# Jinrikisha Days in Japan/Chapter 33
### CHAPTER XXXIII OSAKA

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. Bars and shallows prevent large vessels from reaching the city, and Kobé-Hiogo, twenty miles across the arc of the bay, is its seaport. The branching river and the innumerable canals intersecting the city have given Osaka the name of the “Venice of Japan;” as if a trading city, built on a level plain, with canals too wide and houses too low and dull in color to be in the least picturesque, could be considered even a poor relation of the “Bride of the Sea.” The “Chicago of Japan” is a fitter title, for if no pork-packing establishments exist, the whole community is as energetically absorbed in money-making, the yen, instead of the almighty dollar, being the god chiefly worshipped, and Osaka’s Board of Trade the most exciting and busy one in the empire.
Osaka has been prominent in the history of Japan from the very earliest times, and at the time of the Restoration the rebel Shogun made his last stand and fought his last battle at Osaka castle. The next great event in Osaka’s annals was the flood of 1885, which was without parallel in this country of floods. During the last weeks of the rainy season of June the rain fell in torrents for more than a week, and a typhoon, sweeping the region, deluged the adjoining provinces. Lake Biwa rose many feet above its usual level, the rivers doubled and redoubled their size, and the whole Osaka ​plain was a lake. The rivers having been raised artificially above the level of the surrounding country for the irrigation of the rice fields, their banks and levees melted away before the rush of waters, and the plain was scoured by swift currents running eight and fifteen feet deep over the rice fields. Farm-houses and villages disappeared in a day, and the wretched people saved themselves and their few effects by taking to boats and rafts or seeking refuge in trees. After two weeks of high-water and continuing rains, the flood subsided and the wreck was more apparent. A few farmers, by replanting and careful tending, obtained crops that season, but hundreds and hundreds of the homeless and destitute were sheltered and fed in the unused barracks at Osaka castle.
In the city itself only the castle and a few business streets were left above water, and thousands of houses and godowns were ruined; the mud-walls under the heavy tiled roofs collapsing like card-houses in the current. One hundred and forty-six bridges were carried away, and, for a time, boats were the only vehicles and means of communication. The suffering and destitution were terrible, and Osaka’s many industries were paralyzed. But in the shortest time after the subsidence of the waters temporary bridges and ferries were established, embankments patched up, houses rebuilt, and the city returned to its busy ways. Except for the mud-stained walls and the heaps of drift and debris on roof-tops, little reminded one of the disaster as we sped through the stone-paved streets. House-boats went up and down the river each evening with geisha and maiko singing happily, and koto and samisen ringing on the air till midnight. Jiutei’s queer hotel, a foreign inn up-stairs and a Japanese tea-house below stairs, was the scene of as much feasting as ever, and the recuperative power of Osaka’s people surprised one at every turn.
​The castle is the great show-place of Osaka, and although the palace, which was the heart of the great fortress, was burned in 1868, much remains to be seen. The area enclosed by the massive outer walls and the great moat is immense, and the clustered towers, and buildings, crowning the one elevation on all the Osaka plain, show commandingly from every point. The angles of the walls are sharpened and curve inward like the bow of a battleship, and on each corner remain quaint white towers with curving black roofs piled one upon another. The castle walls are wonders of masonry; single stones forty-six feet in length and ten or twelve feet square being built in on either side of the main gate. Other stones, twenty feet in height, and roughhewn as they came from the quarry, stand at angles of the walls like miniature El Capitans. Nearly all these titanic blocks are known to the Japanese by particular names, each with its legends attached; but the foreigner puzzles long to decide how those primitive builders brought such masses of granite from the quarries on the island of Kiushiu and placed them in these walls without the aid of steam or modern appliances. Three massive walls of defense, one within another, separate the castle proper from the surrounding barracks and parade-ground, and the headquarters are within the third enclosure. A dapper little lieutenant in spotless white uniform received our party at the temple-like headquarters building, one scorching August morning, and conducted us through a fourth wall, and up broad stone stair-ways to the lookout of the old citadel. His orderly ran ahead with field-glasses, and from that airy perch, three hundred feet above the city, we could look over an immense stretch of country and down upon the city roof-tops, from which the air rose quivering with heat. At eight o’clock in the morning at that high point the air was intensely hot, and the stones seemed to scorch our feet; yet up there was a well of deliciously cool water, ​an unfailing supply for the garrison at all times and through many sieges.
Returning to headquarters we met the commandant in such a beautiful snow-white uniform, covered with so many fine lines of white braid, as must make any man regret having to lay it aside for the dark and sombre winter regimentals. The bowing and interchange of conventionally courteous greetings between the commandant and the two Tokio officials whom we accompanied was a charming exhibition of the old etiquette, just a little modified by the new. The cool, shady room, where tea and cake and wine awaited us, had been built on the foundations of the old house where Hideyoshi lived, and its interior was panelled and ceiled with wondrous paintings and carvings brought from one of the Taiko’s distant castles. Before it stood a pine-tree, planted by the daughter of that Napoleon of Japan, and there had been enacted the brilliant drama of feudal life which Judith Gautier has immortalized in The Usurper, a story which invests Osaka’s castle with romance.
Then we spent two scorching hours in the gun-foundery and arsenal outside the castle walls, where the machinery was German from Chemnitz founderies, and the guns were made on Italian models. No foreigners were visible about the place, and the machinery was managed by Japanese workmen.
Next to its arsenal, Osaka takes pride in its mint, which is larger and better supplied with machinery than any of the Government mints in the United States. An army of workmen and workwomen in uniform tend the machines, and melt, cast, cut, stamp, weigh, and finish the coins, which, under the values of yens and sens, correspond exactly to our coinage of dollars and cents. The mint possesses a fine collection of coins, including the coins and medals of all countries, as well as a complete set of Japanese coins from the earliest days.
​Another interesting Government institution is the bazaar for the exhibition and sale of goods of Osaka manufacture. All Japanese cities have these hakurankwai (exposition), but no other is on so great a scale and so crowded with beautiful things as this one. There one may see all that any workshop turns out or any dealer has for sale without the tedious process of bowing, taking off one’s shoes, and sitting in tailor-fashion for an hour before the desired articles are shown. All the goods are marked in plain figures, and the fixed price obviates the bargaining and the rattle of the soroban. There is an admission fee of a few coppers, and a percentage is charged on all sales to support the institution. 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.
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 teakwood into cabinets and stands, or mounts, for vases and tokonoma ornaments, is held almost as a monopoly by a great company of Osaka artisans. Its book trade and dry-goods trade are very great, and its chief silk-store, which is still purely Japanese, displays the choicest fabrics of ​Kioto looms, and stuffs that only after much searching are seen elsewhere. The straw goods trade is an important one, and its paper industries are on an even greater scale. Fans are exported from Osaka by millions, the United States taking one fan for each inhabitant of the great republic.
Stamped leather is another product of Osaka, but is chiefly exported to Trieste, to be made up there and at Vienna into the pocket-books, portfolios, card and cigar cases that cost so much in American jewelry and stationery stores. At Toyono’s, the largest leather factory, squares of stamped leather were shown us in more than a hundred designs of bugs, birds, and fish, covering the ground, each piece of leather being about twenty-four inches square, and selling at one or two dollars for the single piece. Larger pieces, stamped with large and elaborate designs in gold or colors, and used for the foreign trade as panels for wall decorations, mounted to ten and fifteen dollars each, the size and quality of the leather and work of the artist enhancing the price. The cost of one of the large square brass dies from which the impressions are made averages one hundred and fifty dollars. In the old days the two-feet-square surface of brass could be engraved in the finest all-over designs for half that sum. The leather is stamped from these dies by a hand-press, and after the stamping workmen sit on their heels and color the designs.
An industry peculiar to Osaka is the manufacture of floor rugs of cotton or hemp. These Osaka rugs were much esteemed in feudal days, when the daimio had the monopoly and sent them as gifts; but in these prosaic days a stock company and a large factory supply the home market and the great foreign demand for these inexpensive and pleasing articles.
Half the kairos sold in Japan are marked with an Osaka manufacturer’s name, and in cold weather or in ​illness the possessor of the kairo calls Osaka blessed. For be it known that the kairo is a little tin box with perforated sides and a sliding top covered with cloth. Kairo zumi are three-inch paper cases filled with the finest persimmon-leaf charcoal. You light one end of a paper, drop it in the kairo, and blow it until it glows; slip the cover in and wrap the kairo in a handkerchief or special bag. The little charcoal stick will burn for three, or even six hours, giving a steady, even heat all the time. It comes in many sizes, is curved in many ways to fit closely to the body, and its weight is almost nothing. The commonest kairo, about four inches long by two inches high, costs three or five cents, according to the quality of cloth pasted over it, and each package of the zumi costs a cent and a half. On winter days one often sees the Japanese holding kairos in their hands, tucking them in their obis, and slipping them down their backs. They are serviceable in keeping dampness out of the piles of linen in house-keeper’s closets, and at night they assume the function of the ancient warming-pan. In America it has been considered only as a toy, a muff-warmer, or a pocket-stove. But its best use is in the sick-room, where it will keep a poultice or hot cloth at an even heat for days. A chill, a cramp, or a rheumatic pain is charmed away by its steady, gentle heat; and in neuralgia, bound on the aching nerves, it soothes them. Headaches have been known to yield to it, and in sea-sickness the kairo overcomes the agonizing chills and relieves the suffering. Our heavy rubber hot-water bags, that are always leaking and suddenly cooling, may well be superseded by the little kairo.
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. Its theatres, its wrestlers, its maiko and geisha are as ​well known as its industries, and its jinrikisha runners are reckoned the swiftest in the empire. The latter spin over the stone-paved streets and bridges and round corners at a terrifying pace, all for six cents an hour, and usually speed the departing guest to the station early enough to allow him a half-hour at the little tea-houses in the park, to eat cubes of the superlative Osaka sponge-cake. The maiko and geisha of this southern capital are renowned for their grace, beauty, and wit; their taste in arranging the obi and dressing the hair; their cleverness in inventing new dances; and the entertainments in which they figure, under the lanterned awnings of the house-boats as they float up and down the river at night, are unique among such fêtes.
There are many rich and splendid temples in Osaka that seem to have suffered little since the protection of the Shogun and the court were withdrawn. 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. One temple possesses many relics of the Forty-seven Ronins, and at its annual matsuri, when these are exhibited, the surrounding courts are almost impassable with the crowds and the merry fair. The twin Monto temples are splendid structures, and priests from the Kioto Hongwanjis often assist in their ceremonials.
As one approaches Osaka from Kara, Tennoji's roofs and pagoda are seen at the same moment with the castle towers. This pagoda is one of the few in Japan which visitors are allowed to climb, and contains enough wood ​and rough timber to build twenty like it after occidental methods. Such steep and clumsy stairs and ladders are harder to climb than mountains; for the climber crawls over and creeps under heavy beams, and fairly twists himself upward, getting an occasional peep down the dark well-hole, where the builders’ secret is hidden. Visitors wonder how pagodas are made to stand in an earthquake country, and why these spindling edifices should be built up without regard to the inevitable tremble, until they see in the hollow chamber, or well, an exaggerated tongue or pendulum hanging from the topmost beams.
This tongue, made of heavy beams bolted together in a mass, is equal to about half the weight of the whole structure. It descends nearly to the base of the pagoda, and at the shock of an earthquake the large pendulum slowly swings, the structure sways, and settles back safely to its base.
In a tall sheathed bell-tower near the pagoda there is a most interesting shrine where parents hang the garments of sick and dying children. The whole interior is filled with little kimonos and bibs, and the long rope of the gong overhead is covered with them, while tearful women cluster round the priests in the small interior, and a continuous service seems to go on before the altar. In the court-yard a large stone water-tank, sunk a few steps and covered with a pavilion roof, contains a stone tortoise pouring a constant stream of water into the reservoir, on whose surface the faithful, buying wooden shavings or prayer-papers from the priests, cast these petitions and go away content.
Others fill little bottles with the water and carry it home as a specific against many ills. In a pond near by live hundreds of turtles The kamé climb up on wooden platforms in the pond and sun themselves, but at the clap of the hand and the sight of popped beans floating ​about, the whole colony dive off and swim towards their benefactor.
All around Tennoji are the yellow walls of the monasteries, with miniature moats and heavy gate-ways, and this quarter is a religious city by itself, which was once a separate suburb with a population of 30,000.