Queer Things About Japan.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXII, Issue XII, 19 March 1904, Page 54

Queer Things About Japan.

In his book, “Queer Things About Japan,” Mr. Douglas Sladen says that the Japanese baby never crise for Pears’ soap, but he never gets it any more than kisses. The Japanese do not know how to kiss—if a Japanese girl knows how to kiss, it shows the work of a foreign instructor; she does it as an accomplishment, not as an enjoyment. The Japanese have no pens and no ink, but they make a very good shift with a paint-brush. Their writing is so lovely that a poet is judged by his handwriting and not by his compositions. It is no wonder that ihe Japanese think so much of poets. The Japanese houses have no chimneys, and you are never warm enough till the house catches tire. The Japanese tradesmen do without consciences, at any rate towards the people they buy from. To make up for it, they have no swear words, and their children have no tempers. The Japanese have beef and no mutton; the Chinese have mutton and no beef. Japanese bells, like Japanese belles, have no tongues; you ring them by swinging a beam against them. W hen Japanese cherry trees have cherries, they have no stones—l think the oranges have no pips; this is no doubt part of the national politeness. Japanese snakes have no poison; Japanese music has no harmony. The Japanese alphabet is not an alphabet, but a selection of seventy useful ideograms, to dispense with the 30.000 in ordinary use by the Chinese. Japanese theatres nave no actresses, ex«%pt one at Kioto, which has no actors. The Japanese have no forks or spoons or tablecloths; they have no sheets, no wine glasses, no tumblers. STREET SCENES. “Street life in Japan includes nearly everything- The poor Japanese is always in the street, because he practically takes his house down during the day. The harder a Japanese works the lighter the blue of his clothes. The whole life of the poor in Japan is a comedy to those who do not have to live it, and its scene is laid in the street. The poor Japanese simply live in the street; they sit outside their houses like Sicilians when they have done their work. Not that sitting outaide makes any difference, if you take the whole front off your house whenever it is line enough, il is only an apology for a house. I have seen

‘houses which had not cost more than a sovereign, and 1 have seen a man not

five feet high putting out a blaze which was coming through a roof with fa hand-bucket. The roof is generally made of very heavy channelled purple tiles- The Japanese is unusually upside down about roofs; when he is building hie house he builds the roof first, and it weighs more than all the rest of the house put together. It stands earthquakes and typhoons better, and experience has taught hi mthat in typhoons it is not your own roof which falls on you, but your neighbour’s. There is nothing private about his house, because when its beds are rolled up, and its occupants outside, there is nothing in it but a fire-box. HOTEL LIFE. “The bedroom in a foreigner’s hotel is fairly ordinary, except that the furniture may bo arranged with a view to earthquakes. But the bathroom often has spirited variations. A Japanese bath stands in the floor, and not on it, and its sides are made of wood. It is. in fact, a sort of wooden grave—‘facilia descensus.’ If it is still more Japanese, it will be a round tub with a heating apparatus in the bottom for red-hot charcoal. With this instrument the foreigner takes a one to two chance- lie is sure to burn himself with the heater, and is in danger of being smothered by the fumes. Sex is not considered in a Japanese bathroom. A woman housemaid will come in to a bathing gentleman, or a man housemaid to a bathing lady, on pretexts trivial to the European mind, but without any indecent curiosity. If you do not wish to share the fate or appearance of a lobster, you should look before you leap in a Japanese bath. The Japs make their baths, if not their tea, with boiling water.”