# Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings/Chapter 4

CHAPTER IV.
INTERIORS (Continued).
THE kitchen, as an apartment, varies quite as much in Japan as it does in our country, and varies in the same way; that is to say, in the country, in houses of the better class, both in Japan and the United States, the kitchen is large and oftentimes spacious, well lighted and airy, in which not only the preparation of food and the washing of dishes go on. but in which also the meals are served. The kitchen of the common city house in both countries is oftentimes a dark narrow room, ill-lighted, and altogether devoid of comfort for the cook. Among this class of houses the kitchen is the least defined of Japanese rooms; it lacks that tidiness and definition so characteristic of the other rooms. It is often a narrow porch or shed with pent roof, rarely, if ever, possessing a ceiling; its exposed rafters are blackened by the smoke, which finds egress through a scuttle, through which often comes the only light that illumi nates the dim interior. In the city house the kitchen often comes on that side of the house next the street. for the reason that the garden being in the rear of the house the best rooms face that area; being on the street too, the kitchen is convenient for the vender of fish and vegetables, and for all the kitchen traffic, which too often with us results in the strewing of our ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/226 ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/227 ​Fig. 167 (page 186) gives a sketch of an old kitchen at Kabutoyama in the western part of the province of Musashi. This kitchen is nearly three hundred years old, and, is the type of a kitchen of a wealthy and independent Japanese farmer. The great wooden curbed well is seen in front, with a pulley above in which the rope runs. Near by is a trough from which a bamboo spout leads to some trough in another portion of the house. The kamado, or cooking-range, is seen to the left, and beyond is a room partly closed by fusuma. Directly beyond the well two girls may be seen in the act of preparing dinner. which consists in arranging the dishes on little raised lacquered trays, which are to be carried in when dinner is ready. Near the range are little portable affairs made of soft stone and used as braziers. The raised floor is composed of broad planks; kitchens invariably have wooden floors, which are oftentimes very smooth and polished.
The usual form of kitchen range is represented in fig. 168; this is made of broken tiles and mud or clay compacted together and neatly plastered and blackened on the outside. In this range there are two recesses for fire, which open directly in front; and this structure rests upon a stout wooden frame having a place for ashes in front. and a space beneath in which the wood and charcoal are kept. Sometimes this range, retaining the same form, is made of copper; within this water is kept, and little openings permit the wine-bottle to be immersed in order to heat it, as the sake is drunk hot without the admixture of hot water.
In another kitchen in a house in Imado, Tokio. a hood of sheet-iron was arranged to convey the smoke outside the building. This is probably a modern device (fig. 169).
In fig. 170 a sketch is given of a kitchen in Tokio in which the range was a closed affair made of stone, with a funnel at the end as in our stoves. I was told by the owner of this house that ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/229 ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/230 ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/231 ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/232 ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/233 ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/234 ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/235 ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/236 ​houses it is deemed a necessity to have cach chamber provided with a closet, in the Japanese house bed-chambers rarely contain such conveniences. There are low cupboards or closets in certain recesses, the upper part or top of which forms a deep open shelf. In the kitchen, dressers and similar conveniences are used for the dishes. In the province of Omi it is common to see a case of shelves with cupboard beneath; upon the shelves the larger dishes are displayed. In the kitchen there is often combined with the flight of stairs a closet; and this closet usually has a door swinging on hinges. In this closet are often kept the bed-clothes, pillows, candle-sticks, and night-lamps. Fig. 177 illustrates the appearance of this closet. In the hallway, also, a closet is sometimes seen in which to stow away the geta, or wooden clogs. A closet of this nature is described farther on.
As most of the houses are of one story, and the area between the ceiling and the roof never utilized, as with us, stairways are not common; when they do occur they are primitive in their construction. A stairway incorporated into the structure of a building and closed below I have never seen in Japan; nor is there any approach to the broad, low steps and landings or spiral staircases such as we are familiar with in American houses. If the house be of two stories the staircase assumes the form of a rather precipitous step-ladder; that is, it has two side-pieces, or strings, in which the steps, consisting of thick plank, are mortised. This ladder is so steeply inclined that one has to step sideways in ascending, otherwise his knee would strike the step above. Rarely is there any convenience to hold on by: if present, however, this consists of a strip of wood fastened to the wall, or a rope is secured in the same way. The front of the step is open, — that is, there is no riser; but if the back of the steps face an open room, then slats of wood are nailed on behind.
​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/238 ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/239 ​take them after the Japanese fashion. The Japanese, as well as other Eastern people, have for centuries been accustomed to see nakedness, without its provoking among them the slightest attention, or in any way suggesting immodesty. With us, on the contrary, the effect has been different; and the dire result is seen in the almost utter extinction in our country of the classical drama, and the substitution therefor of ballet-dancing and burlesques, — of anything in fact that shall present to the vulgar gaze of thousands the female form in scanty apparel. A Turkish woman looks upon her Christian sister as not only immodest and vulgar, but absolutely immoral, because she, unblushingly parades the public street with a naked face; but the Christian woman knows that the established customs of her country sanction such an exposure as entirely proper. A girl who in our country would deem it immodest to appear among the members of her own family in a robe de chambre, and yet under the glare of a bright gas-light, in the midst of scores of strangers, appears with low corsage, is committing an act which to a Turkish woman would appear inexplicable. To a Japanese, the sight of our dazzling ball-rooms, with girls in décolleté dresses, clasped in the arms of their partners and whirling to the sound of exciting music, must seem the wildest debauch imaginable; for in Japan the sexes, except among the lower classes, never intermingle. No free and happy picnics, sleigh-rides, boat-sails, and evening parties among the girls and ​boys are known there; no hand-shake, no friendly kiss. If the Japanese visitor in this country is a narrow-minded and witless scribbler, he will probably startle his friends at home with accounts of the grossly immoral character of Christians. Unfamiliar as he is with the corner loafer cying every girl that walks by, or with that class which throng our walks with the sole purpose of staring at the girls, who are there for the purpose of being stared at, what must he think of our people when he visits our summer resorts at the seaside and sees a young girl — nay, swarms of them — tripping over the sand under a bright sun, bare-legged, clad only in a single wrapper, which when wet clings to her form and renders her an object of contemplation to a battalion of young men who fringe the beach!
In Japan, among the lower classes, the sexes bathe together, but with a modesty and propriety that are inconceivable to a foreigner until he has witnessed it. Though naked, there is no indecent exposure of the person. While in the bath they are absorbed in their work, and though chatting and laughing seem utterly unmindful of each other. The grossest libels have been written about the Japanese in reference to their custom of public bathing and I hazard the statement, without fear of contradiction, that an intelligent Japanese, seeing many of our customs for the first time, without knowing the conditions under which they had grown up, would find infinitely more to condemn as immodest, than an intelligent foreigner would find in seeing for the first time certain Japanese customs, with the same ignorance at the outset as to what such customs implied.
If cleanliness is next to godliness, then verily the Japanese are a godly race. The simple statement, without qualification, that numbers of Japanese in their public baths bathe in the same ​water would seem a filthy habit. Certainly if such a statement were really true in regard to our own lower classes, it would be a most filthy habit. When it is understood, however, that the Japanese working classes — such as the carpenters, masons, and others — often bathe two or three times a day, and must of necessity enter the bath in a state of cleanliness such as our workmen rarely if ever attain, the statement loses some of its force. When it is further added that these people do not wash in the baths, but boil or soak in them for a while, and then upon a platform, with an extra bucket of water and a towel, wash and dry themselves, the filthy character of this performance assumes quite another aspect. A Japanese familiar with his airy and barn-like theatres, his public readings under an open tent-like structure, or gatherings in a room in which one or all sides may be open to the air even in mid-winter, would look upon the usual public gatherings of our people in lecture-halls, school-rooms, and other closed apartments, wherein the air often becomes so foul that people faint and struggle to the door to get a breath of fresh air, — a Japanese, I say, would justly look upon such practices as filthy to the last degree. And what would he say to one of our great political meetings, for example, where a vast unwashed herd of perspiring and excited people actually bathe their delicate membranous lungs in the combined breath of hundreds!
The public baths, however, do not concern us, — though it may be well to contrast our country with Japan in this respect, where in the latter country every village and every town, and in the city nearly every square, possess public baths where for the price of a cent or two one may find conveniences for a hot bath; while in our country public baths are only found in the larger cities, and few of these even can boast of such a luxury. As for the private houses in our country where bathing is customary, an inquiry shows that few possess the convenience of a bath-tub. ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/243 ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/244 ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/245 ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/246 ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/247 ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/248 ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/249 ​Another form, and a very common one, is a yoke of bamboo, the lower ends of which are firmly secured to a larger bamboo, confining at the same time a piece of bamboo which slides freely up and down on the yoke, and by its own weight resting on the towel which may be thrown across the lower bamboo. Another form consists of a loop of bamboo suspended to the side of a board which is hung against the wall.
The towels are pretty objects, being of cotton or linen, and usually have printed upon them sketchy designs in two shades of blue.
After living in Japan for a time one realizes how few are the essentials necessary for personal comfort. He further realizes that his personal comfort is enhanced by the absence of many things deemed indispensable at home. In regard to the bed and its arrangements, the Japanese have reduced this affair to its simplest expression. The whole floor, the whole house indeed, is a bed, and one can fling himself down on the soft mats, in the draught or out of it, upstairs or down, and find a smooth, firm, and level surface upon which to sleep, — no creaking springs, hard bunches or awkward hollows awaiting him, but a bed-surface as wide as the room itself, and comfortable to the last degree. To be more explicit, the bed is made upon the mats; there is no bedstead, or frame, or circumscribed area of any kind upon or within which the bed is placed. The bed-clothes consisting of lightly or heavily wadded comforters are spread upon the floor, one or more forming the bed, and another one acting as a covering. The common ones are wadded with cotton; the best ones are made of silk, and are stuffed with floss silk. In private houses one often gets a bed consisting of a number of these silk comforters, — and a most ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/251 ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/252 ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/253 ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/254 ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/255 ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/256 ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/257 ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/258 ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/259 ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/260 ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/261 ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/262 ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/263 ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/264 ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/265 ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/266 ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/267 ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/268 ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/269 ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/270 ​Page:Japanese Homes and their Surroundings 1885 by Edward S. Morse (1889 4th ed).pdf/271 ​purposes, I was told that in Hiroshima in the renting of the poorer tenement houses, if three persons occupied a together the sewage paid the rent of one, and if five occupied the same room no rent was charged! Indeed, the immense value and importance of this material is so great to the Japanese farmer, who depends entirely upon it for the enrichment of his soil, that in the country personal conveniences for travellers are always arranged by the side of the road, in the shape of buckets or half-barrels sunk in the ground.
Judging by our standards of modesty in regard to these matters there would appear to be no evidence of delicacy among the Japanese respecting them; or, to be more just, perhaps I should say that there is among them no affectation of false modesty, — a feeling which seems to have developed among the English-speaking people more exclusively, and among some of them to such ridiculous heights of absurdity as often to be fraught with grave consequences. But among the Japanese it would seem as if the publicity given by them to the collecting of this important fertilizer had dulled all sensitiveness on their part, if it ever existed, concerning this matter. Indeed, privacy in this matter would be impossible when it is considered that in cities — as in Tokio, for example — of nearly a million of inhabitants this material is carried off daily to the farms outside, the vessels in which it is conveyed being long cylindrical buckets borne by men and horses. If sensitive persons are offended by these conditions, they must admit that ​the secret of sewage disposal has been effectually solved by the Japanese for centuries, so that nothing goes to waste. And of equal importance, too, is it that of that class of diseases which scourge our communities as a result of our ineffectual efforts in disposing of sewage, the Japanese happily know but little. In that country there are no deep vaults with long accumulations contaminating the ground, or underground pipes conducting sewage to shallow bays and inlets, there to fester and vitiate the air and spread sickness and death.
On the other hand it must be admitted that their water supply is very seriously affected by this sewage being washed into rivers and wells from the rice-fields where it is deposited; and the scourge of cholera, which almost yearly spreads its desolating shadow over many of their southern towns, is due to the almost universal cultivation of the land by irrigation methods; and the consequent distribution of sewage through these surface avenues renders it impossible to protect the water supply from contamination.
* ↑ A correspondent in the "Pall Mall Gazette," in protesting against the attempt to impose European clothing on those people who are accustomed to go without any, says: "In many parts of India there is a profound suspicion of the irreligiousness of clothing. The fakir is distressed even by the regulation rag upon which the Government modestly insists, and a fully dressed fakir would be scouted. The late Brahmo minister, Chesub Chander Sen, expressed the belief that India would never accept a Christ in hat and boots. The missionary should remember that clothes-morality is climatic, and that if a certain degree of covering of the body has gradually become in the Northwest associated with morality and piety, the traditions of tropical countries may have equally connected elaborate dress rather with the sensualities of Solomon in his glory than with the purity of the lily as clothed by Nature."
* ↑ Rein says: "The cleanliness of the Japanese is one of his most commendable qualities. It is apparent in his body, in his house, in his workshop, and no less in the great carefulness and exemplary exactness with which he looks after his fields."
* ↑ From the name tokonoma, which means "bed-place," literally "bed of floor," it is supposed that in ancient times the bed was made or placed in this recess.
* ↑ In this councection it may be interesting to mention the various names applied to the privy by the Japanese, with a free translation of the same as given me by Mr. A. S. Mihara: Setsu-in, "snow-hide;" Chōdzu-ba, "place to wash hands" (the chōdzu-bachi, a convenience for washing the hands, being always near the privy); Benjo and Yō-ba, "place for business;" Kō-ka, "back-frame." Habakari is a very common name for this place; the word Yen-riyo, though not applied to this place, has the same meaning, — it implies reserve. These words with their meanings certainly indicate a great degree of refinement and delicacy in the terms applied to the privy.