Peeps at Many Lands: Japan | Page 9

servant runs and fetches whatever may be wanted.
When the article has served its purpose, it is taken back again.
This building is called a godown. It is built of cement, is painted black,
and bears the owner's monogram in a huge white design. It is
considered to be fireproof, though it is not always so, and is meant to
preserve the family treasures in case of one of the frequent fires. It may
be stored with a great variety of furniture and ornaments, but very few
see the light at one time.
The Japanese does not fill his house with all the decorations he may
own, and live with them constantly. If he has a number of beautiful
porcelain jars and vases, he has one out at one time, another at another.
A certain vase goes with a certain screen, and every time a change is
made, the daughters of the house receive new lessons in the art of
placing the articles and decking them with flowers and boughs of

blossom in order to gain the most beautiful effect. If a visitor be present
in the house, the guest-chamber will be decorated afresh every day,
each design showing some new and unexpected beauty in screen, or
flower-decked vase, or painted kakemono. There is one vase which is
always carefully supplied with freshly-cut boughs or flowers. This is
the vase which stands before the tokonoma. The tokonoma is a very
quaint feature of a Japanese house. It means a place in which to lay a
bed, and, in theory, is a guest-chamber in which to lodge the Mikado,
the Japanese Emperor. So loyal are the Japanese that every house is
supposed to contain a room ready for the Emperor in case he should
stay at the door and need a night's lodging. The Emperor, of course,
never comes, and so the tokonoma is no more than a name.
Usually it is a recess a few feet long and a few inches wide, and over it
hangs the finest kakemono that the house can afford, and in front of it
is a vase whose flowers are arranged in a traditional form which has a
certain allegorical meaning.
At night a Japanese room is lighted by a candle fixed in a large square
paper lantern, the latter placed on a lacquer stand. The light is very dim,
and many are now replacing it with ordinary European lamps.
Unluckily they buy the very commonest and cheapest of these, and so
in consequence accidents and fires are numerous.
Among the coolies of Japan, the people who fill the back streets of the
large towns with long rows of tiny houses, the process of "moving
house" is absolutely literal. They do not merely carry off their
furniture--that would be simple enough--but they swing up the house
too, carry it off, set their furniture in it again, and resume their
contented family life. It is not at all an uncommon thing to meet a pair
thus engaged in shifting their abode. The man is marching along with a
building of lath and paper, not much bigger than a bathing-machine,
swung on his shoulders, while his wife trudges behind him with two or
three big bundles tied up in blue cloth. He carries the house, and she the
furniture. Within a few hours they will be comfortably settled in the
new street to which their needs or their fancies call them.

CHAPTER VIII
A JAPANESE DAY
The first person astir in a Japanese household is the mistress of the
house. She rises from the quilts on the floor which form her bed and
puts out the lamp, which has been burning all night. No Japanese sleeps
without an andon, a tall paper lamp, in which a dim light burns. Next
she unlocks the amado, the wooden shutters, and calls the servants.
Now the breakfast-table must be set out. In one way this is very simple,
for there is no cloth to spread, for tablecloths are unknown, and when
enough rice has been boiled and enough tea has been made, the
breakfast is ready. But there is one point upon which she must be very
careful. The lacquer rice-bowls and the chopsticks must be set in their
proper order, according to the importance of each person in the family.
The slightest mistake in arranging the position at a meal of any member
of the family or of a guest under the roof would be a matter of the
deepest disgrace. Etiquette is the tyrant of Japan. A slip in the manner
of serving the food is a thousand times more important in Japanese eyes
than the quality of the food itself. A hostess might serve burned rice
and the most shocking tea, but if it were handed round in correct