A FIRST GLANCE AT JAPAN.

Waikato Times, Volume 2620, Issue XXXII, 27 April 1889, Page 2 (Supplement)

A FIRST GLANCE AT JAPAN.

(Lord Eustack Cecii., in the ' NineTKK.NTII CK.NITKY.') Tin-: first thine that strikes the traveller in JapAn —fresh, it may b'j, from the iihu.ici'Kninutmg rudeness of the American Far West" —it is exceeding civility of everybody, custom-house officers included. Cheerfulness, good temper, and politeness are universal. The mothers stniie, the children chatter without quarrelling in the streets, and it is a pleasure to watch the ordinary workpeople as they meet and go through the prescribed etiquette of bowiug and shaking hands with each other. Differences over the carriage of your personal effects— if they exist—are speedily settled without the use of bad language and angry oaths, and in less time thau it takes to write, the traveller and his baggage are put into ' jinrikishas' (or light carriages drawn by one or more men scantily dressed, with funny white huts shaped like mushrooms), aud are trotted off to tiie Grand Hotel, famous for its Kuglish comfort and French cuisine. These 'jinrikishas,' or manpower carriages, deserve a word or two in passing. Of modern invention they have been improvised to supply the want of horses and flys, and it is marvellous to see what power of endurance and capacity for toil is to be found amongst the little broad - shouldered coolies who draw them. It is quite a common thing for them to keep up a good steady pace of six or seven miles an hour, on a diet of rice, fish, or tea, for as many hours in the day, and all this for the scanty wage of a mile. They are stubborn facts, which, by comparison, make one tremble for the future of the English working classes, unless they make up their minds to gird themselves up for the coming straggle. The bitter cry of employers at home increased yearly with the increasing dislike of the rising generation to hard manual labour. Throughout Europe aud Asia it is the same story—Germans and Japanese beat us with our own weapons, because they work harder, louger, and for less wage. It was not always so ; but education has softened us, and philanthropy with the best intentions is doing all it can to destroy the sturdy feeling of self dependence, once the pride of the British workman.

In Japan man certainly ' wants but little here below.' With cotton clothes, a diet of rice and fish, and a house of wattle and daub, domestic bills are not high. An ordinary coolie or labourer in the field is content with 2s 6d a week. A clerk in the Government office is well paid with £50 a year, aud a cabinet minister with £100. Th« so-called uesessities of life in all classes are at least one-third of what they would be in the United States or in Europe. My enquiries did not extend so far as rent, rates anel taxes ; but, whatever they may be, there is a good deal to show for them. The streets and roads in and about the capital are good, clean, fairly lighted, and admirably policed, and the railroad of eighteen miles to Tokio—built like all the railroads of the country, after the English model—leaves little to be desired. The capital itself extends over a large area, and is said to contain a million inhabitants. The area it covers is enormous, embracing as it does numerous temples surrounded by groves of evergreen trees, and parks laid out in European fashion. Amongst the finest buildings were thft Shcba temples and gardens, and tho old palace of the Shoguns. These are characteristic of an order of things which is fast passim? away. The gardens were prettily laid o*it in tho ancient style, with gigantic stone lanterns surrounding a lsko devoted to fish and waterfowl; the latter, when required, being ingeniously caught by keepers with long nets concealed behind hedges planted for the purpose. Tho sisiht of these old temples and gardens is full of interest to the antiquarian unci philosopher. They speak of a form of government and a state of society which it is impossible for Englishmen to realise without going back to tho middle ages, but which existed in Japan not a quarter of a century ago. The Shogun and his court, the daimios or great feudal chiefs, aud the samurai or military retainers, have vanished into limbo with a rapidity unexampled in history. Their vices did not differ from those of all oligarchical governments, and to far they deserved to perish. It is rather of their virtues, their courage, aud their devotion to their feudal chiefs that one would wish to Bpeak, in the hope that the faith, loyalty, and patriotism of the past will not be lost in the future. But the recent reforms have net yet had time to bear fruit, nnd the issue is still doubtful. In Japan, more than in any other country in the world, the new ideas of society are makiug the most rapid progress, and it may bo that this marvellous people is destined to find the philosopher's stone in politics of combining liberty with empire without destroying what is worth preserving of the past. It was refreshing at least to find, amongst much that was a mere copy of European taste and fashions, that the new palace of the Mikado at Tokio is being built entirely of wood after the old models. It covered a great space, being only one story high, and was roofed with tho peculiar loug over- lapping tiles introduced from China. The rooms were well proportioned, especially the hall of audience and the banquetting rooms ; aud the wooden ceilings, with square panels decorated with paper and silk on which flowers and animals had been beautifully worked, were unique of their kind. Costly as the estimate of the building and its decorations was reported to be —over a million sterling—one felt thankful that the new ideas of progress which rigidly put utility before beauty had not prevailed in this instance, and that a copy of Buckingham Palace had not beep substituted for the old Japenese architecture.