Jinrikisha Days in Japan
the two sets seldom touch, the missionaries keep to themselves, and the lives of the other extra-territorial people continually shock and offend them. Each set holds extreme, unfair, and prejudiced views of the other, and affords the natives arguments against both.
Socially, Tokio and Yokohama are one community, and the eighteen miles of railroad between the two do not hinder the exchange of visits or acceptance of invitations. When the Ministers of State give balls in Tokio, special midnight trains carry the Yokohama guests home, as they do when the clubs or the naval officers entertain at the seaport town. With the coming and going of the fleets of all nations great activity and variety pervades the social life. In the increasing swarm of tourists some prince, duke, or celebrity is ever arriving, visitors of lesser note are countless, and the European dwellers in all Asiatic ports east of Singapore make Japan their pleasure-ground, summer resort, and sanitarium. That order of tourist known as the “globe-trotter,” is not a welcome apparition to the permanent foreign resident. His generous and refined hospitality has been so often abused, and its recipients so often show a half-contemptuous condescension to their remote and uncomprehended hosts, that letters of introduction are looked upon with dread. Now that it has become common for parents to send dissipated young sons around the “Horn” and out to Japan on sailing vessels, that they may reform on the voyage, a new-comer must prove himself an invalid, if he would not be avoided after he confesses having come by brig or bark. Balls, with the music of naval bands, and decorations of bamboo and bunting, are as beautiful as balls can be; picnics and country excursions enliven the whole year; and there are perennial dinners and dances on board the men-of-war.
Those East-Indian contrivances, the chit and the chit-book, furnish a partial check on native servants. The
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