The Upper Garment Always
Flew Behind Them, Displaying Chests And Backs Elaborately Tattooed
With Dragons And Fishes.
Tattooing has recently been prohibited;
but it was not only a favourite adornment, but a substitute for
perishable clothing.
Most of the men of the lower classes wear their hair in a very ugly
fashion, - the front and top of the head being shaved, the long hair
from the back and sides being drawn up and tied, then waxed, tied
again, and cut short off, the stiff queue being brought forward and
laid, pointing forwards, along the back part of the top of the
head. This top-knot is shaped much like a short clay pipe. The
shaving and dressing the hair thus require the skill of a
professional barber. Formerly the hair was worn in this way by the
samurai, in order that the helmet might fit comfortably, but it is
now the style of the lower classes mostly and by no means
invariably.
Blithely, at a merry trot, the coolies hurried us away from the
kindly group in the Legation porch, across the inner moat and along
the inner drive of the castle, past gateways and retaining walls of
Cyclopean masonry, across the second moat, along miles of streets
of sheds and shops, all grey, thronged with foot-passengers and
kurumas, with pack-horses loaded two or three feet above their
backs, the arches of their saddles red and gilded lacquer, their
frontlets of red leather, their "shoes" straw sandals, their heads
tied tightly to the saddle-girth on either side, great white cloths
figured with mythical beasts in blue hanging down loosely under
their bodies; with coolies dragging heavy loads to the guttural cry
of Hai! huida! with children whose heads were shaved in hideous
patterns; and now and then, as if to point a moral lesson in the
midst of the whirling diorama, a funeral passed through the throng,
with a priest in rich robes, mumbling prayers, a covered barrel
containing the corpse, and a train of mourners in blue dresses with
white wings. Then we came to the fringe of Yedo, where the houses
cease to be continuous, but all that day there was little interval
between them. All had open fronts, so that the occupations of the
inmates, the "domestic life" in fact, were perfectly visible. Many
of these houses were roadside chayas, or tea-houses, and nearly all
sold sweet-meats, dried fish, pickles, mochi, or uncooked cakes of
rice dough, dried persimmons, rain hats, or straw shoes for man or
beast. The road, though wide enough for two carriages (of which we
saw none), was not good, and the ditches on both sides were
frequently neither clean nor sweet. Must I write it? The houses
were mean, poor, shabby, often even squalid, the smells were bad,
and the people looked ugly, shabby, and poor, though all were
working at something or other.
The country is a dead level, and mainly an artificial mud flat or
swamp, in whose fertile ooze various aquatic birds were wading, and
in which hundreds of men and women were wading too, above their
knees in slush; for this plain of Yedo is mainly a great rice-
field, and this is the busy season of rice-planting; for here, in
the sense in which we understand it, they do not "cast their bread
upon the waters." There are eight or nine leading varieties of
rice grown in Japan, all of which, except an upland species,
require mud, water, and much puddling and nasty work. Rice is the
staple food and the wealth of Japan. Its revenues were estimated
in rice. Rice is grown almost wherever irrigation is possible.
The rice-fields are usually very small and of all shapes. A
quarter of an acre is a good-sized field. The rice crop planted in
June is not reaped till November, but in the meantime it needs to
be "puddled" three times, i.e. for all the people to turn into the
slush, and grub out all the weeds and tangled aquatic plants, which
weave themselves from tuft to tuft, and puddle up the mud afresh
round the roots. It grows in water till it is ripe, when the
fields are dried off. An acre of the best land produces annually
about fifty-four bushels of rice, and of the worst about thirty.
On the plain of Yedo, besides the nearly continuous villages along
the causewayed road, there are islands, as they may be called, of
villages surrounded by trees, and hundreds of pleasant oases on
which wheat ready for the sickle, onions, millet, beans, and peas,
were flourishing. There were lotus ponds too, in which the
glorious lily, Nelumbo nucifera, is being grown for the
sacrilegious purpose of being eaten! Its splendid classical leaves
are already a foot above the water.
After running cheerily for several miles my men bowled me into a
tea-house, where they ate and smoked while I sat in the garden,
which consisted of baked mud, smooth stepping-stones, a little pond
with some goldfish, a deformed pine, and a stone lantern. Observe
that foreigners are wrong in calling the Japanese houses of
entertainment indiscriminately "tea-houses." A tea-house or chaya
is a house at which you can obtain tea and other refreshments,
rooms to eat them in, and attendance. That which to some extent
answers to an hotel is a yadoya, which provides sleeping
accommodation and food as required. The licenses are different.
Tea-houses are of all grades, from the three-storied erections, gay
with flags and lanterns, in the great cities and at places of
popular resort, down to the road-side tea-house, as represented in
the engraving, with three or four lounges of dark-coloured wood
under its eaves, usually occupied by naked coolies in all attitudes
of easiness and repose. The floor is raised about eighteen inches
above the ground, and in these tea-houses is frequently a matted
platform with a recess called the doma, literally "earth-space," in
the middle, round which runs a ledge of polished wood called the
itama, or "board space," on which travellers sit while they bathe
their soiled feet with the water which is immediately brought to
them; for neither with soiled feet nor in foreign shoes must one
advance one step on the matted floor.
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