A Japanese Boy
contests. On the same sheet of paper each of us wrote, one beside
another, his favorite character, or did his best at one character we had
mutually agreed upon, and took it to our teacher to decide upon the
finest hand. The best specimens of a school are sometimes framed and
hung on the walls of a public temple of Tenjin. He is worshiped by all
school-boys, and I also followed the fashion. My image of him was made
of clay; I laid it on a shelf and offered saké (rice-wine) in two tiny
earthen bottles, lighted a little lamp every night and put up prayers in
childish zeal. The family rejoiced at my devotion; they finally bought
me, one holiday, a miniature toy temple. It was painted in gay colors; I
was delighted with it beyond expression, and my devotion increased
tenfold.
CHAPTER II.
The earliest recollection I have of my school life is my entrance with a
number of playmates into a private gentleman's school. At that time the
common school system which now exists in Japan had not been adopted;
some gentlemen of the town kept private schools, in which exercises
consisted mainly of penmanship; for arithmetic we had to go somewhere
else. In Imabari there lived a keen-eyed little man who was wonderfully
quick at figures, and to him we repaired for instruction in mathematics.
We worked, not with slate and pencil, but with a rectangular wooden
frame set with beads, resembling an abacus. It is called soroban; you
find it in every store in Japan. I like it better than slate and pencil,
for the fundamental operations of arithmetic, but cannot use it in
higher mathematics. I remember seeing a young man of my acquaintance
perform algebraic calculations, of which we had some knowledge before
the influx of Western learning, with a number of little black and white
blocks called the "mathematical blocks." A knowledge of penmanship and
arithmetic is all that is required of a man of business, but a learned
man is expected to read Chinese.
My schoolmaster was a kind of priest, not of Buddhism nor of Shintoism,
but one of those who go by the name of Yamabushi; he let his hair grow
instead of shaving it off as the Buddhist priest does, wore high clogs
and the peculiar robe of his religion. He simply followed his father in
the vocation; he was a young man of high promise and manifested more
ardor in letters than at the prayers for the sick or for the prosperity
of the people. His house was on the fourth block of the main street, set
back a little from the street and with an open yard between the tall,
elaborate gate and the mansion. The front of the residence was taken up
by the shrine; the school was kept in the back part of the house. When
we first entered the school we were known as the "newcomers" among the
older boys, and though bullying was not altogether absent, we had no
ordeal to go through as the Freshmen have in American colleges.
The pupil's equipment in one of these old-fashioned schools consisted of
a low table, a cushion to squat upon, and a chest for the following
articles: white paper, copy-books and a small box containing a stone
ink-vessel, a cake of india ink, an earthen water-bottle and brushes. A
little water is poured in the hollow of the stone vessel, the india ink
rubbed on it for a while, and when the water becomes sufficiently black
the brush is dipped in it. Then looking at model characters written down
for us in a separate book by the teacher, we try to trace the same on
our copy-books, paying close attention to every particular. The first
that we must learn is our alphabet of forty-eight letters.
I recall vividly the trials in making the alphabetical figures. I tried
time and again, but to fail; the sorrow gathered thickly in my mind and
soon the grief overpowered all my strenuous efforts not to weep, then
the master would send one of the older boys to help me. He stands behind
me while I sit, grasps my hand which holds the brush, and to my heart's
content traces figures like the master's in perfection.
The copy-book is made of the tenacious soft Japanese paper, many sheets
of which are bound together. Each of the forty-eight characters is
studied separately; it is written large so that the learner may see
where a bold stroke is required and where a mild touch. After the
alphabet we learn to write Chinese characters. The copy-books become
black after a while, being dried and used again; therefore they need not
be perfectly white at first; usually they are made of the sheets of an
old ledger. I used to see on the pages of the copy-books made for me by
my father, old debts and credits, and the names of the parties concerned
in them, dating back to grandfather's time; they disappeared
collectively under my wild dash and sweep of india ink. What an act of
generosity to wipe out the remembrance of former money complications!
After a day's work all the copy-books are literally drenched with the
black fluid; they are moist and heavy. They must be dried. Every patch
of sunshine about the school is improved, every breezy corner turned to
account. At home the kitchen is spread with them at night, so as to have
them dry by the morning. Copy-books that have done long service are
coated with a smooth, shining incrustation of carbon--shining if good
ink has been used, but dull if ink is of cheap quality. The quality of
an india ink cake is not only judged by its lustre, but also by its
hardness and odor; a good one is hard and pleasant and the bad soft and
unpleasant. After we have practised writing the letters for some time,
we finally write them on white papers and present them to our teacher,
who with red ink makes further necessary corrections. If the final copy
is satisfactory, he sets us at work on a next portion.
Every morning, after breakfast, I gathered together dried copy-books and
went after or waited for some boys to come along. We strolled up the
street toward the schoolmaster's, calling on other boys as we went. The
first task in school upon our arrival was to set the tables in order,
get the things out of the chests and go after some water for making the
ink. It was no comfortable occupation, cold winter mornings, to get the
water from the well in the windy, open yard in the rear of the house,
and dip our hand and the drip-bottle together and keep them in it until
all the air escaped by bubbles, and the bottle was full. A bottle though
I called it, the receptacle is a hollow, square china vessel, with two
small holes on the flat surface--one in the centre and the other in one
of the corners.
We sit in a house where there is practically no arrangement for heating
and where we are poorly protected from the gusts from without. The
Japanese house is built opening widely into the external air; it has but
a few segments of external walls around it; therefore one can select no
breezier abode during the warm months, but in the dead of winter--the
mere thought of it makes me shiver. Those immense open spaces could be
closed, to be sure, at night with solid pine-board sliding doors; but in
the daytime the question of light comes in. To meet this difficulty our
ingenious forefathers had contrived a frame-work of wood pasted with
paper. You must know they had no idea of glass. We can scarcely call it
a happy solution of the problem, for the paper is soon punched through
and lets in the biting wind. Too much active ventilation takes place,
whistling through the holes; and then when a storm strikes us, the whole
frail work shakes in the grooves wherein its two ends are fitted, like
the chattering of the teeth. This sliding paper partition is called
shoji, and of late has been somewhat replaced by the more expensive
glass windows. Since the introduction of glass I have seen the shoji
partly covered with it and partly with paper, the Japanese thinking it
very convenient to see through the partition without being at the pains
of pushing it aside or making a hole in the paper. Had paper been
entirely discarded and glass alone been used the Japanese house would be
much brighter and warmer.
Such a building is a poor place to hold a school in, but the boys were
used to it and they behaved so--quarreling, weeping, laughing,
shrieking--that there was little time left for them to feel the cold in
their young warm blood.
CHAPTER III.
When just from school our faces and hands were as black as demons' with
ink. On my reaching home my mother would take care of the copy-books,
and send me straight to the kitchen to wash before I sat down to the
table. The vessel corresponding to the basin is made of brass. We have
not learned to use soap; old folks believe that it would turn our black
hair red like that of the foreigners. There is no convenience of faucet
or pump; each house has its own well in the back yard, even in the
city;--hence no water-works, no gas-works, and no fuss about plumbing;
the housewife must proceed to the well for water, rain or shine, and
struggle back to the kitchen with a pailful of it every time she needs
it.
The kitchen itself is not often floored; the range (of clay and of
different appearance from that, which is used here) and the sink stand
directly on mother earth under a shed-like roof which has been darkened
by smoke. The range has no chimney; not coal but wood is burned in it,
and all the smoke escapes from the front opening or mouth and fills the
entire kitchen, causing the dear black eyes of the amiable housewife to
suffuse with tears.
She has the small Japanese towel wrapped round her head to protect the
elaborate coiffure from the soot of years, that has accumulated
everywhere and falls in gentle flakes, snow-fashion, on things
universally. She works her pair of lungs at the "fire-blowing tube," a
large bamboo two or three feet long, opened at one end for a mouth-piece
and punched at the other for a narrow orifice. The imprisoned volumes of
smoke in the kitchen must crowd out through a square aperture in the
roof; if it be closed on a rainy day, they must escape through windows
or crevices the best they may.
The water when brought in from the well is emptied into a deep heavy
earthen reservoir of reddish hue standing near the sink. With a wooden
ladle I would dip out the water into the brass basin (sheet brass, not
solid), and wash myself without soap in the most rapid manner possible,
yearning eagerly for dinner. The towel is a piece of cotton dyed blue
with designs left undyed or dyed black. I grumbled, I confess, when my
mother sent me back for a more thorough washing; but with the utmost
alacrity I always saluted the very sight of viands.
Oftentimes I was late and was obliged to eat a late dinner alone; but
when all of our family sat down together, enough of life was manifested.
At one end my witty young brother provoked laughter in us with stuff and
nonsense; next him sat my younger sister, quiet and good. I assumed my
position between my sister and my father and mother, who sat together at
the head of the row. I forget to mention that my elder brother, whose
place must be next above me, had been ordered to keep peace in the
region of my merry little brother. My sister-in-law or my elder
brother's wife took her stand opposite us, surrounded by a rice-bucket,
a cast-iron cooking-pot, a teapot, a basket of rice-bowls, saucers, etc.
She it was who had to cook and serve dinner and wash dishes and take
care of her babies. It is this that renders a young married woman's lot
in life very hard in Japan, the principal weight of daily work devolving
upon her. After all this, if parents-in-law are not pleased with her she
is in imminent danger of being turned off like a hired servant, however
affectionate she may be toward her husband; and the husband feels it his
duty to part with her despite his deep attachment; so sacred is regarded