LEAVES FROM "A JOURNAL JAPANESQUE."

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 10509, 31 July 1897, Page 1 (Supplement)

LEAVES FROM "A JOURNAL JAPANESQUE."

No. 111. [BY MARTHA W. S. MYERS.]

Shopping in Japan is a fever that seizes jipon one at once, racing at a high rate of temperature, until depleting chills strike the cheque book. How we revel among shoals of gorgeous gold and flowered brocades, clinging crepes with tints of rainbows, sumptuous silks, and embroideries heavy in Oriental richness. So enticingly lovely, so dazzlingly beautiful they are, that a gown of each, for each of the 365 days, seems a most modest and reasonable request. At each shop, our genial host thereof sets before us exquisite cup 3 of tea, delicate painted porcelain holding sake, and golden-pink tinted wafers, heaped with tiny sugared fruits. He presents us, too, with a New Year's souvenir, pretty brocaded silk purses, holding "Happy New Year" cards, whose interrupted print looks like the detached sections of last summer's

The second of January is called " Akinaihajitmc," meaning the first) business day of the new year. We view a procession of the various trades, with their wagons of merchandise, their decorated carts, aomo drawn by oxen roped in crimson cords and bedecked with flowers, paper? and silks of divers colours; others, pulled by sturdy natives, gaily dressed in greens, reds and yellows, full of merry songs and much «ak£. This is called " Hatsu-ni," or the first) load of the year. "I see, it's the same sort of load, on New Year's Day, all the world over," mutters the Sphinx, as he propounds the question, " Were the Japanese the originators of our latter-day New Year's customs: the closing accounts, 'turning over a new leaf,' commercially and morally, and celebrating spiritually and spirituously ?" There is actually a band-wagon in the procession, and tho band is playing. . . . "No"! it cannot be I "shouts Mi-Mi." "It is," Peggy cries, jumping up and down in her rikisha, " It is really ' Marching Through Georgia'!" How uproariously amusing. Immense, and how well the little monkeys play it! We follow the band-wagon, pelting the players with coins and comfits, in hopes of striking " Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay," or " Two Little Girls in Blue," but, alas, these popular ditties have not yet been imported along with the finger bowls of splendid progress; or, perhaps, they do know them, but " Don't want to play in our yard." In Japan there are neither sidewalks nor sewers; yet, astonishing as it may read, the thoroughfares are clean and odourless, save when whiffs of fish wriggle up one's nose. Each resident sweeps twice each day before his own door to half way across the road. The interior of these toy, paper, bamboo, wood houses, are waxen clean, unlittered by furniture and unacquainted with dust (Gorgon of all housewives). No soap is used, but charcoal ashes with hot water proves an excellent equivalent. Personal cleanliness is everywhere evident. The Japs cleanse their teeth in rivers and canals, toothbrushes being used by all, to the very poorest class. Locks and keys are as foreign as folding beds or grand pianos; this to dwellers in the land of latchkeys, seems guilelessly bucolic.

THE PLAIN OF BROKEN REEDS. Situated about five miles from the centre of the city of Tokyo stands the township of " Yoshiwara," meaning in Japanese " The Plain of Broken Reeds it is the

district of; the demi-monde. Weeping willows—eloquent symbols of the souls within—mark the entrance to its glittering arenueß.

Long lantern-lib lanes and lofty stonebalconied houses open to right and left. The women, arranged in rows behind huge latticed cages on the lower floors of each building, look like so many brilliantly plumed birds of Paradise. Often there are as many as 20 in a line, sitting next to handsome " hibachis" (stoves); some are smoking, but mostof them decorating.their faces with powders and pigments, or adjusting ornaments in their broad, glossyblack coiffures. Tiiey are perfectly impassive—almost employing no blandishments, utterly oblivious to the curious gaze of peering passers-by, who, thronging thickly about,' stare at these women, who themselves wear a look of child-like inno-

cence and peculiar ingenuousness. Many are pretty, all are bedizened, painted, and royally arrayed. The only mark of attire that distinguishes them from their purer sisters is the wearing of the obi (sash) tied in front; virtue loops hers up the back. More than 3000 girls are kept in this colony, segregated from the city by the government, which believes that public morals improve by the removal of licensed houses (Kashi-zashiki) from all respectable quarters. " The entire system—including medical inspection, taxes, etc.—is regulated by very intricate laws, most) strictly enforced, and.under close police control. The girl applying to become a licensed " Shogi," must be accompanied by parent or guardian and the keeper of the Kashi-zashiki. The whole system is based upon the theory of a civil contract." The parents are given a certain sum of money (about one hundred dollars) after which the girl becomes a prisoner in the " Yoshi-wara," and belongs—body, soul, and earnings— the proprietor of the bouse. It is an atrocious commerce of human flesh. While attractively young the " Shogi" is a source of rich revenue bat when old, she is dethroned, and acta as a poor servant in the very house she once ornamented and endowed, Many Shogis marry—but none ever escape from the " yoshi-wara " by any other means. It iB claimed by the Japanese that the existence ot this village of vice has absolutely eradicated immorality from the heart of their capital; this is proven by the fact that the streets of this big city, of more than a million and a-half inhabitants, are free from any sign of debauchery and degradation. Their system claims to have met this great social evil by dealing with it prudently, while nob ignoring its existence and power; attempting to solve the problem, by regulating, confining, and removing all moral impurities to a distinct and distant quarter, where its sights will not offend the more respectable or allure the senses of the youthful and the innocent. Whether the enforcement of this municipal law by the Japanese, this legal appropriation of land and buildings, which relegates depravity to a defined portion of the township, is really a solution of the vexed vice question, that now and again agitates Christian nations, is a grave question, fraught with complications. As yet, it has proven a mere shift, a subterfuge. "The trail of the serpent is over it all," quotes Mr. Sphinx, dubiously shaking his head. "Ib moves on the theory that scattered depravity is perniciously stealthy, but accumulated and concentrated, it can corrode only its kind. This ' Yoshi-wara 1 is ostensibly countenanced as a protection to purity 1 Faugh! On the very face of things, it) is a social abcess, fostering and protecting vile traffic of human flesh, pandering and obtruding it by its very conspicuous isolation."

THE VERSATILE BAMBOO. In all Japanese towns, we notice, heaped up, enormous stacks of drying bamboo poles, cut) from the vast growing jangles of this wonderful tree. A prettier light than its luxuriantly graceful green reeds, waving high in the breeze, can scarcely be pictured. Sorely the versatile bamboo ("take") is the most variously useful wood in all the wide world; utilised by the native, the wealth of it* resources, its combined ornamental and serviceable properties, become siaply infinite. There is nothing, existent or imaginable, that the Jap cannot construct from hit beloved bamboo; it is in, and of, everything, from the threads of the material in his glossy jacket to the very root in his soup! This amazing bamboo grows so rapidly, that, watching its sharp ihoots, we can almost sea 'them sprout. You all have heard the Manchausen-like tale of the tourist, who, on entering a tea-house, placed hit cap on a low bamboo branch; the following morning the traveller, tall at the proverbial English globe-trotter, beheld nit hat waving fall fifteen feet in the air I He might prove the yarn today, if he were able to talk through that aforesaid, not " lost-but gone-bsyond" hat! at least the .story'can go on record as the tall*! «tk told thncKit anyoai'i till I

The largest species actually attains a height of thirty (30) feet. In India it is said to roach 100 feat! There are many dwarf growths, which throw an undulating green mantle on hill and plain; and still smaller plants, that young and tender, are stewed and eaten. Of its uses from table g to tooth picks, inclusive, a charming ex_ predion in poetry is given by Mary Nclieij Scott

One night when the hills were drenched with dew And moonbeams lay about, The comical cone of a young bamboo Came cautiously creeping out. It tossed its cap upon the ground, Amazed at the sudden light, And so pleased it was with the world it found That it pew six feet that night. It grew and it grew in the summer breeze; / It grew and it grew until It looked right o*er the camphor trees To the further side of the bill. A Japanese phase the woodcutter used (" Kine tree !" is what he wonld say.) He chopped it all round, till it fell on the ground: His ox thenhiuled it away, He made a fine tub from the lowermost round, Ami a pail from the following one ; A caddy for rice from the very next slice, And his work was no mora than begun. The next were tall »ases, and medicine-cases, With dippers and cups galore: There were platters and bowls, and pickets and poles, And matting to spread on the floor. A mnsnl frame, and an intricate game,

Anil ribs to a piper-fan. A solo to Ills shop, and a toothpick or two, He made next—this wonderful man? A pencil/ I think, and a bottlaforinV, And a stem for bis miniature pipe; A ring for his hand, and * " Shokoji" stand, Anil a tray for the oranges ripe. A rake then he made, and a small garden-spade, And a trellis to loop up his line; A Hate which he blew, and a tea-strainer, too. And a fiddle to squeak shrill and fine. It would take me all day, if I were to say, All that wonderful man brought te view ; But a traveller I met says he's sitting there jet, At work on that single bamboo ! [To be continued.)