The Gist of Japan Part 4

Much has been said in regard to the commercial honor and integrity of the j.a.panese. Our first American minister to j.a.pan, Townsend Harris, p.r.o.nounced them "the greatest liars upon the face of the earth." A foreign employee in a government school, when asked concerning the native character, replied in two words--_deceit_ and _conceit_. The numerous exceptions to upright dealing in mercantile circles seem to justify these judgments. Native merchants are unreliable in such matters as punctuality, veracity, and the keeping of contracts. They will do all in their {68} power to avoid the fulfilment of a contract which would entail a loss. The artisan cla.s.s is even more unreliable in these respects than are the merchants.

To offset this, it should be said that, while the people are frequently unreliable in private matters, in public affairs and in all governmental relations they are honest and fair-dealing. Public office is seldom perverted for private ends, and the national conscience would quickly call to account any official who would enrich himself at the public expense. In this respect j.a.pan is in striking contrast with the other nations of the East, and, alas! with many of those of the West as well.

I have not endeavored to give an exhaustive statement of the national characteristics of the j.a.panese people, but have simply tried to give enough to help my readers to an appreciation of the native character.

I have endeavored to be strictly truthful and at the same time to do justice to the race. While fully recognizing the failings of the j.a.panese, we must also recognize the great improvement of the national character in recent years, and must remember that they are in many respects laboring at a great disadvantage, and deserve, not hatred and contempt, but our warmest sympathy and love.

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IV

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS

A study of the manners and customs of foreign peoples is both interesting and profitable. If we have no knowledge of the customs of other nations we are apt to think that our own customs have their ground in eternal reason, and that all customs differing from ours are necessarily false and wrong. But if we study the manners of other lands, and learn of the daily observance of customs many of which are squarely opposed to our own, and which nevertheless work well, we will be led to value our own customs at their true worth, and to realize that we have not a monopoly of all that is good, convenient, and useful.

To know the manners and customs of a country is to know much about that country. There is no truer index of the character of a people's life.

Knowing these, the prevailing morality and governing laws may be very largely inferred. In fact, {70} every phase of a nation's life has so intimate a connection with the manners and customs that a study of these is exceedingly profitable.

Such a study is especially necessary to those who would gain a correct knowledge of the nature and difficulties of mission work in foreign lands. The customs of a people will have a direct bearing upon mission work among them. If Christianity violates national customs it will be condemned; if it observes them it will be tolerated. Whether it observes or violates them must depend upon the nature of the customs themselves. The success of Christianity in any country will depend, in part, upon the nature of the customs prevalent there. Therefore it is wise for us to study those of j.a.pan, in order to a better understanding of the people and of the condition and prospects of mission work among them.

One of the most striking facts in connection with j.a.panese customs is that many of them are exactly opposed to those which prevail in the West. People who have been accustomed to doing certain things one way all their lives, and have come to look upon that as the only way, upon coming out here are shocked to find these very same things done in precisely the opposite way. This is so to such an extent that j.a.pan has been called "Topsyturvydom." But to those who are acquainted with the customs of both East and {71} West it is a serious question which one is topsy-turvy. After one has become used to them, many of the customs appear just as sensible and convenient as those of America or Europe. Why this opposition, we do not know, but perhaps the fact that the j.a.panese are antipodal to us makes it fitting that their customs should be antipodal too. I will point out a few of the things that are so different.

The manner of making books and of writing letters is very different from that to which my readers are accustomed. An Occidental has an idea that something inherent in things necessitates that a book begin at the left side, and the thought of beginning at the other side appears to him ridiculous. But in reality it is every whit as convenient, fitting, and sensible to begin at one side as at the other; and all j.a.panese books begin at the side which people of the West call the end, i.e., at the right side, and read toward the left. While English books are printed across the page in lines from left to right, j.a.panese books are printed from right to left in columns. An Occidental generally turns the leaves of his book from the top with his left hand; an Oriental turns them from the bottom with his right hand.

In Western libraries the books are placed on their ends in rows; in j.a.pan they are laid flat down on their sides and piled up in columns.

If we see several good dictionaries {72} or encyclopedias in a man's study we are apt to infer that he is a man of studious habits; the j.a.panese of olden times inferred just the opposite. The idea seems to have been that a scholar would already have the meaning and use of all words in his head and would not need to refer to a dictionary. A j.a.panese friend who came into my study one day expressed great surprise at seeing several large dictionaries there. "You have certainly had better educational advantages than I have," he said, "and yet I can get along with a very small dictionary; why cannot you?" Upon inquiry, I learned that many j.a.panese keep their dictionaries concealed, because they do not want it said that they must refer to them often.

The manner of addressing letters in j.a.pan is exactly opposed to ours.

Take a familiar example. We write:

MR. FRANK JONES, 110 Gay Street, Knoxville, Tennessee.

A j.a.panese would write it:

Tennessee, Knoxville, Gay Street, 110, JONES, FRANK, MR.

The latter is certainly the more sensible method, because what the postmaster wants to see is not {73} the name of the man to whom the letter is addressed, but the place to which it is to go.

In matters of dress there are some customs quite opposed to our own.

The American lady, especially if she goes to a ball, has her neck and arms bare, but she would be shocked at the very mention of having her feet bare. The j.a.panese lady puts her heaviest clothing on her arms and shoulders, but does not at all mind being seen with bare feet and ankles. Many of the ladies do not wear any foot-gear at all in the house, but these same women could hardly be induced to expose their arms and necks as Western women do.

A Western lady is very anxious to have a thin, narrow waist; her j.a.panese sister wants a broad one. In the West curly hair is highly prized on girls and women; in the East it is considered an abomination.

If you tell a little girl here that her hair is curly, she will consider it a disgrace and will cry bitterly. The most striking difference in regard to dress, however, is in mourning dress. Whereas in the West it is always black, in j.a.pan it is always white.

Another remarkable contrast is found in the relation of the s.e.xes. In America the woman is given the precedence in everything. Her husband, and all other men who come within her influence, must serve and honor her. Attend an evening party and see woman in her glory. How {74} the men crowd round her, anxious to serve or entertain! When supper is announced they vie with one another for the honor of escorting her to the dining-room. She must have first seat at table and be first served, and during the progress of the meal the men must be careful to see that she has everything her sweet will desires. When supper is over the ladies precede the men to the drawing-room, and by the time the men again appear on the scene the ladies, including the hostess, are settled in the easiest chairs. When the time for departure has come it is my lady who announces to the hostess--not the host--her departure, and her husband or escort simply awaits her bidding. In j.a.pan all of this is changed. The man takes precedence everywhere, and the woman must serve him. At meals the woman must first wait on her husband and then she herself may eat. When, guests come, the husband is the chief entertainer, and the wife takes a back seat and says little. On pa.s.sing through a door, entering a train or carriage, etc., the husband always precedes his wife. When walking on the street together she does not walk by his side, but comes along behind. The men do not intend to mistreat the women; they simply take what they regard their due as the head of the family.

Among the customs most peculiar in the eyes of Westerners and most squarely opposed to their {75} own are those relating to marriage. In j.a.pan the young man and woman have nothing whatever to do with the match-making, except to give their consent to the arrangements of their parents; and frequently even this is not asked. The wedding is arranged in some such manner as this: Whenever the parents of a young man think their son old enough to get married they secure the services of some friend, who acts as "go-between." It is the duty of this party to search out a suitable girl and win the consent of her parents to the marriage. While this is going on it is not likely that either of the young people is aware of it, but as soon as the parents have arranged matters to their own satisfaction they are informed. It often happens that the man has never seen his bride until the wedding-day. Young people seldom object to the arrangements of their parents, and marriages made in this way seem to work well.

In the West the wedding often takes place in church; in j.a.pan the temples are studiously avoided at such times. There a minister is nearly always present; here they are very careful to exclude priests.

The wedding is to be joyous, and as priests are known best as officiators at funerals, and ideas of sadness and misfortune are a.s.sociated with them, they are excluded.

In the West, if the wedding does not take place in church, it will probably be held in the home of {76} the bride; in the East it is always held in the home of the groom. There the bride's household prepares the feast; here the groom's prepares it. There the groom must go to fetch his bride; here she must come to him. It makes no difference whether she lives in the same city or in a distant province; she must go to the groom, not he to her.

The poor mother-in-law is evil spoken of in the East as well as in the West; but while there it is the mother of the bride who is said to make life miserable for the groom, here it is the mother of the groom who often makes life miserable for the bride.

Customs in regard to the use of houses are quite different. In America the front rooms of a house are considered most desirable; in j.a.pan the back rooms are preferred. There the parlors, sitting-rooms, etc., are in front, and the kitchen and store-rooms are relegated to the back; here the kitchen and store-rooms are in front, and the parlors and sitting-rooms behind. There the front yards are kept clean, but the back yards are proverbially dirty; here all sorts of dirt and trash may be lying around in the front yard, while the back yard is a perfect little garden of beauty.

Signs made with the hands are very different in j.a.pan from those to which my readers are accustomed, and are much more graceful. Here, when we call some one to us by the hand, {77} instead of the awkward, ungainly motion of the index-finger used in the West, we simply hold out the whole hand horizontally in front of us and gently move all the fingers up and down. The latter motion is very graceful, while even a pretty girl cannot execute the former one gracefully. Here, when we refuse a request or repel one from us by a sign of the hand, instead of turning the palm of the hand outward and pushing it from the body in a rough, uncivil manner, we merely hold the hand perpendicularly before the face, palm outward, and move it back and forth a few times.

j.a.panese carpenters saw by pulling the saw toward them instead of pushing it from them; the planes cut in the same way; and screws are put in by turning them to the left instead of the right.

Even in the nursery we find customs directly antipodal. While the American nurse takes the child up in her arms, the j.a.panese nurse takes it on her back.

These are some of the customs most squarely opposed to our own. The first thought of my readers when learning of them will probably be, how ridiculous and inconvenient! And yet they are just as convenient and sensible as their own, and some of them much more so. There is nothing in the nature of things why most customs should be either this way or that.

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The most interesting things about foreign peoples are those connected with their daily lives--their homes, food, and dress. Let us examine a j.a.panese house, take a meal with its occupants, and then observe their manner of dress.

The houses are usually very light structures, built of wood, one or two stories high. They resemble an American house but little. The roofs are made of tiles, straw, or shingles. Tiles make a pretty and durable roof, but they cost much more than straw, and hence the common people generally use the latter. The skilful j.a.panese workman can make a very pretty, lasting, and effective roof of straw. The houses of the rich are large and have many nice rooms in them; those of the poor are small, with only one or two rooms. Houses are so constructed as to permit the air to pa.s.s through them freely. The rooms are separated only by light, detachable part.i.tions made of paper, and these are frequently taken away and the whole house thrown into one room. Many of the outer walls are also detachable, and on a warm summer day are put aside, when a delightful breeze constantly pa.s.ses through the house. The floors are covered with thick, soft straw mats, which are kept so clean that the people, even when dressed in their best clothes, sit or loll on them. On entering a j.a.panese house you must leave your shoes at the door, just as you {79} do your hat. It would be an unpardonable offense to come inside and tread on the mats with your shoes on.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Kitchen Scene.]

The average j.a.panese eats, sleeps, and lives in the same room. He has no chairs, no bedsteads, and no tables to get in his way. During the day he sits on the soft straw mats; when evening comes two large comfortables are brought, and one is spread on the floor to lie on, while the other is used for covering. No sheets are used, and the pillow is a funny little block of wood. On this simple bed the man sleeps as soundly as we in our more elaborate ones. In the morning the bed is rolled up and packed away. At meal-time little tables, four or six inches high and about sixteen inches square, are brought, and one is placed before each person. The food is served in pretty little lacquer or china bowls, and each one's portion is placed on his own table. The people eat with chopsticks about eight inches long and one fourth of an inch in diameter. These answer their purpose well, but are hard to use until one is accustomed to them. When the meal is over all these things are carried away to the kitchen, and the room is ready for any other use to which one may desire to put it. In this way one room is made to serve for all the purposes of a household.

The most conspicuous thing in a j.a.panese room {80} is the _hibachi_--a little wooden or china box about one foot square. This is kept half full of ashes, and on top of the ashes is a handful of burning charcoal. On this usually sits a little tea-kettle, filled with boiling water used in making the tea, which is drunk without milk or sugar at every hour of the day. When one first enters a j.a.panese house, politeness requires that the host or hostess immediately offer the guest a small cup of this tea. There is no other provision than this hibachi for heating a room; and, as one would imagine, it gives out but little heat j.a.panese houses are very cold in winter. They would not at all answer in a cold climate, and even here the people suffer from the cold.

j.a.panese food is unpalatable to most foreigners, and the eating of it is an art which must be acquired gradually. After repeated experiments we learn to like it, and can live on it fairly well; but most foreign residents usually take more or less European food with them every time they go into the interior.

From of old Buddhism forbade the eating of anything that had animal life, and hence it came about that the j.a.panese are probably as vegetarian in their diet as any people on earth. Even such animal food as b.u.t.ter and milk is not used. b.u.t.ter is very unpalatable to them, but many are beginning to use a little milk. Bread, so necessary {81} to a Western table, forms no part of a j.a.panese bill of fare. The staple here is rice, not boiled and mashed to pieces, with milk and b.u.t.ter, but simply boiled in water sufficiently to cook it well without breaking the grains. When it is cooked each grain remains intact, and it is snowy white and perfectly dry. No salt or seasoning of any kind is put into it, as it is thought to spoil the flavor.

The rivers, lakes, and seas of j.a.pan are teeming with splendid fish, which form an important part of the native diet. It seems that Buddhism, while forbidding the use of meats generally, permitted the eating of fish. Certain kinds of fish, cut into thin slices and eaten raw with a kind of sauce, are considered a great delicacy. The idea of eating raw fish seems very repugnant, but many of my readers would eat it without realizing what it is unless they were told. I often eat it.

But only a few of the fish consumed are eaten raw; most are boiled or fried.

Foreign vegetables are rare, and are not much liked by the natives.

But there is an abundance of native vegetables. The most common one is a large, coa.r.s.e radish called _daikon_, which is pickled, and eaten at nearly every meal. This daikon is very cheap, and is a chief part of the diet of that small portion of the population that cannot afford rice. Sweet potatoes are abundant and cheap. {82} They are considered the poor man's food, and the well-to-do people are ashamed to eat them.

Often at hotels, when I have asked for sweet potatoes, the servant has replied in astonishment, "Why, do you eat sweet potatoes? They are for coolies." A mountain-potato and the roots of the lotus and bamboo are also eaten. Since the country has been opened to foreign trade and foreigners have settled here it is possible to get meats and flour and some foreign vegetables at most places.

j.a.panese clothing is frequently conspicuous by its absence. Many of the people do not realize the necessity of burdening themselves with clothing on a hot summer day, and wear very little. The government has been constrained to make laws against nudity, but these are enforced only in the cities. The usual summer garment of many of the children in my city is simply the dark-brown one given them by nature. Most of the coolies wear nothing but a little loin-cloth when at work.

The real native costume is both pretty and becoming. It consists usually of a single robe reaching from the shoulders to the ankles, and tied round the waist with a heavy girdle. Tight-fitting undergarments, in foreign style, are sometimes worn now, but they form no part of the original native costume. A black outer garment, {83} reaching only to the knees, is placed over the ordinary robe on state occasions.

Formerly the j.a.panese did not wear hats, and even now half of the men one meets on the street are bareheaded. The women wear neither hats nor bonnets.

It is not considered improper to go barefooted in j.a.pan, but generally the better cla.s.ses are shod when they go out of doors. If anything resembling a stocking is worn, it is what they call _tabi_, a sort of foot-glove, made of either white or black cloth, with a separate inclosure for the great toe. A block of wood called _geta_ corresponds to our shoes. It has two cords attached to the same place in front, and then dividing, one being fastened on each side at the back. These cords slip in between the great toe and the others, and, pa.s.sing over the foot, secure the geta.

j.a.panese bathing customs are peculiar. Perhaps there are no other people on earth that bathe as often as they. It is customary for every one, even the coolies, to bathe well the whole body every day. The baths are taken very hot--about 110F. Each private house has a large bath-tub, which in many instances is capacious enough to accommodate the whole family at once. Besides these private baths each city and town has its public ones, where a good hot bath, in a place large enough for you to swim round, can be had for one cent. Men, women, and children go into {84} them at the same time, indiscriminately. j.a.pan is a land of hot springs, so that almost every district has its natural hot baths. Most of them have medicinal value, and the people flock to them by thousands.