Traveller.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 441, 29 September 1904, Page 7

Traveller.

I MOW THE JAPANESE LIVE. B JAPANESE house is generally all on one floor; in faot, one might say it is all one floor, And in the daytime it is all one room if it is a small hous% The number of rooms depends on the number of bedrooms the owner requires. Dhey are divided for the night by paper Bhutters fixed in grooves like the division of an old fashioned workhox. There are no doors or passages, lour bedroom acts as a passage, and when you want a door you slide back the nearest; panel. It does not matter having handles on every Bhufcber frame, because the handles go in instead of utioking out. A Japanese handle is nothing but a hole with a metal lining. Two sets of shutters go round the outside of the bouse, the inside set are of paper on the off-chance of the owner using them for privacy during the day, and the outside are of wood. These outside shutters cannot be slid in the same promiscuous fashion as the others. Each is held in its place by the next, and the last one is secured with a bolt—of wood. There are plenty of Japanese houses which, when secured for night, would hardly stand a drunken man leaning against them. An Englishman's house may be his castle, a Japanese's house is his bedroom, and his bedroom is a paeeage. Better-class houses are divided into permanent rooms for a foot or two down from the ceiling, by wooden frames filled with plaster to hold the tops of the shutters. Same go as far aa having windows, made of glass, too, which is very un-Japanoso. The ordinary native is quite satisfied with the light that filters through paper. The hoBSJS which have windows generally have walls too, outside j though they put up the paper Bhutters inside. It is necessary to put cp with this shutter arrangement when sons become husbands and fathers under the paternal roof. The houses of rich natives, like that occupied by Sir Edwin Arnold at Azabu, are European houses in Japanese fancy dress. The Japanese j unless it is too cold or too wet the poor Jap takes down the whole front of his house in the daytime. If it ia too sunny he hangs a big blue or brown curtain in front of it, like the sheet for a magic lantern, with a huge white ideogram taking the place of the picture, An ideogram is a Chinese monogram. What distinguishes one country from another is not so much what you find as what you do not find. This is another way of sajing that there is nothing new under the sua. The Jipanese hava to do without many things without which civilised existence would seem impossible unless you had seen it with your own eyes. They have no bread, no beds, no fires, no boots and shoe?, no trousers for the men, no petticoats for the women. This sounds alarming, bub both s.'xes wear instead several dressing-gowns one over the other —the kimonos of commerce. In their housss they have no windows, no doors, no walls, no ceilings, no chests of drawers, not even a washing-stand, and the wardrobe is only a lot of boxes piled one on top of another. In the kitchen of a Japanese house they hav6 no range, no pots, no pans no flourbins, no flour, no kitchen tables. But then they have no tables or chairs in the drawing-room, and in the real native house the drawing-room itself is only a lot of bedrooms with their walls taken down. There is no reason why you should And anything in a Japanese house except mats and a charcoal stove for warming your fingers and the teapot for committing suicide. These, and a cushion or two and a quilt to sleep on, with an elaborate < conventional politeness, constitute the furniture of a Japanese, except the guestchamber. And the articles, in the guestchamber are not wildly useful towards reproducing the comforts of an English home; for they consist of a screen and a kakt mono and a flower-vase 5 and, if the %ouse has been existing for 30 years, a sword rack, Japan is full of cherry frees and plum trees, but they do without fruit. The cherries are used for blossom, and the 1 plums for hanging poems on. Japanese ladies have been known to do without any Btockingß to maintain the harmony between beautiful French slippers and magnificent French evening dresses. I have been served by a. Japanese hosier who did without everything he did not supply himself—he had a shirt, a collar and tie and soarf.pin and Btuds, but he had no trousers. And the effect of their absence was heightened by his wearing braces because he sold them. This is keeping The old adage, 'the cobbler should stick to hlo last,' with a vengeance, when the outfitter will not go behind his outfit. Japanese ladies lose one of the great excitements of life—the pleasure of buying hat and pulling it to pieces; but that does not prevent them from wearing hatpins in their hair. It must be a great comfort to a woman to satisfy mankind with her figure, without benefit , of corsets. Any satisfaction that the Japanese women give their husbands is independent of whalebone, and unleßS he is a Cabinet Minister or a busman, the Japanese does without horBOB; There is a civil service for hoißes in Japan, The Japsnese in his native state did without hats. He had coal, but did not know how to use it. He had lamps, but only burnt candles in them; he had no matches, but this did not signify, because the fire had never been let out since a relation of the sun founded Jipan. The Japanese before Commander Perry with his American guns made them taste the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge was as good at doing without things as the Mexican discovered by Corttz. who depended for food and intoxicating drinks and clothes and house on the American aloe. This wonderful power of doing without ie an essential source of military strength to our ally; it enables his armies to march perpetually light, and in a case of blockade or national disaster it would be almost impossible to Btarva him into surrender. The Japanese is rich, because, as the witty Frenchman observed, ' it is our wants that make ua poor.' There is often no furniture in a Japanese room, and a room which hag a flat cushion each to squat on and a hibachi each to warm the fingers at, is very well furnished. The Japanese never warm beyond the tips of their fingers in winter. Each person ought to have, besides the finger stove, a tabakomono, or smoker's stoves, with pipes, tobacco, and live charcoal for lighting the pipes. As Japanese pipes contain only two or three whiffs, the smoker divides his time bßtweenrelightfeg and knocking the ashes out. The most familiar sounds in Japan are the tap-tap of the cipe having its aßhea knocked out, the klop-Wop of the clogs on the flagged roads, and the toot-toot of the blind shampooer on bis bamboo penny whistle $ and when it is windy, instead of the door bangingi you hear the kakemono's flapflip against the wall of the tokonoma. The tokonoma is a pious fiction. It means liter ally the place where you lay the bt d In theory every Japanese house reserves a space, which no other person is allowed to occupy, for the bed of the Mikado in case he should happen to drop in. This wonderful visit does not often take place, because the Mikado hardly ever dsopa out J ofr {he tabernacle of bojwj in wbM his

domestic lit* is veiled, 'thin is lucky j for it » ao long aiaoa hs wed a tokonoma in this very promitouona fashion that most : of fchfl places reserved for spreading his bad on are not more than two or three feet long and a few inches wide Fancy King Edward having a shelf pat up for him to sleep on in every effort of the jerry builder. A Japanese bed gives one a good idea of the bed in the New Testament which the cnred man was bidden to take up and walk j it consists of one or more thick padded quilts. When you have only ©ne yon use it as a mattress, and your pillow is made of wood the size and Bhape of a door scraper. Over the tokonoma hangs the best kakemono the house can afford, in front of which, usually on one of the low, lacquered, spindle-legged tables, is a vase containing two or three twigs of tree blossom, arranged with par.' ticular regard for etiquette and allegorical meaning. The arrangement of flowers n * a scionce, almost a religion, in Japan,- 1 Douglas Siaden. i