Chapter II: We Land and Go to Tokyo

No matter by which route one crosses the Pacific, he is almost sure to land first in Yokohama. It is the chief doorway to Japan, at least from the west. Only about fifty years ago it was not much more than a fishing village. But here the American Commodore Matthew C. Perry landed in 1854, and since then it has become one of the world’s great ports. For more than two hundred years before that Japan had been a tightly closed country. Some unfortunate impressions gained of Western people and their ways had made the Japanese Government decide that it would be best to have nothing whatever to do with the rest of the world. So no Japanese were allowed to go abroad, and no foreigners were permitted to land in Japan, except a few traders from Holland, who were kept much like prisoners on a little island in Nagasaki harbor.

Two Japanese girls may ride together quite comfortably in a rickshaw.
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But sometimes it was impossible for foreigners not to land in Japan. There might be a storm at sea, or American fishermen on the ocean might have to stop at one of the Japanese islands to get drinking water. It was not right that these seamen, forced to land in the island empire, should be treated as criminals, sometimes even executed. So the United States Government sent Commodore Perry, first with a few ships, the next year with a whole fleet, to try to persuade the Japanese to make a treaty with us. The Japanese were asked to allow Americans to trade with them, and to promise that they would treat properly any of our sailors who happened to land on their shores. To show the Japanese what the outside world had learned since Japan had shut its doors, Commodore Perry brought and set up on the beach of Yokohama a whole railway train, though of almost toy size. The curious Japanese used to sit on the top of the cars for a ride, in order to try out this strange invention. The Commodore showed them many other interesting things. Finally the treaty was signed that opened Japan again to the outside world, and to-day it has railways and other Western conveniences, and foreigners of any nation now travel as safely in Japan as at home.

About the only reason for not landing first in Yokohama after crossing the Pacific would be because it had been destroyed, and that is exactly what happened to that great port at noon on September 1, 1923. A sudden earthquake, followed by a great fire, almost completely destroyed the city in an hour or two, and for some time after that ocean steamers went right past, and made Kobe their first port of call. There have often been earthquakes followed by fires in Japan, but this one that fell upon all the region about Tokyo Bay on that late summer day was not merely the worst Japan had ever known but has been called “the greatest disaster in history.” How many thousands of people were crushed or otherwise killed in the thousands of buildings that fell, never will be exactly known. Hundreds of people were saved by the American and British ships in the harbor; thousands of others rushed away into any open space they could reach, while the ground was still heaving like a sea under their feet. For days, in fact weeks, afterward the people who remained had to live as best they could among the tumbled ruins, and eat whatever the government and other agencies could get to them. For days there was not even water. All the water-mains had been broken, and all sorts of diseases broke out among the houseless survivors. The Japanese government finally announced that 192,000 people had been killed by the earthquake, in one way or another. Some people claim there were many more than that. Among those killed were the American consul and his wife and most of the other American residents of Yokohama, as well as foreigners of many other countries.

Great Changes in Two Years

I have been through Japan three times, the first and last visits twenty years apart. But of all changes I have seen, those in Yokohama—between a year before the earthquake and a year after it—were the greatest. The big modern city had become a large scattered village of low wooden houses, almost shacks. Eight-story buildings of brick and stone were either gone entirely or were smoke-blackened shells half filled with heaps of bricks and what had once been office walls and furniture. Even the big foreign steamship lines now had offices in little low wooden buildings such as the people were using for houses and shops.

© E. M. Newman, from Publishers Photo Service

The 101 steps of Yokohama, at the top of which is the 101-Step Tea
House. From this height Commodore Perry viewed the city at the time
he was successful in having Japan opened to the world.
]

Funny as well as terrible things happened during that great earthquake. For instance, an American lady who had been out shopping was just taking a bath before lunch when the crash came. Her house fell down, and she went sliding, still in the bathtub, down the slope of the Bluff (the higher part of Yokohama, where nearly all foreign residents live), landing at the edge of the bay unhurt but much embarrassed.

I once had an amusing experience on that same Bluff. It was during my first trip around the world, back in 1905, just after I finished my college course. In those days I was a sailor looking for a ship. I was wandering along the Bluff, among the several streets of big foreign houses, when I discovered that I was lost and did not know the way back to the harbor. I stepped into one of the many neat little police stations that are to be found all over Japan, to inquire the way. But I did not know a word of Japanese, and the courteous policemen knew no English. To-day thousands of Japanese speak our language, and I now know enough of theirs to ask a simple question. But that time we were “stumped.” Then suddenly the head policeman picked up the queer looking Japanese telephone and called a number. When he got it, he handed the instrument to me. Someone at the other end asked me in English, though with a Japanese accent, what I wanted. Later I learned that he was the chief interpreter at police headquarters down in the main city. I explained my trouble, and he asked me to hand the telephone back to the police sergeant beside me. Then he explained to him, in Japanese, what I had come for, and a policeman was sent to show me the way back to the harbor.

But this time we were landing in Yokohama instead of leaving it. We found the great harbor really a part of the large bay of Tokyo, and filled with all kinds of steamers from many countries. A Japanese doctor looked at all of us for signs of illness, since of course no one with a contagious disease could be allowed to enter the country. Then polite Japanese customs officers examined our baggage, to see if we were bringing in anything that should pay duty. For some reason apples are not allowed to be brought in. Perhaps it is because up in the island of Yezo the Japanese themselves raise many good apples (which came originally from American seed). My little boy is very fond of apples, so we had stocked up at Seattle, but the customs officers took away our last half dozen. Yet Japanese returning from California were allowed to bring in whole crates of oranges.

Our passports were soon stamped, and then we were free to go anywhere we liked in Japan. The only thing we must not do, besides the things one should not do in any land, was to take photographs anywhere near forts. I recalled how near I had come to having my camera taken away from me years before in Nagasaki because I did not then know that rule.

The Rickshaw

There were automobiles, and even a few queerlooking horse-carriages waiting for passengers, but we preferred to take rickshaws. At first it seems very strange to ride behind a human steed, to be able to talk to your horse and, instead of using reins, tell him which way to go or when to stop. But the traveler in the Far East soon gets used to it, for wherever he lands he is sure to find a crowd of men with these queer carriages rushing forward to offer their services.

Fourth and first pages of our passport, signed by Charles E. Hughes,
Secretary of State.
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Second and third pages of our passport. The visas were stamped in many
different colors.
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When it rains, the rickshaw is a very handy vehicle, for it can pick
you up at the very door and keep you as dry as a limousine, though
the poor runner may get soaked before your trip is done.
]

“Jinricksha,” the rickshaw’s full name, means “manpower carriage.” The _kuruma_, as the Japanese still more often call the rickshaw, is something like the little sulkies to which trotting horses are hitched. It has wire wheels and pneumatic tires, the wheels much larger and the tires much smaller than those of an automobile. The shafts between which the man runs are, naturally, shorter than those for a horse; there is a comfortable seat wide enough for one person or even for an adult and a child, and a top that can be raised and lowered. The _kurumaya_, or rickshaw-man, usually wears a black jacket like a smock, reaching to his knees, and long tight trousers, ending in black cloth shoes or slippers with a separate compartment for the big toe. When the weather is very warm, his sunburned legs are bare and his feet are simply thrust into sandals made of rice-straw.

The rickshaw is not a Japanese or even an Oriental invention. It was originated by an American missionary. His wife, who was an invalid, found it painful to ride in a _kago_, or seat between two poles on men’s shoulders, such as Japanese used in olden days. So he arranged a kind of enlarged baby-carriage in which she could be pushed or pulled, and from this has developed the rickshaw that has spread over much of Asia and some of Africa. The man from the Western world is reminded of this origin during his first few rides in one of these vehicles. He feels very much as if he were being wheeled about in a baby-carriage. But he quickly finds that the rickshaw is very comfortable and convenient. Its rubber tires and the soft-shod feet of the runner make it almost noiseless; it will take him through narrow streets and into many places where a horse-carriage or an automobile could not go. In time he may even become fond of “widin’ man,” that is, “riding man,” as my small son began calling this means of travel soon after we reached Japan.

Yet most of us from the West never get so used to it that we are not rather sorry for the men who have to play horse to earn their living. Even in Japan, where they do not run very fast and are so well paid that it costs more to cover the same distance in a _kuruma_ than in an automobile, they often cannot do this hard work for more than eight or ten years. In China, where there is so much competition among the millions of rickshaw coolies that they have to run very fast indeed to keep their customers, and where their pay is pitifully low, many of them do not last even that long. There are other dangers in rickshaw running, especially in Japan. For there the roads often go up or down steep hills, and the runner with a passenger heavier than himself is sometimes injured by the _kuruma’s_ running away with him or overturning upon him. When the Prince of Wales was in Japan a few years ago he put one of his companions in a rickshaw and started to play rickshaw-man. But the street in Nikko where he tried this new occupation became steeper and steeper as he neared the bottom, and the Prince was lucky to get off with only a broken rickshaw.

Japanese Railways

Wise people do not go to foreign countries just to see ports, for ports are never as different from the rest of the world as the country itself. The people who live in seaports meet so many foreigners that they acquire foreign ways. If one wishes to know something about the real people and their country, he must travel inland, far from the places where ocean steamers dock.

Soon we were on our way to Tokyo, the Japanese capital. There are swift electric and steam trains between Yokohama and Tokyo, leaving a very Western-looking station every fifteen minutes or half-hour during the day and much of the night. We might have gone by automobile, perhaps by trolley, even by rickshaw if we had had plenty of time to spare. We chose the train. The railway cars reminded us a little of the toy train that Commodore Perry took with him when he opened Japan to the outside world. The cars were not only small compared to those in America, but they were drawn by a small engine that had no bell and seemed to screech rather than whistle. The Japanese copied their railways mostly from those of England, yet unlike the typical European railway “carriage” their cars are not divided into compartments with two doors to each compartment. Each car is a single room, like our own, with a door at either end. In the third class, where most of the Japanese ride, there are hard wooden seats, set crosswise, with a central aisle, as on our trains. In second and first class, in which most foreigners and the more wealthy Japanese travel, there is one seat along each side of the car, as in old-fashioned street cars.

A Touch of The West

On these long upholstered seats we saw Japanese business men, professors and government officials, dressed almost exactly as such men would be in America or Europe. But many of the passengers were in the costumes of their own country. Almost never did we see a Japanese woman dressed in European fashion, though the Empress and the ladies of the Court dress that way on important public occasions. The women in our car had on long kimonos, some of silk, richly embroidered, with the _obi_, a great sash of bright colors, wrapped about their waists and fastened behind in a bow so enormous that it looked like a sofa pillow. Their jet-black hair was done up in a very elaborate manner, and they wore no hats. Many of the men also wore kimonos, with a sash belt in place of the obi, and the little boys and girls were dressed much like their elders, though in brighter colors.

A railway station in Japan, showing how closely such places resemble
our own stations. Passengers cross the tracks by the covered bridge.
The men in white are Koreans.
]

All these men, women and children stepped out of the wooden sandals worn in place of shoes, and squatted on the long seat with their stockinged feet drawn up under them. The long seat close to the side of the car is more convenient for them than for us of the Western world, for when they wish to look out, they simply kneel with their faces to the windows, their feet and legs under them. Even some of the men in European dress take off their shoes. Beneath the seats are two long lines of shoes and _geta_, or wooden sandals, waiting until their owners want them again. When passengers are ready to leave, those having the native footwear simply step into their clogs (held by a cord passing between the big toe and the other toes) and away they scrape.

Until we got used to it, perhaps the queerest thing about being in Japan was to realize that now it was _we_ who were the foreigners, instead of those who would have been so in our country. We were objects of curiosity to these almond-eyed, yellow-faced people who to us seemed queerly dressed. If you were like some foreigners in Japan, you might think that the Japanese were sorry not to be like you, that they would prefer to be American or English or French. But you would soon find that they are just as proud of being Japanese as you are of being American, and that they would not change any more than you would. You can see that this is just as it should be, for the people of every country should think of it as better than any other—and strive to make it better still.

A bride being taken by her mother to her future husband. She wears a
white headdress and keeps to the old customs and costume, even
though she rides in a very up-to-date train.
]

As we looked out the train windows we noticed that Japan had copied many things from the West. There were big warehouses and factories and scores of telegraph lines carried on several rows of poles, such as one would see in America or Europe. To be sure, the bright green rice fields were not like our fields, and certainly the men and women were very different in appearance from those we had seen working in American fields as we raced across the continent. They wore great straw or woven-reed hats that looked like parasols without handles. Their kimonos or smocks were pulled up about their waists and tucked into their belts, and their bare legs were often knee-deep in the muddy fields as they hoed or weeded the growing rice. Women work in the fields as much as the men. There were many villages of small thatched houses and some orchards in which the trees seemed strangely tiny. We noticed that some of the trees were trained on a trellis so as to form a shady roof over summer houses or verandas.

The trip was swift, however. In less than an hour we found ourselves racing between unbroken rows of little houses, some of them dark with age, since they had seldom been painted. Big western buildings rose about us again, we stopped at a suburban station or two, and suddenly we reached the huge stone Shimbashi Station of Tokyo. Outside its entrance rows of automobiles and scores of rickshaws were waiting, and before and around us were the sights and sounds of a big city. It was almost bewildering, even to us who were quite used to traveling in foreign lands.