Sharp County record., 1881-03-31
Home Life in Japan.

NCW IOlh DUt VI AhlSo io''DNii's -
Birds book, "Unbeaten Tracks in
Japan"
In this house, which seems to have
been rather better than an average
dwelling of the middle class, Miss Bird
paid fifty cents day for two rooms,
with rice and tea. The meals came up
on a zen, or small table, six inches high,
of old gold lacquer, with the rice in a
gold lacquer bowl, while the teapot and
cup were of fine Kaga porcelain. There
is. of course, vast difference between
the house here described and the mud
cabins occupied by large numbers of the
rural agriculturists; yet even in the out
wardly cleanIy dwellings of well-todo
persons there is great neglect of sani-
yiary precautions. There is, to be sure,
a bath.tub, and most of the persons
have recourse to it once week, but the
water is used without any change by
all the inmates OF house, and soap is
not employed. Partial and interme-
,diate washings are confined to putting
the feet into hot water when they are
covered with mud, and washing the
.haads and face, or giving them slap
with damp towel, The mats, beneath
q clean surface, swarm with insect life,
aud the persons of the people are in-
tested with yermin. In towns the
drinking water is taken from wells
situated amid crowded houses, where
contamination is certain through perco-
laGons from decomposng organic mat
ter. In the farming villages the sew
age is kept in large tubs sunk into the
earth at the house door, whence it is re-
moved in open buckets to the fields.
AS regards the mass of the japanese
population, the essential elements of
their diet are rice, fish and daikon-a
pickled root notorious for its frighttul
scent, beside which that of saur- kraut
is delicious perfume. The range of eata-
hleS, however, open to the richer Jap
anese is almost unlimited, though, ex-
.cept on festival occasions, very little
money is spent upon the table, Over
ninety kinds of sea and river fish are
eaten, and thirteen Orfourteen kinds OF
shell fish. Cranes and storks are luXu-
ries of the rich; but game birds are oc-
casionally eaten by the middle classes.
Fowls are also killed for the table where
Shintoism prevails, or where Buddhist
teachings of the sacred life have been
efaced. How large is the variety OF
vegetables may be inferred from the
fact that no less than fourteen varieties
of beans are grown for food; but, with
Ebe exception of the celebrated daikOn,
all of them are singularly taSteless.
Sea-weed is common article OF diet
and is dried and carried everywhere in
10 the interior. Pickles and relishes
are enormously consumed, cucumberS
and eggplant being most frequently
used for picking. With the exception
of the "loquat," " which is stewed with
sugar and whose large seeds taste like
peach kernels, fruits are eaten raw and
without condiment. The japanese have
no puddings, tarts, creams, nor custards
or anything in which milk or butter is
essential. They are great eaters, how
ever, of sweetmeats, but the best OF
these are singularly insipid and either
etl,e sugar or the rice flour mingled with
1T has stale or musty taste.
In japanese kitchens cooking is done
at small tireplaces over charcoal fires,
and the utensils are, for the most part
limited to kettles and brass tongs. All
birds with the exception of quail, wood
cock and pheasants, which are broiled
on spits, are first cut into small pieces,
and then boiled in water, with little
salt. Fish may be broiled or boiled but
is most commonly eaten raw, served in
small oblong strips, or very thin
thceads. A carp, cut up while yet
alive and placed where the eater can
see it wriggle, is esteemed agreat deli
cacy, and is known on bills of fare as a
" live preparation of Ko-i." The chief
kinds Of soup used by the middle classes
arc bean soup, EGG soup and clear soup.
Nae last-named pottage is little likely to
exhaust the appetite, being an infusion
either of water and salt or OF water and
SOY. The drinks in common use are hot
water which is the ancient national
beyerage-tea, prepared with Waternot
quite boiling and merelypoured through
the leaves and unmingled, we scarcely
need add, with milk or sugar-SaEe, or
rice beer, a straw-colored fluid of faint
isA taste and smell, most varieties of
which contain from II to 17.5 of alco-
hol; and strochin, form of alcohol
which is drunk cold at odd hours. 1t
should be noted that in sake brewing we
have an entirely new and peculiar form
of fermentation industry which differs
in everyrespect from the European proc
esses. 1t is only during the summer
months that the stock of rice beer, re-
manning frcm the preceding winter is
subjected to what we know as Pasteur's
process, which, however, had been
practced in Japan for three centuries.
Stte, it seems, ought to have i've dis
tjnct tastes sweetness, SourneSS, sharp
ness, bitterness and astringency, togeth-
er with slight trace of the flavor of
fusel oil. Miss Bird thought it inSipid,
sickly and nauseous. 1t is frequently
drunk hot, and, as rule, is taken be-
fore what the japanese consider the
substantial part of the repast. There
is, in fact, both about the beverages and
the dishes of Japan something so un-
.palatable to foreigners that it is only
after long experience that a European
can swallow otherwise than ruefully the
native food.
As regards domestic morals and man.