Chapter III: Life in the Japanese Capital

Although it is one of the great cities of the world, with more than two million people, Tokyo is mostly a low, flat city. The people long thought that by building very small houses they would not suffer so much from the frequent earthquakes. But in the great disaster of 1923 it was the American-style buildings, of stone or brick with steel frames, that stood up best. Even if the little wooden houses were not overthrown by the earthquake, they were quickly devoured in the great fire that followed it.

We saw many signs of the earthquake in Tokyo, as in Yokohama. Whole sections of the city were still gleaming new, because the hundreds of little unpainted wooden houses in it had so recently been rebuilt. In places only the charred walls of big stone or brick buildings remained. But Tokyo was not so completely destroyed as its port, and much of the city looked quite as it had on an earlier visit. Perhaps because they are so used to fires and earthquakes, the Japanese had quickly restored their capital after the great calamity. Certainly it was surprising to see how much of the city was rebuilt only a year later.

The streets of the Japanese capital have rougher pavements than our own, and no sidewalks. The people simply walk in the street itself, mingling with the hundreds of rickshaws and the many automobiles, which, we noticed, are almost all American; the Japanese do not seem to make motor cars. Trolley-cars run everywhere, but these we found more uncomfortable than in our American cities. They are small and short, so that they bob about a good deal. The hard wooden seats are not easy to sit on—but the cars are so crowded that most of the passengers have to stand up anyway. Besides, whenever it rains, as it does often in Tokyo, the car floors become covered with mud carried in by the passengers’ wooden clogs.

However, it is always delightful to travel by rickshaw, or even on foot when the sun is bright and the sky clear. In wandering about the city, we saw tall, slender towers high above everything else, with what seemed to be policemen peering out of them. Our Japanese friends told us these were places from which to watch for fires, somewhat like the lookouts of our forest rangers. It is a question whether a fire could burn faster in one of our great forests than in these patches of thousands of little wooden houses that the fire-watchers of Tokyo look down upon day and night. We came across several big parks, with many splendid trees, and one of them was a sea of pink cherry blossoms. Japan is a beautiful place indeed during cherry-blossom time in the spring, and the people have many festivities. Once I was there in the autumn, when the chrysanthemums were in bloom, and in the midst of these big bright blossoms another festival was held.

The Imperial Palace

© E. M. Newman, from Publishers Photo Service

The moat, walls, and watch towers of the imperial palace at Tokyo.
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The Emperor’s palace, within its two moats and walls in the center of the city, is not open to anyone who wishes to visit it. Not only foreigners but the Japanese themselves have to wait for a formal written invitation to visit even the grounds. Such invitations are sometimes sent for lawn festivals. As Emperor Yoshihito was ill for some years before his death in 1926, his eldest son, Crown Prince Hirohito, was a leader in state and social affairs even before succeeding to the throne. Hirohito once made a trip around the world, the first future Emperor of Japan to leave his native land. He visited New York, and a few other American cities; but he is said to feel much more at home within the walls of the imperial palaces. The people of Japan greatly honor their Emperor. Most of them, in fact, consider him sacred, descended from the Japanese gods, and worship him in their temples and schools. He is so holy to them that the common people cannot call him anything more familiar than “Mikado,” which means “honorable gate”; that is, the gate of the palace or of the palace grounds.

The earthquake, however, had no such queer notions, and it did some damage in the palace grounds as well as outside. We saw workmen rebuilding a part of the great outer wall that had been overthrown. The moats about the imperial grounds are broad, and the water seems to be deep, though lilies and other flowers blossom on the surface of it at certain seasons. The walls are massive, made of large stones carefully set together; and the grassy slopes beyond them show that crowds are never allowed to intrude upon the imperial household. In the olden days, when guns were unknown in fighting, these moats and walls were a real protection to the Emperor. Now he must depend more on his big modern army, and the respect his people have for him.

The Japanese Government

One can hardly be in the capital of any country without wondering just how it is governed. Except that it is hard to imagine the Japanese having a president in place of their sacred Mikado, there are many things about the government similar to our own, though it is even more like the British Government. The two Houses of Parliament resemble our Congress, and the Cabinet has very nearly the same officers as ours, except that they are called Ministers instead of Secretaries. Back of all the other parts of the government, and not often seen, is a small group of wise old men called the “elder statesmen,” who have much power.

The common people of Japan do not have as much to do with governing their country as our people do with governing ours, but they are gradually gaining in influence. Recently nearly all men were given the right to vote, and there are some who believe that before many years the women, too, will be allowed to go to the polls. That would be a great change indeed from the day, hardly three-quarters of a century ago, when Commodore Perry came to Japan. Then there was a feudal system, like that in Europe in the Middle Ages, and the ordinary people had very few rights. The lords, who were called _daimyos_, had divided the country up among them, and ruled it with their _samurai_, a caste of men who could never be anything but soldiers. The Emperor was then considered too sacred even to rule, and was kept shut up in his palace in another part of Japan, while the _shogun_, or head of the Japanese army, was the real ruler. The people had nothing whatever to do with the government except to obey the laws and pay very heavy taxes.

A venerable Japanese man, wearing his hair in the style of olden days.
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Roaming about Tokyo, and later about the rest of the Empire, we often saw things to indicate that the government of Japan is a very good one. Its army and navy look just as well disciplined and equipped as our own or any in Europe. Its postal system is quite as efficient as any other. In the streets of the capital we sometimes saw the postmen in their blue cotton uniforms and straw sandals, running from house to house, or from one corner mail box to another, in their hurry to get all their work done. In Tokyo and the other cities, and sometimes out in the country, we saw policemen in spotless uniforms who did their duty seriously and efficiently. In fact, all the Japanese who work for the government are very diligent, for they consider that they are working for their sacred Mikado.

An Interesting Experience

I had quite a long experience with the policemen of Japan at the time of the war between Japan and Russia. Toward the end of that war I landed in Nagasaki on my way homeward in a trip around the world. As I had been earning my way, much of it as a sailor, I suppose I must have looked like a suspicious character to the Japanese police. To make things worse, I was wearing an old khaki uniform, and as I had little money I set out to walk through the country, or at least through the main island. Nearly every policeman I met seemed to take me either for a Russian spy or an escaped prisoner of war, and during my thirty-six days in the country I was arrested forty-eight times!

But the situation was not as bad as this sounds, for the Japanese police are courteous as well as efficient. If I went out to see the sights of a city, to visit a temple or take a train, or started into the country on foot, a policeman was almost sure to step up to me and tell me by signs that I was under arrest. But he did not shake a club at me or drag me off by force to the police station. (Japanese policemen do not carry clubs, anyway, but short swords.) Instead, he would trail along beside or behind me until he met another policeman, and then one of them would run off to the police station while the other stayed with me. By and by the man who had gone away would come back with a police interpreter, who would read questions in English to me out of a little book, pronouncing the words very queerly. As soon as he found that I could speak English, he took my word for it that I was an “Amerikajin,” or American man, and would apologize for having troubled me. Yet perhaps within half an hour another policeman would start following me, and the whole thing would happen over again.

Several times policemen in civilian clothes trailed me from one town to another, and once I walked forty-six miles in a single day in an attempt to tire out the man who was following me. But even then he continued to be polite, and the country people who crowded around me, although believing I was a Russian, never tried to do me any harm. Only once during these forty-eight arrests did the police stop me from going where I wished. That time they insisted that I get off a train before they would let it start, and kept me in the station waiting-room until the interpreter came; and when he came he apologized.

Japanese Stores and Streets

I suppose most Americans visiting Tokyo are more interested in the people and their streets, shops, and homes than in the Mikado and his palace. I am sure we were. Most of the stores are small, like the houses, and open wide on the street, for the front wall is pushed aside like a great door during the day and evening. The floor is raised two or three feet above the ground and is covered with grass mats; and on this the shopkeepers squat, whether they are attending to customers or writing up their accounts. They have tiny little desks, without legs, to write upon. Their wooden sandals are left on the ground before the shop. Generally the customers stand in the street at the edge of the shop floor and do their buying there. If they go inside, they also step out of their sandals and walk about or squat on the mat-covered floor in their stocking feet. The stockings are always mitten-shaped, and usually they reach only to the ankle.

There are also some big department stores in Tokyo, one or two of them several stories high. In these also the floors are covered with mats, or are as highly polished as a piano, and Japanese customers leave their clogs at the door. There, as in our check rooms, boys or girls take care of them. When a foreigner, or a Japanese in American dress, comes in, the employees cover his shoes with cloth overshoes so that he may walk about without soiling or scratching the floor. These department stores are very neat, and as orderly as a museum. Nearly all their goods, of course, are Japanese, but the stores themselves are just as up-to-date as our own, even having interpreters who speak English.

The streets of Tokyo have their own special noise, which is not like the noise of our cities. As nearly everyone wears _geta_, or wooden clogs, the scrape of these on the pavements raises a great din wherever there is a crowd. When it rains, nearly everybody carries an umbrella, usually one made of waterproof paper. In order to keep their feet out of the water and mud, the people put on higher and higher wooden clogs, so that in very bad weather they all look as if they were walking on stilts. The high clogs seem very awkward and a foreigner could hardly walk in them at all; but nearly all Japanese prefer them to shoes. The rickshaw-men and those who draw carts or canal boats, not being able to carry umbrellas, wear raincoats or capes made of grass or palm leaves, and splash along barefoot or in straw sandals.

When rain does not settle the dust, the streets of Tokyo are sprinkled by hand. They swarm with people who would look very strange indeed in the streets of our own country. Hawkers run about shouting strange words to attract customers. The newsboys of Tokyo run too, but instead of calling out the names of their papers they wear a cluster of bells that jingle as they trot, and everyone knows what they have for sale. But, unlike many other cities we were to see before leaving Asia, the Japanese capital has telephones and telegraph stations, plenty of electric light, and other things which Westerners expect in a big busy city.