Kobe

“ One goes from Kobé to Arima by jinrikisha, and starting in the dew and freshness of a summer morning at six o’clock, we reached the grateful shade of the Taiko’s maple in the tea-house garden soon after nine. As we rose by degrees through the suburbs of Kobé, and drew nearer its glorious green hill-wall, we had a superb view of the opaline bay, set with the black hulls of great merchant ships, the white ones of foreign men-of-war, and dotted with the square white sails of hundreds of junks and fishing-boats. ”

“ But at Yokohama, Blake hurried ashore in a sampan, met an agent who seemed to be awaiting him, and caught a train for Kobe. He hurried on, indifferent to the beauties of the country through which he wound, unimpressed by the oddities of the civilization with which he found himself confronted. His mind, intent on one thing, seemed unable to react to the stimuli of side-issues. From Kobe he caught a Toyo Kisen Kaisha steamer for Nagasaki and Shanghai. This steamer, he found, lay over at the former port for thirteen hours, so he shifted again to an outbound boat headed for Woosung. ”

“ Kobe is one of the most attractive cities in the empire, being built on a pretty harbor, with the land rising like an amphitheater. Scores of handsome residences are scattered over the foothills near the sea. Those on the lower side of the streets that run parallel to the harbor have gardens walled up on the rear, while the houses on the upper side of the streets have massive retaining walls. These give opportunity for many ornamental gateways. ”

“ Kobe is one of the treaty ports of Japan, and nowadays is reputed to do more foreign trade than any of the others. One can imagine Kobe being a very pleasant and desirable place to live; the foreign settlement is quite extensive, the surroundings attractive, and the climate mild and healthful. ”

“ Kobe seems well situated at the foot of a range of hills—one peak having still snow on it. There was at Kobe a rumour of the death of Li Hung Chang, but it was incorrect. This personage was constantly dying and always being dug up again. But I wonder if Chinese ever die?
I had left Shanghai at about midday on a Monday, and on Saturday evening was installed at the Grand Hotel in Yokohama, which town at first view presents no interesting features. But that day I had my first view of the world-famous Fujiyama, or “Fuji,” as every one calls it, and its fame is well deserved. ”

“ Farmers, while taking in their rice or plowing their fields, work with the water and thick black mud up to their knees.
Kobe is the foreign name applied to Hyogo, the treaty-port. It is next to Yokohama in commercial importance. The foreigners in Kobe—English, German and American—have a very pleasant club, and pretty bungalows on the hills back of the town. A beautiful waterfall and the Temple of the Moon are not far away.
Maiko, in the province of Harima, is one of the most enchanting spots in this part of Japan. [pg 320] It is near the upper entrance to the Inland Sea, not far from Kobe. ”

“ Kobe owes much of its prosperity to the fact of serving largely as the shipping port of Osaka, the chief manufacturing town in Japan. The foreign community, exclusive of Chinese, exceeds 1000 persons. Kobe is considered the brightest and healthiest of all the places assigned as foreign settlements in Japan, its pure, dry air and granite subsoil constituting special advantages. ”

“ It is an hour in the train from Osaka to Kobe, where we arrived at eight o'clock.
Kobe is a pretty seaport, girt round, close at hand, by great mountains, up into which the streets run. It is too cosmopolitan and European to be very interesting. ”

“ Street-car fare ranged from one and one-half to four cents. The ricksha pullers of Kobe were an improvement on some of the starved Chinese pullers of Shanghai. A great many of the pullers of Japan have no shoes on their feet, but wear cloth, generally white, for protection. Walking over gravel roads did not seem to bother the Japanese ricksha pullers.
Kobe has a population of nearly half a million, and is second to Yokohama in importance as a seaport, much tea being exported from this port. Behind the city rises a range of high hills, covered with pine trees—a natural park. ”

“ When Hearn left Tokyo to take up his appointment at Matsue, he was accompanied by his friend Akira, a young student and priest, who spoke English and could, therefore, act as interpreter. At Kobe they left the railway and continued their journey in jinrikishas, a journey of four [Pg 169] days with strong runners, from the Pacific to the Sea of Japan. ”

“ As to your other question, I always wear the Japanese dress at home or in the interior. In Kōbe or the large cities I wear Western clothes when I go on the street; because it does not do there for a man with a long nose to be too “Japanesey”—there has been a surplus of “Japanesey” display on the part of foreigners of the jocose class. ”

“ Bob, being on official business, had instructions to proceed direct from Nagasaki to Tokio. Most of the passengers, however, among them his recent companions, were remaining on the Sardinia as far as Kobe, with the object of seeing the world-famed beauties of the inland sea. The last words Bob heard as he went down the side after the final farewells were a guttural protest from Herr Schwab, with whom his enforced contribution to the Chang-Wo fund was still rankling.
"Business, my dear sir, are business; sentiment is sentiment. ”

“ The strongest impression that the unprejudiced observer receives in Japan is of the small value set upon labor as well as upon time by the great mass of the people. In Yokohama and in Kobe, which show the most signs of foreign influence, the same traits prevail. ”

“ Hearn's gradually-increasing disinclination to meet strangers was, at this time, indicative of a morbid condition of mind and body. He summarily refused to hold any intercourse with the foreign commercial element in Kobe, pronouncing them rough and common. After life in the interior, he declared life at an open port to be very unpleasant. The Germans represented the best of the foreign element, plain and homely, which at all events was a virtue. ”

“ The Kobe-Kyōto railway is un dróle de petit chemin de fer, qui n'a pas l'air serieux, qui fait l'effet d'une chose pour rire, comme toutes les choses japonaises.—Doubtless there is an element of truth in all this. ”

“ Kobe has a shipbuilding yard, and docks in its immediate neighbourhood.
Hiogo has several temples of interest, one of which has near it a huge bronze statue of Buddha, while by the Minatogawa, which flows into the sea between Hiogo and Kobe, a temple commemorates the spot where Kusunoki Masashige, the mirror of Japanese loyalty, met his death in battle in 1336. The temple of Ikuta was erected on the site of the ancient fane built by Jingo on her return from Korea in the 3rd century. ”

“ It was obvious without inquiring that Hori could not be in that shallow, open-fronted shop. “Very well,” the shoulders answered us and on we went. We stopped for another time with the now familiar “Here!” We had traversed half Kobe. Our futile questions seemed to have nothing to do with any next step. Strangely, instead of having lost our faith it had been growing that by some system the coolies were following the quest. ”

“ I knew he was lying. Kobe was more than a hundred miles away; third-class fare is barely a sen a mile in Japan; it is far cheaper to ride than to buy food sufficient to sustain life on such a journey. ”

“ On February 21st the Tosa Maru left Yokohama for Kobe at schedule time on the tick of the watch, as she had done from Seattle. All Japanese steamers appear to be moved with the promptness of a railway train. On reaching Kobe we transferred to the Yamaguchi Maru which sailed the following morning, to shorten the time of reaching Shanghai. This left but an afternoon for a trip into the country between Kobe and Osaka, where we found, if possible, even higher and more intensive culture practices than on the Tokyo plain, there being less land not carrying a winter crop. And Fig. ”

“ A tolerably flourishing trade accordingly sprang up, and from Kōbe were exported some thousands of pieces yearly, a great many of which were not free from gross blemishes—as, for example, serious faults in the pâte or solutions of continuity in the glaze—while the majority were crude, ill-fired, and unsatisfactory, only redeemed from hopeless mediocrity by their brilliant effect as decorative pieces and by the accidental skill sometimes displayed in the combinations of their colours. ”

“ The idea is growing upon me, more and more each day I live, that the supposed indifferentism of the Japanese in religious matters is affected indifferentism—that it is put on like yofuku, only for foreigners. I see too much of the real life, even here in Kōbe, to think the indifferentism real. ”

“ One wonders how hotels in some countries exist, for often not more than half a dozen guests are living in a big hostelry. The trade seems to come from foreigners only, for seldom is a Japanese seen about.
Osaka was my first stop from Kobe, and, inquiring from a young man how I might reach a certain point, he volunteered to show me about the city. ”

“ He dreamed that the world was peopled solely by mosquitos, and he knew them all, Captain Boynton, Andy Black, Sanno, the Lady Hortense, and even Bobby herself. One by one they came and nipped him while he lay helpless, clad only in a pink suit of silken underwear.
XI THE GYMKHANA
The experiences of his first twenty-four hours in Japan were repeated with variations three times before Percival reached Kobe. His mad desire to overtake Bobby had carried him from Kioto to Nara, where he went to the wrong hotel and missed the Weston party by fifteen minutes. ”

“ Besides, by the time the next Anglo-Indian comes this way there will be a hundred more miles of railway and all the local arrangements will have changed. Write that a man should come to Japan without any plans. The guide-books will tell him a little, and the men he meets will tell him ten times more. Let him get first a good guide at Kobé, and the rest will come easily enough. ”

“ Tomes and Co. in Kobe, 1892-1900; established. Taylor, Cooper and Co., Kobe, 1900, the firm becoming a Ltd. Co. in 1905. Clubs: Kobe; Shanghai; Hongkong. Address: 39, Akashi Machi, Kobe, Japan; or Taylor, Cooper, and Co., Ltd., Kobe, Japan. ”

“ The bell also serves to warn old people or children who may be careless, for the rickshaw has the right of way and the pedestrian must turn to either side to give it the road. Americans, who are far more considerate of the feelings of [6] the Japanese than other foreigners, frequently may be seen walking up the steep grades in such hilly cities as Nikko, Nara and Kobe, but long residence in Japan is said to make everyone callous of the straining and the sweating of the rickshaw man. ”

“ The foreign resident is rarely cast for an important part, never for a permanent one. It is notorious that he lacks aesthetic charm. His wife and children, his club and counting-house, his racecourse and cricket-field, are standing tokens of unassimilative exile. In England he would be a good citizen and an excellent fellow, sure of his seat on the School Board or County Council, if not in Parliament, supposing that his ambitions included that of service to the community. But in Kōbe or Yokohama he lives as isolated from the fascinating "native-born" as any Jew in a mediæval ghetto. ”

“ Ships of all nations lie at anchor in its busy harbor, and [341] the many American sailing vessels that come out loaded with kerosene return with cargoes of rags, camphor, and curios, by which general invoice name are included the cheaper porcelains, lacquers, fans, lanterns, toys, and trifles made for the foreign trade.
Kobé, lying at the head of the Inland Sea, sheltered from the ocean, and screened even from the land by the low range of mountains back of it, possesses the best and driest climate of any of the treaty ports now open for the residence of foreigners. ”

“ He lay still on his face, waiting, letting his eyes range at random, when suddenly he gave a violent start. A little to the left of the horses, beside a tall bare sapling, stood a man whom he perceived, as he looked more closely, to be bound to the stem. He wore the dress of a Chinaman. The fitful flame from the Manchus' fire cast a lurid light upon the face of the prisoner, and with a feeling of dismay Bob recognized him: it was Kobo! ”

“ My country! She will win. I know it. We have crossed the Yalu: then we shall drive the enemy before us—from Kiu-lien-cheng to Liao-yang, from Liao-yang to Mukden, from Mukden to Harbin, from Harbin— Ah! why should we drive them farther? Dai Nippon shall come to her own."
"But yourself, sir; we must take you out of this. You will be more comfortable in Chang-Wo's room, and then, when you have rested and eaten, we will take you slowly into the Japanese lines, and you will live to see the triumph you have done so much to secure."
Kobo shook his head. ”

“ As Bob let his eyes dwell on it with anxious care, he felt his heart sink within him. What had he come for? What could he do, with two helpers however willing, however earnest, to rescue Kobo if Kobo was indeed immured within those strong towers? How could he discover whether his friend was there? The strength of Samson could not tear down those massive walls; the wiles of Ulysses could not avail to win entrance through that single gateway; only an eagle could ascend from the depth of the ravine, and even had he eagle's wings he would ascend in vain. ”