Japan: Its History, Arts, and Literature/Volume 4/Chapter 1
JAPAN
ITS HISTORY ARTS AND
LITERATURE
Chapter I
MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE TOKUGAWA ERA
Little change occurred, either in social conditions or in manners and customs, during the first part of the Tokugawa epoch. Iyeyasu and his grandson, Iyemitsu, preserved the best traditions of the military age, encouraging frugality and love of martial exercises. But the fifth Shōgun, Tsunayoshi (1680-1709), though up to the moment of his accession he seemed a model of virtue, became ultimately conspicuous for extravagant luxury and even unnatural lust, alternating with moods of delirious superstition. Many similar figures are found in Japanese history,—men who at one moment squandered great sums on the ministers of their vice, at another impoverished themselves to endow a temple. Tsunayoshi was among the most conspicuously selfish. Born in the "dog year" of the sexagenary cycle, he believed that his own fate depended on the degree of protection he gave to animals. Several persons had been capitally punished for killing dogs or cats before his officials, in order to save the lives of the citizens, constructed in the suburbs of Yedo a kennel, covering an area of one hundred and forty-eight acres, whither all the dogs in the city were sent to be cared for. The military men, then the nation's ethical models, forgot their fine traditions under such a ruler and the "manners and customs of the Genroku era" (1688–1704) became a byword. The career of the eighth Shōgun, Yoshimune (1716–1746), offered a strong contrast to that of this hysterical libertine. His efforts were persistently directed to mend the morals of the age. He revised the laws, promoted industry, sought to effect a revival of the true samurai spirit, and provided facilities, though on a limited scale, for the study of foreign languages and science. Had he been succeeded by men of like quality, the era of Japan's enlightenment would not have been deferred until the nineteenth century. But after his death the Yedo Court, under the sway of two successive Shōguns, relapsed into a state almost as evil as that of Tsunayoshi's days. Then again the eleventh Shōgun, Iyenari (1787–1838), aided by an able Premier (Matsudaira Sadanobu), undertook reforms like that of Yoshimune, and effected such an improvement in the moral tone of the time, that just as the fifth Shōgun's excesses had rendered the Genroku era proverbial for degraded customs, the virtues of the eleventh made the Kwansei era (1789–1801) a bright landmark in the pages of history. After Iyenari's demise his successor, Iyeyoshi (1838–1853), sought to follow in his footsteps, and was assisted by Mizuno Tadakuni, generally known as "Echizen no Kami." Excessive zeal defeated the aims of this remarkable Minister. His heroic measures and drastic enactments, extending into every sphere of life, aroused such resentment that he ultimately resigned office, having deterred reform rather than encouraged it.
This general retrospect suggests that the Tokugawa epoch subdivides itself into alternating periods of moral elevation and depression. But in truth it was an era of material progress, not the least remarkable feature of which was the extension of refinement to the middle classes. If literature advanced perceptibly in the Nara and Heian epochs, and if polite accomplishments and amusements received much elaboration in the days of Kamakura and Muromachi, these improvements were limited mainly to the patrician orders, whereas, under the sway of the Tokugawa, it is in the condition of the middle and middle-lower classes that progress was most conspicuous. Thus while the samurai occupied themselves with researches into Chinese philosophy and Japanese history and theosophy, the hitherto illiterate heimin began to write couplets (haikai) and read novels, a kind of literature never previously produced, but now suddenly carried to a remarkable degree of development, and rendered additionally attractive owing to rapid growth of the art of book illustration, at first by means of woodcuts only, but afterwards by a high type of chromoxylography. Again, while the classical music of the yokyoku and the solemn posturing of the no dances furnished pastimes for great folks, the humble enjoyed the pathos and passion of the joruri and the gidayu, the vivid historical romances of the raconteur, the wit and humour of the hanashika and the realism of the theatre,—purely popular amusements which never acquired any real vogue before the seventeenth century and even thereafter long excluded from aristocratic circles. In the field of art, also, this new departure was very conspicuous, for if the upper classes delighted in the graphic drawings of the Kano school and the stiff conventionalism of the literary picture (bunjin-ga), the lower grew to love genre paintings (ukiyo-ye), naturalistic drawings (shijo-riu), and coloured prints, which may be regarded as creations of the Tokugawa epoch.
This downward extension of the refinements of life was not accompanied at first by any levelling of social barriers. The nation continued to be divided into four sections, as sharply differentiated as ever—the Court nobles, the military men, the commoners and the degraded class. Immediately below the Throne stood four princely families—Fushimi, Arisugawa, Katsura, and Kwan-in—exclusively privileged to supply an Imperial heir in the event of failure in the direct line of succession. After them ranked the general body of the Kuge (Court nobles), headed by five specially distinguished families in which the great offices of state were hereditary. These five families—Konoye, Kujō, Nijō, Ichijō, and Takatsukasa—were called Gosekke.[1] From them alone men might be taken to serve as "Regent" during the sovereign's ministry and as "Lord Chancellor" during his reign. Next to these five families came nine "pure houses" (seiga)[2]—Sanjō, Saionji, Tokudaiji, Kazan-in, Oi-no-mikado, Kuga, Kikutei, Hirohata, and Daigo—whose scions enjoyed the exclusive right of serving as ministers of state. Such distinctions had not much practical value under the feudal system, when all administrative functions were withdrawn from the sovereign's Court and transferred to that of the Shōgun. The Kwampaku (Lord Chancellor) alone, being the chief avenue of access to the Throne, continued in all ages to possess some influence. But the holders of these traditionally exalted offices were always objects of popular reverence.
In many families of the Court nobility certain accomplishments were hereditary; as caligraphy in the houses of Shimizutani and Jimyoin, floral arrangement in the Sono, football in the Nambu and Asukai, poetry in the Raisai and the Karasumaru, sword-making in the Shijo, heraldry in the Yamashina and the Takakura, wrestling in the Gojo, and divination in the Yoshida. The families thus distinguished numbered one hundred and thirty,—a relic of the days when Kyoto was the centre of all social refinement, and when the nobles residing within the shadow of the Throne possessed ample fortunes and were able to maintain the state attaching to their functions. Under the feudal system their condition was very different. The total annual appropriation for the maintenance of the Imperial Court was only some £30,000, which the Shōgun supplemented by allowances varying from £35,000 to £45,000, and by extraordinary grants on special occasions. As for the income of the Court nobles, they aggregated only £70,000, the wealthiest—the Konoye—having but £2,800. It resulted that these Kuge had to struggle constantly against straitened circumstances which contrasted sharply with the pomp and luxury of their lives in ante-feudal days. Many of them were obliged to eke out their scanty incomes by practising some domestic industry, such as the making of pictorial playing cards, of umbrellas, of toothpicks, or of chopsticks.
Even the expenditure of the trifling sums allotted to the Kyōtō Court was managed in accordance with a system which virtually subjected it to the control of the Yedo administration, certain methods of drawing money being prescribed, and every item being entered in accounts which had to be submitted annually for approval to the Shōgun's representative (the Shoshidai) in Kyōtō. The sovereign lived, for the most part, in the presence of females. Even such duties as the sweeping and cleaning of the inner garden (naka-niwa) upon which the Imperial apartments opened, had to be entrusted to women. A standing order forbade the admission of any visitor to the Imperial presence, and in order to segregate His Majesty still further from the outer world, the ladies in waiting, though permitted to visit their native places thrice a year, were not allowed to go abroad on other occasions without a written permit from one of the two chief chamberlains. The sharp distinction drawn by the military government between itself and the Court in Kyōtō is illustrated by an enactment of the third Shōgun, Iyemitsu, which his successor confirmed, directing that all affairs relating to the Court nobles should be managed by the principal lady in waiting (Nagahashi no Tsubone) in consultation with the two chief chamberlains. Some of the Tokugawa Shōguns were destined at a later epoch to be themselves segregated from politics and active administration by a similar entourage of ladies, but the masterful Iyemitsu and his immediate successor did not foresee such an application of their system. They thought only of stifling the Court in an atmosphere of effeminacy and stagnation,[3] and it cannot be doubted that had their policy been resolutely followed by later Shōguns, Imperialism would have lost every effective attribute of majesty. By way of further provision against disturbing contingencies, they established a Prince of the Blood as abbot of the magnificent temple built by Iyemitsu on the northeast of Yedo. In that they followed the example of the Hōjō, who had contrived that the office of Shōgun in Kamakura should be nominally held by a Prince available at any moment as an alternative sovereign, and had they needed a precedent for consummating the drama, they would have found it in the procedure of the Ashikaga who set up the Northern Court to legitimatise their own usurpation.
As in the case of the Throne so in that of the Shogunate, the privilege of supplying an heir in the event of failure in the direct line was limited to three houses (go-sanke)—Owari, Kii, and Mito—to which were subsequently added three others—Tayasu, Hitotsubashi, and Shimizu. The Ashikaga ruler Yoshimitsu had been the first to ape Imperialism in this matter. He accurately copied the organisation of the Kyōtō Court, nominating two groups of five and seven families, to which he assigned the same titles and the same offices in his own administration as those belonging to the sekke and the seiga in the administration of the Emperor's Court. The parallel is completed by the fact that, just as these families became strong enough to defy the Muromachi control and were thus one of the instruments of the Ashikaga's downfall in the sixteenth century, so the Mito, the Owari, and the Kii contributed to the overthrow of the Tokugawa in the nineteenth.
The wealth of the State, as well as the power, belonged entirely to the Shōgun and the feudal chiefs. Broadly speaking, the latter were divided into three orders,—barons (daimyo), bannerets (hatamoto), and squires (kanin); and the barons were subdivided into three classes according to the extent of their fiefs, namely, provincial fiefs, castle fiefs, and district fiefs. There were other distinctions, but they need not occupy attention. No baron had a smaller revenue than £6,000,[4] approximately, and the richest—Mayeda of Kaga—collected over half a million pounds sterling. Perhaps the clearest conception of the wealth of the feudatories may be gathered from the facts that two hundred and fifty-five of them had incomes ranging from £6,000 to £100,000 annually; fourteen had incomes of from £100,000 to £200,000, and fifteen collected sums varying from £200,000 to £600,000. The total revenues of the feudatories, as officially stated, was twelve millions sterling, approximately, so that the average income of the two hundred and eighty-seven exceeded £40,000, whereas the Court nobles, who numbered one hundred and forty-three, had a total allowance of £45,000, being an average of £314. These figures must be understood as referring to the taxes upon agriculture only: they do not include sums collected from tradesmen and manufacturers, nor do they take any account of the forced labour which the people were obliged to furnish or to commute by monetary payments.[5]
With regard to the income of the Shōgun himself, there is some uncertainty. A return furnished by the commissioners of finance in 1843 showed a revenue of about one and a quarter million pounds sterling in coin, and half a million sterling in kind. The estates of the Shogunate were nominally assessed at a million koku of rice for purposes of taxation, being, in that respect, approximately equal to the estates of Mayeda, baron of Kaga. But there can be no doubt that the official assessment was much below the truth. It will be a close approximation to put the Tokugawa income at two millions sterling annually.
These incomes are not large from the standpoint of modern Europe and America. They would have been very large, however, in mediæval Japan, considering the high value that money commanded, had not the feudatories been obliged to incur heavy outlays on account of military and administrative purposes. Their incomes were, in effect, not private fortunes but revenues of principalities. The humblest of the bannerets had to equip and maintain a force consisting of twenty-three swordsmen, two spearsmen, one archer, and one musketeer, and a fief with a revenue of £60,000 must be able to put seven hundred and fifty men into the field at any moment. Statistics show that some six hundred thousand samurai families had to be supported out of the revenues of the fiefs, and that a muster of all military men between the ages of twenty and forty-five would have produced a force nearly a million strong.
When the Tokugawa originally established themselves in Yedo, they eschewed everything in the nature of pomp and display. Their official buildings were of wood with boarded roofs, and their resident edifices were thatched with straw, had no interior decoration of any kind, and were even without mats for the floor. But from the moment when the provincial barons had to make arrangements for periodical residence in the Tokugawa capital, this austere fashion underwent modification. The feudatories that had been most intimately associated with the Taikō led a new departure, partly, perhaps, because they had become honestly imbued with that great statesman's artistic views, partly because they sought to establish a contrast between their own splendour and the rude austerity of the Tokugawa Court. Contemporary records bear witness to the impression produced upon the citizens by the magnificent mansions which then began to spring up in the city. One tradition says that a golden tiger, set over the gate of the Hikone residence at Shibaura, cast such a brilliant reflection as to drive away all the fish from the neighbouring sea, and another describes the decorations of the Higo baron's mansion in terms that suggest a blaze of grandeur and beauty. Spacious plots of land were granted by the Shōgun for these residences. Even a samurai with an income of only two thousand pounds annually had a space of half an acre for building purposes, and thus the parks surrounding the feudal yashiki soon became as remarkable as the yashiki themselves. It was inevitable that the castle of the Shōgun should gradually be adapted to this growth of refinement. Before the close of the seventeenth century a magnificent suite of apartments had been built, including chambers specially allotted for the reception of the feudatories according to their rank. The principal of these chambers, where the council of State assembled, was known as "the thousand-mat room," 150 × 120 feet; and seventy-two sliding doors that gave access to it were painted throughout with a design of pine-trees from the brush of Kano Tanyu. Some of the chambers took their names from the subjects chosen by their decorators,—as the room of the wild geese, the room of the bamboo, etc.,—and others were distinguished in accordance with their special use or position, as the "waiting-room," the "great corridor," etc. It is not necessary to derive conceptions of this palace solely from the vague eulogies of contemporary wonder. Much more definite information is incidentally furnished by the records of a fire in 1838 which destroyed the western wing of the castle, where the ex-Shōgun, Iyenari, resided. The ladies in waiting, whose apartments were invaded by the conflagration, numbered three hundred and fifty, and they had two hundred and fifty attendants, so that when Iyenari moved to the inner section of the castle, he was accompanied by six hundred females. From the same records it appears that experts estimated the cost of rebuilding this west wing at about fifteen hundred thousand pounds sterling, and that the money was obtained by levying a forced contribution on a sliding scale from every feudatory with an income of over one hundred pounds annually. This produced a sum of over a million pounds sterling, and fully half a million was obtained by voluntary contributions, in addition to large presents of timber and other building materials, not only from the feudal chiefs but also from temples and shrines. The palace in which the Emperor of Japan resides to-day did not cost more than one-third of the sum required to restore one wing of the Tokugawa Castle in 1838.
The system of voluntary contribution derived much of its efficacy from inter-fief rivalry. Each great feudatory sought to outdo his colleagues in the value and rarity of the articles sent by him to the Shōgun for the purposes of a public work. When a park had to be made, strange stones for rockeries and trees of special beauty were sent; when a mausoleum was planned, bronze pedestal-lamps and granite cisterns were presented; when a residence was under construction, timbers of exceptional scantling and fine grain arrived from the provinces. Supplemented by the law of forced labour, these offerings enabled the Yedo authorities to undertake works which would have been scarcely possible without such aids. The digging of the triple tier of moats surrounding the castle and the construction of their colossal scarps, counter-scarps, and battlements could never have been otherwise achieved, and it remains to this day a marvel that the Shōgun Iyemitsu, who was content with a cheap wooden shanty for his own residence, should have had the sublime courage to undertake such an enterprise as the building of the Nikko Mausoleum. The latter stands almost intact to this day, a splendid evidence of the greatness of Japanese architectural decorative genius at the beginning of the seventeenth century, but it is only within the past twelve months that the quality of the castle fortifications has been appreciated. For when the municipality of Tokyo condemned the old castle gates to demolition, because, being placed at a right angle to each other and having their approaches masked by big stone parapets, they constituted a perpetual danger to safe traffic, it was found that the parapets, instead of being simply banks of earth faced and backed with blocks of granite, as was generally supposed, were composed almost entirely of stone, and the mass of material that resulted from even this fractional levelling proved embarrassingly immense. There were no quarries in the neighbourhood of Yedo when this huge work was projected: every fragment of building stuff had to be carried over-sea. Thus the enterprise ranks among the greatest of its kind ever imagined. And the construction of the Nikko Mausoleum stands almost on the same level as to grandeur of conception.
It has been affirmed that this work, as well as the rebuilding of the Osaka Castle and the construction of the Yedo moats and battlements, involved great suffering for the people, inasmuch as they were compelled to toil for starvation wages and to surrender their goods at nominal prices. Regulations issued in connection with the enterprises contradict any such theory. No severity was practised except for the purpose of preventing quarrels. If workmen were found righting, they were put to death at once without any inquiry into the merits of the dispute. But, on the other hand, goods and chattels belonging to the people might never be seized, and must not even be purchased without the owner's consent; trees or bamboos might not be arbitrarily cut, arable lands trespassed upon, or questions raised about the proprietorship of quarries. Nikko being a district far remote from any industrial centre, and even Yedo itself being unable to supply the great number of experts required for such a magnificent work as the mausoleum, skilled artists and artisans were invited from all parts of the Empire. They were desired to repair to Yedo, accompanied by their wives and children, and large wooden edifices, specially constructed, gave them accommodation in the Shōgun's capital until they could be sent forward to the scene of their labour. There was no compulsion. Proclamations announced that to be engaged in this sacred work was a perennial honour, and doubtless the artists and artisans of the era frankly accepted that view. They were not obliged to travel on foot from Yedo to Nikko (eighty miles); one horse was provided for every two persons. Their wages, fixed at full market rates, were paid every second month; they had a holiday every seventh day, and fifteen days were granted annually for a visit to their native place. Only the inhabitants of the districts contiguous to the highroad had any cause of complaint, for although their taxes were lightened in consideration of their keeping the road in good repair, they had to furnish horses and carriers at fixed prices, under penalty of sending twenty pairs of straw sandals per month for three years; and every peasant girl between the ages of thirteen and twenty had to furnish sufficient cotton for a piece of cloth nine yards long, which cotton women between twenty and forty had to weave. Side by side with such practical measures of organisation readers of the annals are surprised to rind evidence of old-time superstitions against contamination. The whole of the persons engaged in the work were divided into parties of one hundred and seven each, and if any artisan received news of a death among his relatives, not only the man himself but every member of his party had to suspend work for a period of from one to three days, and to undergo a process of purification at the hands of a Shintō priest. The same superstition showed itself in the treatment of diseases. Provision was made for the care of a sick person at the scene of the works during twenty days, but thereafter, however critical his condition, he had to be removed elsewhere, lest death should take place in the immediate neighbourhood of the mausoleum.
While the feudal barons were building for themselves splendid mansions and laying out beautiful parks in Yedo, and while the Shōgun was not only following their example but also creating colossal battlements for his castle, as well as mausolea of the utmost splendour in memory of his predecessors, the citizens of the capital continued to inhabit houses of the frailest and humblest nature. It has been explained that not until after the lapse of many decades and the long-observed example of the great nobles, did the tradespeople of Kyōtō begin to use tiles for roofing their houses or make any attempt to construct them solidly. Yedo showed even slower progress, and may be said to have been ultimately prised out of the old groove, not by an intelligent impulse of improvement so much as by the well-demonstrated danger of conservatism. From the day when it became the capital of the Tokugawa, the city suffered crushing calamities from conflagrations. These, when they had once laid hold on flimsy wooden structures, with roofs of shingle, straw, or board, projecting into narrow streets, could not be prevented from burning until no combustible material remained. The Government seems to have been engaged in constant legislation and organisation for checking these catastrophes. At first the city was divided into forty-seven sections, each having its own band of firemen, and on an alarm being raised, all the bands were ordered to proceed to the scene. But it was soon recognised that the loss of life and the robberies caused by failure to control the crowds thronging the streets were more terrible even than the havoc wrought by the flames. Therefore the divisions of the city were reduced to ten, and a decree directed that only the firemen of the section actually burning should proceed to the place, all the rest remaining to protect their sections against sparks and thieves. Measures almost savagely drastic were adopted to prevent disorder. Again and again regulations appeared on the notice boards at the cross-streets forbidding any save the nearest relatives to repair to the scene of a fire, and authorising guards to kill every person acting in defiance of that restriction. The incendiary was crucified, and any one causing a fire by negligence became liable to capital punishment, while the members of the five-family group to which he belonged shared his guilt to the extent of imprisonment. The most obvious precaution, however, was to improve the construction of the houses. At first the Government did not attempt to do more than advise the substitution of boarded roofs for thatched. But in the middle of the seventeenth century, there occurred a conflagration of dimensions so disastrous that the Shōgun, in addition to distributing large sums of money among the sufferers and throwing the State forests open for supplies of timber, postponed the rebuilding of his own palace in order not to increase the demand for workmen. It was then that the more wealthy citizens began to use tiles for roofing their houses. They had already been in the habit of laying along the ridge of the roof a beam on which buckets of water stood perpetually, and of providing a kind of huge box on wheels for carrying away their chattels and clothing at the supreme moment. But during the great fire already spoken of, numbers of persons perished under the wheels of these cumbrous vehicles, which were consequently interdicted. Much greater security was found in a tiled roof, and in the year 1721 one Hachiroji Iga devised a fire-proof warehouse covered entirely with mud and plaster. He communicated his invention to the Shōgun Yoshimune, accompanying it with a classical quotation to show that such edifices had been approved by the Chinese in the days of Confucius. Yoshimune at once appreciated the value of this counsel, and took practical steps to popularise it by advancing money from his own treasury for the building of these dozo (mud storehouses), as they were called. The name of Hachiroji Iga is little remembered now, yet he deserves to rank among Japan's greatest benefactors. His device did not, indeed, suffice to prevent fires, but it served to save great quantities of property, for a well-built dozo preserves its contents against the fiercest conflagration. It is observable that while perils of fire served to promote recourse to a more substantial kind of building, no embellishment of the city resulted. From an architectural point of view nothing could have been less picturesque than the dozo. Neither did the mansions of the feudal barons add much to the city's appearance, since they were generally surrounded by parks so spacious as to render the edifices invisible from the streets. The Shōgun's castle, with its broad moats and imposing battlements, was the most striking feature of Yedo in Tokugawa times, and next in importance ranked an artistic and massive style of gateway that came into vogue in the seventeenth century, differing more or less in design and dimensions according to the status of the baron to whose yashiki it gave admittance, but having always on either flank watch-houses with heavily latticed windows, projecting from long lines of barracks (nagaya) that served as residences for guards. These nagaya had foundations of cut stone, and being solidly constructed and plastered in a picturesque design of diamond diaper which assorted well with their latticed windows, they lent an air of neatness and compactness to the city. Strikingly conspicuous was the contrast between buildings with such an appearance of solidity and seclusion, and the slight structures in which tradesfolk carried on their business: wooden edifices, generally of two storeys and occasionally of three, their front-room completely exposed to the street, or separated from it by a curtain formed of strips of linen, and their back-rooms opening, by means of paper-covered sliding-doors, on a miniature garden. At night these houses were hermetically sealed by wooden sliding-doors, so that whatever might be claimed for their method of construction as allowing the atmosphere to percolate freely during the day-time, they became oppressively close and insanitary when closed for the night. Strange to say, too, the members of the family seldom and the servants never slept in the second storey, where air might have been admitted without giving access to thieves. Thus, for some at any rate of its inmates, a Japanese residence is always essentially unwholesome in summer owing to defective ventilation. Further, it promotes immodesty and therefore immorality; for in its stifling atmosphere all covering at night becomes unendurable, while, at the same time, paper sliding doors are quite ineffective to segregate one room from another. Yet another grave defect of the Japanese house in the form it finally took during the Tokugawa epoch is that it acts like a cupping machine to draw up noxious vapours from the soil. For the floors being loosely constructed so as to prevent the overlaid mats from decaying, and the ground underneath being left in its natural state, its miasmal exhalations find ready access to the chambers above. Neither can it be truly said that a Japanese house is remarkable for cleanliness. It certainly looks clean, because the neat mats, the well-polished verandahs, the knotless timbers, and the white paper give an impression of purity and careful preservation. But these very mats which contribute so greatly to the general effect of tidiness are incomparable dirt-traps. They are not removed for cleaning purposes more than twice a year, in many houses not more than once, and an almost incredible quantity of dust and dirt is thus found to have accumulated beneath them and in their interstices. So long, however, as the Japanese sits and sleeps upon the floor, he must have mats. And he must also have the charcoal-burning brazier, which is undoubtedly an unwholesome element in his life, whether he bends over it inhaling its carbonic-acid fumes, or places it under his quilt to warm his feet. The brazier (hibachi) became a choice article of household furniture during the Tokugawa epoch. It was made sometimes of bronze elaborately chiselled, sometimes of gold lacquer with richly chased mountings of silver or silver-gilt, and sometimes of pure paulownia wood with shakudo or shibuichi metal-work. To banish it from a Japanese house would be a most unwelcome deprivation, and to substitute for it a stove or fireplace in Occidental style is out of the question, for neither of these apparatus emits a heat endurable to people seated on the ground. The mat and the brazier go together, and both will remain until the Japanese house is replaced by the European,—a change of which there are as yet no indications. Two things appear to find little favour in Japan, the female costume and the architectural style of the Occident. A few ladies occasionally wear the frock, the petticoat, and the corset of the West; a few wealthy men have dwellings with chairs, tables, and carpets. But no lady adopts such habiliments of deliberate choice, and no gentleman permanently inhabits such a house. The one dons foreign garments for special objects and on special occasions only; the other uses his foreign chambers for social or official purposes alone, returning to his mats and his brazier as quickly as possible. Tōkyō to-day differs little from Yedo of the Tokugawa times, so far as the citizens' dwellings are concerned. That this conservatism should exist in the midst of general change is probably attributable partly to the greater costliness of edifices in European style and the greater expense of living in them, but mainly to the sans-gêne of Japanese customs compared with European or American. It is not merely a question of sitting on chairs instead of on mats, sleeping on beds instead of on wadded quilts, and eating with knives and forks instead of with chopsticks. There is a far more important consideration involved, namely, that whereas a Japanese house has virtually no limit of elasticity in the matter of accommodation and hospitality, a foreign house is incapable of expansion for either purpose. Probably no highly civilised nation has ever been so averse to formal entertainments as the Japanese. There are exceptions, it is true, which at first sight may seem to contradict this assertion. There are cha-no-yu réunions; there are flower-viewing parties; there are meetings of friends in seashore or riverside villas during the dog-days; there are at-homes to introduce a bride and bridegroom to the relatives and acquaintances of their families, and there used to be assemblages to cap stanzas and witness Nō dances. But the dinner-party and the ball of the Occident do not enter into the social philosophy of the Japanese or accord with their notions of hospitality. The formal call also is unknown. Ladies that live in Japanese style never have "days," nor do men leave cards upon each other as tokens of civility except at certain seasons. Every visit that has not a practical business purpose is made with the object of passing several hours in a friend's company, and it is an unwritten law that the visitor shall join the family circle of the visited at meals as well as in their intervals. No preparation is required except to add to the dining paraphernalia a pair of chopsticks and a set of apparatus, nor is any one obliged to reflect whether there is room at table or whether the viands suffice, for guests and hosts alike sit upon the mats, where accommodation can always be found, and a word to a neighbouring restaurant produces fish and soup in abundance. In a household of the upper classes this fortuitous hospitality has scarcely any limit. The physician, the teachers of music, of dancing, of painting, of cha-no-yu and of ike-bana, all share the family meal, and either they or the guests can be put up for the night merely by taking two or three silk quilts from the wardrobe and spreading. It is this absence of set, formal entertainment that constitutes one of the chief obstacles to social intercourse between foreigners and Japanese. The foreigner's principal device for establishing friendly relations with a Japanese is to invite him to dinner. The Japanese cannot return the compliment. It is not his custom to invite friends to dinner, and he has no special arrangements for entertaining them otherwise. Thus there has grown up among foreigners residing in Japan a resentful conviction that access to Japanese family life is denied to them as a result of social prejudice, whereas the truth is that if they could adopt the customs of Japan, they would be welcome to enjoy her domestic hospitality. That is a matter apart, however. The point immediately interesting is that, whatever the sanitary defects of the Japanese style of building, to exchange it for the European or American style would involve a radical alteration in the life of its inmates. No signs of such a result are yet apparent. If a Japanese is sufficiently wealthy to build for himself a house of western form, he takes care that there shall be a Japanese annex which is his real home, the other serving merely for use on special occasions.
It was in the Tokugawa epoch that allegorical signboards for shops came into use. Thus a purveyor of bean-soup painted over his door a picture of the spoon used in mixing the soup; bath-houses indicate their trade by a bow and an arrow, because iru, to "shoot," is homonymous with iru, to "enter a bath," and bakers of sweet potatoes wrote up the ideographs hachi-ri-han (eight and a half Japanese miles), because kuri (nine miles) means also a "chestnut," and the sweet potato was supposed to be only one stage short of the chestnut in point of palatableness. Towards the close of the eighteenth century fashion favoured the Chinese style of setting up between two posts a board carrying a couplet or some learned phrase in eulogy of the goods sold within, and from that era it became orthodox that restaurants, tea-houses, confectioners, vermicelli sellers, and brothels should take names of classic or artistic import, as fugetsu-do (hall of the breeze and the moon), bairin-ken (hostel of the plum forest), banka-ro (tower of the myriad blossoms), and so on. This custom has never been abandoned: it remains as much in vogue as ever. Pictorial signboards and advertisements, after the mode of the modern Occident, did not suggest themselves to the Japanese of Tokugawa times, unless a particularly artistic innovation, dating from the eighteenth century, be classed as an advertisement. This was a square lantern (called jiguchi andon) having sides of transparent paper upon which the best artists of the era sketched figure-subjects, floral designs, or landscapes in sepia or light colours. Rows of such lanterns were set up at night along the streets on festive occasions, tradespeople competing to show the finest lantern. The custom survives, and lovers of Japanese art may see on these transparencies rare and beautiful sketches from the hands of the pictorial celebrities of the Tokugawa era.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 1.
Note 1.—Their representatives have the title of "Prince" in the present order of Japanese nobility.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 2.
Note 2.—Their representatives have the title of "Marquis" in the present order of Japanese nobility.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 3.
Note 3.—A standing order directed that novelty in every form must be eschewed, and that any unwonted incident must be reported immediately to Yedo.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 4.
Note 4.—The revenues were stated in koku of rice, but it must be understood that the number of koku produced by a fief did not represent the feudatory's income; it represented only the taxable property in his fief.
- ↑ See Appendix, note 5.
Note 5.—It should be noted that the term Daimyō mentioned above was not used as a title. The latter was obtained by appending the word Kami (Chief) to the name of the district over which a baron ruled. Thus Echizen-no-Kami, Dewa-no-Kami, etc., signified the barons of Echizen, of Dewa, and so on. Another form of feudal title was derived from the name of an hereditary office, according to the old custom explained in a previous chapter. With regard to the word Daimyo, literally "great name," the hypothesis is that the military men sent from Kyōtō to govern unruly provincial districts were originally called Myōdai (substitutes), and that when they acquired semi-independent power, they called themselves Daimiyō, preserving one part (miyō) of their original destination, but replacing dai (substitute) by dai (great).