CHAPTER II.

THE STREETS OF TOKYO.

The area and population of Tokyo—Impression of greater populousness—Street improvements—Narrow streets—Shops and sidewalks—Road-making—Dusty roads—Lamps and street repairs—Drainage—Street-names—House-numbers—Incongruities.

The area of Tokyo is not so great as is generally supposed. The people of Yedo used to say that their city was ten miles square; but the extreme length, from north-east to south-west, of Tokyo which does not differ materially in its limits from the old city, is no more than eight miles. The actual area is only 18,482 acres, or nearly twenty-nine square miles. The population fell with the decline of the feudal government and was under a million in the early days of the new regime. The registered population returned to one million in 1884. The municipal census which was taken for the first time on the first of October, 1908, gave the settled population as 1,622,856, composed of 872,550 males and 750,306 females, and the number of families as 377,493. This took no account of the floating population which probably exceeds a hundred thousand; there is also a large population, not less than a quarter of a million, which the rise of rents and the facilities of electric-tramway communication have sent outside the administrative limits of the municipality; it forms, properly-speaking, a part of the population of the city.

Tokyo is therefore a great city; but the stranger who visits its streets for the first time usually gets an impression of an even greater populousness. For the streets are always in the evening teeming with young children; they are not gutter-snipes, but children of respectable parents, small tradesmen or private persons of slender means, who let them run about on the public road rather than romp in their narrow dwellings. But it is not the children alone who think they have a greater right of way over the roads than the public: for on summer evenings especially, men and women turn out of doors and walk about or sit on benches outside their houses. Shops are completely open and reveal the rooms within, so that whole families may be seen from the streets; and as most houses are of only one or two stories, people live for the most part on the ground-floor. Even in private residences of some pretensions, the thin wooden walls allow voices to be easily heard on warm days when the rooms are kept open. So that from the people he sees crowding the houses and the noises he hears on all sides, the stranger is often deceived into giving the city credit for a larger population than it actually possesses.

The streets themselves are worth notice. If the foreigner who comes to Japan expects to see in such a great capital the asphalt carriageway and paved sidewalk of his native country, he will be sadly disappointed, for Tokyo, with all its multitudinous thoroughfares, cannot boast even the boulevards and avenues of a European provincial town. In spite of the efforts of the Tokyo municipality, the streets are still narrow. Their total length is about six hundred miles, with a width ranging from one yard to fifty, the average being nine yards. It was decided twenty years ago to widen some three hundred miles of these roads, giving the largest a width of forty yards for carriageway with a footway on either side of six yards, and the smallest a carriageway of twelve yards and a footway one yard wide. The work is to be accomplished in ninety years. Improvements to this end are slowly going on. The fact is that the City Fathers missed a great opportunity in the early years of the new regime when, upon the desertion of the residences of the daimyo and other feudatories after the fall of the Shogunate, land could have been purchased for a song, for it went begging in the heart of the city at less than thirty yen an acre. Those who were wise enough to buy it have made big fortunes, for the same land now sells for a hundred thousand yen or more per acre. Now, however, the municipality cannot command sufficient funds to purchase the land needed for improvements along the streets proposed, but buys it up only when it is absolutely necessary to relieve the congestion of traffic; and elsewhere it waits patiently until a fire burns down the streets and clears the required space for it as, in that case, it will not have to give any compensation for the removal of the houses.

In the old days, the narrowness of the streets did not interfere with such traffic as was then carried on. The daimyo and others of high rank rode in palanquins, and officials went about on horseback; but the rest of the world walked. The citizens were not allowed to make use of other legs than their own. Those who had to go about much put on cheap straw sandals, which were thrown away at the end of their journey, so that they did not give a thought to the width or the state of the road as they had in any case to wash their feet afterwards; while others, of the common people, were, if they met a daimyo’s procession, thrust to the wall or oftener into the ditch, and they too cared as little for the width of the thoroughfare. And when a samurai met another in a narrow lane, it was by no means rare, if their sword-scabbards touched in passing, for an altercation to arise and be followed by bloodshed; but as brawls were in their way, they did not trouble themselves about the widening of the road. Pedestrians, moreover, could always pick their way in any street, and if they saw coming towards them a daimyo’s retinue or a company of swash-bucklers, they usually turned into a side-street. To the happy horsemen and palanquin-riders the size of a street was a matter of absolute indifference, for if those on shanks’ mare got in their way, it was their lookout. But luckily for these walkers there was little else for them to dodge, for vehicles were comparatively few. The only objects on wheels were handcarts and waggons drawn by horses or oxen. These waggons came from the country with bags of rice, fuel, and other necessaries, and were used, not for their speed which was a snail’s pace, but for their carrying power.

In these latter days, however, things have materially changed. Men to-day would be put to the blush by the hale old survivors of those pedestrian times, for they have gone to the other extreme. The conveniences of the jinrikisha, or two-wheeled vehicles drawn by men, and latterly of electric tramways have sapped all energy out of them, and we hear little nowadays of walking feats. There were in 1900 forty-six thousand jinrikisha in Tokyo; but the electric cars, which began to run a few years later, are driving them out of the city, for they are now less than one-half of that number. Still, the pedestrian has need to keep a good lookout on the road, for where, in the absence of footways, men, women, children, vehicles, and horses move about in an inextricable jumble, it is a matter for wonder that accidents are not more frequent. Besides the jinrikisha and electric cars, there are thousands of handcarts, some drawn by coolies and carrying objects of every description from household articles to stones for road-making and trees for gardens, and others drawn by milkmen with their milk-cans, by apprentices with their masters’ wares, by pedlars with various assortments to attract the housewife’s eye, or by farm-boys with vegetables fresh from the field. There are but a thousand waggons drawn by horses or oxen in Tokyo; but as there are twice as many more in the surrounding country, they are very much in evidence in the city since they make their presence unpleasantly obtrusive in narrow streets. These waggons, however, move slowly and give one time to get out of their way. In this respect they are better to meet than the carriages which drive on indifferent to the width of the road; in narrow streets the latter are preceded by grooms who hustle all loiterers out of the way. They are only less eagerly shunned than the motor-cars and the files of handcarts which move leisurely along with pink flags marked “ammunition” from the Imperial arsenal.

But the Ishmael of the streets of Tokyo was until lately the bicycle. A few years ago there were six thousand of these machines in the city; they were patronised by shop-apprentices who, with large bundles on their backs, scorched through crowded streets careless of accidents to themselves or others. These apprentices were therefore in the policeman’s black books; nor did the jinrikisha-man look upon them with any favour, for he regarded bicycling as an innovation intended to defraud him of his fares. But his hostility against the bicycle melted away when he was confronted by the electric car which has proved itself the most formidable of his foes. The bicycle, too, has suffered an eclipse; for apprentices and others of its patrons find it more expensive to keep it in repair than to travel by the car at the cost of a penny per trip. The motor-car also made its debut a few years back and the dust it raises and the smell of petrol it leaves in its track have brought upon it the anathema of all pedestrians; and though the police regulations prohibit a motor-car from traversing streets less than twelve yards wide, it runs merrily through lanes and small side-streets. It sometimes charges into shops and makes havoc among their merchandise. The pranks it plays in the hands of unskilful chauffeurs are not likely to lessen its unpopularity.

What with carriages, jinrikisha, waggons, handcarts, and bicycles jostling one another and men, women, and children threading their way through the labyrinth or fleeing before motor or electric cars, the more frequented streets of Tokyo present a confused mass of traffic; but in respect of actual numbers they are really less crowded than western streets of similar importance. The busy appearance is mostly due to the absence of sidewalks, and the bustle is increased by the wayfarers having to run to and fro to get out of the way of the vehicles. In streets provided with sidewalks one would expect less confusion; but as a matter of fact, people are so used to walking among vehicles of all sorts that they prefer sauntering on the carriageway to quietly pacing the sidewalks; and it is no uncommon experience to meet a company walking abreast in the middle of the road and dodging carriages while the sidewalks are almost deserted.

Sidewalks are not likely to gain in popularity until improvements are made in the arrangements of shops. There are no streets in Tokyo which are known as fashionable afternoon resorts, because the shops are so constructed that one cannot stop before them without being accosted by the squatting salesmen. Only in a few main streets are there regular rows of shops with show-windows against which one could press one’s nose to look at the wares exhibited or peer beyond at the shop-girls at the counter; but then business is not done in Japan over the counter, nor do shop-girls hide their charms behind a window, for the shops are open to the street and the show-girls, or “signboard-girls” as we call them, squat at the edge visible to all passers-by and are as distinctive a feature of the shop as the signboard itself. The goods are exhibited on the floor in glass cases or in piles, a custom which is not commendable when pastry or confectionery is on sale, for standing as it does on the south-eastern end of the great plain of Musashino, Tokyo is a very windy city, and the thick clouds of fine dust raised by the wind on fair days cover every article exposed and penetrate through the joints of glass cases, so that in Tokyo a man who is fond of confectionery must expect to eat his pound of dirt not within a lifetime, but often in a few weeks. If one stops for a moment to look at the wares, he is bidden at once to sit on the floor and examine other articles which would be brought out for his inspection, whereupon he has either to accept the invitation or move on. One seldom cares therefore to loiter in the street. The only shops that are often crowded by loiterers are the booksellers’ and cheap-picture dealers’.

But even more unpleasant than the narrowness of the streets is the state in which many of them are to be found. In a few streets the roadway has been dug up and pyramidal stones have been laid on the bed with the points up; they are then covered with earth and broken stone and finished with a top-dressing of gravel. They are not, however, rolled as steam-rollers have only lately made their appearance in Tokyo; sometimes small stone-rollers, about two feet in diameter, are drawn over the metal by a dozen coolies, but the work is inefficient as the pressure of such toy rollers is too slight to make any sensible impression. For the most part, therefore, newly-made roads are left to be levelled with the beetle-crushers of the long-suffering public. The municipality finds it the cheapest way. This is bad enough on the gravelled road, but the tortures it inflicts on men and beasts of burden, to say nothing of the rapid wear and tear of vehicles, are indescribable when the thoroughfare is repaired in the orthodox style. Whenever the road wants mending, cartloads of pebbles are, according to this method, brought from the beds of the rivers in the neighbourhood of Tokyo and scattered over the highway. They are laid evenly, but not levelled or rolled. The public press them down as they walk with their clogs, sandals, or boots; immediately any part is embedded in the soil, that path alone is used till it is beaten flat, so that one often sees a narrow path meandering in a wide stone-covered road, along which all traffic is carried on and the rest of the road is practically unused. When this path is beaten in and becomes hollow, more cartloads of pebbles are thrown upon it and the public recommence their patient task of road-levelling. But fortunately for them, they are materially aided in this benevolent work by the solstitial rains, which when they come down in torrents, soon bury the stones in the clayey soil, and for the nonce the people walk over it rejoicing until the municipality sets them a new task; or the rains have done their work but too well and the poor pedestrians find themselves wading through quagmire.

Indeed, quagmire is what we find in many streets after rain; for the supply of rubble is necessarily limited as it comes mostly from the rivers in and about the city, and consequently a majority of roads are left uncared for. These, after a heavy rain, are covered with a thick coating of mud, which when the sun has dried it, leaves behind deep ruts, making the roads more unpleasant to walk on than when covered with pebbles. In midsummer when the ridges of these ruts have been pulverised and blown in all directions so that one appears to be walking on sand, the roads are watered twice or more every day. The watering is done on high roads by coolies with small hand-drays out of which water is sprinkled spasmodically, and as the men stop from time to time to take breath, there are on many spots pools of water in which one can soil one’s footgear as effectually as on the rainiest day. But worse still is the watering done by private persons on the part of the road facing their dwellings. These merely ladle the water from their pails and sprinkle it in splashes, leaving in the middle of the street puddles for children to make mud-cakes in. In short, the great objection to the way in which the streets are watered in Tokyo is that it is too much for laying the dust, but not enough for flushing the roadway.

The pedestrian has therefore to be very careful in selecting the part of the road to walk on in both wet and fine weather. This is not very difficult in the daytime; but at night, especially when there is no moon, the task is hard to accomplish with success; for rarely are street lamps set up at the public expense, and in most streets the inhabitants have lamps for their own convenience over their front doors or gates; but the light of these lamps is very meagre as they are naturally not intended to guide the stray wayfarer over the road. But even these are of some service in streets of shops where the front doors are ranged pretty closely together; in roads, however, where there are only private houses, the gates being far apart, the lights are also at some distance from each other and the passenger has mostly to trust to his luck to keep himself clean. That luck, however, deserts him at times, for the repairs which the roads seem to undergo in every part of the city are astonishingly frequent. It is not the mere mending that is the cause of the trouble, but the constant pulling up of the roads for laying or repairing gas-pipes, water-pipes, and what not that so often brings one to an _impasse_. As, moreover, the authorities work independently of one another, a road which has been dug up for one purpose and filled in again, may be pulled up for another. Matters are not likely to improve in the near future, for before long the telegraph and telephone authorities must have a hand in digging up the road; at present the wires are overhead, but the poles are already overweighted and cannot be loaded much more without serious danger to traffic. Electric-light wires are equally menacing; and the situation is only aggravated where the electric cars run through crowded streets of the business quarters.

The wretched state of the roads after rain is undoubtedly due to imperfect drainage. The cross-section of the roads has little or no curvature or gradient, and the gutters, where they have been made, do not drain off and are only receptacles for muddy stagnant water. They are occasionally cleaned by heaping the mire on the roadside. And yet, curious to state, in spite of these insanitary methods, the rate of mortality in Tokyo is not so high as might be expected. It varies from twenty to twenty-five per thousand on the registered population and therefore must be less when the floating population is taken into account. It shows that Tokyo is not an unhealthy city, and when the municipality has carried out the plan it has made for a drainage system, the Japanese capital will probably compare favourably with most other great cities of the world.

There is one peculiarity about the streets of Tokyo which deserves mention, that is, the way they are named. Of course every thoroughfare has a name given to it; but it differs from streets in other countries in that name being the designation, not of the thoroughfare itself, but of the section or piece of land through which it runs. Thus, two or more thoroughfares which run through the same section are known by the same name; in a large section there may be a dozen streets running in all directions and bearing the same name. When a road runs on the boundary of two sections, the opposite sides would be known by different names, and a man walking in the middle of such a road would be perambulating two streets at one and the same time. Some of the larger sections, if regularly built, are divided on the main road into subsections by streets crossing them; but irregular streets are arbitrarily subdivided so that it is often very hard to find one’s way through them. As many sections are full of tortuous streets with turnings and alleys, the numbering of houses in a section is often complicated, and one seldom knows where the numbers begin or end. Frequently consecutive numbers are to be found in entirely different directions and in hunting up a number, one has to traverse the length and breadth of the section before one comes upon it.

The numbering of houses is further complicated by the fact that the same number is given often to dozens, and sometimes to hundreds, of houses. The explanation is that the numbering first took place while the great daimyo’s mansions were still standing; and when they were pulled down and cut up into smaller lots, these lots retained the same numbers. There are in Tokyo at least two of these great estates which have been divided into nearly a thousand house-lots. It is indeed hard to see how these houses could be renumbered, because in that case every division of an estate would necessitate the renumbering of the whole street, which, in a city like Tokyo where the sizes of houses are constantly changing, would be simply intolerable. Besides these divisions of mansions, we must take into account the frequency of fires. Changes take place not seldom after a fire in the number of houses in a street, and it would of course be impracticable to renumber the whole street whenever a portion of it is burnt down. Sometimes an additional designation, usually a second set of numbers, is given to a group of houses with the same street-number; but fancy names, such as are common in the suburbs of London, are hardly ever given to dwelling-houses. It may therefore be imagined that it is no light task to look up a friend in an unfamiliar quarter.

The stranger, then, who visits the streets of Tokyo will find much to arouse his curiosity in the open, windowless shops, the jinrikisha, the native dresses of men and women, the throngs of hawkers, and the ceaseless din of traffic; and at the same time, as he comes to Japan usually in search of the quaint and _bizarre_, he will perhaps be disappointed when he sees the countless overhead wires, the electric trams, omnibuses, and bicycles, European clothes of all shades and descriptions, and other encroachments of western civilisation, which he had hoped to leave behind him and which somewhat shock his artistic sense in their new surroundings. But these inæsthetic innovations he must put up with, for they are typical of the present stage of Japanese civilisation, and nowhere else are they more marked than in Tokyo. The herculean task Japan has set herself leaves her little leisure to consider its artistic effects; she is too much in earnest to waste a thought on the awkward cut of the habiliments she is donning; and only when she has so adapted herself as to fit them exactly, will she turn her attention to their frills and trimmings.