Jinrikisha

“ Until the long jinrikisha ride was over we had not felt weary, as each day beguiled us with some new interest and excitement; but when we stepped from those baby-carriages at the door of the Shiurokindo we were dazed with fatigue, although the coolies who ran all the way did not appear to be tired in the least. Their headman, who marshalled the team of ten, was a powerful young fellow, a very Hercules for muscle, and for speed and endurance hardly to be matched by that ancient deity. ”

“ Foreigners who live near godowns complain of the babble of the coolies before daylight, and a tea-firing godown always declares its nearness by the confused hum of the several hundred cheerful voices all day long. The Japanese lower classes are the most talkative people under the sun, and rows of jinrikisha coolies never sit quietly in waiting, like the red-nosed Parisian cabmen, dozing or reading feuilletons, but are always jabbering, laughing, playing games and tricks on one another. ”

“ Of male domestics there are only a few. The jinrikisha-man is the only servant of that sex worth speaking of, that is, in a well-to-do middle-class family. He is in most cases engaged from a jinrikisha-master, who has a number of young coolies under him. He is well fed, as his is a severe physical work, and going as he does with his master to all sorts of places, he has to be treated well for fear he should give exaggerated accounts of petty family affairs at the houses where he waits for his master. He has his faults; but on the whole, he is a faithful, diligent, and willing servant. ”

“ Friends recognize each other in the crowd by some distinctive article of clothing. One procession of jinrikishas will land a group with heads tied up in gayly-figured towels all alike, or bits of figured cotton folded as collars around the necks of their kimonos. Boat-loads of men, partly disguised by their queer head-dresses, are sculled and poled along the banks, shouting and singing, clapping and strumming the samisen, with an entire abandon that is the wonder and envy of the Anglo-Saxon. ”

“ When a jinrikisha-man has brought a guest to a brothel or tea-house he is usually given a tip of from 20 to 30 sen, which is paid by the house and afterwards charged to the guest. There is also a body of jinrikisha-coolies known as “mōrō-shafu” (“shady” jinrikisha-men) who are invariably very bad characters. Sometimes these rascals have an arrangement with certain of the lower-class brothels (bori-ya=greedy and covetous houses) to inveigle country-folk into their dens and thus make improper gains. ”

“ It is impossible to see the place in a jinrikisha, so one must thread the crowded streets as best he can on foot. Girls in superb kimonos sit behind barred windows like dolls displayed for sale in a shop. ”

“ There were also 40,820 jinrikisha-men, excluding those in private employ, of whom 8,692 drew their own jinrikisha, 29,807 hired them from 5,471 owners of such vehicles, and 2,321 were employed to draw them by 638 jinrikisha-house keepers.
The jinrikisha-men may be divided into three classes; those who serve in private houses, ply their trade under a jinrikisha-keeper, or work on their own account in the street. The first-named is a servant and treated in all respects as such. The police instructions touching the jinrikisha-man’s clothes do not apply to him. ”

“ It is used largely in Hongkong for climbing the steep streets which are impossible for the jinrikisha. The bearers are low-class coolies from the country, whose rough gait makes riding in a chair the nearest approach to horseback exercise. The jinrikisha is also largely in evidence, but the bearers are a great contrast in their rapacious manners to the courteous and smiling Japanese in all the cities of the Mikado's land. ”

“ Children are equally indifferent, and jinrikisha coolies, although they draw the hoods and tie their passengers in snug and dry with oil-paper or rubber aprons, trot along cheerfully, with their too scanty cotton garments more abbreviated than ever. They substitute for an umbrella a huge flat straw plate of a hat, and instead of putting on galoches, they take off even their straw sandals and run barefooted, tying up the big tee with a bit of rag or wisp of straw, apparently by way of decoration. ”

“ The attendant idlers cheered his shots, and a wrinkled old woman brought us dragon candies on a dark-red lacquer tray, under whose transparent surface lay darker shadows of cherry blossoms. The eye of the connoisseur was quick to descry the tray, and when the woman said it had been bought in the town, we took jinrikishas and hurried to the address she gave. ”

“ These tea-houses and shops interpose a neutral and worldly barrier between the cluster of Buddhist establishments at the one side and the region of Shintoism beyond. From the tea-house gates the road makes a curve off into the wistaria-tangled forest to conduct jinrikishas to the lower level, but the pilgrims descend, instead, four long flights of rough stone steps, that are wonderfully picturesque with these quaint moving figures and the queer little shops that hang to the borders of the stairs, climbing up and down the hill with them. ”

“ Such men are called “extras,” and having no jinrikisha of their own, are nothing but middlemen. They often make more money than the bona-fide jinrikisha-men, and that too without the least physical exertion.
There are said to be no fewer than four thousand jinrikisha-men who regularly ply their trade at night, resting all day. They take their station at the most frequented places and lie in wait for belated passengers or strayed revellers. As Japanese generally keep early hours, these night workers are all on the look-out by ten o’clock. ”

“ This road was made two centuries ago, when the Shoguns chose Nikko as their burial place, and these venerable trees have shaded the magnificent funeral trains of the old warriors, and the splendid processions of their successors, who made pilgrimages to the tombs of Iyeyasu and Iyemitsu. In our day, alas, instead of mighty daimios and men-at-arms in coats of mail, or brocaded grandees in gilded palanquins, telegraph-poles, slim, ugly, and utilitarian, impertinently thrust themselves forward before the grand old tree-trunks, and the jinrikisha and the rattle-trap basha take their plebeian way. ”

“ The police regulations for the guidance of the jinrikisha-man dwell upon the necessity of licenses and annual jinrikisha inspection, give directions for the build and colour of the jinrikisha and its appurtenances, instruct the jinrikisha-man that he may take off the top of his vehicle in fine weather, order what clothes he shall generally wear on a fair day, and lay down the cut and colour of his water-proof coat when wet. They are equally minute in their rules of the road. ”

“ Lafcadio Hearn, the author of this selection, took a four days' journey in a jinrikisha to the remote country district which he describes. He is almost the only foreigner who has ever entered the village.
Bon-odori:—The dance in honor of the dead.
Hiroshige:—A Japanese landscape painter of an early date.
kuruma:—A jinrikisha; a two-wheeled cart drawn by a man. ”

“ The oldest or most honored person rides at the head of the line, and only a boor would attempt to change the order of arrangement. Spinning down the Bund, at a tariff so moderate that the American can ride for a week for what he must pay in a day at home, one finds the jinrikisha to be a comfortable, flying arm-chair—a little private, portable throne. The coolie wears a loose coat and waistcoat, and tights of dark-blue cotton, with straw sandals on his bare feet, and an inverted wash-bowl of straw covered with cotton on his head. ”

“ At Kodzu we took wagonettes and rattled over the plain and up a valley along the Tokaido, children being snatched from under the heels of the horses, and coolies, with poles and baskets over their shoulders, getting entangled with the wheels all the way. A Japanese driver is a most reckless Jehu, and the change to jinrikishas, after the wild ten-mile charge up the valley, was beatific. ”

“ The fifteen miles between these two places were travelled in jinrikishas or on foot,—a style of journeying which was pleasant and more merciful, since the steep rise of the latter part of the way made their work too hard even with two men to each jinrikisha. And indeed, I have never been able to be amused rather than angered at the sight, common enough even now, of a fat English or American woman jabbing a little Japanese man with her parasol in order to make him run faster. How can we modify so as to cover a case like this, the motto: “A [72] merciful man is merciful to his beast!” ”

“ For the motion of these jinrikishas, the only practicable mode of progression in Japan, is delightfully easy and pleasant. The coolies in their dark blue cotton breeches and loose jacket and large mushroom-shaped hats, go at an easy trot of six miles an hour, and they will do forty miles in one day. This patient, toiling, perspiring race never seem to tire, and their bare brown legs, with their large muscular development, with sinews and veins standing out, and their high regular action, trot as steadily as the rough docile ponies. ”

“ In the great temple pyramids of candles burn, incense rises, bells sound, and money rains into the big cash-box at the head of the steps. The splendid interior is a mass of lacquer, gilding, and color, the panelled ceiling has an immense filigree brass baldaquin hanging like a frosted canopy over the heads of the priests, and a superb altar, all images, lotus-leaves, lights, and gilded doors, dazzles the eye. ”

“ Up mossy stair-ways, between massive embankments, and through a shady grove, the priest’s clogs scrape noisily to the hexagonal temple, where the ashes of Hidetada, the Ni Dai Shogun, Iyeyasu’s son, lie in a great gold lacquer cylinder, the finest existing specimen of the lacquer of that great art age. The quiet of Shiba, the solemn background of giant trees, the deep shadows and green twilight of the groves, the hundreds of stone lanterns, the ponds of sacred lotus, the succession of dragon-guarded gate-ways, and carved and gorgeously-colored walls, crowd the memory with lovely pictures. ”

“ May is one of the best months for such overland trips in Japan, as the weather is perfect, pilgrims and fleas are not yet on the road, and the rainy season is distant. The whole country is like a garden, with its fresh spring crops, and the long, shaded avenue of trees is everywhere touched with flaming azaleas and banks of snowy blackberry blossoms. ”

“ All about the temple grounds is heard the noise of rushing water, and the music and gurgle of these tiny streams, the rustle of the high branches, and the cawing of huge solitary rooks are the only sounds that break the stillness of the enchanted groves between the soft boomings of the morning and evening bells. The noise of voices is lost in the great leafy spaces, and the sacredness of the place subdues even the unbelieving foreigner, while native tourists and pilgrims move silently, or speak only in undertones, and make no sound, save as their clogs clatter on stones and gravel. ”

“ Wistaria vines, thick, gnarled, and lichen-covered with the growth of years, hang in giant festoons from the trees, roll in curves and loops over the ground, and, climbing to the top of the tallest pines, hang their clusters of pale-green leaves like blossoms against the dark evergreens. ”

“ Facing the front of the house are rows of mat sheds, covering the precious flowers that stand in files as evenly as soldiers, the tops soft masses of great frowsy, curly-petalled, wide-spreading blooms, shading to every tint of lilac, pink, rose, russet, brown, gold, orange, pale yellow, and snow white. ”

“ Just outside the temple-door is a plum-tree whose age is lost in legend. Its bent and crooked limbs and propped-up branches sustain a thick-massed pyramid of pale rose-pink. The outer boughs droop like a weeping-willow, and their flowers seem to be slipping down them like rosy rain-drops. ”

“ The open rooms look upon a lovely garden, and paths of flat-topped stones lead through the tiny wilderness of lake, forest, thicket, and stream; over old stone bridges, stained and lichen-covered, to picturesque tea-houses and pavilions, overhanging the lake. Stone Buddhas and stone pagodas stand in shadowy places, and stone lanterns under dwarf pine-trees are reflected in the curve of every tiny bay. It is an ideal Japanese garden, with the dew of a midsummer morning on all the spider webs, and only the low note of the grasshoppers to break the stillness. ”

“ Oikoto had the long, narrow eyes, the deeply-fringed lids, the nose and contour of face of Egyptian women. Her hand and arm were exquisite, but it was her soft voice, her dreamy smile, and slowly lifted eyelids that led us captive. Oikoto san and the tiny maiko fluttered about the table, filling glasses, nibbling sweetmeats, answering questions, and accepting our frank admiration with grace incomparable. ”

“ The forest ended as suddenly as if one had stepped from a door-way, and a sloping dump of bare lava and cinders stretched upward endlessly; the whole cone visible, touched with scudding bits of thin white clouds. Every dike and seam of lava between the forest edge and the summit was clearly seen, and the square blocks of rest-houses, though miles away, stood out on the great ash-heap as if one could touch them. ”

“ Thatched roofs, whose ridge poles are beds of lilies, shaded by glorified green plumes of bamboo-trees, tall, red-barked cryptomerias, crooked pines, and gnarled camphor-trees, everywhere charm the eye. ”