The How and Why Library/Geography/Section XIV
XIV. The Children of Topsy and Turvy Land
Wouldn't you like to visit some children who never cry when they are babies? No, they are not Indians, although they ride around on their mother's backs. Their faces are yellow. Their almond-shaped black eyes are slanting. They wear ki-mo'nos, They wipe their little noses on little paper handkerchiefs that they carry up their wide sleeves.
Japanese children! You have seen them in picture books. But how shall we really go to see them?
Let us go back to the City of the Golden Gate. One part of it is like fairy stories. The fronts of the shops are covered with red and gold dragons. This is called Chinatown because the Chinese people live there. If we hunt a long time maybe we will find a Japanese shop. The merchant is yellow, like the Chinese, but he wears American clothes and cuts his hair short. He speaks very good English. We will buy some tea, or a roll of silk, or a blue and white china bowl. If we are very polite, and we tell him we are going to get on a ship and go to Japan, perhaps he will give us a letter, and ask us to call on his brothers and sisters in Tok-io. Won't that be fine to visit Japanese children in their own home?
We get on the big steamship. It is not like the little sailing vessel—the Mayflower—that the Puritan children came in, three hundred years ago. It is a floating hotel, six stories deep, a hundred feet wide and as long as a city block. We sit on the roof of the ship. It is called the deck. The ship plows its way across the ocean. It goes very fast, but it takes days and days to get to Japan because this ocean is nearly five thousand miles wide. When we get to Japan we notice a strange thing. We may look back over the ocean we have crossed and see the sun rise! Japan is called the Land of the Rising Sun. The big rising sun is on all the Japanese flags. They float from ships in the harbor, and from tall houses in the city.
Here come the children, down to the dock, to meet us! They look just like their pictures. They are all dressed alike in blue or gray or flowered cotton ki-mo'nos, down to their straw or wooden sandals. We have to turn them around to see which are boys. The girls tie their sashes in big butterfly bows. The boys tuck in the ends. And the girls do up their hair like mamas. The ki-mo'nos are not pinned or buttoned. They are just folded across the front. To keep the ki-mo'nos from flying open the children take short steps and walk pigeon toed. The biggest girl carries baby brother on her back. He is just as interested in what is going on as anybody. The children all smile, and bow very low. It is not polite in Japan to look unhappy or to say cross words. In a minute a little girl will rub her velvety, gold-colored cheek against yours. That is a Japanese kiss. She will put her arm around your waist. Then you are dear friends. She will want you to ride in the same jin-rik-i-sha with her.
Jin-rik-i-shas are like big baby cabs on two wheels. They are pulled by men. The men wear blue or white cotton, butter-bowl hats on their heads, very short, tight breeches and loose shirts outside. In the jin-rik-i-sha you feel like twin baby sisters out with the nurse maid for an airing. You giggle, and your new little friend giggles. Then you ask her name. She says it is Cherry Blossom. That seems too good to be true. Her brother's name is Nogi after a great war hero.
How fast the jin-rik-i-sha man runs—as fast as a horse. He whirls you through the queerest streets. The houses and shops are of gray wood, with heavy, over-hanging roofs of black tiles. They are wide open. The walls are slid back so you can see everything that is going on inside. By and by you come to the children's house. They all kick off their sandals and go in in their stocking feet. No wonder, with such clean white straw mats on the floor! You take off your shoes, too. They are so troublesome you think you will get some Japanese sandals to wear.
What a funny house! It has no windows, no doors, no rooms. The walls slide back to make just one room, and that is open clear through as if it was all out doors. There are no chairs, no beds, no tables. The parlor is at the back of the house. That is the prettiest part because it looks into the prettiest little garden you ever saw.
There is a little hill, and a little river with a tiny bridge across it. There is a little lake with gold fish, and tiny twisted old pine trees. There is a little tea house in the garden. You sit on your heels before little tables a foot high, and a little maid brings tea on a tray. You drink out of dolly tea cups.
Every minute there is something new. The children stop a toy stove peddler and rent a real stove with a charcoal fire in it. You
can have it for an hour for five cents with rice flour dough to bake cakes on it. The girls bring out their dollies. The dollies look just like themselves. The boys fly kites. The kites are shaped like fish balloons, like dragons and butterflies and animals. They play something like pussy wants a corner, and a card game like authors. They call this the game of the one hundred poets. Verses are on the cards and you have to learn them to play well.
At dinner the family sits in a circle on the floor. Each person has a little stool for a table. The maid brings food on little black and gold trays, one thing at a time. There are no knives or forks or spoons. You eat with long ivory pencils called chop-sticks—if you can. You drink soup from cups. Candy and sweet things are brought first. Then you have fish with pineapple sauce, then salad and hard green pears, then rice and tea. There is quite a peck of boiled rice in a round wooden box, with a cover to keep it hot. Rice is Japanese bread. You may eat all you want. If you drop vour chop-sticks or break a cup, everybody will laugh and begin to talk about something else very fast. They know you feel bad about it and it wouldn't be polite to notice an accident.
At night the maid slides the walls in place around the house. Then she pulls out more walls, and makes as many bedrooms as are needed. She opens cupboards in the walls and tumbles out dozens of soft thick comforters onto the floor. That makes a bed. You use the top comforter for a cover. She gives you a wooden brick for a pillow. Little Cherry Blossom giggles when she sees your surprised look. But she rolls up a quilt to make you a pillow. She lies down beside you, tucks the block under her own neck and goes sound asleep in a minute.
Before you leave Japan you must go to visit a Japanese school with your little friends. You find they have forty-seven letters to learn, instead of twenty-six. And they have thousands of word signs, that look like very queer, black, bird-tracks. They write with a paint brash. Their books begin at the back, and the reading goes up and down instead of across the page. They sit on mats on the floor, in their stocking feet. They count with wooden beads strung on wires in a slate frame. They have to learn English, too. They say English is the hardest to learn of all their lessons, because it seems upside down.
If you go to Japan in the spring you will see the cherry trees in bloom, and the pear trees and plum trees. The Japanese grow fruit trees in their little toy gardens just for the blossoms. They have a flower festival when the trees are in bloom. Everybody writes little poems about the flowers on rice paper, and ties them to the trees. Isn't that a pretty thing to do? People try to stay out of doors, in big parks, all they can, in cherry blossom time. They go up the mountain sides where miles of trees are in bloom. They take picnic lunches in little straw boxes. They carry oiled paper parasols for fear it might rain; and when they come home at night they carry red paper lanterns to light the way.
Sometimes Japan is called the Flowery Kingdom. It might be called the land of polite people, or the land of happy children. What would you call it? See Japan, page 960. Mutsuhito, Emperor of Japan, page 1292, and Oriental Art in article on Fine Arts.