Japanese Girls and Women, Alice Mabel Bacon [ebook reader library TXT] 📗

and during that time the quarter of the city in which they occur seems entirely given over to festivity. The streets are gayly decorated with flags, and bright lanterns—all alike in design and color—are hung in rows from the low eaves of the houses. Young bamboo-trees set along the street, and decorated with bits of bright-colored tissue paper, are a frequent and effective accompaniment of these festivals, and here and there throughout the district are set up high stands, on the tops of which musicians with squeaky flutes, and drums of varying calibre, keep up a din more festive than harmonious. It takes a day or two for the rejoicings to get fully under way, but by the second or third day the fun is at its height, and the streets are thronged with merrymakers. A great deal of labor and strength, as well as ingenuity, is spent in the construction of enormous floats, or dashi, lofty platforms of two stories, either set on wheels and drawn by black bullocks or crowds of shouting men, or carried by poles on men's shoulders. Upon the first floor of these great floats is usually a company of dancers, or mummers, who dance, attitudinize, or make faces for the amusement of the crowds that gather along their route; while up above, an effigy of some hero in Japanese history, or the figure of some animal or monster, looks down unmoved upon the absurdities below. Each dashi is attended, not only by the men who draw it, but by companies of others in some uniform costume; and sometimes graceful professional dancing-girls are hired to march in the matsuri procession, or to dance upon the lofty dashi. At the time of the festivities which accompanied the promulgation of the Constitution, three days of jollification were held in Tōkyō, days of such universal fun and frolic that it will be known among the common people, to all succeeding generations, as the "Emperor's big matsuri." Every quarter of the city vied with every other in the production of gorgeous dashi, and the streets were gay with every conceivable variety of decoration, from the little red-and-white paper lanterns, that even the poorest hung before their houses, to the great evergreen arches, set with electric lights, with which the great business streets were spanned thickly from end to end. An evening walk through one of these thoroughfares was a sight to be remembered for a lifetime. The magnificent dashi represented all manner of quaint conceits. A great bivalve drawn by yelling crowds—which halted occasionally—opened and displayed between its shells a group of beautifully dressed girls, who danced one of the pantomimic dances of the country, accompanied by the twanging melodies of the samisen. Then slowly the great shell closed, once more the shouting crowds seized hold of the straining ropes, and the great bivalve with its fair freight was drawn slowly along through the gayly illuminated streets. Jimmu Tenno and other heroes of Japanese legend or history, each upon its lofty platform, a white elephant, and countless other subjects were represented in the festival cars sent forth by all the districts of the city to celebrate the great event.

Upon such festival occasions the shopkeeper does not put up his shutters and leave his place of business, but the open shop-fronts add much to the gay appearance of the street. There are no signs of business about, but the floor of the shop is covered with bright-red blankets; magnificent gilded screens form an imposing background to the little room; and seated on the floor are the shopkeeper, his family, and guests, eating, drinking tea, and smoking, as cosily as if all the world and his wife were not gazing upon the gay and homelike interior. Sometimes companies of dancers, or other entertainments furnished by the wealthier shopkeepers, will attract gaping crowds, who watch and block the street until the advance guard of some approaching dashi scatters them for a moment.

In Japan, as in other parts of the world, the country people are rather looked down upon by the dwellers in the city for their slowness of intellect, dowdiness of dress, and boorishness of manners; while the country people make fun of the fads and fashions of the city, and rejoice that they are not themselves the slaves of novelty, and especially of the foreign innovations that play so prominent a part in Japanese city life to-day. "The frog in the well knows not the great ocean," is the snub with which the Japanese cockney sets down Farmer Rice-Field's expressions of opinion; while the conservative countryman laughs at the foreign affectations of the Tōkyō man, and returns to his village with tales of the cookery of the capital: so extravagant is it that sugar is used in everything; it is even rumored that the Tōkyōites put sugar in their tea.

But while the country laughs and wonders at the city, nevertheless, in Japan as elsewhere, there is a constant crowding of the young life of the country into the livelier and more entertaining city. Tōkyō especially is the goal of every young countryman's ambition, and thither he goes to seek his fortune, finding, alas! too often, only the hard lot of the jinrikisha man, instead of the wealth and power that his country dreams had shown him.

The lower class women of the cities are in many respects like their sisters of the rural districts, except that they have less freedom than the country women in what the economists call "direct production." The wells and water tanks that stand at convenient distances along the streets of Tōkyō are frequently surrounded by crowds of women, drawing water, washing rice, and chattering merrily over their occupations. They meet and exchange ideas freely with each other and with the men, but they have not the diversity of labor that country life affords, confining themselves more closely to indoor and domestic work, and leaving the bread-winning more entirely to the men.

There are, however, occupations in the city for women, by which they may support themselves or their families. A good hair-dresser may make a handsome living; indeed, she does so well that it is proverbial among the Japanese that a hair-dresser's husband has nothing to do. Though professional tailors are mostly men, many women earn a small pittance in taking in sewing and in giving sewing lessons; and as instructors in the ceremonial tea, etiquette, music, painting, and flower arrangement, many women of the old school are able to earn an independence, though none of these occupations are confined to the women alone.

The business of hotel-keeping we have referred to in a previous chapter, and it is a well-known fact that unless a hotel-keeper has a capable wife, his business will not succeed. At present, all over Tōkyō, small restaurants, where food is served in the foreign style, are springing up, and these are usually conducted by a man and his wife who have at some time served as cook and waitress in a foreign family, and who conduct the business cöoperatively and on terms of good-fellowship and equality. In these little eating-houses, where a well-cooked foreign dinner of from three to six courses is served for the moderate sum of thirty or forty cents, the man usually does the cooking, the woman the serving and handling of the money, until the time arrives when the profits of the business are sufficient to justify the hiring of more help. When this time comes, the labor is redistributed, the woman frequently taking upon herself the reception of the guests and the keeping of the accounts, while the hired help waits on the tables.

One important calling, in the eyes of many persons, especially those of the lower classes, is that of fortune-telling; and these guides in all matters of life, both great and small, are to be found in every section of the city. They are consulted on every important step by believing ones of all classes. An impending marriage, an illness, the loss of any valuable article, a journey about to be taken,—these are all subjects for the fortune-teller. He tells the right day of marriage, and says whether the fates of the two parties will combine well; gives clues to the causes of sudden illness, and information as to what has become of lost articles, and whether they will be recovered or not. Warned thus by the fortune-teller against evils that may happen, many ingenious expedients are resorted to, to avoid the ill foretold.

A man and his family were about to move from their residence to another part of the city. They sent to know if the fates were propitious to the change for all the family. The day and year of birth of each was told, and then the fortune-teller hunted up the various signs, and sent word that the direction of the new home was excellent for the good luck of the family as a whole, and the move a good one for each member of it except one of the sons; the next year the same move would be bad for the father. As the family could not wait two years before moving, it was decided that the change of residence should be made at once, but that the son should live with his uncle until the next year. The uncle's home was, however, inconveniently remote, and so the young man stayed as a visitor at his father's house for the remaining months of the year, after which he became once more a member of the household. Thus the inconvenience and the evil were both avoided.[*]

Another story comes to my mind now of a dear old lady, the Go Inkyo Sama of a house of high rank, who late in life came to Tōkyō to live with her brother and his young and somewhat foreignized wife. The brother himself, while not a Christian, had little belief in the old superstitions of his people; his wife was a professing Christian. Soon after the old lady's arrival in Tōkyō, her sister-in-law fell ill, and before she had recovered her strength the children, one after another, came down with various diseases, which, though in no case fatal, kept the family in a state of anxiety for more than a year. The old lady was quite sure that there was some witchcraft or art-magic at work among her dear ones, and, after consulting the servants (for she knew that she could expect no sympathy in her plans from either her brother or his wife), she betook herself to a fortune-teller to discover through his means the causes of the illness in the family. The fortune-teller revealed to her the fact that two occult forces were at work bringing evil upon the house. One was the evil spirit of a spring or well that had been choked with stones, or otherwise obstructed in its flow, and that chose this way of bringing its afflictions to the attention of mortals. The other was the spirit of a horse that had once belonged in the family, and that after death revenged itself upon its former masters for the hard service wherewith it had been made to serve. The only way in which these two powers could be appeased would be by finding the well, and removing the obstructions that choked it, and by erecting an image of the horse and offering to it cakes and other meat-offerings. The fortune-teller hinted, moreover, that for a consideration he might be able to afford material aid in the search for the well.

At this information Go Inkyo Sama was much perturbed, for further aid for her afflicted family seemed to require the use of money, and of that commodity she had very little, being mainly dependent upon her brother for