A couple of miles beyond the river we came to the well-known gardens called Ume Yashiki (the plum orchard), where we were waited on by some very pretty girls. Everybody who travelled along the Tokaido in those days, who had any respect for himself, used to stop here, in season or out of season, to drink a cup of straw-coloured tea, smoke a pipe and chaff the waiting-maids. Fish cooked in various ways and warm sake (rice beer) were also procurable, and red-faced native gentlemen might often be seen folding themselves up into their palanquins after a mild daylight debauch. Europeans usually brought picnic baskets and lunched there, but even if they started late were glad of any excuse for turning in to this charmingly picturesque tea-garden.…
The building occupied as the legation was part of a Buddhist temple To-zen-ji, behind which lay a large cemetery. But our part of it had never been devoted to purposes of worship. Every large temple in Japan has attached to it a suite of what we might call state apartments, which are used only on ceremonial occasions once or twice in the year, but from time it has been the custom to accommodate foreign embassies in these buildings. A suitable residence for a foreign representative could not otherwise have been found in Yedo. As a general rule every Japanese, with the exception of the working classes, lives in his own house, instead of renting it as do most residents in an European capital. The only purely secular buildings large enough to lodge the British Minister and his staff were the yashiki or ‘hotels’ of daimyos but the idea of expropriating one of these nobles in order to accommodate a foreign official was probably never mooted.…
The rooms were not spacious, and very little attempt had been made to convert them into comfortable apartments. I think there was an iron stove or two in the principal rooms, but elsewhere the only means of warming was a Japanese brazier piled up with red hot charcoal, the exhalations from which were very disagreeable to a novice. The native who wraps himself up in thick wadded clothes and squats on the floor has no difficulty in keeping himself warm with the aid of this arrangement, over which he holds the tips of his fingers. His legs being crumpled up under him, the superficies he presents to the cold air is much less than it would be if he sat in a chair with outstretched limbs in European fashion. To protect himself against draughts he has a screen standing behind him, and squats on a warm cushion stuffed with silk wool. These arrangements enable him even in winter to sit with the window open, so long as it has a southern aspect.… Underneath you there are thick straw mats laid upon thin and badly jointed hoarding, through which the cutting north-west wind rises all over the floor, while the keen draughts pierce through between the uprights and the shrunken lath-and-plaster walls.
1878 ISABELLA BIRD
The indefatigable British writer Isabella Bird (see page 119) visited Japan in 1878, arriving in Tokyo but mostly travelling in remote parts as she described in Unbeaten Tracks in Japan (1880).
24 May I have dated my letter Yedo, according to the usage of the British Legation, but popularly the new name of Tokiyo, or Eastern Capital, is used, Kiyoto, the Mikado’s former residence, having received the name of Saikio, or Western Capital, though it has now no claim to be regarded as a capital at all. Yedo belongs to the old regime and the Shogunate, Tokiyo to the new regime and the Restoration, with their history of ten years. It would seem an incongruity to travel to Yedo by railway, but quite proper when the destination is Tokiyo.
The journey between the two cities is performed in an hour by an admirable, well-metalled, double-track railroad, 18 miles long, with iron bridges, neat stations and substantial roomy termini, built by English engineers at a cost known only to government, and opened by the Mikado in 1872. The Yokohama station is a handsome and suitable stone building, with a spacious approach, ticket offices on our plan, roomy waiting rooms for different classes – uncarpeted, however, in consideration of Japanese clogs – and supplied with the daily papers. There is a department for the weighing and labelling of luggage, and on the broad, covered, stone platform at both termini a barrier with turnstiles, through which, except by special favour, no ticketless person can pass. Except the ticket clerks, who are Chinese, and the guards and engine-drivers, who are English, the officials are Japanese in European dress. Outside the stations, instead of cabs, there are kurumas [carriages], which carry luggage as well as people.…
The Japanese look most diminutive in European dress. Each garment is a misfit, and exaggerates the miserable physique and the national defects of concave chests and bow legs. The lack of a complexion and of hair upon the face makes it nearly impossible to judge of the ages of men. I supposed that all the railroad officials were striplings of 17 or 18, but they are men from 25 to 40 years old.…
You don’t take your ticket for Tokiyo, but for Shinagawa or Shinbashi, two of the many villages which have grown together into the capital. Yedo is hardly seen before Shinagawa is reached, for it has no smoke and no long chimneys; its temples and public buildings are seldom lofty; the former are often concealed among thick trees, and its ordinary houses seldom reach a height of 20 feet. On the right a blue sea with fortified islands upon it, wooded gardens with massive retaining walls, hundreds of fishing boats lying in creeks or drawn up on the beach; on the left a broad road on which kurumas are hurrying both ways, rows of low, grey houses, mostly teahouses and shops; and as I was asking ‘Where is Yedo?’ the train came to rest in the terminus, the Shinbashi railroad station, and disgorged its 200 Japanese passengers with a combined clatter of 400 clogs – a new sound to me.
These clogs add three inches to their height, but even with them few of the men attained 5 feet 7 inches, and few of the women 5 feet 2 inches; but they look far broader in the national costume, which also conceals the defects of their figures. So lean, so yellow, so ugly, yet so pleasant-looking, so wanting in colour and effectiveness; the women so very small and tottering in their walk; the children so formal-looking and such dignified burlesques on the adults, I feel as if I had seen them all before, so like are they to their pictures on trays, fans and teapots. The hair of the women is all drawn away from their faces, and is worn in chignons, and the men, when they don’t shave the front of their heads and gather their back hair into a quaint queue drawn forward over the shaven patch, wear their coarse hair about three inches long in a refractory undivided mop.…
Hundreds of kurumas and covered carts with four wheels drawn by one miserable horse, which are the omnibuses of certain districts of Tokiyo, were waiting outside the station, and an English brougham for me. The Legation stands in Kojimachi on very elevated ground above the inner moat of the historic ‘Castle of Yedo’, but I cannot tell you anything of what I saw on my way thither, except that there were miles of dark, silent, barrack-like buildings, with highly ornamental gateways and long rows of projecting windows with screens made of reeds – the feudal mansions of Yedo – and miles of moats with lofty grass embankments or walls of massive masonry 50 feet high, with kiosk-like towers at the corners, and curious, roofed gateways, and many bridges, and acres of lotus leaves. Turning along the inner moat, up a steep slope, there are, on the right, its deep green waters, the great grass embankment surmounted by a dismal wall overhung by the branches of coniferous trees which surrounded the palace of the shogun…. Besides these, barracks, parade-grounds, policemen, kurumas, carts pulled and pushed by coolies, packhorses in straw sandals and dwarfish, slatternly looking soldiers in European dress, made up the Tokiyo that I saw between Shinbashi and the Legation.
1889 MARY CRAWFORD FRASER
Tokyo, like all of Japan, is subject to frequent earthquakes, which visitors, such as Mary Crawford Fraser (1851–1922), American-born novelist and wife of a British diplomat, had to grow used to.
I am not new to earthquakes, and we have had no very alarming ones here as yet; but the Japanese papers are unkindly promising us a severe visitation shortly. It seems that the shocks are felt very strongly in Tokyo, as they are in all places where there is a large area of soft alluvial soil; and (consoling rider!) our house stands, so I am told, exactly where t
hey all pass, no matter whence the current comes or whither it tends. It may be a distinction to live over a kind of Seismic Junction; but it is bad for the nerves – and the china!
25 May My daily drives in Tokyo are as full of fun and interest as was my first jinriksha ride in Nagasaki. The distances are enormous, and it often happens that I make a journey of three or four miles between one visit and another; but every step of the way brings me to some new picture or new question, reveals some unimagined poetry or bit of fresh fun in daily life. There are parties of little acrobats, children in charge of an older boy, who come tumbling after the carriage in contortions which would be terrible to see did one not feel convinced that Japanese limbs are made of India-rubber. Then there are the pedlars; the old-clothes sellers; the pipe-menders, who solemnly clean a pipe for one rin as they sit on the doorstep; the umbrella-makers, who fill a whole street with enormous yellow parasols drying in the sun. Here a juggler is swallowing a sword, to the delight and amazement of a group of children; there the seller of tofu, or bean-curd, cuts great slabs of the cheesy substance, and wraps it in green leaves for his customers to carry away. I love watching the life of the streets, its fullness and variety, its inconvenient candour and its inexplicable reticences. I am always sorry to come in, even to our lovely home with its green lawns and gardens in flower. It is like leaving a theatre before the piece is over, and one wonders if one will ever see it again.
1907 MARIE STOPES
Marie Stopes (1880–1958), a British botanist later better known as a birth-control advocate, spent eighteen months in Japan studying fossilized plants in coal mines. Her Journal from Japan (1910) was her first book and only published piece of travel writing.
10 August I am much surprised to find how like Venice Tokio is, with its numerous waterways. This hotel is on a very tiny island with six bridges, which connect it with the numerous other islands which seem to compose a large part of Tokio – there are waterways, lakes, docks or rivers everywhere.… At first I was a little disappointed in the streets, pretty and quaint though they were, but when we came to the broad roads outside the moats of the Imperial Palace, I found far more of beauty and wonder than I had expected. Roads, grey sloping walls, green banks running up from the green water which shadowed the great trunks of fantastic trees – the heart of the city, and no sign of its life. In the grey sloping walls was a silent strength and majesty, in the beautiful trees a fantastic charm; the whole being one of the most impressive views I have ever seen in a city – a sight that brought tears to one’s eyes.…
In the afternoon I went to the Botanical Gardens and Institute…. The gardens are beautiful. The part with the little lakes and streams, distant views and wistaria arbours, more beautiful than anything of the kind I have yet seen. Some of the Gymnosperm trees are also very fine indeed. Parts of the garden are allowed to run wild, and there is a want of gardeners – the old story. The low, wooden-built, picturesque Institute, with palms growing almost into its windows, can show London and Manchester a good deal.…
When returning in the rickshaw at night (it is an hour’s drive to the hotel) the pretty Japanese lanterns decorated the dark streets. Our festival arrangements are here the daily custom. Alas, that there are now several red and white brick abominations of buildings in this low-built, grey wooden town. These brick buildings are quite new; but some of the older Europeanized buildings are beautiful, for example, the Japan Bank is dignified and graceful, of grey stone, set in brilliant green gardens.
11 August I had an exciting time going about Tokio; of course I could (and did until today) go in a rickshaw, but then one is simply a parcel of goods to be delivered. Today I sallied forth to a place three miles away, and to get there had to take three different tram-cars and walk a mile through little twisting streets. I took a map and got there without losing myself once until within a hundred yards of the place; then my guardian angel (in the shape of Professor F.) turned up and rescued me, though as I had planned this expedition without his knowledge, and spoken of it to no one, it was nothing short of a miracle. Tokio is enormous, for its two millions or so live in single-storeyed houses, and there are many parks and gardens, so that it is very easy to get thoroughly lost, and not one of the common people can speak English. In the afternoon I got one of my desires, and saw a real Japanese house. It was perfectly exquisite in snowy white, soft straw colour and grey. I took the shoes from off my feet. It belonged to the widow of an officer killed in the war and her daughter; and as a most exceptional favour I am to be allowed to take part of the house and live with them as a kind of lodger. I could sing for joy. My rooms, of course, are small, but exquisite as a sea-shell; I shall live as nearly as possible in true Japanese style. The house is on rising ground, fifteen minutes from the Botanical Gardens, in a part that is almost country, near a great Buddhist temple; the air fresh and inspiring after that on the flats down here in Tsukiji.
12 August Glorious weather. I conveyed my luggage to my house and found that boxes look detestably out of place in such a dwelling, and appear more unutterably hideous than ever.
In the afternoon I had tea in the big summer house in the Botanical Gardens. The room is really a good-sized lecture hall, only flat and open after Japanese style; the three side walls had their screens taken out, and so we looked on to the lakes and streams of the landscape garden. At tea there was quite a party.
The Stimmung [mood] is strange and fascinating, and quite indescribable. Professor M. is in Japanese dress; real Japanese tea (totally unlike our tea) and real Japanese cakes, also as unlike cakes as possible. One is a kind of jelly, made of seaweed, and is very nice. I had my first lesson in eating with chopsticks, and have ‘graduated’.
I had dinner with Dr M. and Professor F., and then returned for my first night in a true Japanese house.… They all kneel on the matting and touch the floor with their hands and foreheads, and I do a half-hearted imitation of the courtesy. It crushes my frocks, but otherwise does me no harm to be polite. The matting on the floor is delightful, so springy to walk on as well as pleasing to the eye.
My futons (soft, thick quilt-like mats) are beauties of silk and velvet and I feel ashamed to lie on them. The mosquito curtains are nearly as big as the room, and make a high, four-square tent when erected, but everything is put away in the day, and no sign of sleeping remains; hence everything gets aired and there is no possibility of dust collecting under beds. In many of the household arrangements we are far behind the Japanese. They have reduced simplicity to a fine art. The bath, where one sits upright instead of lying down, is most comfortable; but of course mine was too hot after a short time in it, as the fire is inside it, and I had to rush out and get help in Japanese!
At night the stillness was absolute, but the strangeness of the day kept sleep away.
1955 FOSCO MARAINI
Fosco Maraini (1912–2004) was an Italian anthropologist and photographer who taught in Japan from 1938 to 1943, but was interned with his family in 1943 until the end of the Second World War. His book Meeting with Japan (1955) described his return to that country, which now combined traditional values and urgent Westernization.
Now we were on terra firma. They opened the door, and we got out; and here were the first Japanese sounds, smells, voices. I felt very moved, though afraid of being disappointed. So many people had told me that Japan was spoilt, that the young had ‘gone American’ and chewed gum, and that the old were disillusioned and no longer thought about anything but money. Would this turn out to be true or false? I took deep breaths of the air of my second country, the country in which I had lived and suffered for so long, where my daughters were born, the air of this eastern Hellas which has the gift of putting those who have once loved her under a permanent spell.
I quickly completed the customs and passport formalities. How smoothly they went! Times seem to have changed greatly; in a few moments it was all over. Even my collection of photographic apparatus, my cine-camera, the many boxes of film I had brought with me,
passed without question, almost without a glance. How different it was the first time I had arrived in Japan, in distant 1938! Then you were subjected to interminable inspections, interrogations, the most minute customs and medical examinations – even your faeces were examined; you had to give the name of all your close and distant relatives, and if it turned out that you had, or had had, a connection with any army or political party or international organization, it was just too bad. Finally you had to make a complete list of all the books and other printed matter you had with you.…
Today I walked around Tokyo for the first time. As soon as I got out of the shosen [underground] I was surprised at the number of new houses and new concrete buildings, at the speed with which Japanese reconstruction had taken place, at the liveliness of the streets and, at any rate superficially and at first sight, the general impression of prosperity.…
Nowhere else in the world can you see in the streets girls and women in kimonos, either vividly coloured or subdued according to their age, young women in Paris models, girls in jeans, or Indian saris, or neat Chinese dress; mothers leading their children by the hand, or carrying them on their back, or pushing them in prams; men in shirts, in work happi [coats], in the uniform of ten different armies, with their sons on their back, in straw sandals, gumboots, overalls, eighth-century costume, in shorts, rags, smart white suits, in yukata [informal kimonos], in haori [open jackets], hakama [pleated trousers] and bowler hats, or in montsuki [formal kimonos]; with black, red or fair hair; with almond-shaped eyes or blue eyes; men who drag their feet (Japanese), gesticulate (Latins), walk stiffly and inexorably (Teutons) or loosely and smilingly (Americans); Buddhist monks, Roman Catholic priests, orthodox archimandrites, protestant pastors, Shinto kannushi [priests], Indian sadhus, huge men with long hair knotted on top of their heads (sumo wrestlers), martial and agile Sikhs in pink turbans, human relics of Hiroshima or Nagasaki; white-shirted disabled ex-servicemen begging and pathetically playing some instrument while the victors pass by with girls on their arms; boys on bicycles demonstrating their virtuosity by threading their way through the traffic with one hand on the handlebar and the other holding aloft two or three layers of trays full of food; men-horses pulling perfumed, heavily made-up geishas, people terrified of infection wearing surgeon’s masks over their faces, students in uniform, railwaymen in uniform, postmen in uniform, firemen in uniform, nurses in uniform; itinerant flute-layers who hide their heads on baskets; men disguised as insects or corpses who dance, cut capers or beat drums or do whatever else may be required to advertise some product or other; sellers of red-fish or of roasted sweet potatoes, or a special bean paste made up in beautiful wooden boxes; baseball players returned from a game; pipe-cleaners pushing carts on which a tiny kettle is permanently whistling; Coca-Cola sellers wearing the uniform and device of the firm; masseurs, who are generally blind; aged widows with their hair cut short; Buddhist nuns with shaved heads; scowling colonels of the reserve in kimono and bowler hat; and frivolous girls, often in wooden sandals, who probably belong to the reserve of another army, that of Tokyo’s 80,000 prostitutes, for that is the number the city is said to muster.
Great Cities Through Travelers' Eyes Page 34