Rare Days in Japan
9781465684554
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The utter strangeness of feeling which came over me when, in May of 1892, I first landed in Japan, will never be repeated by any experience of travel in the future amidst other scenes, no matter how wholly new they may chance to be. Between Vancouver, so like one of our own Western towns, and the Land of the Rising Sun, nature provided nothing to prepare the mind for a distinctly different type of landscape and of civilisation. There was only the monotonous watery waste of the Northern Pacific, and the equally monotonous roll of the Empress of China, as she mounted one side and slid down the other, of its long sweeping billows. There was indeed good company on board the ship. For besides the amusement afforded by the “correspondent of a Press Syndicate,” who boasted openly of the high price at which he was valued, but who prepared his first letter on “What I saw in China,” from the ship’s library, and then mailed it immediately on arrival at the post office in Yokohama, there were several honest folk who had lived for years in the Far East. Each of these had one or more intelligent opinions to impart to an inquirer really desirous of learning the truth. Even the lesson from the ignorance and duplicity of this moulder of public opinion through the American press was not wholly without its value as a warning and a guide in future observations of Japan and the Japanese. The social atmosphere of the ship was, however, not at all Oriental. For dress, meals, hours, conversation, and games, were all in Western style. Even with Doctor Sato, the most distinguished of the Japanese passengers, who was returning from seven years of study with the celebrated German bacteriologist, Professor Koch, I could converse only in a European language. The night of Friday, May 27, 1892, was pitchy dark, and the rain fell in such torrents as the Captain said he had seldom or never seen outside the tropics. This officer did not think it safe to leave the bridge during the entire night, and was several times on the point of stopping the ship. But the downpour of the night left everything absolutely clear; and when the day dawned, Fujiyama, the “incomparable mountain,” could be seen from the bridge at the distance of more than one hundred and thirty miles. In the many views which I have since had of Fuji, from many different points of view, I have never seen the head and entire bulk of the sacred mountain stand out as it did for us on that first vision, now nearly twenty years ago. The other first sights of Japan were then essentially the same as those which greet the traveller of to day. The naked bodies of the fishermen, shining like polished copper in the sunlight; the wonderful colours of the sea; the hills terraced higher up for various kinds of grain and lower down for rice; the brown thatched huts in the villages along the shores of the Bay; and, finally, the busy and brilliant harbour of Yokohama,—all these sights have scarcely changed at all. But the rush of rival launches, the scramble of the sampans, the frantic clawing with boat hooks, which sometimes reached sides that were made of flesh instead of wood, and the hauling of the Chinese steerage passengers to places where they did not wish to go, have since been much better brought under the control of law. The experience of landing as a novice in Japan is at present, therefore, less picturesque and exciting; but it is much more comfortable and safe.
