The end nearest the road is a little temple, much crowded with
images, and small, red, earthenware urns and tongs for sale to the
relatives of deceased persons, and beyond this are four rooms with
earthen floors and mud walls; nothing noticeable about them except
the height of the peaked roof and the dark colour of the plaster.
In the middle of the largest are several pairs of granite supports
at equal distances from each other, and in the smallest there is a
solitary pair. This was literally all that was to be seen. In the
large room several bodies are burned at one time, and the charge is
only one yen, about 3s. 8d., solitary cremation costing five yen.
Faggots are used, and 1s. worth ordinarily suffices to reduce a
human form to ashes. After the funeral service in the house the
body is brought to the cremation ground, and is left in charge of
the attendant, a melancholy, smoked-looking man, as well he may be.
The richer people sometimes pay priests to be present during the
burning, but this is not usual. There were five "quick-tubs" of
pine hooped with bamboo in the larger room, containing the remains
of coolies, and a few oblong pine chests in the small rooms
containing those of middle-class people. At 8 p.m. each "coffin"
is placed on the stone trestles, the faggots are lighted
underneath, the fires are replenished during the night, and by 6
a.m. that which was a human being is a small heap of ashes, which
is placed in an urn by the relatives and is honourably interred.
In some cases the priests accompany the relations on this last
mournful errand. Thirteen bodies were burned the night before my
visit, but there was not the slightest odour in or about the
building, and the interpreter told me that, owing to the height of
the chimneys, the people of the neighbourhood never experience the
least annoyance, even while the process is going on. The
simplicity of the arrangement is very remarkable, and there can be
no reasonable doubt that it serves the purpose of the innocuous and
complete destruction of the corpse as well as any complicated
apparatus (if not better), while its cheapness places it within the
reach of the class which is most heavily burdened by ordinary
funeral expenses. {23} This morning the Governor sent his
secretary to present me with a translation of an interesting
account of the practice of cremation and its introduction into
Japan.
SS. "Volga," Christmas Eve, 1878. - The snowy dome of Fujisan
reddening in the sunrise rose above the violet woodlands of
Mississippi Bay as we steamed out of Yokohama Harbour on the 19th,
and three days later I saw the last of Japan - a rugged coast,
lashed by a wintry sea.
I. L. B.
Footnotes:
{1} This is an altogether exceptional aspect of Fujisan, under
exceptional atmospheric conditions. The mountain usually looks
broader and lower, and is often compared to an inverted fan.
{2} I continue hereafter to use the Japanese word kuruma instead
of the Chinese word Jin-ri-ki-sha. Kuruma, literally a wheel or
vehicle, is the word commonly used by the Jin-ri-ki-sha men and
other Japanese for the "man-power-carriage," and is certainly more
euphonious. From kuruma naturally comes kurumaya for the kuruma
runner.
{3} Often in the later months of my residence in Japan, when I
asked educated Japanese questions concerning their history,
religions, or ancient customs, I was put off with the answer, "You
should ask Mr. Satow, he could tell you."
{4} After several months of travelling in some of the roughest
parts of the interior, I should advise a person in average health -
and none other should travel in Japan - not to encumber himself with
tinned meats, soups, claret, or any eatables or drinkables, except
Liebig's extract of meat.
{5} I visited this temple alone many times afterwards, and each
visit deepened the interest of my first impressions. There is
always enough of change and novelty to prevent the interest from
flagging, and the mild, but profoundly superstitious, form of
heathenism which prevails in Japan is nowhere better represented.
{6} The list of my equipments is given as a help to future
travellers, especially ladies, who desire to travel long distances
in the interior of Japan. One wicker basket is enough, as I
afterwards found.
{7} My fears, though quite natural for a lady alone, had really no
justification. I have since travelled 1200 miles in the interior,
and in Yezo, with perfect safety and freedom from alarm, and I
believe that there is no country in the world in which a lady can
travel with such absolute security from danger and rudeness as in
Japan.
{8} In my northern journey I was very frequently obliged to put up
with rough and dirty accommodation, because the better sort of
houses were of this class. If there are few sights which shock the
traveller, there is much even on the surface to indicate vices
which degrade and enslave the manhood of Japan.
{9} I advise every traveller in the ruder regions of Japan to take
a similar stretcher and a good mosquito net. With these he may
defy all ordinary discomforts.
{10} This can only be true of the behaviour of the lowest
excursionists from the Treaty Ports.
{11} Many unpleasant details have necessarily been omitted. If
the reader requires any apology for those which are given here and
elsewhere, it must be found in my desire to give such a faithful
picture of peasant life, as I saw it in Northern Japan, as may be a
contribution to the general sum of knowledge of the country, and,
at the same time, serve to illustrate some of the difficulties
which the Government has to encounter in its endeavour to raise
masses of people as deficient as these are in some of the first
requirements of civilisation.
