On One Side Of The Doma Is
The Kitchen, With Its One Or Two Charcoal Fires, Where The Coolies
Lounge On The Mats And Take Their Food And Smoke, And On The Other
The Family Pursue Their Avocations.
In almost the smallest tea-
house there are one or two rooms at the back, but all the life and
interest are in the open front.
In the small tea-houses there is
only an irori, a square hole in the floor, full of sand or white
ash, on which the live charcoal for cooking purposes is placed, and
small racks for food and eating utensils; but in the large ones
there is a row of charcoal stoves, and the walls are garnished up
to the roof with shelves, and the lacquer tables and lacquer and
china ware used by the guests. The large tea-houses contain the
possibilities for a number of rooms which can be extemporised at
once by sliding paper panels, called fusuma, along grooves in the
floor and in the ceiling or cross-beams.
When we stopped at wayside tea-houses the runners bathed their
feet, rinsed their mouths, and ate rice, pickles, salt fish, and
"broth of abominable things," after which they smoked their tiny
pipes, which give them three whiffs for each filling. As soon as I
got out at any of these, one smiling girl brought me the tabako-
bon, a square wood or lacquer tray, with a china or bamboo
charcoal-holder and ash-pot upon it, and another presented me with
a zen, a small lacquer table about six inches high, with a tiny
teapot with a hollow handle at right angles with the spout, holding
about an English tea-cupful, and two cups without handles or
saucers, with a capacity of from ten to twenty thimblefuls each.
The hot water is merely allowed to rest a minute on the tea-leaves,
and the infusion is a clear straw-coloured liquid with a delicious
aroma and flavour, grateful and refreshing at all times. If
Japanese tea "stands," it acquires a coarse bitterness and an
unwholesome astringency. Milk and sugar are not used. A clean-
looking wooden or lacquer pail with a lid is kept in all tea-
houses, and though hot rice, except to order, is only ready three
times daily, the pail always contains cold rice, and the coolies
heat it by pouring hot tea over it. As you eat, a tea-house girl,
with this pail beside her, squats on the floor in front of you, and
fills your rice bowl till you say, "Hold, enough!" On this road it
is expected that you leave three or four sen on the tea-tray for a
rest of an hour or two and tea.
All day we travelled through rice swamps, along a much-frequented
road, as far as Kasukabe, a good-sized but miserable-looking town,
with its main street like one of the poorest streets in Tokiyo, and
halted for the night at a large yadoya, with downstairs and
upstairs rooms, crowds of travellers, and many evil smells. On
entering, the house-master or landlord, the teishi, folded his
hands and prostrated himself, touching the floor with his forehead
three times. It is a large, rambling old house, and fully thirty
servants were bustling about in the daidokoro, or great open
kitchen. I took a room upstairs (i.e. up a steep step-ladder of
dark, polished wood), with a balcony under the deep eaves. The
front of the house upstairs was one long room with only sides and a
front, but it was immediately divided into four by drawing sliding
screens or panels, covered with opaque wall papers, into their
proper grooves. A back was also improvised, but this was formed of
frames with panes of translucent paper, like our tissue paper, with
sundry holes and rents. This being done, I found myself the
possessor of a room about sixteen feet square, without hook, shelf,
rail, or anything on which to put anything - nothing, in short, but
a matted floor. Do not be misled by the use of this word matting.
Japanese house-mats, tatami, are as neat, refined, and soft a
covering for the floor as the finest Axminster carpet. They are 5
feet 9 inches long, 3 feet broad, and 2.5 inches thick. The frame
is solidly made of coarse straw, and this is covered with very fine
woven matting, as nearly white as possible, and each mat is usually
bound with dark blue cloth. Temples and rooms are measured by the
number of mats they contain, and rooms must be built for the mats,
as they are never cut to the rooms. They are always level with the
polished grooves or ledges which surround the floor. They are soft
and elastic, and the finer qualities are very beautiful. They are
as expensive as the best Brussels carpet, and the Japanese take
great pride in them, and are much aggrieved by the way in which
some thoughtless foreigners stamp over them with dirty boots.
Unfortunately they harbour myriads of fleas.
Outside my room an open balcony with many similiar rooms ran round
a forlorn aggregate of dilapidated shingle roofs and water-butts.
These rooms were all full. Ito asked me for instructions once for
all, put up my stretcher under a large mosquito net of coarse green
canvas with a fusty smell, filled my bath, brought me some tea,
rice, and eggs, took my passport to be copied by the house-master,
and departed, I know not whither. I tried to write to you, but
fleas and mosquitoes prevented it, and besides, the fusuma were
frequently noiselessly drawn apart, and several pairs of dark,
elongated eyes surveyed me through the cracks; for there were two
Japanese families in the room to the right, and five men in that to
the left. I closed the sliding windows, with translucent paper for
window panes, called shoji, and went to bed, but the lack of
privacy was fearful, and I have not yet sufficient trust in my
fellow-creatures to be comfortable without locks, walls, or doors!
Eyes were constantly applied to the sides of the room, a girl twice
drew aside the shoji between it and the corridor; a man, who I
afterwards found was a blind man, offering his services as a
shampooer, came in and said some (of course) unintelligible words,
and the new noises were perfectly bewildering.
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