Chapter IV: Living with the Japanese

When my family and I reached Tokyo, the largest hotel in the city had recently burned down. Since there are few “foreign” hotels in the capital, and many foreigners had come for the cherry-blossom season, we could not get a room. Fortunately I had a letter of introduction to a Japanese business man, and when he had telephoned to every foreign hotel he could think of, without success, he asked one of his employees to give us lodging. The man sent word to his wife that we were coming, and by and by we were taken to our host’s home in the merchant’s automobile.

The house was in Ushigome-ku, one of the most densely populated wards in the Japanese capital. It was much like the homes of thousands of his neighbors, resembling a large wooden box with a tile roof, and set back from the street in a pretty little garden. Across the front of it was a veranda, raised about two feet above the ground and carpeted with grass mats, like those in the Japanese shops.

When we approached, the whole family came out to the edge of the veranda to greet us. There was the old grandmother, the wife, and three children, all dressed in kimonos and in their stocking feet. Even the man, who had hurried home ahead of us, now wore a kimono. For, while many of the business men of Japan, and the government officials, wear European clothing at their offices, they change to their more comfortable native costume when they get home in the evening. All the family stood in a row and bowed very low to us several times, each time rubbing their thighs with their hands, which is a form of Japanese politeness. We had to sit down on the edge of the veranda and take off our shoes. To go into a Japanese house with shoes on is very bad manners indeed. We were ashamed to find that there was a hole or two in our stockings. That never happens among the Japanese, for they know that the feet of their stockings will be seen by other people many times a day. When we had left our shoes on the ground along the edge of the veranda, we went inside.

Downstairs this family had a small living room with a wooden floor. In it were a foreign table and chairs, contrary to the Japanese custom. Bowls of sweetmeats—candied fruits, preserved ginger, and other Japanese delicacies—were set before us. The family were very kind, but as we could not talk to them we had to do the best we could with signs. The Japanese do not often use signs, and they had hard work understanding ours. If we pointed at a thing, they might come and examine the finger we were pointing with, rather than notice what we were pointing at. Our little boy became very restless and wanted to run about the house. But we had to stop him, because all the inside walls were made of paper and he might have run through them.

© E. M. Newman, from Publishers Photo Service

Japanese ladies in their best dress gathered about the tea service or
dinner, which is always eaten on the floor.
]

By and by we were taken to our room upstairs, reached by a very steep and narrow stairway. It was large enough for a dozen people, yet there was not a single piece of furniture in it, nor anything else! The floor was covered with thick, soft grass matting, the walls were of rice paper on little wooden frames, and the ceiling looked quite frail. On some of the walls bamboos and flowers and birds were painted. These surroundings interested us, but we were all hungry and we looked forward eagerly to supper.

A Japanese Meal

Presently a servant girl entered noiselessly with three cushions and laid them on the floor. We were expected to kneel on these instead of sitting on chairs. Quite a time went by, and then the girl appeared again, carrying a little table, with legs hardly a foot high. Before long she slipped in a third time and brought us food. There was a small wooden tub with a cover, which she placed on the floor beside the table. On the table itself she put several dishes of strange looking food and, kneeling down beside us, began to serve our dinner. When she took the cover off the wooden tub we saw that it was full to the brim of steaming hot rice. She ladled some of this into three bowls, using a wooden scoop, and set them before us. There was no sugar, no milk, no water, no salt and pepper, no butter, no bread; and there were no knives, forks, or spoons. Instead, we were each given two slender sticks, like long lead-pencils. Fortunately we also had a utensil made of porcelain that looked something like a spoon, or our small boy, at least, might not have been able to eat at all.

We were supposed to begin with bowls of soup, an almost raw egg in each. Then we had stewed seaweed, black beans that rolled around as we tried to pick them up one at a time with the chopsticks, and several other things that were not at all like our American food. The pickled raw fish we simply could not eat. Our distaste for this dish amused the servant. She kept filling our rice-bowls from the wooden tub every time we had eaten a few mouthfuls of the soft but almost dry rice. The Japanese often eat five or six bowls of rice at a meal, and the servant could not understand our small appetite for what in Japan takes the place of bread. If you have been used to bread all your life you will be surprised to find how hard it is to eat a meal without it. There is some rather poorly baked bread in Japan, but outside the foreign hotels not many people eat it.

In time we became quite used to Japanese food, and liked some of it, especially the omelets that are not very different from ours. But that evening I am afraid we went to bed rather hungry, in spite of the kindness of our hosts. It was a long time before we got to bed, too, and to tell the truth what we finally lay down on were not really _beds_ at all. The servant carried out all the food, all the dishes, and even the table. While we squatted rather forlornly in the middle of the big bare room, my son fell asleep, with his head on his cushion.

To pass the time we stepped to the half-open paper wall at the back and looked across the garden and a little gorge behind the house, upon the crowded ward of Ushigome. Hundreds of electric lights shone among the thousands of little wooden houses, especially along the streets lined with shops. There a great crowd seemed to be moving back and forth, for we could hear the scraping of thousands of _geta_, mingling together like a great chorus. Later I went out to one of the shopping streets and found it completely filled with Japanese, all in their native costumes, from one side of open shop-fronts to the other, so that it looked like an endless river of people flowing back and forth.

How They Sleep in Japan

Photo from Keystone View Co., Inc., of N. Y.

A Japanese bedroom, which will be a living room in the daytime. The
bed consists of quilts laid on the mat-covered floor, with a pillow
as hard as a brick to protect the women’s hair-dress.
]

But at last the servant came in again, this time bringing a huge armful of thick quilts. She laid these, one on top of another, on the floor, and placed at one end of the pile three hard little bags that seemed to be filled with dry beans. These we were expected to use as pillows. The Japanese are so fond of hard pillows that many of them use wooden ones. Then she put up a huge mosquito-net, fastening its corners to the corners of the room, which was almost completely filled with it. Before she had quite finished, however, the grandmother came in and ordered her to take all the quilts out again. Though we could not understand the old lady’s words, we made out from her actions and her voice that she was scolding the servant for having given guests from far-off America cotton quilts instead of the best silk ones. The girl then brought beautiful silk-covered quilts and made the bed all over again.

The grandmother gave us to understand that there was a bathroom downstairs, and I decided to have a bath before retiring. I found a long narrow room, with a wooden floor containing several little tubs. One side was taken up by a large square wooden tank filled to the brim with steaming water and almost five feet deep. This water was heated by a fire under the tank, beneath the house, and it was so hot that I nearly scalded a foot when I started to step into it. The Japanese like their baths very hot, and they get used to bathing in water which an American could hardly dip his hands in. Their way of bathing is to fill one of the little wooden tubs with hot water from the tank, soap and scrub themselves thoroughly, rinse, and then get into the tank and soak until they look as if they had been boiled. When the soaking is finished, the bather pours cold water over himself with another of the little wooden basins, and dries and dresses himself. Several persons may use the tank at the same time, but we do the same thing in our swimming pools.

When I returned to our room it seemed very “stuffy.” I found that the servant had closed all the paper walls, and also the sliding wooden walls on the outside of the house. These wooden walls are made of many sections, and during the day are kept in narrow spaces partitioned off for them at the corners of the house. At night everything is shut as tight as a drum, for the Japanese think it is not good for the health to let night air into a sleeping-room. I noticed that the bright electric light hanging from the ceiling had not been turned off and remembered that most Japanese do not like to sleep in complete darkness. There are many people like that, in all lands, just as there are millions who shut out the night air when they sleep.

As our family’s likes and dislikes were the opposite, I turned off the light and found a way to open the wooden outer wall. But our hosts must have been watching, afraid, perhaps, that some harm would come to us under their roof. For I had hardly dropped asleep when I heard someone come in, close the wall again, and turn on the light. I saw it was the grandmother. Two or three times more I switched off the light and let in some air, but the worried old lady would not let us run such risks. At last I took the electric bulb out of its socket, and she finally seemed to understand that we did not like to sleep in a lighted room. But I could not find any way to persuade her to let the night air come in, and we therefore had a very restless sleep.

Up with the Sun

We were not allowed to lie abed late in the morning. Almost before daylight, we were awakened by a great banging and slamming, and found the servants opening the outer walls and putting them away section by section in the places for them at the corners of the house. The _shoji_, or paper walls, were also opened all about us, and we felt so embarrassed, lying on the floor in the center of the open house, that we quickly rose and dressed. The tub of steaming rice, and some other food much like that of the evening before, was brought in, and we did our best to breakfast on a meal that was not in the least like the one we would have had at that hour at home. It was delightful now to sit on the soft mats and cushions—for the servant had carried off the quilts and beanbags that had formed our bed—and look out into the garden, its flowers and shrubs brilliant in the sunshine, a bird here and there gaily singing.

We decided that there are pleasant and unpleasant things in every land. When I am asked in which of the many countries I have visited I would prefer to make my home, I answer that I would like to take certain things from this country, and that country, and other countries, and put them all together into one that would have only pleasant features and no unpleasant ones. Some of the nice things I would borrow from Japan. For instance, it seems very good to leave one’s shoes, with all the dust and mud of the street, at the door rather than to bring them into the house. Frail paper walls are fine when a bright sun is shining through them, or when they can be opened wide on a pretty garden. But it is not so pleasant to have to be careful all the time not to put your hand or your elbow through the wall of the house! It is convenient to be able to fold one’s bed and lay it away out of sight during the day, and furniture sometimes is a bother. Still, one would like a few bureau drawers and closets and hooks, instead of having to hang everything on the floor, so to speak. Those of us who have not been trained to it from childhood find it rather difficult, also, to squat on our haunches on a cushion instead of sitting in a chair. When the average American man stands up in a Japanese house he feels enormous, like Gulliver among the Lilliputians. Perhaps the most unpleasant thing about Japanese living, to us of the western hemisphere, is that there is never any privacy about it. Nobody knocks and there are no doors to lock. Anyone in the house may push aside the walls of your room and leave it no room at all! Someone may even walk into the bathroom when you are taking a bath! The Japanese think nothing of being seen without their clothing, perhaps because they have lived all these centuries in paper houses, with sliding walls. Then, too, the houses are seldom quiet. You can hear everyone else every time he moves or speaks. So, though the Japanese are not a noisy race, seldom quarreling and not much given to chatter, people who mind noise will not enjoy living in a Japanese house.

Japanese Hotels

We never again lived in the home of a wholly Japanese family, but in traveling about the country I stopped in many a Japanese hotel or inn that was quite like that Tokyo home. The hotels for foreigners in Japan are stone or brick or wooden buildings such as we have in America. I always feel sorry, however, for the traveler through the Japanese Empire who stops only in these, living much as he would at home. He misses a great deal that is interesting by not staying in genuine Japanese inns, which he would find not at all bad when he got used to them.

The typical Japanese hotel is a building much like one of the family homes, except that it is larger. It has the same sliding paper walls, the same wooden outer walls that can be pushed aside during the day. The floors are covered with mats, the chairs are cushions and the beds are quilts piled one on top of another. As in the home, the electric lights are kept blazing all night and not a crack is left for the night air.

Let us suppose that we have just stepped off the train in some Japanese city where there is no foreign hotel, or that we have decided to stay at a Japanese inn. We might call the city Hiroshima, since that is where all that is to follow first happened to me, many years ago. As I was weary of sitting still on the train, I declined the offers of the half hundred rickshaw-men at the station, and walked to the hotel. I knew I should have to depend on the sign language there, but I thought I could manage it. The front of the hotel I chose was wide open, with a raised, mat-covered floor the whole length of it. I had hardly stepped up to this when the hotel owner or manager, several young men who seemed to be his assistants, and half a dozen servant-girls ran forward noiselessly and all began bowing to me, over and over again. They were all smiling, for it is a part of Japanese politeness to show only a happy exterior, no matter how sad one may be.

This time my shoes, and the _geta_ of the other guests, were put into a kind of closet near the door; perhaps to prevent their being stolen, for of course there are thieves in Japan, as in every other country. The room to which I was taken upstairs was very much like that in the home of our Tokyo hosts. Along one side of it was a little veranda overhanging a large and busy street of the town. On the opposite side was another veranda, above a pretty little courtyard which was completely surrounded by the hotel. In this courtyard there were dwarf pine trees and other small trees trained into strange shapes, a little fountain with its jet of water flashing in the sunshine and, of course, many flowers and some birds.

In Japanese hotels there are no dining rooms. Each guest has his dinner served in his room, at any hour he likes. When he wants it, he merely claps his hands together three times, and a _nesan_, or “older sister,” appears. That is merely a polite Japanese name for the hotel servant. She falls on her knees, bows her head almost to the floor matting, and then goes to bring the dinner.

© E. M. Newman, from Publishers Photo Service

Many Japanese homes, as well as hotels, parks and other public places,
have little ponds, fountains, evergreen trees, flowers, lanterns,
and other things to beautify them. This is the garden of the hotel
at Miyajima. (See Chapter XI.)
]

The food and the way it was served were much the same in that Hiroshima inn as in the Tokyo home. The servant-girl kept filling my rice-bowl before it was half empty, and as soon as I had drunk my tea from the little cup without a handle, she poured out more. This time there was no seaweed, but there were pickled radishes and lily bulbs, and a kind of salad made of the heart of a small palm tree. One or two of the hot dishes were so much like some we have in American restaurants that they hardly looked strange at all. All the food was brought on a little lacquered tray, except of course the tubful of steamed rice. Then the dining service was whisked away again, and the quilt bed was made up.

A Scarcity of Furniture

There is little more furniture in a Japanese inn room than in one at a home. Sometimes there is a kind of clothes rack, and a curious wooden thing upon which to rest your elbow while you squat on a floor cushion. Possibly there is a tiny writing desk without legs. If it is cold, the servant will bring in a _hibachi_. This is a big brass vase or a square wooden box, filled half with ashes and half with glowing charcoal, which takes the place of a stove in heating a Japanese room. The Japanese have no furnaces, and their houses have no chimneys. Yet all except the more southern islands of the empire have real winters, with snow and ice. Having only these poor little charcoal burners, the people would suffer severely from the cold if it were not for another custom. As the weather becomes colder and colder, they put on more and more cotton-padded kimonos one outside another, so that in midwinter the Japanese look like a much fatter race than they do in summer. Even so, their costumes, their paper houses, and many of their customs are not suitable for wintertime. This fact has made some scientists think that the Japanese must originally have come from islands farther south, where it is always summer.

Before turning off the light in my hotel room at Hiroshima, and crawling into my stack of quilts, I noticed that the paper walls were painted not merely with trees and flowers and birds, but with several upright rows of Japanese letters. These were sacred texts or moral sayings taken from the classics, or perhaps pretty poems, all meant to make the guest feel more comfortably surrounded. In the morning the usual early noises wakened me, for the Japanese do not believe in sleeping late, though they often doze during the day.

All Expect Tips

When a guest in a Japanese hotel pays his bill, he must remember that everyone who has in any way served him expects a tip, not even excepting the owner or manager himself. Guests in Japanese inns often pay out as much in presents to the people who have waited on them as they do for the night’s lodging and food. The inn people will all be there to wish the traveler good-by, just as they welcomed him, all standing in a row at the door, bowing low and rubbing their thighs politely. In olden times no guest ever left a _yadoya_, or Japanese inn, without also being given a present. It might be a fan, a small towel with a bit of Japanese scenery painted on it, or a brightly colored yard of cloth for carrying small articles in the way they often are carried in Japan. But things have grown so expensive in Japan, just as they have in other countries, that now the innkeeper can hardly afford to give a departing guest any souvenir more expensive than a tissue-paper napkin or a painted card. Yet he cordially invites the guest to come again.

There are some things about Japanese hotels with which a fussy person can find fault. There are a few things that are very annoying. But of one thing the guest may be sure—there will be no indifference shown him by the hotel people. All, from the manager to the coolie or _nesan_ who tries to help him take his bath, will do their best to serve him perfectly, foresee his wants, and keep cheerful and smiling in his presence. Therefore one does not begrudge the tips.