20 DECEMBER 1873, Page 17

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE JAPANESE.* OF all the strange

lands that the advance of commerce has opened up to the insatiable curiosity of the West, there is surely none stranger than Japan. The more the veil is lifted which has so long hidden from view those lovely and fertile islands swarming with busy life, the more do we find to excite our surprise and amused admiration. Here is a people who for ages have jealously guarded themselves from close contact with even their nearest neighbours, welcoming with alacrity the most advanced results of a distant civilisation; constructing railways, building steamers, and sending their sons in numbers to learn from the once hated Christians to despise their fathers' customs, to forsake their ancient faith, and to replace their picturesque national costume by the latest Paris fashion. Here is a throne which for more than five centuries had abdicated its royal functions, which, while retaining the veneration of the people, had apparently completely lost its hold over the temporal affairs of the kingdom ; and whose occupant was brought up in the harem in more than Eastern seclusion, fed, dressed, and waited upon by women who had the entire charge of his person, and through whom alone be communi- cated with the outer world,—his "face never seen by day- light or by profane eyes," "never exposed to the light of sun or moon, to the touch of earth, of men, or of his own hands,"—and suddenly this stereotyped expression of a dead power and a dying faith wakens from sleep, breaks bonds stronger than those with which Samson was bound by Delilah, takes at once into his own hands the supreme rule, abolishes the office of Taikoon, under which he bad been reduced to the mere shadow of royalty, sets himself at the head of a movement which must in the end destroy the very foundations of his supremacy ; opens his kingdom to the Christians, whom he has cruelly persecuted in times past (and persecuted so cruelly and relentlessly that the few descendants of the converts of the seventeenth century are now the very refuse of the people, lower than the pariahs, living and dying under the eyes of the police, who "carry off each dead body, when the spirit has at last escaped from their vigilance, lest the name of the Crucified One should be pronounced over its ashes "), and himself open i in state the first railway connecting the port of the strangers, Yokohama, with his capital, Yeddo. And here, strangest sight of all, is a powerful and turbulent nobility, strong in their feudal castles, surrounded by armed retainers, drawing from their wide estates yearly re- venues of from forty to three hundred and fifty thousand pounds —trained to think arms the sole career possible (at seven years old the Daimio may be seen strutting about with a servant or elder sister, carrying after him a sword too weighty for his childish strength), and inheriting the ambitious and factious traditions of a long line of ancestors—of their own free-will, in order, in the words of one of their leaders, to "firmly establish the foundations of the Imperial Government," giving up their territories, disbanding their retainers, abandoning their titles, and "under the name of Kazokus nobles, receiving such small pro- perties as may suffice for their wants."

A nation in which such things come to pass is well worth studying, and among all the helps to that end which have appeared since Japan was opened to the Treaty Powers, not one gives so lively a picture of its peoples, or so clear and brief a narrative of its past history, religious and political, and of its recent changes, as the handsome and beautifully illustrated volume in which M. Humbert's researches and observations during his residence as Swiss Plenipotentiary at Yokohama are given to the English public. The illustrations, besides being infinitely amusing in themselves (taken as they are from photographs done on the spot and from native drawings), are a great help towards the understanding of this original people. Some of the latter show a strong sense of humour, as that at page 187, where a Bonze is pelting with, apparently, small pebbles two hideous monsters, who, writhing and bowling, retreat towards the door, while the domestic gods, behind their brazier of incense, engaged with a tea-kettle and large fish in a lordly dish, roll against each other with what (in spite of the emblematical kettle) looks very like tipsy delight ; or that of the God of Longevity at page 57—an old man squatting on a stork ; the action, by the way, of the stork as he cuts through the air is admirably given ; or that at page 133, where the souls of the dead, of pigmy size, appear before the "Great God of Hell." The expression on the faces of the wretched little suppliants is at once piteous and ludicrous. Take, again, the "Rice Sale," where the sellers and buyers are rats ; or the green-room of a

4' Japan and the Japanese. By Aimd Humbert. Translated by Mrs. Oashel Racy. Edited by H. W. Bates. London: Richard Bentley and Son. Yeddo theatre, a scene worthy of Hogarth's pencil. These native artists show a great facility also in the drawing of animals,—with one or two touches they give the action and expression to the life; but perhaps the most interesting of all are those that paint the domestic life of the Japanese, a life among the middle and lower orders of the simplest and most public description. The houses are built entirely of wood, and the walls are made to slide back, so as to admit a constant current of air :- "Pursuing our walk [writes M. Humbert] from street to street, we look into the interior of the houses with hardly any interruption from the sliding panels, and see the picturesque groups of men, women, and children squatting round their humble dinners. The straw table-cloth is laid on the mats which cover the floor ; in the centre is a large wooden bowl containing rice, which forms the principal food of every class of Japanese society. Each guest attacks the common dish, and takes out enough to fill up a great China cup, from which he eats with- out the aid of the little stick which serves him for a fork, except just for the last few mouthfuls, to which he adds a scrap of fish, crab, or fowl, taken from the numerous plates which surround the central bowl."

Life in Japan is reduced to its simplest elements. Thanks to a delicious climate and an easily contented disposition, the wants of the people are few ; dress is reduced to the minimum, except on festival occasions, when bright colours and flowing garments make gay the suburban tea-gardens or the courts of the Buddhist temples. All their furniture consists of rice-straw mats carefully plaited (on these they sit, and sleep, and eat), and a few china bowls and caps, some lacquered trays, and the unfailing tea- kettle. With so small a need of ready-money for furnishing, one would think that matters are made almost unfairly easy for young people starting in life ; but it is not so, as amongst the Hindoos the expenses of the wedding-feast and gifts is so great, that Japanese parents have discovered a novel way of escape which, as M. Humbert observes, illustrates amusingly the national talent for acting :—

"An honest couple have a marriageable daughter, and the latter is acquainted with a fine young fellow who would be a capital match, if only he possessed the necessary means of making his lady-love and her parents the indispensable wedding presents. and of keeping open house for a week. Ono fine evening the father and mother, returning from the bath, find the house empty.—the daughter is gone. They make inquiries in the neighbourhood; no one has soon her, but the neighbours hasten to offer their services in seeking her, together with her distracted parents. They accept the offer, and head a solemn pro- cession. which goes from street to street, to the lover's door. In vain does he, hidden behind his panels, turn a deaf ear; he is at length obliged to yield to the importunities of the besieging crowd, ho opens the door, and the young girl drowned in tears throws herself at the foot of her patents, who threaten to curse her. Then comes the inter- vention of charitable friends, deeply moved by this spectacle; the softening of the mother ; the proud and inexorable attitude of the father; the combined eloquence of the multitude employed to soften his heart ; the lover's endless protestations of his resolution to become the best of sons-in-law. At length the father yields, his resistance is overcome ; he raises his kneeling daughter, pardons her lover, and calls him son-in-law. Then, almost as if by enchantment, cups of saki (an intoxicating liquor made from rice) circulate through the as- sembly; everybody sits down upon the mats, the two culprits are placed in the centre of the circle, largo bowls of saki are handed to them, and when emptied, the marriage is recognised, and declared to be validly contracted in the presence of a sufficient number of wit- nesses, and it is registered next day by the proper officer 'without any difficulty."

The incident of the parents returning from the bath points to one want which might be more generally felt among us with advan- tage. No native of Japan thinks of passing a day without his warm bath ; and (house accommodation being limited) that bath is taken in public. "A tacit agreement has therefore been estab- lished in Japan, which places the bath, from the point of view of public morals, in the category of indifferent actions, neither more nor less than sleeping, walking-out, or eating ; at the baths, twin the streets, the theory prevails, and if the bathers of either sex wish to take the air on the pavement outside, they are respec- tively regarded as partaking of the benefit of the accepted fiction ; and more than that, it shelters them to their own dwelling when it is their pleasure to proceed thither, with the fine lobster-colour, which they have brought out of the hot bath, intact."

One of the pleasantest features of the Japanese character is its love of children and animals. Every house has its pet doge, enormously fat ; its cats, tailless like the Manx breed, very idle; its glass case of fish, or wicker cages of lovely butterflies and grasshoppers; among these the children grow up without any restraint, "as in a shady playground." It bas been said that Japanese children never cry. M. Humbert bears witness to the general truth of this assertion, and explains it by saying, "It is granted by all Japanese that a child ought to have his own way." The shades of Miss Edgeworth and of Mrs. Trimmer rise up in rebuke before us as we record this sentiment, and its practical result in Japan. No more healthy, happy, pleasant children

are to be found anywhere, and the " whole of the adult population can read, write, and calculate."

There is, as every one at all acquainted with Japan knows, a darker side to this picture of cheerful open-air life and busy, animated existence. Polygamy is the privilege of the Mikado, but concubinage is common among the Daimios, where the lawful wife has to share her husband's roof with these recognised inmates. As among the Turks, poverty limits the mass of the people to one wife alone ; but throughout all ranks, the legalized vice which attains its maximum in the quarter of Sin-Yosiwara, at Yeddo, "assumes more and more strongly the characteristics of a national scourge and an immense public calamity."

We should far outrun the space at our command if we were to speak of all the points of interest in this volume. The chapters on religious practices and beliefs we have not even touched on, yet they are full of tempting bits for quotation. Reynard the Fox figures there, under the name of Kitsne ; with name, not nature, changed. Old trees are endowed with human life, and like Dante's grove, drop blood under the woodman's axe ; old polecats rule the elements, call up bitter winds to bear them through the skies, that they may tear the faces of travellers with their cruel claws as they pass ; a favourite of the Emperor, dismissed for her extrava- gance, leaves the palace under the shape of a white fox, with six fan-shaped tails ; all sorts of grotesque inventions of human imagination have concreted round the lofty nihilism of Buddha's doctrines, and the simple hero-worship of the primitive people of Japan. But we must leave our readers to seek for themselves all these, and many other subjects of interest, in this attractive volume, whose splendid exterior and excellent paper and type must not be allowed to merge it in the mass of the handsomely got-up, but ephemeral, gift-books of the season. In a final chapter the editor has brought down the history of the changes in Japan to their most recent phase, and dwells on the probability of some degree of temporary reaction ; but the result, if slow, is not the less certain. Japan will become modernised, and lose its charm for the imagination ; all the more do we thank Mrs. Hoey for introducing to the English public M. Humbert's quaint and amusing picture of it as it is ; her translation of his work leaves nothing to be desired ; it has all the ease of a practised English writer, while retaining a subtle flavour of its foreign origin.