Osaka

“ The streets are of good width, and they are kept cleaner than those of most other cities in Japan. The people are very proud of Osaka, and are as tender of its reputation as the inhabitants of any Western city in America are tender of theirs. There are not so many temples as in Tokio, and not so many palaces, but there is a fair number of both; and, what is better in a practical way, there are many establishments where cotton, iron, copper, bronze, and other goods are manufactured. As a commercial and manufacturing centre, Osaka is at the head, and without a rival so far as Japan is concerned. ”

“ The open square of the inner moat is now a garden, and the palace has been used to accommodate the General and his staff. It is worth climbing up to the top of the walls for the splendid view over the plain, always bordered by those chains of mountains, that run as a prickly backbone from north to south of Japan.
Osaka is a charming town. It is called the Venice of Japan, and with its flowing rivers and canals intersecting the streets, its high, arched bridges thrown across on a single sweep, its grassy banks and avenues of weeping willows, it is fitly likened to that Queen City of the sea. ”

“ Northward of the cyclopean stone ramparts of the old castle of Osaka stands the enormous Mint, one of the finest establishments of the sort in the world, to the east of which is the Arsenal, where the Japanese turn out all the cannon and guns necessary for the use of their army. At night the horizon is crimson with the ruddy glow of the cotton-mills and other numerous factories. ”

“ As an expression of the human spirit by means of inanimate figures, the Doll-theatre of Japan is unique. It is a surprise to find this jewel of art in Osaka, the city of smoke-stacks—an art that has been alive in Japan for more than three hundred years, but is at present practically confined to one small theatre, the Bunraku-za. ”

“ A song, accompanied by the twanging of a samisen and the clanging of tamtams, is sung by three geishas. Kyoto brings in Osaka to admire her beauty, and sets a high price upon it. Osaka sends for jewels. Iris awakes and speculates in philosophical vein touching the question of her existence. She cannot be dead, for death brings knowledge and paradise joy ”

“ Next day, from early dawn, the streets of Osaka were full of movement and mirth. The people prepared for the feast, rejoicing in the thought of coming pleasures. Shops, the homes of artisans and citizens, opening full upon the street, afforded a free view of their modest interiors, furnished only with a few beautifully colored screens. ”

“ From the reputation of Ōsaka as a centre of production and distribution, one would imagine it the most modernized, the least characteristically Japanese, of all Japanese cities. But Ōsaka is the reverse. Fewer Western costumes are to be seen in Ōsaka than in any other large city of Japan. No crowds are more attractively robed, and no streets more picturesque, than those of the great mart. ”

“ The Kioto frog turned his nose towards Osaka, and the Osaka frog turned his nose towards Kioto; but the foolish things forgot that when they stood up their great eyes lay in the backs of their heads, and that though their noses might point to the places to which they wanted to go, their eyes beheld the places from which they had come.
“Dear me!” cried the Osaka frog, “Kioto is exactly like Osaka. It is certainly not worth such a long journey. ”

“ Forty years after the coming of the Portuguese, Hideyoshi constructed Osaka Castle. [5] Forty years is a brief space in the life of a nation, yet that short interval sufficed to convert the fragile, flimsy structures of wood and clay, with their boarded towers and single-planked gates, which the soldiers of the Hōjō and the Ashikaga called strongholds, into colossal castles, with broad moats, lofty battlements, and stupendous escarpments of masonry. ”

“ Osaka, the great commercial city of Japan, with its population of over 361,000 souls, stretches out its square miles of gray-roofed houses at the edge of the plain, where the waters of the Yodogawa reach Osaka Bay. ”

“ Osaka has curio-shops that are small museums filled with the choicest industrial art of old Japan, and this rich commercial city rivals Tokio and Kioto in its amusement world, and has a theatre street a mile long. ”

“ Ōsaka is really the most unsafe place in Japan to play the fool in;—its dangerous and vicious classes are more to be feared than those of the capital; and the daily news of the great city furnishes the apprentice with terrible examples of men reduced to poverty or driven to self-destruction through neglect of those very rules of conduct which it is part of his duty to learn. ”

“ One may spend a day in the labyrinth of rooms studying Osaka’s many industries; and everything, from gold and silver ware, crapes, brocades, lacquers, enamels, porcelains and carvings to food preparations, patent medicines, and imitations of foreign goods, is to be found there. There is even a department of plants and flowers, a hall of antiquities, a section of toys, acres of china shops, and specimens of everything made, sold, or used in that bustling city. Evening brings electric lights and a military band, and this industrial fair is made popular and profitable all the year round. ”

“ For this reason the majority of the goods manufactured at Osaka are exported viâ Kobe, where nearly all the great English and American steamers touch, and which is an admirable port. The formation of a large harbour at Osaka was begun in 1899, at a cost of something like £2,000,000, assured by a loan of £1,700,000, issued by the town, in addition to a considerable subvention from the State. ”

“ Then we had a ride along Cherry Blossom Avenue, the trees being laden with the pale pink flower. We visited bazars and noted the general aspect234 of the place, canals being a dominant characteristic of the landscape. We saw a particularly fine temple among many others. Osaka is a commercial city of great wealth and is more celebrated from a business point of view than from its artistic aspect. ”

“ They were invited to seats in the office, and, after a brief delay, were escorted through the establishment.
The mint at Osaka is one of the most noted enterprises which the government of Japan has undertaken, and likewise one of the most successful. When it was founded it was under foreign supervision, and the most of the employés were from Europe; but year by year the Japanese have learned how to conduct its machinery, and have relieved the foreigners of the labor of managing it. The direction is Japanese, and so are the heads of the departments, and the employés from highest to lowest. ”

“ Osaka is the centre of great iron, copper, and bronze industries. Its artists decorate the finest modern Satsuma in microscopically fine designs, and the mark of Gioksen, of Osaka, on tiny vase or koro stamps the piece as the best example of the day. The soft yellow and richly-toned wares of Idzumi kilns find their market through Osaka, and the carving of blackwood into cabinets and stands, or mounts, for vases and tokonoma ornaments, is held almost as a monopoly by a great company of Osaka artisans. ”

“ A rope being made fast to the mast-head of our boat, she was drawn forwards by men, as our west country barges are at London. We found Osaka a very large town, as large as London within the walls, having many very high and handsome timber bridges which serve to cross the river Jodo, which is as wide as the Thames at London. Some of the houses here were handsome, but not many. It is one of the chiefest sea-ports in all Japan, and has a castle of great size and strength, with very deep ditches all round, crossed by drawbridges, and its gates plated with iron. ”

“ Ōsaka is extremely populous, and if we believe what the boasting Japanese tell us, can raise an army of eighty thousand men from among its inhabitants. It is the best trading town in Japan, being extraordinarily well situated for carrying on a commerce both by land and water. This is the reason why it is so well inhabited by rich merchants, artificers and manufacturers. Provisions are cheap, notwithstanding the city is so well peopled. ”

“ But even as a class in the ordinary sense of merchants they scarcely deserve that kind of condemnation. Osaka in former days had some resemblance to free cities of the West, and every one well acquainted with things Japanese knows what a well-developed mercantile system it possessed. ”

“ Here the company embarked in small boats for Ōsaka. As they passed along they saw at a distance the imperial city of Sakai, three or four Japanese miles south from Ōsaka. The description of Ōsaka, and of the journey thence to Miyako, is thus given by Kämpfer:
“Ōsaka, one of the five imperial cities, is agreeably seated in the province of Settsu, in a fruitful plain, and on the banks of a navigable river. At the east end is a strong castle; and at the western end, two strong, [Pg 50] stately guard-houses, which separate it from its suburbs. ”

“ Osaka, Tokio, and Kioto, the three capitals, are the three religious centres; and the Buddhist establishments, the extensive yellow-walled monastery grounds in the district beyond the Osaka castle are worthy of a capital. The numbers of priests in the streets, the thousands of summer pilgrims, and the scores of shops for the sale of temple ornaments, altar furnishings, rosaries, and brocade triangles for the shelf of household images, give a certain sacerdotal aspect to the busy town. ”

“ To conjure up the past or to recall bygone traditions, one ought to linger in Nara's sacred groves and Nikko's hidden shrines; but on arrival in Tokio and Osaka, one is awakened to the reality of modern times, and dreams are bound to give place to the hard work of life. After the first disappointment caused by the capital's inartistic and rather incoherent aspect of today, one cannot fail to be impressed by the activity of its inhabitants ”

“ From Osaka—canal-cut, muddy, and fascinating Osaka—the Professor, Mister Yamagutchi,—the guide,—and I took train to Kioto, an hour from Osaka. On the road I saw four buffaloes at as many rice-ploughs—which was noticeable as well as wasteful. A buffalo at rest must cover the half of a Japanese field; but perhaps they are kept on the mountain ledges and only pulled down when wanted. The Professor says that what I call buffalo is really bullock. The worst of travelling with an accurate man is his accuracy. ”

“ At Osaka where in 1532 the priests of the Hongwan-ji temple had built a castle which Nobunaga captured in 1580 only after a long and severe siege, Hideyoshi built what is called The Castle of Osaka. It is a colossal fortress, which is still used as military headquarters for garrison and arsenal, and the dimensions of which are still a wonder, though only a portion of the building survives. ”

“ To their credit, be it said, they are really working very hard to attain their ideal. One has only to visit Osaka, the Manchester of the Mikado’s Empire, to realize the amazing progress made by the Japanese in the last quarter of the century. This city, which has a population of about half a million souls, is situated midway between Kioto and Kobe, about thirty miles distant, which respectively contain 340,000 and 150,000 inhabitants. About six and a half miles further on is yet another industrial centre, Sakai, with a population of 50,000. ”

“ His face is pleasing,—nose straight or slightly aquiline,—mouth veiled by a heavy black moustache: the eye-lids alone give you some right to suppose that you are conversing with an Oriental. Such is one type of the Ōsaka commercial traveler of 1896,—a being as far superior to the average Japanese petty official as a prince to a lackey. Should you meet the same man in his own city, you would probably find him in Japanese costume,—dressed as only a man of fine taste can learn how to dress, and looking rather like a Spaniard or Italian in disguise than a Japanese. ”

“ Architecturally not less than fashionably, Ōsaka remains almost as Japanese as anybody could wish. Although some wide thoroughfares exist, most of the streets are very narrow,—even more narrow than those of Kyōto. There are streets of three-story houses and streets of two-story houses; but there are square miles of houses one story high. The great mass of the city is an agglomeration of low wooden buildings with tiled roofs. Nevertheless the streets are more interesting, brighter, quainter in their signs and sign-painting, than the streets of Tōkyō ”

“ Osaka, at the head of a bay of the same name on the south side of Niphon, is in lat. 34° 58' N. long. 135° 5' E. Sakay, or Sakai, on the eastside of the same bay, is about fifteen miles directly south from Osaka. ”

“ Kyoto, with a population of 400,000, is held to be the center of the manufacture of Japanese art. Forty miles distant is Osaka, a city of one and a half millions, the chief products of which are metal goods, carpets, rugs, etc.
I was surprised at the large number of Germans I met with in the trains. Quite sixty per cent., if not more, of the firstclass passengers were unmistakably German. Many of them live at Kyoto and visit Osaka daily on business. In their efforts to secure the Japanese markets German manufacturers follow their clever policy of giving twelve months' credit. ”

“ Ōsaka, a city very famous for the extent of its commerce and the wealth of its inhabitants, lies about thirteen Japanese water-leagues from Hiōgo, which, on account of the shallowness of the water, we make in small boats, leaving our barge at Hiōgo till our return. From Ōsaka we go again by land, over the great island Nippon, as far as Yedo, the emperor’s residence, where we arrive in about fourteen days or more. The road from Ōsaka to Yedo is by the Japanese called Tōkaidō, that is, the east sea or coast way. ”