THE LAND OF TILE KITING SUN.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXV, Issue 29, 3 February 1904, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE LAND OF TILE KITING SUN.

lI.—YOKOUAATA. (By Florence Balgarnic.)' It was well that my first act on landing in Japan was to hasten to Osaka, and pay my respects a-1 tlie shrine of the National Exhibition, lor since then typhoon and high-tide earthquakes and Hooded rivers have dislocated the. train service, and for a time have cut off Yokohama from the more southerly parts of the island. This, 1 am told, is of annual occurrence during the rainy season, and within the last few days news has reached us of the flooding of tens of thousands of houses and the loss of many lives. Returning last Friday from the mountains which encircle Fujiyama, the Mt. Eguiont of Japan, we found the bridge which spans the Sakawa River wrecked, and after a long detention of the electric tram which connects the towns of Yusnoto and Kod/.u, we were enabled to reach the other bank by a footbridge, hastily constructed of tram lines and telegraph wires. "some three hundred yards of a solid looking embankment had been washed away as well as sixty feet of the bridge. The river liows over a broad shingle bed, and, with tho mountains on one side and the seashore on the other. I could have imagined myself crossing the Rakaia or Rangitata Rivers. L'p in tbe mountains the scenery reminds mc of the road between Waiouru and Pipiriki, combined with a grcencss and moisture similar to that of the West, Coast of the South. Island. But to return to Osaka, the iuos£ modern as well as the most ancient city of Japan. Tlie first record of its existence is GGO 8.C., and in 313 A.D. it was made t_e capital, and ultimately became the great business centre of Japan and the national storehouse for rice, the staple food of the people. Although the seat of Government is now at Tokio, a few miles from Yokohama, Osaka has not lost her commercial supremacy. On the contrary, this city of 22 square miles and 400 bridges, which ten or fifteen years go had no factory of any size, now has 5000 factories of various sizes. Besides this there are 20,000 weaving establishments, with over 30,000 hand looms, which turn out 3,500,000 pieces of cotton cloth yearly. At the end of 1000 there were 133 banks in the city, of which 00 bad their bead offices in Osaka and possessed capital amounting to 27.330,000 yen (2/), while the number of bills which passed through the clearing house amounted to 523,552,000 yen. F»om 1882 to 1001 the. population of Osaka increased from 332,425 to 921.617, or nearly threefold. Indeed, in another decade it will not. be surprising if the quaint, picturesque, low-roofed city will have disappeared, giving place to granite and brick buildings of the Chicago or New York style. if so, the real charm of Osaka will have vanished as it is too rapidly vanishing throughout Japan. Even amongst the mountains and lakes •the old-fashioned inns are giving place to European bouses, furnished in the most approved style with mahogany sideboards, spring bedsteads, and mar-ble-topped washing stands. 0! Shades of Japan, with doorless and windowless chambers, and quilts laid on matting by way of beds. Prices, of course, have risen in proportion, and have doubled within the last four years. But as a world traveller I must confess fcuat the rooms are airy and spacious, and for no greate:' cost, one has threefold better accommodation and twofold better food than in the hotels of the, tourist resorts in New Zealand. Since the feudal system received its death blow some 30 yer.rs ago, Osaka has prospered in every way, and its progressive municipality has spent its resources on waterworks, sewers, street lighting, telephones, canals, roads, and harbour works, as well as on schools, hosptials, museums, a board of hygiene, and fire brigades. In my previous letter T indicated that the Osaka, Exhibition was a worthy reflex of the high intellectual standard of the country and the enterprise of the city. The exhibition of the silk industry from the manipulation of the cocoon by groups of young girls in the machinery department, to the most exquisite embroideries in the art. building, is naturally one of the most characteristic and beautiful. I had imagined that I had seen embroidery in perfection in the warehouses which fringe the squalid lands of Canton, but Chinese work is coarse and crude, unimaginatively monotonous when compared with the flights of phantasy which find embodiment in the silk embroideries of Japan. The art, feeling, too. is applied to the cheap cotton kinionas which form the sole garninif of the average- Japanese, and the chaste designs lo be seen on the dress of the poorest people lends a beauty to •tlie scene as the crowds move to and fro amongst the machinery (or up and down the long rows of glass eases). Of woollen exhibits there are none worth mentioning. So far 1 have not seen a single sheep in Japan. Where an occasional slice of mutton comes from I know not. A grazing authority -tells mc that neither sheep nor cattle can ever be pastured in Japan, because of the. all-pre-vailing bamboo. This useful and sturdy free, which grows to such magnificent proportions in this moist, warm climate, sprouts up shrubwise everywhere. it is I 'no pest of Japan, much as the gorse is of yiev,- Zealand. There seems no way of keeping it under, and the sharp edges of its leaves prove fatal to sheep and cattle when they aLtompL to swallow ii Hence, all milk cows are kept, in stables, an d no animals are ever seen ou;- at pasture. With the advent of European beds, the horrid, heavy wadded quilts, or futons, arc. gradually giving place to imported woollen blankets, feu which, as years roll on, there must he an ever increasing demand. Another exhibit which I watched with peculiar interest, because it represented a national industry, was the machinery for drvim> tea. It consists of _ huge brass cauldro* standing over a stove, in which the tn is placed and stirred by electric fanTea thus prepared is the cheapest and the best, and it finds a ready market in America. Would that it supplanted the hand-starrsd tt&; but the freaks of lash,on, or appetite, demand the latter, t was thankful to learn from the manar?r of one of the largest tea houses that none of it finds its way; to England

or to New Zealand, America consumes it all. I have spent much time watching the workers in their gardens, as tho tea factories are called. The principal workers are women and children. They; stand from o a.m. until o p.m.. with only half an hour for a midday meal, and, bathed in perspiration, with bosoms bare, they bend over this heated cauldron, incessantly stirring the leaves. Now and again they pause for an instant to wipe their perspiring bodies with a cloth, and twice a day they are all turned out into ihe yard tci take ,i plunge batii. Their babies are huddled ■away in corners, and spend the livelong I day in this awful beat, and at night ara : carried home on -their wearied mothers' | backs. Tlie men workers sort the leaves, and, regardless of rhe presence of the women, the overseers prowl-around, clad i only in an apology for a loin cloth. But I nudity is a national habit in Japan, for, despite their high an. faculty, Lhe/, lack what seems to us the primary essentials of civilisation; but; so did ;:ie cultured Creek and the wor'd-conquenmg Roman. The wages paid to these patient, toilers, who work f::orn Monday j morning until Sunday nightt, is eighteen: sens for children, twenty-six' for women, and thirty-five to forty fo\r men. lb takes four .-ens to make an Lngibh penny. The busy season la-sts only for the three summer months, and very often men, women and children toil from 5 a.m. until ,5 a.m. next day, with only two hours off for food and baths. If they fall asleep over their monotonous toil they are wakened by the overseer. For this nigh;, work they receive the magnilicent pay of 25 sens. Appalling a_ are these conditions, it is only fair to say tha! only women of the very poorest; class, corresponding to the coolies, will undertake this work. Strange, too, they pass their lazy hours in laughter and song and gossip, as if not a thought of care ever troubled them. Where, population increases so rapidly and the price of labour is so cheap, there is not the same incentive for the introduction of machinery. Gold mining in the southern province is thereby severely handicapped. In spite of this, coal mining, as shown in a special section of the exhibition, seems to be. carried out on tlie very latest method. I know something of colliery districts in the Old Country, but have never seen such splendid plant and fine Da-vey pumps as exhibited in the model of the Mauda Pit of the Mitree Colliery Company. The exhibit includes a pillar of coal hewn last December. It measures eleven feet long (including roof and floor); its aide is forty-two inches, and its weight 13,300 lbs, while the seam from which it is taken averages nine feet. What wages the miners receive, and what the conditions of underground lahour are, I intend to disc-over. So much has been written about "picturesque Ja.pan," and so little about its practical side, that I hope, during ray journey into the interior, by social and labour inquiries, to add a little to the store of knowledge which all ihe world is anxious to acquire about this land of "topsyturvydom." It is now in the throes of transition, and my one regret is that I did not visit it ten years earlier, reserving a second visit for ten years hence. Beyond the ports and the welhtrodden tourist tracks I hope to see more of Japan as she was. (To be continued.)