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PEEPS AT MANY LANDS
PEEPS AT MANY LANDS JOHN FINNEMORE WITH TWELVE FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR
BY
ELLA DU CANE
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. THE LAND OF THE RISING SUN
II. BOYS AND GIRLS IN JAPAN
III. BOYS AND GIRLS IN JAPAN (_continued_)
IV. THE JAPANESE BOY
V. THE JAPANESE GIRL
VI. IN THE HOUSE
VII. IN THE HOUSE (_continued_)
VIII. A JAPANESE DAY
IX. A JAPANESE DAY (_continued_)
X. JAPANESE GAMES
XI. THE FEAST OF DOLLS AND THE FEAST OF FLAGS
XII. A FARTHING'S WORTH OF FUN
XIII. KITE-FLYING
XIV. FAIRY STORIES
XV. TEA-HOUSES AND TEMPLES
XVI. TEA-HOUSES AND TEMPLES (_continued_)
XVII. THE RICKSHAW-MAN
XVIII. IN THE COUNTRY
XIX. IN THE COUNTRY (_continued_)
XX. THE POLICEMAN AND THE SOLDIER
XXI. TWO GREAT FESTIVALS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
BY ELLA DU CANE
OUTSIDE A TEA-HOUSE
_Sketch-Map of Japan_
THE LITTLE NURSE
THE WRITING LESSON
GOING TO THE TEMPLE
A JAPANESE HOUSE
OFFERING TEA TO A GUEST
FIGHTING TOPS
THE TOY SHOP
A BUDDHIST SHRINE
PEACH TREES IN BLOSSOM
THE FEAST OF FLAGS
THE TORII OF THE TEMPLE
CHAPTER I
THE LAND OF THE RISING SUN
Far away from our land on the other side of the world lies a group of
islands which form the kingdom of Japan. The word "Japan" means the "Land
of the Rising Sun" and it is certainly a good name for a country of the
Far East the land of sunrise.
The flag of Japan too is painted with a rising sun which sheds its beams
on every hand and this flag is now for ever famous so great and wonderful
have been the victories in which it has been borne triumphant over Russian
arms.
In some ways the Japanese are fond of comparing themselves with their
English friends and allies. They point out that Japan is a cluster of
islands off the coast of Asia as Britain is a cluster of islands off the
coast of Europe. They have proved themselves like the English brave and
clever on the sea while their troops have fought as nobly as British
soldiers on the land. They are fond of calling themselves the "English of
the East" and say that their land is the "Britain of the Pacific."
The rise of Japan in becoming one of the Great Powers of the world has been
very sudden and wonderful. Fifty years ago Japan lay hidden from the world;
she forbade strangers to visit the country and very little was known of
her people and her customs.
Her navy then consisted of a few wooden junks; to-day she has a fleet of
splendid ironclads handled by men who know their duties as well as English
seamen. Her army consisted of troops armed with two swords and carrying
bows and arrows; to-day her troops are the admiration of the world armed
with the most modern weapons and as foes to be dreaded by the most
powerful nations.
Fifty years ago Japan was in the purely feudal stage. Her great native
Princes were called Daimios. Each had a strong castle and a private army
of his own. There were ceaseless feuds between these Princes and constant
fighting between their armies of samurai as their followers were called.
Japan was like England at the time of our War of the Roses: family quarrels
were fought out in pitched battle. All that has now gone. The Daimios have
become private gentlemen; the armies of samurai have been disbanded and
Japan is ruled and managed just like a European country with judges and
policemen and law-courts after the model of Western lands.
When the Japanese decided to come out and take their place among the great
nations of the world they did not adopt any half-measures; they simply
came out once and for all. They threw themselves into the stream of modern
inventions and movements with a will. They have built railways and set up
telegraph and telephone lines. They have erected banks and warehouses
mills and factories. They have built bridges and improved roads. They have
law-courts and a Parliament to which the members are elected by the
people and newspapers flourish everywhere.
Japan is a very beautiful country. It is full of fine mountains with
rivers leaping down the steep slopes and dashing over the rocks in snowy
waterfalls. At the foot of the hills are rich plains and valleys well
watered by the streams which rush down from the hills. But the mountains
are so many and the plains are so few that only a small part of the land
can be used for growing crops and this makes Japan poor. Its climate is
not unlike ours in Great Britain but the summer is hotter and the winter
is in some parts very cold. Many of the mountains are volcanoes. Some of
these are still active and earthquakes often take place. Sometimes these
earthquakes do terrible harm. The great earthquake of 1871 killed 10000
people injured 20000 and destroyed 130000 houses.
The highest mountain of Japan also is the most beautiful and it is greatly
beloved by the Japanese who regard it as a sacred height. Its name is
Fujisan or Fusi-Yama and it stands near the sea and the capital city
of Tokyo. It is of most beautiful shape an almost perfect cone and it
springs nearly 13000 feet into the air. From the sea it forms a most
superb and majestic sight. Long before a glimpse can be caught of the shore
and the city the traveller sees the lofty peak crowned with a glittering
crest of snow rising in lonely majesty with no hint of the land on which
it rests. The Japanese have a great love of natural beauty and they adore
Fujisan. Their artists are never tired of painting it and pictures of it
are to be found in the most distant parts of the land.
CHAPTER II
BOYS AND GIRLS IN JAPAN
In no country in the world do children have a happier childhood than in
Japan. Their parents are devoted to them and the children are always good.
This seems a great deal to say but it is quite true. Japanese boys and
girls behave as quietly and with as much composure as grown-up men and
women. From the first moment that it can understand anything a Japanese
baby is taught to control its feelings. If it is in pain or sad it is not
to cry or to pull an ugly face; that would not be nice for other people to
hear or see. If it is very merry or happy it is not to laugh too loudly or
to make too much noise; that would be vulgar. So the Japanese boy or girl
grows up very quiet very gentle and very polite with a smile for
everything and everybody.
While they are little they have plenty of play and fun when they are not in
school. In both towns and villages the streets are the playground and here
they play ball or battledore and shuttlecock or fly kites.
Almost every little girl has a baby brother or sister strapped on her back
for babies are never carried in the arms in Japan except by the nurses of
very wealthy people. The baby is fastened on its mother's or its sister's
shoulders by a shawl and that serves it for both cot and cradle. The
little girl does not lose a single scrap of her play because of the baby.
She runs here and there striking with her battledore or racing after her
friends and the baby swings to and fro on her shoulders its little head
wobbling from side to side as if it were going to tumble off. But it is
perfectly content and either watches the game with its sharp little black
eyes or goes calmly off to sleep.
In the form of their dress both boys and girls appear alike and more than
that they are dressed exactly like their parents. There is no child's
dress in Japan. The garments are smaller to fit the small wearers--that is
all.
The main article of dress is a loose gown called a kimono. Under the outer
kimono is an inner kimono and the garments are girt about the body with a
large sash called an obi. The obi is the pride of a Japanese girl's heart.
If her parents are rich it will be of shining costly silk or rich brocade
or cloth of gold; if her parents are poor they will make an effort to get
her one as handsome as their means will allow. Next to her obi she prides
herself on the ornaments which decorate her black hair--fine hairpins
with heads of tortoiseshell or coral or lacquer and hair-combs all most
beautifully carved.
A boy's obi is more for practical use and is not of such splendour as
his sister's. When he is very small his clothes are of yellow while his
sister's are of red. At the age of five he puts on the hakama and then he
is a very proud boy. The hakama is a kind of trousers made of silk and is
worn by men instead of an under-kimono. At five years old a boy is taken
to the temple to thank the gods who have protected him thus far; and as he
struts along and hears with joy his hakama rustling its stiff new silk
beneath his kimono he feels himself a man indeed and that his babyhood of
yesterday is left far behind.
Upon the feet are worn the tabi--thick white socks which may be called
foot-gloves for there are separate divisions for the toes.
These serve both as stockings outside the house and slippers inside for no
boots are worn in a Japanese house. When a Japanese walks out he slips his
feet into high wooden clogs and when he comes home he kicks off the clogs
at the door and enters his home in tabi alone. The reason for this we
shall hear later on. In Japanese clothes there are no pockets. Whatever
they need to carry with them is tucked into the sash or into the sleeves of
the kimono. The latter are often very long and afford ample room for the
odds and ends one usually carries in the pocket.
But fine kimonos and rich obis are for the wealthy Japanese; the poor
cannot afford them and dress very simply. The coolie--the Japanese working
man--goes almost naked in the warm weather wearing only a pair of short
cotton trousers until he catches sight of a policeman when he slips on
his blue cotton coat for the police have orders to see that he dresses
himself properly. His wife wears a cotton kimono and the pair of them can
dress themselves handsomely--for coolies--from head to foot for a sum of 45
sen which taking the sen at a halfpenny amounts to 1 S. 10-1/2d. in our
money.
CHAPTER III
BOYS AND GIRLS IN JAPAN (_continued_)
When Japanese boys and girls go to school they make very low bows to their
teacher and draw in the breath with a buzzing sound. This is a sign of deep
respect and the teacher returns their politeness by making low bows to
them. Then the children sit down and begin to learn their lessons.
Their books are very odd-looking affairs to us. Not only are they printed
in very large characters but they seem quite upside down. To find the
first page you turn to the end of the book and you read it backwards
to the front page. Again you do not read from left to right as in our
fashion but from right to left. Nor is this all: for the lines do not run
across the page but up and down. Altogether a Japanese book is at first
a very puzzling affair. When the writing lesson comes the children have
no pens; they use brushes instead. They dip their brushes in the ink and
paint the words one under the other beginning at the top right-hand corner
and finishing at the bottom left-hand corner. If they have an address to
write on an envelope they turn that upside down and begin with the name
of the country and finish with the name of the person--England London
Kensington Gardens Brown John Mr.
But Japanese children have quite as many things to learn at home as at
school. At school they learn arithmetic geography history and so on
just as children do in England but their manners and their conduct towards
other people are carefully drilled into them by their parents. The art of
behaving yourself towards others is by no means an easy thing to learn
in Japan. It is not merely a matter of good-feeling gentleness and
politeness as we understand it but there is a whole complicated system
of behaviour: how many bows to make and how they should be made. There
are different forms of salutation to superiors equals and inferiors.
Different ranks of life have their own ways of performing certain actions
and it is said that a girl's rank may easily be known merely by the way
in which she hands a cup of tea to a guest. From the earliest years the
children are trained in these observances and they never make a mistake.
The Japanese baby is taught how to walk how to bow how to kneel and
touch the floor with its forehead in the presence of a superior and how
to get up again; and all is done in the most graceful manner and without
disturbing a single fold in its kimono.
A child is taught very carefully how to wait on people how to enter the
room how to carry a tray or bowl at the right height and above all how
to offer a cup or plate in the most dainty and correct style. One writer
speaks of going into a Japanese shop to buy some articles he wanted. The
master the mistress the children all bent down before him. There was
a two-year-old baby boy asleep on his sister's back and he too was
awakened and called upon to pay his respects to the foreign gentleman. He
woke without a start or a cry understood at once what was required of him
was set on his feet and then proceeded to make his bows and to touch the
ground with his little forehead just as exactly as his elder relatives.
This done he was restored once more to the shawl and was asleep again in
a moment.
The art of arranging flowers and ornaments is another important branch of a
girl's home education. Everything in a Japanese room is carefully arranged
so that it shall be in harmony with its surroundings. The arrangement of
a bunch of flowers in a fine porcelain jar is a matter of much thought
and care. Children are trained how to arrange blossoms and boughs so that
the most beautiful effect may be gained and in many Japanese houses may
be found books which contain rules and diagrams intended to help them in
gaining this power of skilful arrangement. This feeling for taste and
beauty is common to all Japanese even the poorest. A well-known artist
says: "Perhaps however one of the most curious experiences I had of the
native artistic instinct of Japan occurred in this way: I had got a number
of fan-holders and was busying myself one afternoon arranging them upon
the walls. My little Japanese servant-boy was in the room and as I went
on with my work I caught an expression on his face from time to time which
showed me that he was not overpleased with my performance. After a while
as this dissatisfied expression seemed to deepen I asked him what the
matter was. Then he frankly confessed that he did not like the way in which
I was arranging my fan-holders. 'Why did you not tell me so at once?' I
asked. 'You are an artist from England' he replied 'and it was not for
me to speak.' However I persuaded him to arrange the fan-holders himself
after his own taste and I must say that I received a remarkable lesson.
The task took him about two hours--placing arranging adjusting; and when
he had finished the result was simply beautiful. That wall was a perfect
picture: every fan-holder seemed to be exactly in its right place and it
looked as if the alteration of a single one would affect and disintegrate
the whole scheme. I accepted the lesson with due humility and remained
more than ever convinced that the Japanese are what they have justly
claimed to be--an essentially artistic people instinct with living art."
CHAPTER IV
THE JAPANESE BOY
A Japanese boy is the monarch of the household. Japan is thoroughly Eastern
in the position which it gives to women. The boy and afterwards the man
holds absolute rule over sister or wife. It is true that the upper classes
in Japan are beginning to take a wider view of such matters. Women of
wealthy families are well educated wear Western dress and copy Western
manners. They sit at table with their husbands enter a room or a carriage
before them and are treated as English women are treated by English men.
But in the middle and lower classes the old state of affairs still remains:
the woman is a servant pure and simple. It is said that even among the
greatest families the old customs are still observed in private. The great
lady who is treated in her Western dress just as her Western sister is
treated takes pride in waiting on her husband when they return to kimono
and obi just as her grandmother did.
The importance of the male in Japan arises from the religious customs of
the country. The chief of the latter is ancestor-worship. The ancestors
of a family form its household gods; but only the male ancestors are
worshipped: no offerings are ever laid on the shelf of the household gods
before an ancestress. Property too passes chiefly in the male line and
every Japanese father is eager to have a son who shall continue the worship
of his ancestors and to whom his property may descend.
Thus the birth of a son is received with great joy in a Japanese
household; though on the other hand we must not think that a girl is
ill-treated or even destroyed as sometimes happens in China. Not at
all; she is loved and petted just as much as her brother but she is
not regarded as so important to the family line.
At the age of three the Japanese boy is taken to the temple to give thanks
to the gods. Again at the age of five he goes to the temple once more to
return thanks. Now he is wearing the hakama the manly garment and begins
to feel himself quite a man. From this age onwards the Japanese boy among
the wealthier classes is kept busily at work in school until he is ready to
go to the University but among the poorer classes he often begins to work
for his living.
The clever work executed by most tiny children is a matter of wonder and
surprise to all European travellers. Little boys are found binding books
making paper lanterns and painting them making porcelain cups winding
grass ropes which are hung along the house-fronts for the first week of the
year to prevent evil spirits from entering weaving mats to spread over the
floors and at a hundred other occupations. It is very amusing to watch
the practice of the little boys who are going to be dentists. In Japan the
dentist of the people fetches out an aching tooth with thumb and finger
and will pluck it out as surely as any tool can do the work so his pupils
learn their trade by trying to pull nails out of a board. They begin with
tin-tacks and go on until they can with thumb and finger pluck out a
nail firmly driven into the wood.
Luckily for them they often get a holiday. The Japanese have many
festivals when parents and children drop their work to go to some famous
garden or temple for a day's pleasure. Then there is the great boys'
festival the Feast of Flags held on the fifth day of the fifth month. Of
this festival we shall speak again.
Every Japanese boy is taught that he owes the strictest duty to his parents
and to his Emperor. These duties come before all others in Japanese eyes.
Whatever else he may neglect he never forgets these obligations. From
infancy he is familiar with stories in which children are represented as
doing the most extraordinary things and undergoing the greatest hardships
in order to serve their parents. There is one famous old book called
"Twenty-four Paragons of Filial Virtue." It gives instances of the doings
of good sons and is very popular in every Japanese household.
Professor Chamberlain the great authority on Japan quotes some of these
instances and they seem to us rather absurd. He says: "One of the paragons
had a cruel stepmother who was very fond of fish. Never grumbling at her
harsh treatment of him he lay down naked on the frozen surface of the
lake. The warmth of his body melted a hole in the ice at which two carp
came up to breathe. These he caught and set before his stepmother. Another
paragon though of tender years and having a delicate skin insisted on
sleeping uncovered at night in order that the mosquitoes should fasten on
him alone and allow his parents to slumber undisturbed.
"A third who was very poor determined to bury his own child alive in
order to have more food wherewith to support his aged mother but was
rewarded by Heaven with the discovery of a vessel filled with gold off
which the whole family lived happily ever after. But the drollest of all
is the story of Roraishi. This paragon though seventy years old used to
dress in baby's clothes and sprawl about upon the floor. His object was to
delude his parents who were really over ninety years of age into the idea
that they could not be so very old after all seeing that they still had
such a childlike son."
His duty to his Emperor the Japanese takes very seriously for it includes
his duty to his country. He considers that his life belongs to his country
and he is not only willing but proud to give it in her defence. This was
seen to the full in the late war with Russia. Time and again a Japanese
regiment was ordered to go to certain death. Not a man questioned the
order not a man dreamed for an instant of disobedience. Forward went the
line until every man had been smitten down and the last brave throat had
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