Read Ebook: Peeps at Many Lands: Japan by Finnemore John Du Cane Ella Illustrator

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Ebook has 254 lines and 25439 words, and 6 pages

"A third, who was very poor, determined to bury his own child alive in order to have more food wherewith to support his aged mother, but was rewarded by Heaven with the discovery of a vessel filled with gold, off which the whole family lived happily ever after. But the drollest of all is the story of Roraishi. This paragon, though seventy years old, used to dress in baby's clothes and sprawl about upon the floor. His object was to delude his parents, who were really over ninety years of age, into the idea that they could not be so very old, after all, seeing that they still had such a childlike son."

His duty to his Emperor the Japanese takes very seriously, for it includes his duty to his country. He considers that his life belongs to his country, and he is not only willing, but proud, to give it in her defence. This was seen to the full in the late war with Russia. Time and again a Japanese regiment was ordered to go to certain death. Not a man questioned the order, not a man dreamed for an instant of disobedience. Forward went the line, until every man had been smitten down, and the last brave throat had shouted its last shrill "Banzai!" This was the result of teaching every boy in Japan that the most glorious thing that can happen to him is to die for his Emperor and his native land.

THE JAPANESE GIRL

The word "obedience" has a large part in the life of a Japanese boy; it is the whole life of a Japanese girl. From her babyhood she is taught the duty of obeying some one or other among her relations. There is an old book studied in every Japanese household and learned by heart by every Japanese girl, called "Onra-Dai-Gaku"--that is, the "Greater Learning for Women." It is a code of morals for girls and women, and it starts by saying that every woman owes three obediences: first, while unmarried, to her father; second, when married, to her husband and the elders of his family; third, when a widow, to her son.

Up to the age of three the Japanese girl baby has her head shaved in various fancy patterns, but after three years old the hair is allowed to grow to its natural length. Up to the age of seven she wears a narrow obi of soft silk, the sash of infancy; but at seven years old she puts on the stiff wide obi, tied with a huge bow, and her dress from that moment is womanly in every detail. She is now a musume, or moosme, the Japanese girl, one of the merriest, brightest little creatures in the world. She is never big, for when at her full height she will be about four feet eight inches tall, and a Japanese woman of five feet high is a giantess.

This is her time to wear gay, bright colours, for as a married woman she must dress very soberly. A party of moosmes tripping along to a feast or a fair looks like a bed of brilliant flowers set in motion. They wear kimonos of rich silks and bright shades, kimonos of vermilion and gold, of pink, of blue, of white, decorated with lovely designs of apple-blossom, of silk crape in luminous greens and golden browns, every shade of the rainbow being employed, but all in harmony and perfect taste. If a shower comes on and they tuck up their gaily-coloured and embroidered kimonos, they look like a bed of poppies, for each shows a glowing scarlet under-kimono, or petticoat.

Not only is this the time for the Japanese girl to be gaily dressed, but it is her time to visit fairs and temples, and to enjoy the gaieties which may fall in her way: for when she marries, the gates which lead to the ways of pleasure are closed against her for a long time. The duties of a Japanese wife keep her strictly at home, until the golden day dawns when her son marries and she has a daughter-in-law upon whom she may thrust all the cares of the household. Then once more she can go to temples and theatres, fairs and festivals, while another drudges in her stead.

Marriage is early in Japan. A girl marries at sixteen or seventeen, and to be unmarried at twenty is accounted a great misfortune. At marriage she completely severs herself from her own relations, and joins her husband's household. This is shown in a very striking fashion by the bride wearing a white kimono, the colour of mourning; and more, when she has left her father's house, fires of purification are lighted, just as if a dead body had been borne to the grave. This is to signify that henceforward the bride is dead to her old home, and her whole life must now be spent in the service of her husband and his relations.

The wedding rites are very simple. There is no public function, as in England, and no religious ceremony; the chief feature is that the bride and bridegroom drink three times in turn from three cups, each cup having two spouts. These cups are filled with sak?, the national strong drink of Japan, a kind of beer made from rice. This drinking is supposed to typify that henceforth they will share each other's joys and sorrows, and this sipping of sak? constitutes the marriage ceremony.

The young wife now must bid farewell to her fine clothes and her merry-making. She wears garments of a soft dove colour, or greys or fawns, quiet shades, but often of great charm. She has now to rise first in the morning, to open the shutters which have closed the house for the night, for this is a duty she may not leave to the servants. If her husband's father and mother dwell in the same house, she must consider it an honour to supply all their wants, and she is expected to become a perfect slave to her mother-in-law. It is not uncommon for a meek little wife, who has obeyed every one, to become a perfect tyrant as a mother-in-law, ordering her son's wife right and left, and making the younger woman's life a sheer misery. The mother-in-law has escaped from the land of bondage. It is no longer her duty to rise at dawn and open the house; she can lie in bed, and be waited upon by the young wife; she is free to go here and there, and she does not let her chances slip; she begins once more to thoroughly enjoy life.

It may be doubted, however, whether these conditions will hold their own against the flood of Western customs and Western views which has begun to flow into Japan. At present the deeply-seated ideas which rule home-life are but little shaken in the main, but it is very likely that the modern Japanese girl will revolt against this spending of the best years of her life as an upper and unpaid servant to her husband's friends and relations. But at the present moment, for great sections of Japanese society, the old ways still stand, and stand firmly.

It was formerly the custom for a woman to make herself as ugly as possible when she was married. This was to show that she wished to draw no attention from anyone outside her own home. As a rule she blackened her teeth, which gave her a hideous appearance when she smiled. This custom is now dying out, though plenty of women with blackened teeth are still to be seen.

Should a Japanese wife become a widow, she is expected to show her grief by her desolate appearance. She shaves her head, and wears garments of the most mournful look. It has been said that a Japanese girl has the look of a bird of Paradise, the Japanese wife of a dove, and the Japanese widow of a crow.

IN THE HOUSE

The first is that Japan is a home of earthquakes, and when an earthquake starts to rock the land and topple the houses about the peoples' ears, then a tall, strong house of stone or brick would be both dangerous in its fall and very expensive to put up again. The second is that Japan is a land of fires. The people are very careless. They use cheap lamps and still cheaper petroleum. A lamp explodes or gets knocked over; the oiled paper walls burst into a blaze; the blaze spreads right and left, and sweeps away a few streets, or a suburb of a city, or a whole village. The Jap takes this very calmly. He gets a few posts, puts the same tiles up again for a roof, or makes a new thatch, and, with a few paper screens and shutters, there stands his house again.

A house among the poorer sort of Japanese consists of one large room in the daytime. At night it is formed into as many bedrooms as its owner requires. Along the floor, which is raised about a foot from the ground, and along the roof run a number of grooves, lengthways and crossways. Frames covered with paper, called shoji, slide along these grooves and form the wall between chamber and chamber. The front of the house is, as a rule, open to the street, but if the owners wish for privacy they slide a paper screen into position. At night wooden shutters, called amado, cover the screens. Each shutter is held in place by the next, and the last shutter is fastened by a wooden bolt.

The Japanese are very fond of fresh air and sunshine. Unless the day is too wet or stormy, the front of the house always stands open. If the sun is too strong a curtain is hung across for shade, and very often this curtain bears a huge white symbol representing his name, just as an Englishman puts his name on a brass plate on his front-door. The furniture in these houses is very simple. The floor is covered with thick mats, which serve for chairs and bed, as people both sit and sleep on them. For table a low stool suffices, and for a young couple to set up housekeeping in Japan is a very simple matter. As Mrs. Bishop, the well-known writer, remarks:

"Among the strong reasons for deprecating the adoption of foreign houses, furniture, and modes of living by the Japanese, is that the expense of living would be so largely, increased as to render early marriages impossible. At present the requirements of a young couple in the poorer classes are: a bare matted room , two wooden pillows, a few cotton futons , and a sliding panel, behind which to conceal them in the daytime, a wooden rice bucket and ladle, a wooden wash-bowl, an iron kettle, a hibachi , a tray or two, a teapot or two, two lacquer rice-bowls, a dinner box, a few china cups, a few towels, a bamboo switch for sweeping, a tabako-bon , an iron pot, and a few shelves let into a recess, all of which can be purchased for something under ?2."

These young people would, however, have everything quite comfortable about them, and housekeeping can be set up at a still lower figure, if necessary. Excellent authorities say, and give particulars to prove, that a coolie household may be established in full running order for 5-1/2 yen--that is, somewhere about a sovereign.

In better-class houses the same simplicity prevails, though the building may be of costly materials, with posts and ceilings of ebony inlaid with gold, and floors of rare polished woods. The screens still separate the rooms; the shutters enclose it at night. There are neither doors nor passages. When you wish to pass from one room to the next you slide back one of the shoji, and shut it after you. So you go from room to room until you reach the one of which you are in search. The shoji are often beautifully painted, and in each room is hung a kakemono . A favourite subject is a branch of blossoming cherry, and this, painted upon white silk, gives an effect of wonderful freshness and beauty.

There is no chimney, for a Japanese house knows nothing of a fireplace. The simple cooking is done over a stove burning charcoal, the fumes of which wander through the house and disperse through the hundred openings afforded by the loosely-fitting paper walls. To keep warm in cold weather the Japanese hug to themselves and hang over smaller stoves, called hibachi, metal vessels containing a handful of smouldering charcoal.

In the rooms there are neither tables nor chairs. The floor is covered with most beautiful mats, as white as snow and as soft as a cushion, for they are often a couple of inches thick. They are woven of fine straw, and on these the Japanese sit, with their feet tucked away under them. At dinner-time small, low tables are brought in, and when the meal is finished, the tables are taken away again. Chairs are never used, and the Japanese who wishes to follow Western ways has to practise carefully how to sit on a chair, just as we should have to practise how to sit on our feet as he does at home.

When bedtime comes, there is no change of room. The sitting-room by day becomes the bedroom by night. A couple of wooden pillows and some quilts are fetched from a cupboard; the quilts are spread on the floor, the pillows are placed in position, and the bed is ready. The pillows would strike us as most uncomfortable affairs. They are mere wooden neckrests, and European travellers who have tried them declare that it is like trying to go to sleep with your head hanging over a wooden door-scraper.

As they both sit and sleep on their matting-covered floors, we now see why the Japanese never wear any boots or clogs in the house. To do so would make their beautiful and spotless mats dirty; so all shoes are left at the door, and they walk about the house in the tabi, the thick glove-like socks.

IN THE HOUSE

Even supposing that a well-to-do Japanese has a good deal of native furniture--such as beautifully painted screens, handsome vases, tables of ebony inlaid with gold or with fancy woods, and so forth--yet he does not keep them in the house. He stores them away in a special building, and a servant runs and fetches whatever may be wanted. When the article has served its purpose, it is taken back again.

This building is called a godown. It is built of cement, is painted black, and bears the owner's monogram in a huge white design. It is considered to be fireproof, though it is not always so, and is meant to preserve the family treasures in case of one of the frequent fires. It may be stored with a great variety of furniture and ornaments, but very few see the light at one time.

The Japanese does not fill his house with all the decorations he may own, and live with them constantly. If he has a number of beautiful porcelain jars and vases, he has one out at one time, another at another. A certain vase goes with a certain screen, and every time a change is made, the daughters of the house receive new lessons in the art of placing the articles and decking them with flowers and boughs of blossom in order to gain the most beautiful effect. If a visitor be present in the house, the guest-chamber will be decorated afresh every day, each design showing some new and unexpected beauty in screen, or flower-decked vase, or painted kakemono. There is one vase which is always carefully supplied with freshly-cut boughs or flowers. This is the vase which stands before the tokonoma. The tokonoma is a very quaint feature of a Japanese house. It means a place in which to lay a bed, and, in theory, is a guest-chamber in which to lodge the Mikado, the Japanese Emperor. So loyal are the Japanese that every house is supposed to contain a room ready for the Emperor in case he should stay at the door and need a night's lodging. The Emperor, of course, never comes, and so the tokonoma is no more than a name.

Usually it is a recess a few feet long and a few inches wide, and over it hangs the finest kakemono that the house can afford, and in front of it is a vase whose flowers are arranged in a traditional form which has a certain allegorical meaning.

At night a Japanese room is lighted by a candle fixed in a large square paper lantern, the latter placed on a lacquer stand. The light is very dim, and many are now replacing it with ordinary European lamps. Unluckily they buy the very commonest and cheapest of these, and so in consequence accidents and fires are numerous.

Among the coolies of Japan, the people who fill the back streets of the large towns with long rows of tiny houses, the process of "moving house" is absolutely literal. They do not merely carry off their furniture--that would be simple enough--but they swing up the house too, carry it off, set their furniture in it again, and resume their contented family life. It is not at all an uncommon thing to meet a pair thus engaged in shifting their abode. The man is marching along with a building of lath and paper, not much bigger than a bathing-machine, swung on his shoulders, while his wife trudges behind him with two or three big bundles tied up in blue cloth. He carries the house, and she the furniture. Within a few hours they will be comfortably settled in the new street to which their needs or their fancies call them.

A JAPANESE DAY

The first person astir in a Japanese household is the mistress of the house. She rises from the quilts on the floor which form her bed and puts out the lamp, which has been burning all night. No Japanese sleeps without an andon, a tall paper lamp, in which a dim light burns. Next she unlocks the amado, the wooden shutters, and calls the servants.

Now the breakfast-table must be set out. In one way this is very simple, for there is no cloth to spread, for tablecloths are unknown, and when enough rice has been boiled and enough tea has been made, the breakfast is ready. But there is one point upon which she must be very careful. The lacquer rice-bowls and the chopsticks must be set in their proper order, according to the importance of each person in the family. The slightest mistake in arranging the position at a meal of any member of the family or of a guest under the roof would be a matter of the deepest disgrace. Etiquette is the tyrant of Japan. A slip in the manner of serving the food is a thousand times more important in Japanese eyes than the quality of the food itself. A hostess might serve burned rice and the most shocking tea, but if it were handed round in correct form, there would be nothing more to be said; but to serve a twice-honourable guest before a thrice-honourable guest--ah! that would be truly dreadful, a blot never to be wiped off the family escutcheon.

After breakfast the master of the house will go about his business. If the day is fine the wife has his straw sandals ready for him; if it is wet she gets his high wooden clogs and his umbrella of oiled paper. Then she and the servants escort him to the door and speed his departure with many low bows, rubbing their knees together--the latter is a sign of deep respect--and calling good wishes after him.

It may seem odd to us that the servants should accompany their mistress on such an errand, but the servants in Japan are not like other servants: they are as much a part of the family as the children of the house. Domestic service in Japan is a most honourable calling, and ranks far higher than trade. A domestic servant who married a tradesman would be considered as going down a step in the social scale. In Japan trade has been left until lately to the lower classes of the population, and tradespeople have ranked with coolies and labourers.

This importance of domestic servants arises from two reasons: First, the old custom which compels the mistress of the house, even if she be of the highest rank, to serve her husband and children herself, and also to wait on her parents-in-law, has the effect of raising domestic service to a high and honourable level. Second, many Japanese servants are of good birth and excellent family. Only a generation ago their fathers were samurai, followers of some great Prince, a Daimio, and members of his clan. In the feudal days of Japan, so recently past, the position of the samurai was exactly the same as the clansmen of a Highland chief, say at the time of the "Forty-Five."

The Daimio, the Japanese chief, had a great estate and vast revenues, counted in measures of rice; one Daimio had as much as 1,000,000 koku of rice, the koku being a weight of about 132 pounds. But out of these revenues he had to maintain his clan, his samurai, the members of his private army. The samurai clansmen were the exact counterparts of Highlanders. The poorest considered himself a gentleman and a member of his chief's family; he held trade and handicrafts in the utmost disdain: he lived only for war and the defence of his lord. But he regarded service in his lord's household as a high honour, and thus all service was made honourable. When the feudal system came to an end, when the Daimios retired into private life, and the samurai were disbanded, then the latter and their families found that they must work for their own support, and great numbers entered domestic service.

Boys and girls who are meant for servants have to go through a course of training in etiquette, quite apart from the training they receive in their duties. This training is intended to maintain the proper distance between employer and servant, while, in a sense, allowing them to be perfectly familiar. The Japanese servant bows low and kneels to her mistress, and addresses her always in the tone of voice used by an inferior to a superior, yet she will join in a conversation between her mistress and a caller, and laugh with the rest at any joke which is made.

It sounds difficult to believe that servants do not become too forward under such conditions, but they never do. Their perfect taste and good breeding forbid that they should pass over a certain line where familiarity would go too far. The position of a servant in Japan is shown by the fact that, though her master or mistress will speak to her as a servant, yet a caller or guest must always use the tone of equality and address her as san . In the absence of the mistress, servants are expected to entertain any callers, and they do this with the perfection of gentle manners and exquisite politeness. A lady writer says:

"I remember once being very much at sea when I was taken to pay a call on a Japanese lady of the well-to-do class. Not being able to speak a word of the language, I was unable to follow the conversation which took place between the charming little lady who greeted us at the inner shutters and my friend. She was dressed in the soft grey kimono and obi of a middle-aged woman, and her exquisite manner and gentleness made me feel as heavy as my boots, which I had not been allowed to take off, sounded on the delicate floor-matting compared to her soft white foot-gloves.

"My friend addressed her as san, and seemed to speak to her just as a guest would to her hostess. We had tea on the floor, and my friend chatted pleasantly for some time with the little grey figure, when suddenly the sound of wheels on the gravel outside caught my ears, and the next instant there was the scuffling of many feet along the polished wooden passage which led to the front door, and the eager cry of 'O kaeri! O kaeri!' . Our hostess for the time rose from her knees, smiled, and begged us to excuse her honourable rudeness. When she had hurried off to join in the cry of welcome, my friend said, 'Oh, I am glad she has come!'

"'Who has come ?' I asked.

"'The lady we came to see,' she said.

"'Then, who was the charming little lady who poured out tea for us?' I asked. My friend smiled.

"'Oh, that was only the housemaid.'"

A man dealing with the same point remarks: "It is very important that a Japanese upper servant should have good manners, for he is expected to have sufficient knowledge of etiquette to entertain his master's guests if his master is out. After rubbing his knees together and hissing and kowtowing , he will invite you to take a seat on the floor, or, more correctly speaking, on your heels, with a flat cushion between your knees and the floor to make the ordeal a little less painful. He will then offer you five cups of tea , and dropping on his own heels with ease and grace, enter into an affable conversation, humble to a degree, but perfectly familiar, until his master arrives to relieve him. Even after his master has arrived he may stay in the room, and is quite likely to cut into the conversation, and dead certain to laugh at the smallest apology for a joke!"

A JAPANESE DAY

But we must return to our Japanese housewife, who has at present only shown her husband out politely to his business. Now she sees that all the paper screens are removed, so that the whole house becomes, as it were, one great room, and thus is thoroughly aired. The beds are rolled up and put away in cupboards, and the woodwork is carefully rubbed down and polished. Perhaps the flowers in the vases are faded, and it is a long and elaborate performance to rearrange the beautiful sprays and the blossoms brought in from the garden.

Cooking is not by any means so important a matter in her household life as it is in that of her Western sister. If her rice-box is well filled, her tea-caddy well stored, her pickle-jar and store of vegetables in good order, she has little more to think about. "Rice is the staple food of Japan, and is eaten at every meal by rich or poor, taking the place of our bread. It is of particularly fine quality, and at meals is brought in small bright-looking tubs kept for this exclusive purpose and scrupulously clean; it is then helped to each individual in small quantities, and steaming hot. The humblest meal is served with nicety, and with the rice various tasty condiments, such as pickles, salted fish, and numerous other dainty little appetizers, are eaten. To moisten the meal, tea without sugar is taken. A hibachi, or charcoal basin, generally occupies the central position, round which the meal is enjoyed, and on the fire of which the teapot is always kept easily boiling."

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.

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