Lamps, Burning Mineral Oils, Native And Imported, Are Being
Manufactured On A Large Scale, But, Apart From The Peril Connected
With Them, The Carriage Of Oil Into Country Districts Is Very
Expensive.
No Japanese would think of sleeping without having an
andon burning all night in his room.
These villages are full of shops. There is scarcely a house which
does not sell something. Where the buyers come from, and how a
profit can be made, is a mystery. Many of the things are eatables,
such as dried fishes, 1.5 inch long, impaled on sticks; cakes,
sweetmeats composed of rice, flour, and very little sugar; circular
lumps of rice dough, called mochi; roots boiled in brine; a white
jelly made from beans; and ropes, straw shoes for men and horses,
straw cloaks, paper umbrellas, paper waterproofs, hair-pins, tooth-
picks, tobacco pipes, paper mouchoirs, and numbers of other trifles
made of bamboo, straw, grass, and wood. These goods are on stands,
and in the room behind, open to the street, all the domestic
avocations are going on, and the housewife is usually to be seen
boiling water or sewing with a baby tucked into the back of her
dress. A lucifer factory has recently been put up, and in many
house fronts men are cutting up wood into lengths for matches. In
others they are husking rice, a very laborious process, in which
the grain is pounded in a mortar sunk in the floor by a flat-ended
wooden pestle attached to a long horizontal lever, which is worked
by the feet of a man, invariably naked, who stands at the other
extremity.
In some women are weaving, in others spinning cotton. Usually
there are three or four together - the mother, the eldest son's
wife, and one or two unmarried girls. The girls marry at sixteen,
and shortly these comely, rosy, wholesome-looking creatures pass
into haggard, middle-aged women with vacant faces, owing to the
blackening of the teeth and removal of the eyebrows, which, if they
do not follow betrothal, are resorted to on the birth of the first
child. In other houses women are at their toilet, blackening their
teeth before circular metal mirrors placed in folding stands on the
mats, or performing ablutions, unclothed to the waist. Early the
village is very silent, while the children are at school; their
return enlivens it a little, but they are quiet even at play; at
sunset the men return, and things are a little livelier; you hear a
good deal of splashing in baths, and after that they carry about
and play with their younger children, while the older ones prepare
lessons for the following day by reciting them in a high,
monotonous twang. At dark the paper windows are drawn, the amado,
or external wooden shutters, are closed, the lamp is lighted before
the family shrine, supper is eaten, the children play at quiet
games round the andon; and about ten the quilts and wooden pillows
are produced from the press, the amado are bolted, and the family
lies down to sleep in one room. Small trays of food and the
tabako-bon are always within reach of adult sleepers, and one grows
quite accustomed to hear the sound of ashes being knocked out of
the pipe at intervals during the night. The children sit up as
late as their parents, and are included in all their conversation.
I never saw people take so much delight in their offspring,
carrying them about, or holding their hands in walking, watching
and entering into their games, supplying them constantly with new
toys, taking them to picnics and festivals, never being content to
be without them, and treating other people's children also with a
suitable measure of affection and attention. Both fathers and
mothers take a pride in their children. It is most amusing about
six every morning to see twelve or fourteen men sitting on a low
wall, each with a child under two years in his arms, fondling and
playing with it, and showing off its physique and intelligence. To
judge from appearances, the children form the chief topic at this
morning gathering. At night, after the houses are shut up, looking
through the long fringe of rope or rattan which conceals the
sliding door, you see the father, who wears nothing but a maro in
"the bosom of his family," bending his ugly, kindly face over a
gentle-looking baby, and the mother, who more often than not has
dropped the kimono from her shoulders, enfolding two children
destitute of clothing in her arms. For some reasons they prefer
boys, but certainly girls are equally petted and loved. The
children, though for our ideas too gentle and formal, are very
prepossessing in looks and behaviour. They are so perfectly docile
and obedient, so ready to help their parents, so good to the little
ones, and, in the many hours which I have spent in watching them at
play, I have never heard an angry word or seen a sour look or act.
But they are little men and women rather than children, and their
old-fashioned appearance is greatly aided by their dress, which, as
I have remarked before, is the same as that of adults.
There are, however, various styles of dressing the hair of girls,
by which you can form a pretty accurate estimate of any girl's age
up to her marriage, when the coiffure undergoes a definite change.
The boys all look top-heavy and their heads of an abnormal size,
partly from a hideous practice of shaving the head altogether for
the first three years. After this the hair is allowed to grow in
three tufts, one over each ear, and the other at the back of the
neck; as often, however, a tuft is grown at the top of the back of
the head. At ten the crown alone is shaved and a forelock is worn,
and at fifteen, when the boy assumes the responsibilities of
manhood, his hair is allowed to grow like that of a man.
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