LETTERS FROM EXILE

Evening Star, Issue 14512, 2 November 1910, Page 9

LETTERS FROM EXILE

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By Randolph Bedford. No. X. CHERRY BLOOM AND FRAUDS. The cherry blossom and the westoria and the yellow, of mustard, all the land worked by spade and hoe, and in little pocket-handkerchief allotments, gins in gashes of cherry and plum color, perfect irrigation and crops of onions, barley, beans, and rice, the green gloom or pines, the lighter green of maple, a population of 2,250 to tho square mile, and no poverty to of, .tho work of a coolie idealised in his dross, as a decoration of wheels for the porter white or black, and 7s a month wages. That was the Japan of the idealists—the Japan of to-day spends all its savings in dress—mostly copies of tho ugly clothes of Europe—and is drunk with foolish imitation.

—“ John’s Honesty.”— The Chinaman’s honesty is that of the best policy, as most white traders honesty is—but it is honesty, and that is why, in tho long run, China will hold the East, and Japan como to her proper position. But a fow white men s land may have to bo stolen and a few white men’s heads fall before that can happen. Dragons and old amor, ancient swords and Buddhas and wondrous carvings of snakes on sculls made one sorry that tho Jap. ever became civilised.” But civilised he is, And impudent as an Englishman after tho battle of Trafalgar; and that the boginning of his end. The Chinaman is old when ho is young, the Jap. is a child always, and a child without a sense of humor. Ho fixes on a distinctive color for the back-borno babv nnd the mother so that the husband shall not hurt the child when he beats the wife. And that peculiar sort of one-eyed justice and purblind kindness is his all tho way. Again, let us bo sorry for the people who can imagine a god of little children, who, up in the skies, tolls stones and builds houses of pebbles to comfort the babies who have died, and tho people fill tho arms of tho image with printed stories, so that to his audience of dead children ho can never be a boro. And they have lost that spirit, and become an Oriental Brummagem. But they have an active patriotism—not tho patriotism that consists in waving a nag and getting its name into tho newspapers, but an active love or vanity of country—prepared to give its life for its land—aye, more than that, prepared to lose a little money for the sake of the common good. They have jingoistic newspapers, printed in English generally, remarking how superior are the Japs, to any other peoples; they assert that their revision of treaties must give all Japanese unrestricted right of entry to all British possessions —so tho struggle may be nearer than we think. —Japan’s Climatic Conditions.— Yokohama, in 36 north lat., is colder than the equivalent position in Australia. This fact is mentioned against the widely-advertised statement that Japanese and Chinese labor is specially suitable for North Australia, and that white Australian labor is not. China and Japan have winters more rigorous than Australia ever knew. But to tho color of the Jap’s life: the Jap. of tho old kind selling rice and chilis and dried fish and bamboo scoops in a color scheme denoted by a green lizard and the plumage of a Carpentaria finch. Girls on streets in kimonos of green, with red lilies thereon, and in kimonos of fierce blue, yellow, and black check, and in kimonos of black with yellow grape leaves thereon, and glaring red chrysanthemums as never were on land or sea, and in sago green with an obi of old gold, so reconciling all Christian sects, and again in chock and maroon, with a sky-blno umbrella of paper, and a bunch of cherries painted on tho dome to give a tang to tho eye ; green avenues of pine and cryptomeria, and blue-tiled roofed houses with bloodred eaves, great, green gallows frame Siortals to mere trees, bronzes of useess form, and behind it all the sea of cherry bloom, sometimes in billows, and never anything less than a smear, for. tho suggestion of it is always there. Sometimes they get a new note by tying between tho posts of tho gallows frame portal a rope of old gold with three tassels hanging therefrom, and below it a girl in glossy green and gold waits to keep the picture complete. And through tho bamboo entrances to the paper houses, pass and repass girls in digitated socks, held from the ground on little woodon stilts, and louting low to each other as they go. The trade and tho toy shops walk right up to tho cherry slopes at Yokohama, the line between being the 100 itone steps. And infesting most highways are cdolies in pagoda hats, drawing high loaded carts of basketware and feather flusters, which latter seem to bo used by the hundred in the meticulously polished shops of silks and jewels on tho Benten Dari. Carts loaded with beer bottles tied in dozens by native string, and then some of the wonders of the world in tho way of advertisement hoardings. A Japanese advertisement looks like a crippled spider struck by lightning. I did three hours anti-cham-bering in Yokohama that day looking for people who were undiscoverable, and the rickshaw men in their grass overcoats galloped with me through tho rain from direction to direction—wearing sandals of rope and saving their bifurcated boots—which are merely ridiculous trousers for the feet for a fine day. —Queer Street Numbering.— All the trouble wits owing to the fact that street numbers in Yokohama are not consecutive. Houses are numbered in the order of their building, and No 2 may be widely separated from No 3. I searched for No 59 Main for three hours and at last found it a mile from No 52, of which number there wore eight. And at last I gave up the search and let the rickshaw take mo where it would. It took mo to a Gorman saloon, where a little fox-terrior howled dolorously to a phonograph that would not dio, and could not be quenched, and to shops soiling stacks of firewood in bundles and charcoal small and squat like tho inhabitants and their diminutive fowls. Owing to the rain the saloonkeeper told mo that no Goman mon-o’-warsmon would be ashore that day, German being careful of his clothes.

“S’pose English-Amorican,” said the saloonkeeper; “ho no care clothes if ho have money spend—bnt Gorman he hot like hurt coat.” While the rickshaw men waited without, and a musical-box rendered ‘ Cavalleria Rusticana * for ever and ever, and the fox-terrier barked whenever the man, who once carried mails on the Bogan, N.S.W., called her “ Madame Melba ” —but few Germans drank loving cups of beer out of a half gallon glass Wellington boot. Watching this palled very soon, and we drove in the rain again—the view, so far as I was concerned, being confined to the back view of the rickshaw man and his heaving buttocks as he splashed through the puddles. When we stopped in Theatre street the rickshawman filled his little brass pipe with dog’s hair and that fluff which is found under beds, and puffed it to smoke in a moment and we wont on. As we descended a hill the rickshawman worked back into the non-existent breeching and narrowly missed a collision as we turned a corner sharply a collision with two other rickshaws—running dangerously close together and occupied by a white man and a girl in earnest conversation. As we missed that danger, I had a strong desiro to say “ gee up ” to my “ horse ” and help him on, bnt I thought of the regard the Japanese law has for a white man, and decided to resist tcirmtfttinp,

—How the Jap. Amuses Himself.—

Theatre street, Yokohama, is a roaring thoroughfare, full of rickshaws, food and clothes shops, missionaries, and. the maddest picture shows that man has ever known. The white man is content to have his moving picture shows illustrated by action only. Here, in addition to the J apaneso one-stringed violin, which tears the bowels of tho foreigner, they have an actor with a ridiculously bass voice-on tho prompt side of the picture to act tho men’s parts, and another actor with a squeaky little voice up to E flat to speak such linos as are sot down for ladies. Then on to a mountain side and through a torrent runs a woman on her dizzy, stilt boots, and after her a ruffian also on stilts. Then the little E flat voice on the O.P. side begins to plead, and tho big voice on tho prompt side to threaten, and when there has boon sufficient of this foolishness tho ono-stringed fiddle begins to tear flesh from spirit again. In the theatre were tho small boy as of all the world —but here flatfaced, flat-browed, and eyes like two slits of black light—leaning over tho railings and drinking greedily all the noises of the one-stringed fiddle, and looking at the stage with as much concentration as they two Japanese lapdogs like to the Japs themselves —little shtted eyes, a mouth like the mouth of a cat, and a face retreating as if tho father of all dogs had been kicked by a horse. Those dogs are black and white, and so ugly as to be styled beautiful by childless ladies, and they carry heir eccentric tails coiled lightly oyer the starboard loin. White electrics, flaring gas, and paper lanterns and rickshaw lights tearing tho arc light rays anew at every moment; a Japanese missionary with a miraculous imitation of the shave of Exeter Hall, and oven of the Exeter Hall bloat, and the night growing old in the rain. But nobody wants to sleep while there is a chance of winning a more or less dishonest penny.

—The Night Side of Yokohama.— At midnight the shops wore still trying to soil post-cards; homeward going Japs sang horribly in the streets, for the Japs arc tho most unmusical people of tho earth —not oven excepting the Chinaman. A night watchman with his iron polo nnd its loose steel rings passed me, slapping tho sounding pole on tho pavement to tell tho thieves to koop the road clear. You can hear this ringing metal two blocks away, and it is carried for the protection of tho watchman, and a n ->arentJy to give the thieves time to escape. A Jap prepared for bod—apparently in the street—standing stark naked under an arc light, and knocking the dust out of his trousers against a telegraph pole; and then out of the darkness grew sudden fairy lights—azaleas and cherry blossom asleep in tho dark, the light-prinked houses of the Yoshiwarra, whoso existence contradicts the Japanese hope of being first among the groat civilised nations of tho world. Painted girls waiting weary under tho paint, the only beautiful thing tho wistaria and the garden in the quadrangle, tV only clean thing azalea and tho. tecoma belling and blooming under the stars; kimono and front-worn obi all complete, black hair piled high and glossily, and the quaint, not ungraceful, shuffle of the sandal, because the clothes are made to hide tho shuffle of these shortlegged, knock-kneed, flat-faced passiyists trying to make faco contours with paints. Whore is the geisha the lying globe-trotter talks about to stay-at-homo friends? W. S. Gilbert is the only writer man with a properly balanced knowledge of the Jap—others have taken seriously these depressing representatives of vice. Two librettists made her tell in frightful numbers that she was

The jewel of Aysher—of Ayshor—of Ayshor, Tho pretty littlo pet of tho Gaysher—tho Gaysher—tho Gaysher.

Tho jewels are paste. See them with the paint off—hollow-eyed dwarfs tragic in their leanness, ugly fatigue leaning by fish ponds, but too depressed to sin" anything to any goldfish. Short-legged, flat-footed, thick-anklcd Madame Chrysanthemum may paint herself an inch thick, but there is no breeding nor beauty in her. All very pitiful; grossness, and no passion and puppy laughter to hide tho lack of oven a rudimentary intelligence. Out of tho lighted quarter into tho darkened streets again, and there a madman trying to sell lemons in the rain at after midnight, and at another corner a “spruikor” selling rubber stamps as in any whito man’s country, and with all the rude eloquence of his kind—a three-legged dog his only audience, and a small boy leading an ovorcoated Dachshundliko puppy over a bridge; a mail van drawn by two galloping horses—a guard behind it—the Japanese flag in the van, and a great bell like that of a New York fire engine ringing all the time, because if a thing can bo done here quietly or noisily they select tho noisy way as being more suited to the limelight they love. In tho most_ homely way another naked man dusting his clothing in the street, and others like him, except that apparently they have no clothing to dust —a habit kindly and likely to put tho visitor quite at his case. A cyclist with a paper lantern hung round his neck redo at breakneck speed around corners, but rickshaw men have the luck of tho drunkard, the baby, and the poor, and there is very rarely an accident. I am awearied of the Jap in the individual; to-morrow I shall go to Tokio and study him in tho mass.