A Further Consideration of Japan. The Inland Sea, and Good Cookery. The Mystery of Passports and Consulates2 and Certain Other Matters
Rome! Rome! Wasn’t that the place where I got the good cigars?— Memoirs3 of a Traveller.
ALAS4 for the incompleteness of the written word! There was so much more that I meant to tell you about Nagasaki and the funeral procession that I found in her streets. You ought to have read about the wailing5 women in white who followed the dead man shut up in a wooden sedan-chair that rocked on the shoulders of the bearers, while the bronze-hued Buddhist6 priest tramped on ahead, and the little boys ran alongside.
I had prepared in my mind moral reflections, purviews of political situations, and a complete essay on the future of Japan. Now I have forgotten everything except O-Toyo in the tea-garden.
From Nagasaki we — the P. and O. Steamer — are going to Kobé by way of the Inland Sea. That is to say, we have for the last twenty hours been steaming through a huge lake, studded as far as the eye can reach with islands of every size, from four miles long and two wide to little cocked-hat hummocks7 no bigger than a decent hayrick. Messrs. Cook and Son charge about one hundred rupees extra for the run through this part of the world, but they do not know how to farm the beauties of nature. Under any skies the islands — purple, amber8, grey, green, and black — are worth five times the money asked. I have been sitting for the last half-hour among a knot of whooping9 tourists, wondering how I could give you a notion of them. The tourists, of course, are indescribable. They say, ‘Oh my!’ at thirty-second intervals10, and at the end of five minutes call one to another: ‘Sa-ay, don’t you think it’s vurry much the same all along?’ Then they play cricket with a broomstick till an unusually fair prospect11 makes them stop and shout ‘Oh my!’ again. If there were a few more oaks and pines on the islands, the run would be three hundred miles of Naini Tal lake. But we are not near Nai ni Tal; for as the big ship drives down the alleys12 of water, I can see the heads of the breakers flying ten feet up the side of the echoing cliffs, albeit13 the sea is dead-still.
Now we have come to a stretch so densely14 populated with islands that all looks solid ground. We are running through broken water thrown up by the race of the tide round an outlying reef, and, apparently15, are going to hit an acre of solid rock. Somebody on the bridge saves us, and we head out for another island, and so on, and so on, till the eye wearies of watching the nose of the ship swinging right and left, and the finite human soul, which, after all, cannot repeat ‘Oh my!’ through a chilly16 evening, goes below. When you come to Japan — it can be done comfortably in three months, or even ten weeks — sail through this marvellous sea, and see how quickly wonder sinks to interest, and interest to apathy17. We brought oysters18 with us from Nagasaki. I am much more interested in their appearance at dinner to-night than in the shagbacked starfish of an islet that has just slidden by like a ghost upon the silver-grey waters, awakening19 under the touch of the ripe moon. Yes, it is a sea of mystery and romance, and the white sails of the junks are silver in the moonlight. But if the steward20 curries21 those oysters instead of serving them on the shell, all the veiled beauties of cliff and water-careen rock will not console me. Today being the seventeenth of April, I am sitting in an ulster under a thick rug, with fingers so cold I can barely hold the pen. This emboldens22 me to ask how your thermantidotes are working. A mixture of steatite and kerosene23 is very good for creaking cranks, I believe, and if the coolie falls asleep, and you wake up in Hades, try not to lose your temper. I go to my oysters!
Two days later. This comes from Kobé (thirty hours from Nagasaki), the European portion of which is a raw American town. We walked down the wide, naked streets between houses of sham24 stucco, with Corinthian pillars of wood, wooden verandahs and piazzas25, all stony26 grey beneath stony grey skies, and keeping guard over raw green saplings miscalled shade trees. In truth, Kobé is hideously27 American in externals. Even I, who have only seen pictures of America, recognised at once that it was Portland, Maine. It lives among hills, but the hills are all scalped, and the general impression is of out-of-the-wayness. Yet, ere I go further, let me sing the praises of the excellent M. Begeux, proprietor29 of the Oriental Hotel, upon whom be peace. His is a house where you can dine. He does not merely feed you. His coffee is the coffee of the beautiful France. For tea he gives you Peliti cakes (but better) and the vin ordinaire which is compris, is good. Excellent Monsieur and Madame Begeux! If the Pioneer were a medium for puffs30, I would write a leading article upon your potato salad, your beefsteaks, your fried fish, and your staff of highly trained Japanese servants in blue tights, who looked like so many small Hamlets without the velvet31 cloak, and who obeyed the unspoken wish. No, it should be a poem — a ballad33 of good living. I have eaten curries of the rarest at the Oriental at Penang, the turtle steaks of Raffles’s at Singapur still live in my regretful memory, and they gave me chicken liver and sucking-pig in the Victoria at Hong-Kong which I will always extol34. But the Oriental at Kobé was better than all three. Remember this, and so shall you who come after slide round a quarter of the world upon a sleek35 and contented36 stomach.
We are going from Kobé to Yokohama by various roads. This necessitates37 a passport, because we travel in the interior and do not run round the coast on ship-board. We take a railroad, which may or may not be complete as to the middle, and we branch off from that railroad, complete or not, as the notion may prompt. This will be an affair of some twenty days, and ought to include forty or fifty miles by ’rickshaw, a voyage on a lake, and, I believe, bedbugs. Nota bene.— When you come to Japan stop at Hong-Kong and send on a letter to the ‘Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary at Tokio,’ if you want to travel in the interior of this Fairyland. Indicate your route as roughly as ever you choose, but for your own comfort give the two extreme towns you intend to touch. Throw in any details about your age, profession, colour of hair, and the like that may occur to you, and ask to have a passport sent to the British Consulate1 at Kobé to meet you. Allow the man with a long title a week’s time to prepare the passport, and you will find it at your service when you land. Only write distinctly, to save your vanity. My papers are addressed to a Mister Kyshrig —‘Radjerd Kyshrig.’
As in Nagasaki, the town was full of babies, and as in Nagasaki, every one smiled except the Chinamen. I do not like Chinamen. There was something in their faces which I could not understand, though it was familiar enough.
‘The Chinaman’s a native,’ I said. ‘That’s the look on a native’s face, but the Jap isn’t a native, and he isn’t a Sahib either. What is it?’ The Professor considered the surging street for a while.
‘The Chinaman’s an old man when he’s young, just as a native is; but the Jap is a child all his life. Think how grown-up people look among children. That’s the look that’s puzzling you.’
I dare not say that the Professor is right, but to my eyes it seemed he spoke32 sooth. As the knowledge of good and evil sets its mark upon the face of a grown man of Our people, so something I did not understand had marked the faces of the Chinamen. They had no kinship with the crowd beyond that which a man has to children.
‘They are the superior race,’ said the Professor, ethnologically.
‘They can’t be. They don’t know how to enjoy life,’ I answered immorally38. ‘And, anyway, their art isn’t human.’
‘What does it matter?’ said the Professor. ‘Here’s a shop full of the wrecks39 of old Japan. Let’s go in and look.’ We went in, but I want somebody to solve the Chinese question for me. It’s too large to handle alone.
We entered the curio-shop aforementioned, with our hats in our hands, through a small avenue of carved stone lanterns and wooden sculptures of devils unspeakably hideous28, to be received by a smiling image who had grown grey among netsukes and lacquer. He showed us the banners and insignia of daimios long since dead, while our jaws40 drooped41 in ignorant wonder. He showed us a sacred turtle of mammoth42 size, careen in wood down to minutest detail. Through room after room he led us, the light fading as we went, till we reached a tiny garden and a woodwork cloister43 that ran round it. Suits of old-time armour44 made faces at us in the gloom, ancient swords clicked at our feet, quaint45 tobacco pouches46 as old as the swords swayed to and fro from some invisible support, and the eyes of a score of battered47 Buddhas48, red dragons, Jain tirthankars, and Burmese beloos glared at us from over the fence of tattered49 gold brocade robes of state. The joy of possession lives in the eye. The old man showed us his treasures, from crystal spheres mounted in sea-worn wood to cabinet on cabinet full of ivory and wood carvings50, and we were as rich as though we owned all that lay before us. Unfortunately the merest scratch of Japanese character is the only clew to the artist’s name, so I am unable to say who conceived, and in creamy ivory executed, the old man horribly embarrassed by a cuttle-fish; the priest who made the soldier pick up a deer for him and laughed to think that the brisket would be his and the burden his companion’s; or the dry, lean snake coiled in derision on a jawless51 skull52 mottled with the memories of corruption53; or the Rabelaisan badger54 who stood on his head and made you blush though he was not half an inch long; or the little fat boy pounding his smaller brother; or the rabbit that had just made a joke; or — but there were scores of these notes, born of every mood of mirth, scorn, and experience that sways the heart of man; and by this hand that has held half a dozen of them in its palm I winked55 at the shade of the dead carver! He had gone to his rest, but he had worked out in ivory three or four impressions that I had been hunting after in cold print.
The Englishman is a wonderful animal. He buys a dozen of these things and puts them on the top of an overcrowded cabinet, where they show like blobs of ivory, and forgets them in a week. The Japanese hides them in a beautiful brocaded bag or a quiet lacquer box till three congenial friends come to tea. Then he takes them out slowly, and they are looked over with appreciation56 amid quiet chuckles57 to the deliberative clink of cups, and put back again till the mood for inspection58 returns. That is the way to enjoy what we call curios. Every man with money is a collector in Japan, but you shall find no crowds of ‘things’ outside the best shops.
We stayed long in the half-light of that quaint place, and when we went away we grieved afresh that such a people should have a ‘constitution’ or should dress every tenth young man in European clothes, put a white ironclad in Kobé harbour, and send a dozen myoptic lieutenants59 in baggy60 uniforms about the streets.
‘It would pay us,’ said the Professor, his head in a clog-shop, ‘it would pay us to establish an international suzerainty over Japan; to take away any fear of invasion or annexation61, and pay the country as much as ever it chose, on condition that it simply sat still and went on making beautiful things while our men learned. It would pay us to put the whole Empire in a glass case and mark it, “Hors Concours,” Exhibit A.’
‘H’mm,’ said I. ‘Who’s us?’
‘Oh, we generally — the Sahib-log all the world over. Our workmen — a few of them — can do as good work in certain lines, but you don’t find whole towns full of clean, capable, dainty, designful people in Europe.’
‘Let’s go to Tokio and speak to the Emperor about it,’ I said.
‘Let’s go to a Japanese theatre first,’ said the Professor. ‘It’s too early in the tour to start serious politics.’
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consulate
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| n.领事馆 | |
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consulates
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| n.领事馆( consulate的名词复数 ) | |
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memoirs
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| n.回忆录；回忆录传( mem,自oir的名词复数) | |
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alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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wailing
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| v.哭叫，哀号( wail的现在分词 )；沱 | |
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Buddhist
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| adj./n.佛教的，佛教徒 | |
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hummocks
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| n.小丘，岗( hummock的名词复数 ) | |
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amber
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| n.琥珀；琥珀色；adj.琥珀制的 | |
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whooping
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| 发嗬嗬声的，发咳声的 | |
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intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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alleys
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| 胡同，小巷( alley的名词复数 )； 小径 | |
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albeit
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| conj.即使；纵使；虽然 | |
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densely
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| ad.密集地；浓厚地 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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chilly
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| adj.凉快的，寒冷的 | |
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apathy
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| n.漠不关心，无动于衷；冷淡 | |
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oysters
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| 牡蛎( oyster的名词复数 ) | |
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awakening
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| n.觉醒，醒悟 adj.觉醒中的；唤醒的 | |
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steward
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| n.乘务员，服务员；看管人；膳食管理员 | |
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curries
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| n.咖喱食品( curry的名词复数 ) | |
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emboldens
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| v.鼓励，使有胆量( embolden的第三人称单数 ) | |
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kerosene
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| n.(kerosine)煤油，火油 | |
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sham
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| n./adj.假冒(的)，虚伪(的) | |
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piazzas
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| n.广场，市场( piazza的名词复数 ) | |
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stony
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| adj.石头的，多石头的，冷酷的，无情的 | |
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hideously
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| adv.可怕地，非常讨厌地 | |
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hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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proprietor
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| n.所有人；业主；经营者 | |
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puffs
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| n.吸( puff的名词复数 )；（烟斗或香烟的）一吸；一缕（烟、蒸汽等）；（呼吸或风的）呼v.使喷出( puff的第三人称单数 )；喷着汽（或烟）移动；吹嘘；吹捧 | |
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velvet
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| n.丝绒，天鹅绒；adj.丝绒制的，柔软的 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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ballad
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| n.歌谣，民谣，流行爱情歌曲 | |
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extol
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| v.赞美，颂扬 | |
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sleek
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| adj.光滑的，井然有序的；v.使光滑，梳拢 | |
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contented
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| adj.满意的，安心的，知足的 | |
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necessitates
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| 使…成为必要，需要( necessitate的第三人称单数 ) | |
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immorally
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| adv.淫荡地；不正经地；不道德地；品行不良地 | |
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wrecks
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| n.沉船( wreck的名词复数 )；（事故中）遭严重毁坏的汽车（或飞机等）；（身体或精神上）受到严重损伤的人；状况非常糟糕的车辆（或建筑物等）v.毁坏[毁灭]某物( wreck的第三人称单数 )；使（船舶）失事，使遇难，使下沉 | |
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jaws
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| n.口部；嘴 | |
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drooped
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| 弯曲或下垂，发蔫( droop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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mammoth
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| n.长毛象；adj.长毛象似的，巨大的 | |
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cloister
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| n.修道院；v.隐退，使与世隔绝 | |
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armour
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| （=armor）n.盔甲；装甲部队 | |
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quaint
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| adj.古雅的，离奇有趣的，奇怪的 | |
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pouches
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| n.（放在衣袋里或连在腰带上的）小袋( pouch的名词复数 )；（袋鼠等的）育儿袋；邮袋；（某些动物贮存食物的）颊袋 | |
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battered
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| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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Buddhas
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| n.佛，佛陀，佛像( Buddha的名词复数 ) | |
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tattered
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| adj.破旧的，衣衫破的 | |
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carvings
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| n.雕刻( carving的名词复数 )；雕刻术；雕刻品；雕刻物 | |
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jawless
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skull
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| n.头骨；颅骨 | |
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corruption
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| n.腐败，堕落，贪污 | |
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badger
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| v.一再烦扰，一再要求，纠缠 | |
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winked
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| v.使眼色( wink的过去式和过去分词 )；递眼色（表示友好或高兴等）；（指光）闪烁；闪亮 | |
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appreciation
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| n.评价；欣赏；感谢；领会，理解；价格上涨 | |
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chuckles
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的名词复数 ) | |
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inspection
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| n.检查，审查，检阅 | |
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lieutenants
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| n.陆军中尉( lieutenant的名词复数 )；副职官员；空军；仅低于…官阶的官员 | |
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baggy
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| adj.膨胀如袋的，宽松下垂的 | |
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annexation
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| n.吞并，合并 | |
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