The Voyage Of The Vega Round Asia And Europe Part 58

After we had at our entrance saluted the people of the inn and pa.s.sed some time in the exchange of civilities, there came a girl, and, in a kneeling posture, offered the foreigners j.a.panese tea, which is always handed round in very small cups only half full. Then we took off our shoes and went into the guest-chamber. Such chambers in the j.a.panese inns are commonly large and dazzlingly clean.

Furniture is completely wanting but the floor is covered with mats of plaited straw. The walls are ornamented with songs suitable for the place, or mottoes, and with j.a.panese paintings. The rooms are separated from each other by thin movable panels, which slide in grooves, which can be removed or replaced at will. One may, therefore, as once happened to me, lay himself down to sleep in a very large room, and, if he sleeps sound, awake in the morning in a very small one. The room generally looks out on a j.a.panese garden-inclosure, or if it is in the upper story, on a small balcony. Immediately outside there is always a vessel filled with water and a scoop. Generally on one side of the room there is a wall-press, in which the bed-clothes are kept. Those, the only household articles in the room, consist of a thick mat, which is spread on the floor, a round cushion for the head, or instead of it a wooden support, stuffed on the upper side, for the neck during sleep, and a thick stuffed night-shirt which serves at covering.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A JINRIKISHA. ]

[Ill.u.s.tration: j.a.pANESE BEDROOM. ]

As soon as one comes in the female attendants distribute four-cornered cushions for sitting on, which are placed on the floor round a wooden box, on one corner of which stands a little brazier, on the other a high clay vessel of uniform breadth, with water in the bottom, which serves as a spittoon and tobacco-ash cup. At the same time tea is brought in anew, in the small cups previously described, with saucers, not of porcelain, but of metal. Pipes are lighted, and a lively conversation commences. Along with the tea sweetmeats are brought in, of which, however, some cannot be relished by Europeans. The brazier forms the most important household article of the j.a.panese. Braziers are very variable in size and shape, but are often made in an exceedingly beautiful and tasteful way, of cast-iron or bronze, with gilding and raised figures. Often enough, however, they consist only of a clay crock.

The j.a.panese are very skilful in keeping up fire in them without the least trace of fumes being perceptible in the room. The fuel consists of some well-burned pieces of charcoal, which lie imbedded in white straw-ashes, with which the fire-pan is nearly filled to the brim. When some glowing coals are laid in such ashes they retain their heat for hours, until they are completely consumed. In every well-furnished house there are a number of braziers of different sizes, and there are often four-cornered hatches in the floor, which conceal a stone foundation intended as a base for the large brazier, over which the food is cooked.

At meal-times all the dishes are brought in at the same time on small lacquered tables, about half a foot high, and with a surface of four square feet. The dishes are placed in lacquered cups, less frequently in porcelain cups, and carried to the mouth with chop-sticks, without the help of knife, fork, or spoon. For fear of the fish-oils, which are used instead of b.u.t.ter, I never dared to test completely the productions of the j.a.panese art of cookery; but Dr. Almquist and Lieut. Nordquist, who were more unprejudiced, said they could put up with them very well. The following _menu_ gives an idea of what a j.a.panese inn of the better cla.s.s has to offer:--

Vegetable soup.

Boiled rice, sometimes with minced fowl.

Boiled fish or raw fish with horse-radish.

Vegetables with fish-sauce.

Tea.

Soy is used to the fish. The rice is brought in hot in a wooden vessel with a lid, and is distributed in abundance, but the other dishes in extremely small portions. After meals, especially in the evening, the j.a.panese often drink warm _saki_, or rice-brandy, out of peculiar porcelain bottles and small cups set apart for that purpose alone.

During the meal one is commonly surrounded by a numerous _personnel_ of female attendants, squatted down on the floor, who keep up with the guest, if he understands their language, a lively conversation, interrupted by salvoes of hearty laughter. The girls remain while the man undresses in the evening, and permit themselves to make remarks on the difference of the _physique_, of the Europeans and j.a.panese, which are not only, in our way of thinking, unsuitable for young girls, but even impertinent towards the guest. The male attendants are seldom seen, at least in the inner apartments. In the morning one washes himself in the yard or on the balcony, and if he wishes to avoid getting into disfavour, the guest will be careful not to spill anything or spit on the mat.

The j.a.panese tobacco-pipe now in use resembles that of the Chukches, is very small, and is smoked out in a couple of whiffs. A j.a.panese smokes without stopping a score of pipes in succession.

Tobacco-smoking is now very general among high and low of both s.e.xes. It was introduced at the close of the sixteenth century, it is uncertain whether from Corea or from the Portuguese possessions in Asia, and spread with great rapidity. As among us, it here too at first gave occasion to stringent prohibitions, and a lively exchange of writings for and against. In a work by the learned j.a.panologist, Mr. E.M. SATOW ("The Introduction of Tobacco into j.a.pan,"

_Transactions of the Asiatic Society of j.a.pan_, vol vi. part i. p.

68), the following statements among others are made on this subject:--

"In 1609 there were in the capital two clubs whose main delight was to contrive quarrels with peaceful citizens.

Upwards of fifty of the members of these clubs were suddenly arrested and thrown into prison; but justice was satisfied when four or five of the leaders were executed, the rest were pardoned. As these societies were originally smoking clubs, the tobacco-plant came by the bad behaviour of their members into disrepute, and its use was prohibited. At that time tobacco was smoked in long pipes, which were stuck in the belt like a sword, or carried after the smoker by an attendant. In 1612 a proclamation was published in which tobacco-smoking and all trade in tobacco were prohibited, under penalty of forfeiture of estate. The prohibition was repeated several times, with as little success as in Europe."

[Ill.u.s.tration: TOBACCO SMOKERS. j.a.panese drawing. ]

Mr. Satow further gives the following peculiar extracts from a j.a.panese work, which enumerates the advantages and disadvantages that are connected with tobacco-smoking:--

"_A_--ADVANTAGES.

"1. It dispels the vapours and increases the energies."

"2. It is good to produce at the beginning of a feast."

"3. It is a companion in solitude."

"4. It affords an excuse for resting now and then from work, as if in order to take breath."

"5. It is a storehouse of reflection, and gives time for the fumes of wrath to dispense."

"_B_--DISADVANTAGES

"1. There is a natural tendency to hit people over the head with one's pipe in a fit of anger."[376]

"2. The pipe comes sometimes to be used for arranging the burning charcoal in the brazier."

"3. An inveterate smoker has been known to walk about among the dishes with his pipe in his mouth."

"4. People knock the ashes out of their pipes while still alight and forget to extinguish the fire."

"5. Hence clothing and mats are frequently scorched by burning tobacco ash."

"6. Smokers spit indiscriminately in braziers, foot-warmers, and kitchen fires."

"7. Also in the crevices between the floor-mats."

"8. They rap the pipe violently on the edge of the brazier."

"9. They forget to have the ash-pot emptied till it is full to overflowing."

"10. They use the ash-pot as nose-paper (_i.e._ they blow their nose into the ash-pot)".

As during our stay at Enoshima as the governor's guests we were constantly attended by two officials from his court, I considered it my duty to show myself worthy of the honour by a liberal distribution of drink-money. This is not given to the attendants, but is handed, wrapped up in paper, and accompanied by some choice courteous expressions, to the host himself. He on his part makes a polite speech with apologies that all had not been so well arranged as his honoured guest had a right to expect. He accompanies the traveller on his departure a shorter or longer distance in proportion to the amount of drink-money and the way in which his guest has behaved.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ITO-KESKE. A j.a.panese Editor of Thunberg's writings. ]

It is a specially praiseworthy custom among the j.a.panese to allow the trees in the neighbourhood of the temples to stand untouched. Nearly every temple, even the most inconsiderable, is therefore surrounded by a little grove, formed of the most splendid pines, particularly Cryptomeria and Ginko, which often wholly conceal the small, decayed, and ill-kept wooden hut which is dedicated to some of the deities of Buddha or Shinto.

On the 23rd September the Europeans and j.a.panese of Yokohama gave a dinner and ball for us in the hall of the English club. It was beautifully lighted and decorated. Among other things there were to be seen on a wall portraits of Berzelius and Thunberg, surrounded by garlands of greenery. The latter has a high reputation in j.a.pan. His work on the flora of the country has lately been published in a j.a.panese edition with a wood-cut portrait, by no means bad, of the famous Swedish naturalist,[377] engraved in j.a.pan; and a monument to his and Kampfer's memory is to be found at Nagasaki, erected there at the instance of von Siebold.[378] The chairman of the feast was Dr. GEERTZ, a Dutchman, who had lived a long time in the country and published several valuable works on its natural productions.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MONUMENT TO THUNBERG AND KAEMPFER AT NAGASAKI. ]

On the 26th September I started for Tokio, in order thence to undertake a journey proposed and arranged by the Danish consul, Herr Bavier, to Asamayama, a yet active volcano in the interior of the country. In consequence of an unexpected death among the European consuls at Yokohama, Herr Bavier, however, could not join us until the day after that which had been fixed for our departure. The 27th accordingly was pa.s.sed in Tokio among other things, in seeing the beautiful collections of antiquities made by the _attache_ of the Austrian legation, Herr H. VON SIEBOLD, son of the famous naturalist of the same name. j.a.pan has also, like most other lands, had its Stone Age, from which remains are found at several places in the country, both on Yezo and on the more southerly islands. Implements from this period are now collected a.s.siduously both by natives and Europeans, and have been described by H. von Siebold in a work accompanied by photographic ill.u.s.trations. In general the implements of the j.a.panese stone folk have a resemblance to the stone tools still in use among the Eskimo, and even in this fruitful land the primitive race, as the bone remains in the kitchen-middens show, lived at first mainly by hunting and fishing.

[Footnote 372: The Dutch had permission in former times to send some vessels annually to Nagasaki. By Perry's treaty, signed on the 31st March, 1854, Shimoda and Hakodate were opened to the Americans.

Finally, by new treaties with the United States and various European powers, the harbours Kanagava (Yokohama), Nagasaki, Hakodate, Niigata, Hiogo, and Osaka, were a.s.signed for commerce with foreigners. ]

[Footnote 373: At first it strikes a European as if all the j.a.panese had about the same appearance, but when one has got accustomed to the colour of the skin and the traits of the race, the features of the j.a.panese appear as various in form and expression as those of Europeans. ]

[Footnote 374: At the close of the twelfth century this now inconsiderable town was the residence of Joritomo, the founder of the Shogun power, and the arranger of the j.a.panese feudal system. ]

[Footnote 375: Five _yen_ are about equal to 1 pound sterling. ]

[Footnote 376: The j.a.panese pipes are now so small that no serious results from this disadvantage are to be dreaded. In former times the pipes used were long and probably heavy. The Dyaks of Borneo still use pipes so heavy that they may be used as weapons. ]

[Footnote 377: The work bears the t.i.tle _Tai-sei-hon-zo-mei-so_ (short list of European plant-names), by Ito-Keske, 1829, 3 vols. ]

[Footnote 378: Carl Peter Thunberg, born at Jonkoping in 1743, famed for his travels in South Africa, j.a.pan, &c., and for a number of important scientific works, finally Professor at Upsala, died in 1828. Engelbert Kampfer, born in Westphalia in 1651, was secretary of the emba.s.sy that started from Sweden to Persia in 1683. Kampfer, however, did not return with the emba.s.sy, but continued his travels in the southern and eastern parts of Asia, among them, even to j.a.pan, which he visited in 1690-92, he died in 1716. Kampfer's and Thunberg's works, together with the great work of von Siebold, who erected the monument to them, form the most important sources of the knowledge of the j.a.pan that once was. ]