New Ulm weekly review. [volume] (New Ulm, Minn.) 1878-1892, 1881-03-02
Homo Life in Japan.

Homo Life in Japan.
The following is from !. review in the
New York Sir OF, Miss Isabella L.
Birds book, ''Unbeatcn 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 q day for two rooms,
with rice and tea. The meals came up
on q zen, or small table, six inches high,
of old gold lacquer, with the rice in q
gold lacquer bowl, while the teapot and
cup We're OF fine Kaga porcelain. There
is, of course, a 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 clearly dwellings of we'll TODD
persons there is Il great neglect of SAM
tary 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 Il house, aud 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
hands and face, or giving them slap
with a damp towel. The mats, beneath
a clean surface, swarm with insect life,
and the persons of the people are in
tested with vermin. In towns the
drinking water is taken from wells
situated amid crowded houses, where
contamination is certain through perco-
lations from decomposing 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
picked root notorious for its frightful
scent, beside which that of saur-kraut
is delicious perfume. The range of eata-
bles, 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 or fourteen kinds of
she'll fish, Cranes and storks are luxu-
ries of the rich; but game birds are oc-
.ca5iolally eaten by the middle classes.
Fowe are also killed for the table where
Shintoism prevails, or where Buddhist
teachings of the sacred life have been
elfaced. 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
the 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
to the interior. Pickles. and relishes
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 insi pid and either
the sugar OF the rice flour mingled with
it has a stale or musty taste.
In Japanese kitchens cooking is done
at small fireplaces 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 splits, are first cut into small pieces,
and then boiled in water, with a little
salt. Fish may be broiled or boiled but
is most commonly eaten raw, served in
small obleng strips. or very thin
threads. A carp, cut up while yet
alive and placed where the eater can
see it wriggle, is esteemed great 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
are bean soup, egg soup and clear soup.
The 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
beverage-tea, prepared with waterno
quite boiling and merely poured through
the leaves and unmingled, we scarcely
need add, with milk or sugar-s0te, or
rice beer, a straw colored fluid of faint
ish taste and smell, most varieties of
which contain from II to 17.5 of alco-
hol; and strochin, a form of alcohol
which is drunk cold at odd hours. It
should be noted that in sake brewing we
have an entirely new and peculiar form
| of fermentation industry which differs
in every respect from the European proc
esses. It is only during the summer
months that the stock of rice beer, re-
naming from the preceding winter is
| subjected to what we know as Pasteur's
| process, which, however, had been
practiced in Japan for three centuries.
Sake, it seems, ought to have five dis
tinct tastes-sweetness sourness, sharp
| ness, bitterness and astringency, togeth-
| er with a slight trace of the flavor of
| fusel oil. Miss Bird thought it insipid.
sickly and nauseous. It 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 I'M
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
ners, Miss Bird has frequently had oc-
casion to point out the tendency to
sink the wife in the mother. In all ways
the matrimonial is completely subordi-
mated to the parental relation. Instead
of a mans leaving his father and moth
er and cleaving to his wife, married
woman in Japan is virtually lost to her
own family, and must become the SUBJ
missive handmade, not only of her hus-
band, but of her husbands parents.
Even the father is the servant of his
child, but the mother is it's slave. Miss
Bird tells us that the children form the
chief topic of the conversation at every