Chapter I: Front Matter

GLIMPSES OF JAPAN
AND FORMOSA

GLIMPSES OF JAPAN AND FORMOSA

BY

HARRY A. FRANCK

AUTHOR OF “FOUR MONTHS AFOOT IN SPAIN,” “ZONE POLICEMAN 88,” “TRAMPING
THROUGH MEXICO,” ETC., ETC.

WITH SOME KODAK SNAPSHOTS BY THE AUTHOR

THE CENTURY CO.
NEW YORK & LONDON

Copyright, 1924, by
THE CENTURY CO.

Printed in U. S. A.

ILLUSTRATIONS

A pilgrim of Koya-san, with full equipment of staff,
bell, begging-bowl, pilgrim’s specified pack, and all
the rest _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
The American-like main street of Sapporo, capital of
Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan proper 16
A street-lamp, a mail-box, and an American-copied
baby-carriage before a shop of Sapporo 16
The old Ainu chief who threatened to crown me with a
plow 17
The younger Ainu chief of another village, in ceremonial
garb 17
An Ainu who has come into close contact with Japanese
civilization 32
An Ainu girl of the younger, unmustached generation 32
The older Ainu women of the primitive tribe of northern
Japan have flaring blue tattooed mustaches—but they
are almost invisible to the camera 33
Preparing to propitiate the gods, and the neighbors, in
favor of a new building in Hokkaido, where religious
custom remains even if architecture changes; this
ceremony seems always to take place at sunset 33
An Ainu working in his front garden 36
Ainus mending their fishing utensils 36
A typical Ainu hut—and kodak-shy Ainu children
scrambling for coppers 37
In the American-like north island of Japan a Shinto
shrine or a Buddhist temple here and there is almost
the only touch of Oriental architecture 37
The sacred red lacquer bridge at Nikko 44
A quiet corner of the temples of Nikko 45
A Shinto priest (if the word fits) of Nikko 48
The tomb of Iemitsu, founder of the Nikko shrines, and
the holy of holies of its great group of temples,
photographed only by stealth 48
Not a palace garden, but the entrance to a house of
prostitution in Tokio’s Yoshiwara 49
The front of a Yoshiwara house in Tokio, with the usual
advertising features of large framed photographs of
the inmates, two of whom appear in person behind the
railing, one hiding behind a newspaper rather than be
photographed. The sign reads “3-yen two-storied
natural inn” 49
Approaching the great Buddha of Kamakura, which stood
through the earthquake of September 1, 1923 52
Thus the great Buddha gazed down through the ages with
what strikes the Western beholder as indifference to
the woe or weal of puny mankind 53
Venders of food and religious trinkets line with their
shops the shaded walks of the island of Enoshima 60
The leglessness of Japanese houses! A corner of our room
in the Japanese hotel at Kozu 61
The façade of a moving-picture theater in Nagoya 61
Farming in Japan rice-fields is a great life—if you
don’t weaken 64
A Japanese woman enjoying her pipe and the seascape at
Toba 64
Little girls of Yamada-Isé dressed in a riot of color,
topped by hats of real flowers, for the
twenty-one-yearly rebuilding festivities 65
A peasant woman of Japan up to her knees in work 65
Residents of Yamada-Isé garbed for the cart-drawing
festival. Brilliant colors characterize the clothing;
the torn-paper “duster” is a frequent Shinto motif 80
Inside the grounds of the Naigu, most sacred of all the
Shinto temple groups of Japan, all pilgrims purify
themselves by washing in the sacred river before
proceeding to their devotions; photography is strictly
forbidden 80
A small section of the long line of rope-pullers
returning with a sacred timber from the river to the
temple rebuilding 81
At last the sacred timber itself, wrapped in grass mats
to prevent any injury, came creaking and grinding
around the corner of a narrow, winding street 81
Though cremation is much more common than burial, a
Japanese cemetery bears no small resemblance to one of
our own 84
Within the grounds of the finest of Koto’s temples 84
Hundreds of semi-sacred deer roam at will about Nara and
vicinity, recalling the sacred bulls of India 85
The entrance to the ever-higher temples of Nara 85
The _basha_ is still the most rapid and aristocratic
means of conveyance in many parts of Japan 88
Some of my fellow-pilgrims on the climb to Koya-san; it
is as usual to hire women carriers as men in this part
of Japan 88
No small number of pilgrims to the sacred mountain climb
by the exertions of others 89
Pilgrims—in real life lawyers, doctors, dentists,
business men of Japan’s second largest city—climb
Koya-san with all the customary accoutrement, led at
the end by the young Buddhist priest who took me in as
guest 92
Women pilgrims arriving at the entrance to the miles of
temples, tombs, and the like on Koya-san, a point
beyond which, up to half a century ago, no member of
the fair sex was allowed to pass 92
Two pilgrims to Koya-san 93
The shrine in our garden at Beppu 93
Descending, satisfied pilgrims sometimes suggest the
knights of ancient days 96
Beggars along the ascent to Koya-san have all sorts of
schemes to attract attention, and charity 97
Three Buddhist novices and a temple bookkeeper, my
guides, philosophers, and friends during my stay
there, bid me farewell to Koya-san 100
Pilgrims descending from a train on their return from
Koya-san 100
Dotombori, the theater and “movie” street of Osaka 101
Osaka Castle is perhaps the most impressive in Japan 101
In building a Japanese bridge the first thing needed is
a compact framework of bamboo tied with vines 108
Making paper from mulberry-leaves by spreading the
sheets on boards out in the blazing sunshine of
southern Japan 108
Stripping off the _kozu_, or mulberry-leaf paper, when
dry; among other things it is used in making Japanese
parasols 109
Bringing in the sheaves from a Japanese rice-field 109
Japanese threshing usually consists of beating the heads
of bundles of grain on a round stone 112
After it has been winnowed by the wind and swept up, the
rice or other grain is spread out on grass mats to dry
in the sunshine 112
The never-failing picturesqueness of Miyajima 113
After all, this is almost all there is worth while at
Miyajima nowadays 113
There are no rickshaws on the island of Miyajima; hence
we had to trust even our most precious belongings to a
_ninguruma_, or baggage-cart 120
A view of Beppu, famed for its hot springs, at the head
of the Inland Sea, on Kyushu, southernmost island of
Japan proper 121
A Shinto monument, with the famous watering-place of
Beppu in the background 121
A peasant’s house near Beppu, with hot water for bathing
and heat for cooking perpetually furnished by nature,
there being a live volcano near at hand 128
The terraced hills of Kyushu are even more remarkable
than those of the main island 128
A glimpse of Nagasaki through the loggia of a hilltop
temple 129
A stream which languishes through Nagasaki furnishes a
drying-place for new parasols 132
A glimpse of Kagoshima, southernmost city of Japan
proper, with its island volcano of Sakurajima in its
splendid harbor 133
A memorial in the park of Kagoshima to the old-fashioned
men who perished in the Satsuma rebellion, an attempt
to halt the restoration and keep Japan closed to the
outside world 140
The workhorse saddles of Kagoshima are gaily decorated
in red and gold 140
Government House at Taihoku, capital of Formosa 141
One often wonders if the Japanese have not made the
streets of Formosan cities too broad for its tropical
climate 141
The business streets of Taihoku and other modernized
cities throughout Formosa are lined by shady and more
or less cool arcades 144
Japanese field-day in the streets of the Formosan
capital 144
Formosan ladies of the well-to-do class 145
It takes a sharp eye to tell the country women of
Formosa from their husbands and brothers, since there
is almost complete equality of garb and work 145
The Japanese build Shinto shrines in every Formosan town
of importance, but they have made little progress in
making Shintoists or mikado-worshipers of the
inhabitants 160
The Chinese type of temples and demon-propitiating are
still dearest to the hearts of the Formosans 161
Formosan school-girls waiting for classes to begin in an
ancient temple of Confucius which the Japanese have
turned into a school 176
After all, girls are girls, whether they go to school in
Ward No. 1 or in a former temple of Confucius in
Formosa 176
A group of reassembled Formosan classmates in a small
interior town, ranging now in social scale from
shopkeepers to professors in the capital 177
All the Japanese have left of the old city walls of
Formosa is here and there an ancient gate for
decorative purposes 177
A well-to-do Formosan family in a typical upper-class
railway carriage, identical with those of Japan 180
In third class there are usually several Formosan
country women with a striking head-dress suggestive
of, yet on close examination quite different from,
those of the ladies of Japan 180
To our Western eyes the women of Formosa are seldom
striking beauties 181
Baby rides in Formosa much as he does in Japan 181
A Formosan funeral 188
After the low, squat ones of China, the Japanese
rickshaws of Formosa seem lofty not merely in price 189
Flowers on their way to an ancestral temple 189
The Japanese furnish excellent school accommodations
throughout Formosa, at least to their own children 192
Japanese boys on their way to school in southern Formosa 192
The Japanese say that they themselves cannot distinguish
the reformed head-hunters of Formosa from their own
country people. But for the teacher and two children
in the front row these are all of the wild mountain
tribes, the tallest man and his little boy in front of
him being both in the first grade 193
Former head-hunters more or less domesticated during
years of labor in the camphor camps of the Japanese 193
A typical house of the savages of Formosa, built in a
coast city as a lodging for those who can be induced
to visit it 208
The savages and head-hunters of the Formosan interior
build their homes of slate, sometimes filled in with
slabs of wood and other stone 208
A semi-domesticated couple from the head-hunting tribes 209
It is typical of wild tribes the world over that the
women do all the carrying and most of the other hard
work 209
Young braves of a wild Formosan tribe, whom he who cares
to keep his head might do well to avoid meeting far
from the protecting Japanese overlords 224
A Japanized woman from the mountain-dwelling tribes of
Formosa 225
One might not think to look at her that her father
probably had a dozen or more trophies in his
slate-built skull-cupboard 225

GLIMPSES OF JAPAN AND FORMOSA