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...

The Settlement is bounded by the creek, from whose opposite side many steep hill-roads wind up to the Bluff, where most of the foreigners have their houses. These bluff-roads pa...

In the Settlement, back of the main street, the Chinese have an ill-smelling corner to themselves. Their greasy walls and dirty floors affront the dainty doll dwellings across t...

At Kanagawa proper the Tokaido comes to the bay’s edge, which it follows for some distance through double rows of houses and splendid old shade-trees. Back of Kanagawa’s bluff l...

The contemporary Yankee might anticipate the sage reflections of the future New Zealander on London Bridge were there left enough ruins of the once great city of Kamakura to sit...

The first view of Tokio, like the first view of Yokohama, disappoints the traveller. The Ginza, or main business street, starting from the bridge opposite the station, goes stra...

There are no such holiday-makers as the Japanese. The whole twelvemonth is fête-time, and the old year held three hundred and sixty-five festivals and anniversaries. All the gre...

With all its foreign sophistications, flower worship has not died out in the Japanese capital. The calendar is divided into the time of the camellia, the plum, the cherry, the w...

Among Japanese virtues stands hospitality, but, until the adoption of foreign dress and customs by the court nobles, no Japanese allowed his wife to receive general visitors, or...

“Saturated with the refinements of an old civilization,” as Dr. Dresser says, and possessing all other arts in perfection, it is not surprising that the Japanese drama should be...

European sovereigns and reigning families are parvenus compared to the ruler and the imperial house of Japan, which shows an unbroken line from the accession of Jimmu Tenno, the...

Thirty different places have been the capital and home of the Emperors of Japan, and Omi, Settsu, and Yamashiro were imperial provinces before the Tokugawa’s city of Yeddo (bay’...

The suburbs of Tokio are full of holiday resorts for the people and the beautiful villas of nobles. To the north-east, in Oji, are the Government chemical works and paper mills,...

The Nikko mountains, one hundred miles north of Tokio, are the favorite summer resort of foreign residents and Tokio officials. The railway now reaches Nikko, and one no longer...

Of all Japan’s sacred places, Nikko, or Sun’s Brightness, is dearest to the Japanese heart. Art, architecture, and landscape-gardening add to Nature’s opulence, history and lege...

The Inquisition should have been put in possession of the Japanese kago as a lesser punishment for heretics, so exquisite and insidious are its tortures. This kago is a shallow...

It was in the third week of July that we made our long-talked-of ascent of Fujiyama. There were nine of us, all told, four stalwart men, three valiant women, and two incomparabl...

From Saturday until Tuesday, three endless days and as many nights, the whirling storm kept us prisoners in the dark, smoke-filled rest-house. What had been the amusing incident...

As the kago gave way to the jinrikisha, the jinrikisha disappears before the steam-engine, which reduces a _ri_ to a _cho_, and extends the empire of the commonplace. The first...

Great once was Shidzuoka, which now is only a busy commercial town of an agricultural province. The old castle has been razed, its martial quadrangle is a wheat field; and the m...

In this day of French uniforms, Gatling-guns, and foreign tactics, it is only in Nagoya that the garrison occupies the old castle; the fortress, with its gates and moats, remain...

After the pace of the jinrikisha the slow train from Nagoya to Nagahama, on Lake Biwa, seemed to attain a dizzy speed. Rising continually, we reached a hilly region where the ro...

Kioto is seen at its best in summer-time, in the fulness and color of its out-door life. Though the great plain of the city bakes and quivers in the sun, the heat is no greater...

As an evidence of the vitality of their faith the Monto Buddhists point to their great new temple in the southern part of the city. This Higashi Hongwanji (Eastern Temple) was e...

Kioto remains faithful to its traditions, and yields but slowly to the foreign fashions which absorb Tokio. Tokio has nineteenth-century political troubles, even demagogues and...

Kioto remains the home of the arts, although no longer the seat of government. For centuries it ministered to the luxury of the two courts, which gathered together and encourage...

Their range of stitches, their ingenious methods and combinations, and the variety of effects attained with the needle and a few strands of colored silk, easily place the Japane...

The porcelains of Kiomidzu, renowned as they are throughout Japan, figure lightly in the export trade lists, as compared to the immense shipments of decorated faience from the A...

Nammikawa, the first _cloisonné_ artist of the world, has his home, his workshop, and his little garden in a quiet corner of the Awata district. Most visitors never pass beyond...

It required an elaborate negotiation extending through two weeks, as well as the tactful aid of an officer of the Kioto Kencho to arrange for me a cha no yu at the house of Senk...

An early morning start, with many jinrikishas and tandems of coolies; a wild spin through the streets, past shops, temple gates and walls; by the innumerable toriis and lanterns...

In the last week of June, the proprietor of the tea-field beneath our veranda conducted a second picking of his stumpy little bushes. From sunrise until dusk rose a chorus of ch...

Osaka, the great commercial city of Japan, with its population of over 361,000 souls, stretches out its square miles of gray-roofed houses at the edge of the plain, where the wa...

Travellers had cause to rejoice when the Tokaido railroad made it a twenty-four hours’ journey on dry land from Tokio to Kobé, the foreign settlement adjoining the ancient town...

Since Commodore Perry opened Japan to the world his countrymen have been consuming more and more of its teas each year, the United States and Canada being almost her only custom...

In making six trips through the Inland Sea I have seen its beautiful shores by daylight and moonlight and in all seasons—clothed in the filmy green of spring, golden with ripene...

And after a foreigner has spent months or years in the midst of these charming people, what has he discovered them to be? What does the future hold for them? To what end did Com...