Out of the way places

Preface

OFF and on, for some years, in the summer months, I have stolen away from my lawoffice, and have crossed the seas and roamed strange lands. On those travels I have written, irregularly, many letters to the papers of Dayton, describing my observations, experiences, and sensations. These letters have not always dealt with the most important objects, but with those that momentarily appealed to me.

From these letters, describing the odds and ends of travel, I have selected some telling of less familiar places, and these I have combined and revised, and now put forth in this little book.

My motive for these travels has been the simple love of travel, and is expressed in these lines from Kipling's poem, "The Feet of the Young Men" :

"He must go — go — go away from here!

On the other side the world he's overdue, *Send your road is clear before you when the old Spring-fret comes o'er you

And the Red Gods call for you!

* * * *

"Unto each the voice and vision; unto each his spoor and sign — Lonely mountain in the Northland, misty

sweat bath 'neath the line — And to each a man that knozvs his naked soul!"

Wm. G. Frizell.

Dayton, Ohio.

Contents

I. Japan — Dreamland 1

II. Religious Japan 25

III. China's Capital 37

Chapter I. Japan— Dreamland

JAPAN is dreamland. It does not seem like a real land. So beautiful and picturesque are the islands, so small and unique the people, so artistic their creations, so fascinating and yet so strange is everything that it seems as if it must be a land conjured up in one's fancy.

Japan is called the "Land of the Rising Sun," but like the land of dreams, it is also located in the region of the setting sun. I found it by following the setting sun for twenty-one days across land and sea, following it beyond flowery Hawaii, the paradise of the Pacific, and beyond the 180th meridian, where a day is dropped from the calendar, and the far, far West becomes the Far East. Here, rising out of a warm, rich blue sea, wrapped in a hazy atmosphere that makes it an artist's paradise, are great green islands, some three to four thousand in numbers.

Frequently the first glimpse of these islands, as one approaches Yokohama, is caught not by looking off toward the horizon, but by looking skyward. Then there is seen above the clouds the summit of Japan's sacred mountain, Fujiyama, which lifts its head nearly thirteen thousand feet, and wears around its brow an almost constant wreath of mists. As I saw from the steamer's deck, across the seas, up in the heavens, above the clouds, as if suspended in the air, the great summit of this magnificent mountain, it seemed to me that it was a fitting representative of Japan, which does not seem like a part of this earth of ours, but rather a land ethereal, a land of fancy, or a land of dreams.

As is proper, too, for dreamland, Japan is woman's land. If I were asked to paint a picture representing, in a single figure, Japan, I would paint the picture of a smiling Japanese girl. With her sweetness, mildness, and brightness, she best represents the fascination of Japan. Japan is woman's land, as China is man's land. Japan is the land of Miss Cherry Blossom, and of Madame Chrysanthemum, while China is the land of John Chinaman. Master Cherry Blossom, Mr. Chrysanthemum, and Mrs. John Chinaman are all secondary personages. Curiously, in Japan men wear women's clothes, and in China women wear men's clothes. In Japan men wear the long-skirted kimono, while in China women wear broad pantaloons.

To travelers, the Japanese girls and women are among the most fascinating in the world. Their charm is peculiar to themselves. It results largely from an extreme development of the so-called feminine qualities of mildness, kindliness, and sympathy. It is expressed in their ever-ready smile. Their smile is one of bright, curious, kindly, sympathetic interest.

No visitor ever forgets the sensations and impressions of his first night in that strange country, especially if he meets Japanese girls and women. After dinner, at the luxurious Grand Hotel, several of us stepped out upon the veranda to listen to the music of a Japanese orchestra. Soon some jinrikisha men persuaded us to take a ride. Seated in these strange vehicles, with lighted Japanese paper lanterns swinging from the shafts, drawn by bobbing bronze men, we dashed through several deserted streets in the European quarter, and suddenly emerged into a crowded, busy Japanese city. Here was a dense city of little yellow men and women, gliding along unpaved streets, lined on either side with unsubstantial two-story frame houses, with the fronts all open, and streets and houses all lighted with picturesque paper lanterns. While these little yellow people, in a matter-of-fact way, were shopping, marketing, and soberly attending to the serious duties of life, yet in their curious costumes, and in the mingled light of the gaily colored Japanese paper lanterns, they seemed to be denizens of a different world.

Up and down these crowded streets we rode, looking, wondering, dreaming, until suddenly the wise jinrikisha men dropped their shafts in the open front of a celebrated tea house. Here we were greeted instantly by a little, low-bowing gentleman, the personification of hospitable politeness, and cordially bade welcome. Clumsily dismounting for the first time from a jinrikisha, w^e were escorted through a hall, scrupulously neat, to a large and airy dining-room. While the supper was being arranged, about a dozen geisha girls in their pretty costumes came in and entertained us. We were not particularly enchanted with their music, but between performances these little girls delighted us by their tittering, giggling, and broken English small talk. Shortly, a light supper of rice, fish, and sweet cakes was served, and we had our first lesson from laughing teachers in the use of chopsticks. Until late we lingered, and when we returned to the hotel it was long I lay awake, my brain all awhirl with the memory of the strange, fantastic scenes of the first day and evening in Japan, and in a sort of doze I wondered whether I was in a real land or in a truly dreamland. That wonder never wore off.

Japan is the most curious civilized country in the world. From the ship's approach to Yokohama until its departure everything is curious. From the almost naked sampan men, upon whose bronze muscles glistened the sun, who poled out in their unpainted boats to meet our ship, and who, on account of a passing shower, put on thatched straw hats and thatched straw coats, that so completely hid them that they looked like little moving straw stacks, to the miniature policemen who sailed down the bay with ouf departing ship, and stopped us at the entrance to take off stowaways, all is curious.

The vehicles are curious. The usual beast of burden is man. He pushes the carts, pulls the carriages, carries loads on his head, or suspended at the ends of poles that are slung across his shoulders. The favorite vehicle is the jinrikisha, which is a baby cab on buggy wheels, with shafts, and pulled by men. The Japanese word means "man-pull-car," and some American girl has transposed it into "pull-man-car," or Pullman car of the Far East. It was invented about 1870 by a Mr. Goble, an American Baptist missionary, with an invalid wife, and it at once became very popular in the Far East. In Tokio alone there are over forty thousand of them.

Riding in these vehicles has a certain thrill of excitement, for the men usually run, with their heads down, through the narrow crowded streets, and their object seems to be to come as near every obstacle as possible without hitting it. One day I was being taken to the railway station, and as down the narrow street my man went bobbing along with head down, I noticed another one coming in the opposite direction in the same manner. In his jinrikisha sat a young English lady. When we concluded that a head-on collision was inevitable, both of us grabbed the sides of our vehicles, but the men quickly veered and passed in safety. After that I felt that jinrikisha men never collide, until I saw the flaring headlines in the "J^P^^ Mail" : "A Jinrikisha Accident. A Noted Traveler Severely Injured."

One reason why man carries the burdens in Japan is that animals are few. In a week's time in Kyoto, a city the size of Cincinnati, I saw but five horses, and two of them were in a circus. Horses are comparatively rare. Up in the mountains around Nikko there are a number of small ponies. The streets of Japanese cities in the interior are almost horseless.

Cattle are kept mostly for the foreigners, as the Japanese do not eat beef, or milk and butter, as we do. In a semi-foreign Japanese inn at Nara, I was dining with some Americans, when the hotel cat came into the rooim. An American girl, noticing a little milk in the mug, poured it into a saucer and put it upon the floor for the cat to drink. While the cat was enjoying the feast of its life, there entered the wife of the proprietor. As soon as she saw the cat drinking milk she threw up her hands in horror, and for half an hour she went around mutterinsf about the dreadful extravagance of the Americans who would give milk to a cat. These cats, in passing I might say, are short-tailed, much like rabbits.

The Japanese inns are curious and furnish a succession of surprises. My first stay at a purely Japanese inn was at a small, out-of-the-way interior city to which we were sent on account of a landslide ahead on the railway. The inn, like most Japanese buildings, was only two stories high, and built of wood because of the frequency and severity of earthquakes. At the entrance we removed our shoes and gave them to the servants. On account of the soft reed mats that cover Japanese floors, shoes can never be worn into inns, residences, temples, theaters, and oftentimes not into stores. Our foreign shoes are an incumbrance in Japan, and I finally seldom laced them, but had them ready to slip off. The Japanese wear a little block of wood called a "geta" with stilts beneath, and a double cord that passes between the big toe and the next and then over the foot, so that they can readily step out of their shoes.

On entering the inn the five Americans in our party were assigned a wing, which consisted of one long room with two end walls, but no side walls. There was no furniture in it, except the mat upon the floor. There were no chairs, as the Japanese do not sit on chairs, the Chinese being the only Asiatics who do. We accordingly sat down in the middle of the floor. Soon maids brought us fresh kimonos to put on, sweet cakes to eat, and a brazier in which to light our pipes or cigarets. The Japanese use long, straight reed pipes with a very small bowl, which requires constant refilling.

At supper-time small individual taborets were brought in, and the inn furnished us with rice, chicken, and tgg omelet, while we had some bread with us. Towards bed-time servants put up paper screens, fitting in grooves in the floor and ceiling for outside walls, and likewise put paper screens crosswise in other grooves to make the dividing walls of the four rooms into which thie large one was converted.

For a bed a quilt was placed upon the floor, the Japanese use no bedstead, a second was rolled up for a pillow, and a third was spread over us. The Japanese do not use our pillow, but have instead a little wooden pillow, covered with a cloth, about the size of a rail. It looks so much like a railroad rail, that the story runs that when the first railroad was built by foreigners in China, the Chinese, who have the same kind of a pillow, thought that the rails were pillows placed there for their comfort, and insisted upon sleeping upon them, so that trains could not run at night. The reason for the use of such a pillow is that the Japanese and Chinese women arrange their hair in such elaborate and fantastic forms. They dress it only once or twice a week, so they require a pillow that will not muss their hair.

Shortly after I had retired, I was startled at finding one of my paper walls opening, and a couple of Japanese maids coming in and beginning to carry off my clothes. I called to my friend who could speak Japanese, and the maids told him that as the wooden exterior screens were not in use, that robbers could easily enter through the paper screens, and steal our clothes and baggage. We yielded our belongings, but the two American ladies insisted upon taking their umbrellas to bed with them to fight the robbers when they entered.

No robbers appeared, but in the morning the problem was to get dressed. I called for my clothes, and was soon surprised at noticing a servant carrying them to the ladies' room. Men and women wear practically the same clothes in Japan. When my clothes were delivered to me the maids of the inn began promenading through my room. A wall would suddenly open, and a couple of maids appear. After gesticulating them out of the room I would hardly have time to jump up and close the wall before having to dive back into bed on account of the opening of an opposite wall. Finally, between visits, I managed to get into my clothes. We were the first foreign curiosities that had come under the close observation of these inn servants.

Before breakfast each of our party was presented by the proprietor with a tooth-brush, in the shape of a stick about eight inches long, with one end crushed into fine fiber, and also a small package of tooth-powder. When we paid our bill, which was very reasonable, we made the proprietor a present of the customary tip, and he sent to us, at the train, by special messenger, a high-sounding note of thanks for honoring his inn with our patronage, and inviting us to return. Subsequent experiences in Japanese inns were very pleasant, and one soon prefers them to the large foreign hotels of the cities.

As the landslide was not removed, we took on the train, to transport ourselves and baggage across the country to another railway, some ten jinrikisha men with their vehicles. We traveled by rail forty miles, then we left the train and went by a round-about route, over roads about four feet wide, through a country studded with neat, clean villages. News of our coming must have gone ahead, for the village populations were lined up to see the strange caravan. These people probably had never been visited by foreigners before. Our young American lady, with her big hat and feathers, attracted more attention than a goddess of liberty in a circus parade. The Japanese women wear no hats. The villagers presented to us as interesting a scene as we to them. They were there in their clothes and half clothes. Clothes have not long been regarded as a necessity in Japan, and they are now worn by adults with considerable variety as to amount, and by small children frequently not at all. These villagers looked like a hard-working set of people. They received us pleasantly, with smiles. Much of the country through which we rode was a beautiful rice-growing country; the rice fields were covered with about five inches of water.

Finally we were all ferried across a wide, swift river in sampans, and reached a little village on the railway. As we had to wait here for about two hours we went to the village inn. It was built at the corner of two streets, and the first floor consisted of one large room with both walls on the sides towards the streets removed. In our stocking feet we sat on the floor, while a curious crowd of about fifty stood in the streets and watched us. We still had some bread with us, so we bought a sort of Japanese honey, made from the bean, some large peaches with a very red meat, and some mineral water, and thus improvised a lunch, which the crowd with interest enjoyed watching us eat. Above our heads swung several straw cages in which were imprisoned grasshoppers, that chirped at intervals. In a distant part of the room sat a number of Japanese guests waiting for the train, one of whom, anxious to keep his kimono in good condition, took it off and folded it up in a handkerchief, and sat in his loin-cloth. Frequently that is done on the trains. Altogether we were in strange and curious environments.

The Japanese inns have a number of peculiarities. One of them is the bath. The Japanese aire the cleanest people in the world. With them, cleanliness is more than godliness, for they bathe oftener than they pray. The story is told that in one of the villages the people apologized for not being as clean as usual, saying that at that time of year they were so busy that they could take only two baths a day, while ordinarily they took five baths daily. In Tokio there are about eight hundred public baths, at which over half a million baths are taken daily. So fond are the Japanese of water that in all contracts for service, even in those of coolies outside of Japan, it is always specified in the agreement the number of gallons of hot water the person is to have weekly for bathing purposes.

The Japanese bath is peculiar in a number of respects. The water is usually about 112° Fahrenheit, so that the first time a foreigner steps into the tub he jumps out quickly for fear that he will be boiled before he can get out. A foreigner, however, soon learns to enjoy it. Then a person always soaps and washes himself before he gets into the tub, and there instead of lying down, he sits up with the water about to his chin. In Japanese families and country inns the water is usually changed but once a day. All the members of a family, or guests, take turns about bathing in the same water. I prefered the first turn, but sometimes had the last; however, the water is always clear. Men and women frequently bathe in the same bathroom at the same time. In Tokio the public baths have only a lattice screen between the bathers and the street. In harmony with European ideas, the law now requires a partition between the men and women in the bathrooms, but as the law is not very specific the partition varies in size. In one inn bathroom I discovered that the partition consisted of a stick across the bathtub.

Another noticeable Japanese characteristic at the inns, and, in fact, everywhere, is the politeness. The Japanese are not only the cleanest, but also the politest people in the world. It is an easy, good-natured politeness that invites and flatters, rather than the stately, formal politeness of the Spaniards, which always puts one on his dignity. The Japanese politeness is partly the result of religious teaching, and partly of necessity. For centuries their religion has emphasized that it is always one's duty to have a bright and cheerful countenance, regardless of one's personal griefs. It is told of old General Nogi, the captor of Port Arthur, that after the death of his only two sons, he still publicly bore a happy countenance, although, frequently, when alone, he would be detected with tear-stained eyes. So bright faces are found everywhere. On every face there is an incipient smile. In out-of-the-way parts of Japan, when followed by a curious crowd, I would say "Ohio," which means "goodmorning," and provoke them all to smiles and bows. These Japanese bows, too, are quite elaborate. There is usually a series of them, each bow being lower than the preceding one, until the head almost touches the ground. I could never be as polite as my Japanese acquaintances.

Their politeness is almost a matter of necessity. The density of population and the lack of privacy would make life unendurable if it were not for the politeness. Japan has a population equal to half that of the United States, crowded into an area not as large as the single State of California. There are people, people everywhere.

Then there can be no privacy in houses where the interior walls are paper screens, and the exterior walls are taken down in daytime. The paper screens are little protection against the curious, for a pair of fingers moistened by the lips will readily make peep-holes. A traveler is sometimes surprised at finding his room surrounded by these peep-holes. A little piece of paper quickly mends the punctured screen. Everything is open to the public. The houses have not even dark closets in which to hang family skeletons.

Possibly this lack of privacy and generally crowded condition is one of the causes of the Japanese babies being so excessively polite that they never cry. Scientists explain the goodness of the Japanese babies on the ground that they have not the nerves of Occidental babies. Think of the consternation in these paper-walled houses that a healthy American baby, with lusty lungs, would create ! These Japanese babies, tied on the backs of their not much bigger brothers and sisters, all day will look, laugh, play, and sleep, but seldom cry. They are the world's model babies.

Perhaps another reason why the babies are so good, is that Japan is a sort of children's paradise. There are more cheap, attractive, ingenious toys for children in Japan than in any other country. There are attractive toy-stands everywhere. There are doll stores, crowded with an infinite variety of dolls and their outfits. The dolls are usually sold in boxes with a half dozen wigs for the doll. The wigs are made to represent the hair arrangement at different ages. Sometimes the toys are puzzling. I noticed a vendor with a tray of moving vehicles. Wondering how such small mechanical toys could be constructed so cheaply, I examined them and found that the motive power was furnished by our common house fly. A little wax was put on the fly's head, and then it was harnessed to the vehicle. The bamboo toy houses are so attractive that almost every foreigner purchases one.

Children have their annual toy festivals. The girls' holiday is on March 3, when there are doll bazaars everywhere, and the girls are given a great variety of dolls, while the boys' holiday is May 5, when they receive more masculine toys.

Little girls, on festal occasions, are dressed in bright kimonos, with brighter obis, and have their faces painted and enameled, until they look like flower gardens. These Japanese children are bright and attractive, and the ease and accuracy with which many of them speak English, which they have studied in school, is surprising. Teachers state that these children are quick and unusually obedient. The boys are so excessively patriotic that if a class is asked what is the highest purpose in life, instantly they will answer, it is td die for their emperor. The patriotic martial spirit is engendered in the schools.

Japan is often called "toy-land." The reason is that everything is an object of delight, and almost everything is diminutive. The people, the houses, their vehicles and trains are on such a reduced scale that they suggest toys. The people are so small that when they put on official p costumes they frequently look like caricatures. On a little bridge near my hotel in Tokio stood a little policeman with a little sword, who was so attractive in his littleness that I never passed him without being inclined to put my arm about him and carry him off as a souvenir. Although I knew I would have caught a Tartar, yet I never regarded him seriously. So the casual traveler seldom regards Japan seriously. It is only a great toy-land for his amusement. The light little houses, with the little back-yard parks, with th^ir little lakes, cascades, and century-old dwarf pines, with the little people moving hither and thither, eating off of little dishes, drinking out of little cups, impress the traveler that Japan is only a play land for grown up children. To be children again with such beautiful toys delights travelers. Travelers who are not looking for large things find Japan a land of constant delight.

Japan is also pleasure land. There is pleasure in everything, even in shopping, in Japan. Kyoto, Japan's ancient capital, is the most delightful shopping-place in the world. Bargain prices for the most artistic articles, exhibited by the most engaging Oriental shopmen, will tempt the emptying of almost any purse. The delicate, exquisite cloissonne, which in recent years has been greatly improved ; ancient satsuma which is becoming so rare as to be practically unpurchasable, and the richest and most artistic embroideries are all to be found in most tempting forms in Kyoto. Then the old curiosity shops, with the discarded treasures of the old nobility and of dismantled temples, arouse a bargaining enthusiasm that becomes almost a mania. Temples, palaces, galleries, all are forgotten in the pleasurable excitement of shopping in Kyoto. It is pardonable, too, because no one can put so much thought, and feeling, and beauty in tea-cups, vases, screens, and a thousand other small things, as the Japanese.

But there are higher pleasures in Japan than the fascinating one of shopping. Japan, itself, is a pleasure to behold. It is a great landscape park. It is a magnificent study in green. It is everywhere a great, beautiful picture, with a foreground of rich green, terraced rice-fields, with here and there groves of the gracefullywaving, tall, slender, green bamboo, and with a background of the darker, giant cryptomeria, or of mountain sides of a heavier verdure, broken and given tone and efifect by bright lacquered temples and stately pagodas, set in, or inlaid, as it were, amid the foliage of the mountains. In every direction there is a vista of beauty.

The Japanese, themselves, are pleasure lovers, and in addition to enjoying their landscape views, flower holidays, and tea-houses, are fond of wrestling matches and the theater. Wrestling matches in Japan take the place of prize fights in America. Exhibitions are given in tents in the parks of different cities, and the matches are largely attended. The wrestlers, instead of being small like other Japanese, are big, fleshy fellows, often being over six feet tall, and weighing from two hundred to three hundred pounds. Certain families are known as hereditary wrestlers, as the members, for many generations, have followed the same calling. In the ring the wrestlers are naked, except that they wear a brightly embroidered apron. Jiujutsu is a more scientific method of wrestling, and is not used by the heavy wrestlers.

Like the Chinese, the Japanese are especially fond of the theater. The theaters represent old Japan. There are many in the different cities, and are usually crowded. The largest is the Kabukiza in Tokio. It is a large, three-story frame building in the center of the city, and will seat about three thousand people. Performances begin at five in the afternoon, and last until about eleven, with an opportunity to get refreshments between acts.

When I visited the theater the first time there was a howling mob around the gates trying to get in, and a howling mob of ushers inside calling out how many could enter. Soon an usher spied that I was a foreigner, and had a space opened to admit me. In the wide vestibule there were three great piles of Japanese wooden sandals and Japanese paper umbrellas. Everybody had to remove his shoes and check them. While I hesitated about taking off my shoes and tossing them upon a pile, for fear that they might be carried off as souvenirs, the usher hurried away and found a pair of large white sacks, which he brought back and tied over my shoes. Feeling somewhat like a kitten with its feet tied up in paper slippers, I was conducted to a box. The same accommodating usher soon brought me a chair, and with two foreign ladies who entered later, we were the only ones in the great crowded theater not sitting on the floor. In a short time the usher reappeared to collect the money for the seat. There is no admission charge at the entrance, but the fee is collected by the usher after a person is comfortably seated. For my box seat the price was only seventy-five cents.

The theater has a main floor and two balconies, the boxes being on either side of the lower balconies. The main floor is divided into square stalls that seat from four to six people, divided by partitions about a foot high. The theater was crowded with a responsive, motley crowd of men, women, and children, all in native costume.

The stage is quite broad and deep. It revolves on a pivot, so that the stage setting between scenes is quickly changed by revolving the stage.

The stage setting was elaborate and realistic. From the rear of the theater to the stage extends a platform about six feet wide, along which the principal actors make their entrances and exits. As they walk along this platform their step is stiff and stilted, with many stops, to represent that they are coming from a long distance. Much of the acting was stiff and the speech was affected, but a few of the actors were very natural and? effective. There are no actresses upon the Japanese stage, but men take women's parts. It is rather amusing at times to hear a deep masculine voice coming from a feminine costume. There is a tendency toward the extremely realistic in the stage setting and stage tricks. In a heavy tragedy there was much wailing and cutting off of heads. As a murderer brought down his sword upon his enemy's neck, the victim, as he fell towards the floor, quickly threw his robe over his head, and from beneath it rolled out an artificial head with a gory neck and long locks. While the murderer was swinging this head by the hair, in the air, making an eloquent speech, two stage assistants with a little screen stepped before the murdered man ; the dead man got up quickly and all three sidled out. The audience was supposed not to notice this, or even to observe on the stage the little assistants dressed in black, with black masques, which they pull down over their faces when they look toward the audience, who are constantly running about the stage during the performance adjusting a costume, arranging a piece of scenery, or helping off a dead man. These little black-robed assistants seem to foreigners like little brownies, and soon stand out as the most prominent personages upon the stage.