Part 8

Kyoto will be found one of the best cities in Japan for the purchase of the art work just described, as well as embroidery, silks and other stuffs. In many of these shops the work is done on the premises and hence the prices are cheaper than in any other city except Yokohama. It is worth while to visit the shops that exhibit bronze work, silks, velvets and carvings in ivory and wood, as well as curios of many kinds. Most of these shopkeepers demand more than they expect to receive, but in a few shops the goods are plainly marked and no reduction in price can be secured. At Kyoto the tourist will find many traces of primitive Japanese life, especially in the unfrequented streets and in the suburbs. Here in the bed of the river, a portion of which was being walled up for a canal, were employed a dozen women digging up gravel and carrying it in baskets to carts near by. They had their skirts tied up and they were working in mud and water which reached to their knees. It was not a pleasant spectacle, but it excited no comment in this country, where women labor in the rice fields by the side of men.

A short ride from Kyoto brings the visitor to Nara, the seat of the oldest temples in Japan, and famous for the tame deer in the park. A long avenue of stone lanterns leads to the principal temples, in an ancient cedar grove. The main temple gives an impression of great age by its heavy thatched roof.

Next looms up the gigantic wooden structure, which houses Daibutsa, the great bronze image of Buddha. This statue, which dates back to the eighth century, is fifty-three and one-quarter feet high; the face is sixteen feet long and nine and one-quarter feet wide. The god is in a sitting position, with the legs crossed. The head, which is darker than the remainder of the image, replaced in the sixteenth century the original head destroyed by fire. The expression of this Buddha is not benignant, and the image is impressive only because of its size. It has two images eighteen feet in height on either hand, but these seemed dwarfed by the huge central figure.

The park at Nara is very interesting, because of the tame deer which have no fear of the stranger in European dress, but will eat cakes from his hand. One of the sources of revenue is to sell these cakes to the tourist.

A visit was paid to an old temple at Horyuji, about eight miles from Nara, which is famous as the oldest Buddhist temple in Japan. It contains a valuable collection of ancient Japanese works of art. The rickshaw ride to this place is of great interest, as the road passes through a rich farming country and two small towns which seem to have been little affected by European influence. In the fertile valley below Nara rice is grown on an extensive scale, these paddy fields being veritable swamps which can be crossed only by high paths running through them, at distances of thirty or forty feet. Here also may be seen the curious method of trellising orchards of pear trees with bamboo poles. The trellis supports the upper branches and this prevents them from breaking down under the weight of fruit, while it also makes easy the picking of fruit. Agriculture at its best is seen in this fertile Japanese valley. One peculiarity of this country, as of other parts of rural Japan, is that one sees none of the scattered farmhouses which dot every American farming section. Instead of building on his own land the farmer lives in a village to which he returns at night after his day's work.

KOBE, OSAKA, THE INLAND SEA AND NAGASAKI

Kobe is regarded as a base for the tourist who wishes to make short excursions to Kyoto, Osaka and other cities. It was established as a foreign settlement in 1868, and has grown so remarkably during the last ten years that now it exceeds in imports and exports any other city in Japan. Kobe is one of the most attractive cities in the empire, being built on a pretty harbor, with the land rising like an amphitheater. Scores of handsome residences are scattered over the foothills near the sea. Those on the lower side of the streets that run parallel to the harbor have gardens walled up on the rear, while the houses on the upper side of the streets have massive retaining walls. These give opportunity for many ornamental gateways.

Kobe has many large government schools, but the institutions which I found of greatest interest were Kobe College for Women, conducted by Miss Searle, and the Glory Kindergarten, under the management of Miss Howe. Kobe College, which was founded over thirty years ago, is maintained by the Women's Board of Missions of Chicago. It has two hundred and twenty-five pupils, of whom all except about fifty are lodged and boarded on the premises. I heard several of the classes reciting in English. The primary class in English read simple sentences from a blackboard and answered questions put by the teacher. A few spoke good English, but the great majority failed to open their mouths, and the result was the indistinct enunciation that is so trying to understand. Another class was reading Hamlet, but the pupils made sad work of Shakespeare's verse. The Japanese reading of English is always monotonous, because their own language admits of no emphasis; so their use of English is no more strange than our attempts at Japanese, in which we employ emphasis that excites the ridicule of the Mikado's subjects.

Not far from this college is the kintergarten, which Miss Howe has carried on for twenty-four years. She takes little tots of three or four years of age and trains them in Froebel's methods. So successful has she been in her work among these children of the best Japanese families of Kobe that she has a large waiting list. She has also trained many Japanese girls in kintergarten work. All the children at this school looked unusually bright, as they are drawn from the educated classes. It sounded very strange to hear American and English lullabies being chanted by these tots in the unfamiliar Japanese words.

Osaka, the chief manufacturing city of Japan, is only about three-quarters of an hour's ride from Kobe. It spreads over nine miles square and lies on both sides of the Yodogawa river. The most interesting thing in Osaka is the castle built by Hideyoshi, the Napoleon of Japan, in 1583. The strong wall was once surrounded by a deep moat and an outer wall, which made it practically impregnable. What will surprise anyone is the massive character of the inner walls which remain. Here are blocks of solid granite, many of them measuring forty feet in length by ten feet in height. It must have required a small army of men to place these stones in position, but so well was this work done (without the aid of any mortar) that the stones have remained in place during all these years. From the summit of the upper wall a superb view may be gained of the surrounding country.

From Kobe the tourist makes the trip through the Inland Sea by steamer. Its length is about two hundred and forty miles and its greatest width is forty miles. The trip through this sea, which in some places narrows to a few hundred feet, is deeply interesting. The hills remind a Californian strongly of the Marin hills opposite San Francisco, but here they are terraced nearly to their summits and are green with rice and other crops. Many of the hills are covered with a growth of small cedar trees, and these trees lend rare beauty to the various points of land that project into the sea. At two places in the sea the steamer seems as though she would surely go on the rocks in the narrow channel, but the pilot swings her almost within her own length and she turns again into a wider arm of the sea. In these narrow channels the tide runs like a mill race, and without a pilot (who knows every current) any vessel would be in extreme danger. The steamer leaves Kobe about ten o'clock at night and reaches Nagasaki, the most western of Japanese cities, about seven o'clock the following morning.

Nagasaki in some ways reminds one of Kobe, but the hills are steeper and the most striking feature of the town is the massive stone walls that support the streets winding around the hills, and the elaborate paving of many of these side-hill streets with great blocks of granite. The rainfall is heavy at Nagasaki, so we find here a good system of gutters to carry off the water. The harbor is pretty and on the opposite shore are large engine works, three large docks and a big ship-building plant, all belonging to the Mitsu Bishi Company. Here some five thousand workmen are constantly employed.

The Daibutsu or Great Bronze Buddha at Hyogo, Near Kobe. The Impressive Figure is Forty-eight Feet High and Eighty-five Feet Round the Waist. It is Not so Fine as the Daibutsu at Kamakura But Surpasses That at Nara]

One of the great industries of Nagasaki is the coaling of Japanese and foreign steamships. A very fair kind of steam coal is sold here at three dollars a ton, which is less by one dollar and one-half than a poorer grade of coal can be bought for in Seattle; hence the steamer Minnesota coaled here. The coaling of this huge ship proved to be one of the most picturesque sights of her voyage. Early on the morning of her arrival lighters containing about a railway carload of coal began to arrive. These were arranged in regular rows on both sides of the ship. Then came out in big sampans an army of Japanese numbering two thousand in all. The leaders arranged ladders against the sides of the ship, and up these swarmed this army of workers, three-quarters of whom were young girls between fourteen and eighteen years old. They were dressed in all colors, but most of them wore a native bonnet tied about the ears. They formed in line on the stairs and then the coal was passed along from hand to hand until it reached the bunkers. These baskets held a little over a peck of coal, and the rapidity with which they moved along this living line was startling.

Every few minutes the line was given a breathing space, but the work went on with a deadly regularity that made the observer tired to watch it. Occasionally one of the young girls would flag in her work and, after she dropped a few basketfuls, she would be relieved and put at the lighter work of throwing the empty baskets back into the lighters. Most of these girls, however, remained ten hours at this laborious work, and a few worked through from seven o'clock in the morning until nearly midnight, when the last basket of coal was put on board. At work like this no such force of Europeans would have shown the same self-control and constant courtesy which these Japanese exhibited. Wranglings would have been inevitable, and the strong workers would have shown little regard for their weaker companions.

Another feature of this Japanese work was the elimination of any strain or overexertion. If a girl failed to catch a basket as it whirled along the line she dropped it instantly. Never did I see anyone reach over or strain to do her work.

The rest for lunch occupied only about fifteen minutes, the begrimed workers sitting down on the steps of the ladders and eating their simple food with keen relish. At night when strong electric lights cast their glare over these constantly moving lines of figures the effect was almost grotesque, reminding one of Gustave Doré's terrible pictures of the lost souls in torment, or of the scramble to escape when the deluge came. The skill that comes of long practice marked the movements of all these workers, and it was rare that any basket was dropped by an awkward or tired coal-passer.

In seventeen hours four thousand five hundred tons of coal were loaded on the steamer. About fifteen hundred people were working on the various ladders, while another five hundred were employed in trimming the coal in the hold and in managing the various boats. The result was an exhibit of what can be done by primitive methods when perfect co-operation is secured.

Nagasaki itself has little that will interest the tourist but a ride or walk to Mogi, on an arm of the ocean, five miles away, may be taken with profit. The road passes over a high divide and, as it runs through a farming country, one is able to see here (more perfectly than in any other part of Japan) how carefully every acre of tillable land is cultivated. On both sides of this road from Nagasaki to the fishing village of Mogi were fields enclosed by permanent walls of stone, such as would be built in America only to sustain a house. In many cases the ground protected by this wall was not over half an acre in extent, and in some cases the fields were of smaller size. Tier after tier of these walls extended up the sides of the steep hills. The effect at a little distance was startling, as the whole landscape seemed artificial. The result of this series of walls was to make a succession of little mesas or benches such as may be seen in southern California.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE JAPANESE SENSE OF BEAUTY

After a trip through Japan the question that confronts the observant tourist is: What has preserved the fine artistic sense of the Japanese people of all classes, in the face of the materialist influences that have come into their life with the introduction of Western methods of thought and of business? The most careless traveler has it thrust upon him that here is a people artistic to the tips of their fingers, and with childlike power of idealization, although they have been forced to engage in the fierce warfare of modern business competition. What is it that has kept them unspotted from the world of business? What secret source of spiritual force have they been able to draw upon to keep fresh and dewy this eager, artistic sense that must be developed with so much labor among any Western people?

The answer to these questions is found, by several shrewd observers, in the Japanese devotion to their gardens. Every Japanese, no matter how small and poor his house, has a garden to which he may retire and "invite his soul." These Japanese gardens are unique and are found in no other land. China has the nearest approach to them, but the poor Chinese never dreams of spending time and money in the development of a garden, such as the Japanese in similar circumstances regards as a necessity. And these Japanese gardens are always made to conform to the house and its architecture. The two never fail to fit and harmonize. A poor man may have only a square of ground no larger than a few feet, but he will so arrange it as to give it an appearance of spaciousness, while the more elaborate gardens are laid out so as to give the impression of unlimited extent. The end of the garden appears to melt into the horizon, and the owner has a background that extends for miles into the country. By the artistic use of stones and dwarf plants, a few square feet of ground are made to give the effect of liberal space and, with bridges, moss-covered stones, ponds, gold fish and other features, a perfect illusion of the country may be produced.

Into this garden the master of the house retires after the work of the day. There he takes none of his business or professional cares. He gives himself wholly to the contemplation of Nature. He becomes for the time as a little child, and his soul is pleased with childish things. For him this garden, with its pretty outlook on a larger world, serves as the boundary of the universe. Here he may dream of the legends of the Samurai, before Japan fell under the evil influence of the new God of Gain. Here he may indulge in the day-dreams that have always been a part of the national consciousness. Here, in fine, he may get closer to the real heart of Nature than any Occidental can ever hope to reach.

It is this capacity to get close to Nature that the Japanese possess beyond any other Oriental people--and this capacity is not limited to those of means or leisure or education. The poor man, who has a daily struggle to get enough rice to satisfy his moderate wants, is as open to these influences as the rich man who is not worried by any material wants. There is no distinction of classes in this universal worship of beauty--this passion for all that is lovely in nature. It was not my good fortune to be in Japan at the time of the cherry-blossom festival--but these fêtes merely serve to bring out this national passion for beauty and color, which finds expression not only in the gardens throughout the empire but in painting, drawing and in working on silks and other fabrics. The same instinctive art sense is seen in the work of the cabinet-maker and even in the designs of gateways and the doors of houses. The eye and the hand of the common worker in wood and metal is as sure as the hand of the great artist. Such is the influence of this constant study of beauty in nature and art.

When you watch a busy Japanese artisan you get a good idea of the spirit that animates his work. He regards himself as an artist, and he shows the same sureness of hand and the same sense of form and color as the designer in colors or the painter of portraits or landscapes. All the beautiful gateways or torii, as they are called, are works of art. They have one stereotyped form, but the artists embellish these in many ways and the result is that every entrance to a large estate or a public ground is pleasing to the eye. As these gateways are generally lacquered in black or red or gold, they add much to the beauty and color of each scene. The ornamental lattice over nearly every door also adds enormously to the effectiveness of even a simple interior.

Watch a worker on cloissone enamel and you will be amazed at the rapidity and the accuracy with which he paints designs on this beautiful ware. Without any pattern he proceeds to sketch with his brush an intricate design of flowers, birds or insects, and he develops this with an unerring touch that is little short of marvelous, when one considers that he has never had any regular training in drawing but has grown up in the shop and has gained all his skill from watching and imitating the work of his master on the bench at his side. One day in Kyoto I watched a mere boy gradually develop a beautiful design of several hundred butterflies gradually becoming smaller and smaller until they vanished at the top of the vase. What he proposed to make of this was shown in a finished design that was exquisite in the gradation of form and color. The same skill of hand and eye was seen in the shops of Kyoto where damascene ware is made. Gold and silver is hammered into steel and other metals, so that the intricate designs actually seem to become a part of the metal. In carving in wood the Japanese excel, and in such places as Nikko and Nara the tourist may pick up the most elaborate carvings at absurdly low prices.

CONCLUSIONS ON JAPANESE LIFE AND CHARACTER

In summing up one's observations of Japanese life and character, after a brief trip across the empire, it is necessary to exercise much care and not to take the accidental for the ordinary incidents of life. Generalizations from such observations on a hurried journey are especially deadly. To guard against such error I talked with many people, and the conclusions given here are drawn from the radically different views of missionaries, merchants, steamship agents, bankers and others. Generous allowance must be made for the prejudices of each class, but even then the forming of any conclusions is difficult. This is due largely to the fact that the Japanese a half-century ago were mediæval in life and thought, and that the remarkable advances which they have made in material and intellectual affairs have been crowded into a little more than the life of two generations.