Japanese Girls and Women by Alice Mabel Bacon (ebook reader for laptop txt) 📖

correctly in every particular by Japanese tailors, shoemakers, and hatters. The standard has been attained, for men at least, and in foreign dress as well as in Japanese, the natural good taste of the people has begun to assert itself. So it will be in time with other new things adopted. As no single element of the Chinese civilization secured a permanent footing in Japan except such as could be adapted, not only to the national life, but to the national taste as well, so it will be with European things. All things that are adopted will be adapted, and whatever is adapted is likely in time to be improved and made more beautiful by the national instinct for beauty. During the transition, enormities are omitted and monstrosities are constructed, but when the standard is at last attained, we may expect that the genius of the race will triumph over the difficulties that it is now encountering. Individual Japanese who have lived long in Europe or America show the same nice discrimination in regard to foreign things that they do in their Japanese surroundings, and are rarely at fault in their taste. What is true of the individual now will be true of the nation when European standards have become common property. Page 242.

In the remote mountain regions, where the majesty and uncertainty of the great natural forces impress themselves constantly upon the minds of the peasantry, one finds a simple nature worship, and a desire to propitiate all the unseen powers, that is not so evident in the daily life of the dwellers in more populous and progressive parts of the country. As the mountains close in about the road that runs up from the plains below, a great stone, on which is deeply carved "To the God of the Mountains," calls the attention of the traveler to the fact that the supernatural is a recognized power among the mountaineers. In such regions one finds the stated offerings at the shrines which stand near the wayside kept constantly renewed. Nearly every house is protected by some slip of paper pasted above the door, a charm obtained by toilsome pilgrimage to some noted temple. Behind or near the village temple one may see rude wigwams of straw, each sheltering a gohei,[45]—witnesses to the vows of devotees who hope, sooner or later, to erect small wooden shrines and so win favor from the unknown rulers of human destinies. In places where pack-horses form a large part of the wealth of the people, stones to the horses' spirits are erected, and the halters of all the horses that die are left upon these stones. Prayers, too, are offered to the guardian spirits of the living horses, before stones on which are carved sometimes the image of a horse bearing a gohei on his back, sometimes a rough figure of the horse-headed Kwannon. To such stones or shrines are brought horses suffering from sickness of any kind, and the hand is rubbed first on the stone and then on the part of the animal supposed to be affected. In one district, when a horse epidemic broke out, its rapid spread was attributed by the authorities to this custom, and all persons were warned of the danger, with what effect in breaking up the ancient habit the newspaper reports failed to say. It is in such regions as this that the oni and the tengu[46] still live in the every-day thought of the people; it is here, too, that the old custom of offering flowers and fruit to the spirits of the dead at the midsummer festival is most conscientiously kept up. All possible spirits are included in these offerings, so that even by the roadside one finds bunches of flowers set up in the clefts of the rock, to the spirits of travelers who have died on the way.

In one little mountain resort, far from the railroad but in touch with the outside world through the hundreds of visitors that seek its hot baths during the summer, it was my good fortune to spend a few weeks recently. Our walks were rather limited in variety, as the village lay in an almost inaccessible mountain valley through which a carefully engineered road ran along the edge of the river gorge. About half a mile out of the village, close to the road and overhanging the waters of the river at a spot where the rocks were so worn and carved by the rushing torrent as to have gained the appropriate title of the "Screen Rocks," was a little shop and a tea-house. It was a pleasant resting-place after a warm and dusty walk, and almost daily we would halt there for a cup of tea and a slice of yokan, or bean marmalade, before returning to our rooms in the hotel. The managers of the place were an old man and his wife, who divided their labor between the shop and the tea-house. The old man was an artist in roots. His life was devoted to searching out grotesquely shaped roots on the forest-covered hills, and whittling, turning, and trimming them into the semblance of animal or human forms. Tengu and goblins, long-legged birds and short-legged beasts, all manner of weird products of his imagination and his handiwork, peopled the interior of the little shop, and he was always ready to welcome us and show us his latest work, with the pride of an artist in his masterpiece.

His wife, a cheery old woman, attended to the tea-house, and as soon as we had seated ourselves, bustled about to bring us cool water from the spring that bubbled out of the rocks across the road, and to set before us the tiny cups of straw-colored tea and the delicious slices of yokan which we soon learned was the specialty of the place. She was glad to have a little gossip as we sipped and nibbled, telling us many interesting bits of folklore about the immediate locality. It was from her that we learned that the pinnacle of rock that dominated the village was built by tengu long ago, though now they were all gone from the woods, for she had looked for them often at night when she went out to shut the house, but she had never seen one,—and even the monkeys were becoming scarce. She it was, too, who sent us to look for the mysterious draught of cold air that crossed the road near the base of the great rock, colder on hot days than on cool ones, and at all times astonishing,—the "Tengu's Wind Hole." We learned through her about the snakes to be found in the woods, and of the wonderful tonic virtues of the mamushi (the one poisonous snake of Japan), if caught and bottled with a sufficient quantity of saké. The saké may be renewed again and again, and the longer the snake has been bottled the more medicinal does it become, so that one mamushi may, if used perseveringly, medicate several casks of saké. We had opportunity later to verify her statements, for we found at a small grocery store, where we stopped to add a few delicacies to our somewhat scanty bill of fare, two snakes, neatly coiled in quart bottles and pickled in saké, one of which could be obtained for the sum of seventy-five sen, though the other, who in his rage at being bottled had buried his fangs in his own body, commanded a higher price because of his courage. We did not feel in need of a tonic that day, so left the mamushi on the grocery shelves, but it is probable that their disintegrating remains are being industriously quaffed to-day by some elderly Japanese whose failing strength demands an unfailing remedy.

When our little friend had learned of our interest in snakes, she was on the lookout for snake stories of all kinds. One day she stopped us as we came by rather later than usual, hurrying home before a threatening shower, to tell us that we ought to have come a little sooner, for the great black snake who was the messenger of the god that lived on the mountain had just been by, and we might have been interested to see him. She had seen him before, herself, so he was no novelty to her, but she was sure that the matter would interest us. Poor little old lady, with her kindly face and pleasant ways, and her friendly cracked voice. Her firm belief in all the uncanny and supernatural things that wiser people have outgrown brought us face to face with the childhood of our race, and drew us into sympathy with a phase of culture in which all nature is wrapped in inscrutable mystery.

Page 264.

Each year that passes sees a few more stores adopting the habit of fixed prices, not to be altered by haggling.

Page 282.

On another occasion the good offices of the fortune-teller were sought concerning a marriage, and the powerful arranger of human destinies discovered that though everything else was favorable, the bride contracted for was to come from a quarter quite opposed to the luck of the bridegroom. This was no laughing matter, as the bride was of a noble family and the breaking of the engagement would be attended with much talk and trouble on both sides; but, on the other hand, the family of the bridegroom dared not face the danger so mysteriously prophesied by the fortune-teller. In this predicament, there was nothing to do but to pull the wool over the eyes of the gods as best they might. For this purpose the bride with all her belongings was sent the day before the wedding from her father's house to that of an uncle living in another part of the city, and on the morning of the wedding-day she came to her husband from a quarter quite favorable to his fortunes. It seems quite probable that the gods were taken in by this somewhat transparent subterfuge, for no serious evil has befallen the young couple in three years of married life.

Page 317.

To the American mind this method of terminating relations is always irritating and frequently embarrassing, but in Japan any discomfort is to be endured rather than the slightest suspicion of bad manners. If the foreign visitor is trying to learn to be a good Japanese, she must submit patiently when the servant solemnly engaged fails to appear at the appointed hour, sending a letter instead to say that she is ill; or when the woman upon whom she is depending to travel with her the next day to the country receives a telegram calling her to the bedside of a mythical son, and departs, bag and baggage, at a moment's notice, leaving her quondam mistress to shift for herself as best she may.

Page 318.

Among the many changes that have come over Japan in the transition from feudalism to the conditions of modern life, there is none that Japanese ladies regard with greater regret than the change in the servant question. As the years go by and new employments open to women, it becomes increasingly difficult to engage and keep servants of the old-time, faithful, intelligent sort. Notwithstanding increased pay, and the still existing conditions of considerate treatment, comfortable homes, and light work, it is hard to fill places vacated, even in noble households: and there is almost as much shaking of heads and despondent talk over the servant question in Japan to-day as there is in America.

Page 322.

It is interesting to note that it is