Jinrikisha Days in Japan

All the Orient is a surprise to the Occidental. Everything is strange, with a certain unreality that makes one doubt half his sensations. To appreciate Japan one should come to it from the mainland of Asia. From Suez to Nagasaki the Asiatic sits dumb and contented in his dirt, rags, ignorance, and wretchedness. After the muddy rivers, dreary flats, and brown hills of China, after the desolate shores of Korea, with their unlovely and unwashed peoples, Japan is a dream of Paradise, beautiful from the first green island off the coast to the last picturesque hill-top. The houses seem toys, their inhabitants dolls, whose manner of life is clean, pretty, artistic, and distinctive.

There is a greater difference between the people of these idyllic islands and of the two countries to westward, than between the physical characteristics of the three kingdoms; and one recognizes the Japanese as the fine flower of the Orient, the most polite, refined, and æsthetic of races, happy, light-hearted, friendly, and attractive.

The bold and irregular coast is rich in color, the perennial green of the hill-side is deep and soft, and the perfect cone of Fujiyama against the sky completes the landscape, grown so familiar on fan, lantern, box, and plate. Every-day life looks too theatrical, too full of artistic and decorative effects, to be actual and serious, and streets and shops seem set with deliberately studied scenes and carefully posed groups. Half consciously the spectator waits for the bell to ring and the curtain to drop.

The voyage across the North Pacific is lonely and monotonous. Between San Francisco and Yokohama hardly a passing sail is seen. When the Pacific Mail Steamship Company established the China line their steamers sailed on prescribed routes, and outward and homeward-bound ships met regularly in mid-ocean. Now, when not obliged to touch at Honolulu, the captains choose their route for each voyage, either sailing straight across from San Francisco, in 37° 47′, to Yokohama, in 35° 26′ N., or, following one of the great circles farther north, thus lessen time and distance. On these northern meridians the weather is often cold, threatening, or stormy, and the sea rough; but the steadiness of the winds favors this course, and persuades the ship’s officers to shorten the long course and more certainly reach Japan on schedule time. Dwellers in hot climates dislike the sudden transition to cooler waters, and some voyagers enjoy it. Fortunately, icebergs cannot float down the shallow reaches of Bering Strait, but fierce winds blow through the gaps and passes in the Aleutian Islands.