"'Had a lively time," he panted, with a hundred children at his heels. "There's a sort of roulette table here where you can gamble for cakes. I bought the owner's stock–in–trade for three dollars and ran the Monte Carlo for the benefit of the kids—about five thousand of 'em. Never had such fun in my life. It beats the Simla lotteries hollow. They were perfectly orderly till they had cleared the tables of everything except a big sugar–tortoise. Then they rushed the bank, and I ran away."
And he was a hard man who had not played with anything as innocent as sweetmeats for many years!
When we were all weak with laughing, and the Professor's camera was mixed up in a tangle of laughing maidens to the confusion of his pictures, we too ran away from the tea–house and wandered down the river bank till we found a boat of sewn planks which poled us across the swollen river, and landed us on a little rocky path overhanging the water where the iris and the violet ran riot together and jubilant waterfalls raced through the undergrowth of pine and maple. We were at the foot of the Arashima rapids, and all the pretty girls of Kioto were with us looking at the view. Up–stream a lonely black pine stood out from all its fellows to peer up the bend where the racing water ran deep in oily swirls. Down–stream the river threshed across the rocks and troubled the fields of fresh logs on its bosom, while men in blue drove silver–white boats gunwale–deep into the foam of its onset and hooked the logs away. Underfoot the rich earth of the hillside sent up the breath of the turn of the year to the maples that had already caught the message from the fire–winds of April. Oh! it was good to be alive, to trample the stalks of the iris, to drag down the cherry–bloom spray in a wash of dew across the face, and to gather the violets for the mere pleasure of heaving them into the torrent and reaching out for fairer flowers.
"What a nuisance it is to be a slave to the camera," said the Professor, upon whom the dumb influences of the season were working though he knew it not.
"What a nuisance it is to be a slave to the pen," I answered, for the spring had come to the land. I had hated the spring for seven years because to me it meant discomfort.
"Let us go straight home and see the flowers come out in the Parks."
"Let us enjoy what lies to our hand, you Philistine." And we did till a cloud darkened and a wind ruffled the river reaches, and we returned to our 'rickshaws sighing with contentment.
"How many people do you suppose the land supports to the square mile?" said the Professor, at a turn in the homeward road. He had been reading statistics.
"Nine hundred," I said at a venture. "It's thicker set with humans than Sarun or Behar. Say one thousand."
"Two thousand two hundred and fifty odd. Can you believe it?"
"Looking at the landscape I can, but I don't suppose India will believe it. S'pose I write fifteen hundred?"
"They'll say you exaggerate just the same. Better stick to the true total. Two thousand two hundred and fifty–six to the square mile, and not a sign of poverty in the houses. How do they do it?"
I should like to know the answer to that question. Japan of my limited view is inhabited almost entirely by little children whose duty is to prevent their elders from becoming too frivolous. The babies do a little work occasionally, but their parents interfere by petting them. At Yami's hotel the attendance is in the hands of ten–year–olds because everybody else has gone out picnicing among the cherry trees. The little imps find time to do a man's work and to scuffle on the staircase between whiles. My special servitor, called "The Bishop" on account of the gravity of his appearance, his blue apron, and gaiters, is the liveliest of the lot, but even his energy cannot account for the Professor's statistics of population….
I have seen one sort of work among the Japanese, but it was not the kind that makes crops. It was purely artistic. A ward of the city of Kioto is devoted to manufactures. A manufacturer in this part of the world does not hang out a sign. He may be known in Paris and New York: that is the concern of the two cities. The Englishman who wishes to find his establishment in Kioto has to hunt for him up and down slums with the aid of a guide. I have seen three manufactories. The first was of porcelain–ware, the second of cloissonnée, and the third of lacquer, inlay, and bronzes. The first was behind black wooden palings, and for external appearance might just as well have been a tripe–shop. Inside sat the manager opposite a tiny garden four feet square in which a papery–looking palm grew out of a coarse stoneware pot and overshadowed a dwarfed pine. The rest of the room was filled with pottery waiting to be packed—modern Satsuma for the most part, the sort of thing you get at an auction.
"This made send Europe—India—America," said the manager, calmly. "You come to see?"
He took us along a verandah of polished wood to the kilns, to the clay vats, and the yards where the tiny "saggers" were awaiting their complement of pottery. There are differences many and technical between Japanese and Burslem pottery in the making, but these are of no consequence. In the moulding house, where they were making the bodies of Satsuma vases, the wheels, all worked by hand, ran true as a hair. The potter sat on a clean mat with his tea–things at his side. When he had turned out a vase–body he saw that it was good, nodded appreciatively to himself, and poured out some tea ere starting the next one. The potters lived close to the kilns and had nothing pretty to look at. It was different in the painting rooms. Here in a cabinet–like house sat the men, women, and boys who painted the designs on the vases after the first firing. That all their arrangements were scrupulously neat is only saying that they were Japanese; that their surroundings were fair and proper is only saying that they were artists. A sprig of a cherry blossom stood out defiantly against the black of the garden paling; a gnarled pine cut the blue of the sky with its spiky splinters as it lifted itself above the paling, and in a little pond the iris and the horsetail nodded to the wind. The workers when at fault had only to lift their eyes, and Nature herself would graciously supply the missing link of a design. Somewhere in dirty England men dream of craftsmen working under conditions which shall help and not stifle the half–formed thought. They even form guilds and write semi–rhythmical prayers to Time and Chance and all the other gods that they worship, to bring about the desired end. Would they have their dream realised, let them see how they make pottery in Japan, each man sitting on a snowy mat with loveliness of line and colour within arm's length of him, while with downcast eyes he—splashes in the conventional diaper of a Satsuma vase as fast as he can! The Barbarians want Satsuma and they shall have it, if it has to be made in Kioto one piece per twenty minutes. So much for the baser forms of the craft!
The owner of the second establishment lived in a blackwood cabinet—it was profanation to call it a house—alone with a bronze of priceless workmanship, a set of blackwood furniture, and all the medals that his work had won for him in England, France, Germany, and America. He was a very quiet and cat–like man, and spoke almost in a whisper. Would we be pleased to inspect the manufactory? He led us through a garden—it was nothing in his eyes, but we stopped to admire long. Stone lanterns, green with moss, peeped through clumps of papery bamboos where bronze storks were pretending to feed. A dwarfed pine, its foliage trimmed to dish–like plaques, threw its arms far across a fairy pond where the fat, lazy carp grubbed and rooted, and a couple of eared grebes squawked at us from the protection of the—waterbutt. So perfect was the silence of the place that we heard the cherry blossoms falling into the water and the lisping of the fish against the stones. We were in the very heart of the Willow–Pattern Plate and loath to move for fear of breaking it. The Japanese are born bower–birds. They collect water–worn stones, quaintly shaped rocks, and veined pebbles for the ornamentation of their homes. When they shift house they take the garden away with them—pine trees and all—and the incoming tenant has a free hand.