More Queer Things About Japan

ese Interiors; Mr W. E. Griffis's Mikado's Empire; and the various works of the late Mr Iafcadio Hearn, to all of which I have frequently had recourse in refreshing the memories of my year in Japan. CHAPTER I HOW EUROPEANS LIVE IN JAPAN In Japan, Europeans do not live, as many people suppose, in paper houses, nor do they eat Japanese food, or make a dinner-table of their floor, or substitute a wooden neck-rest for a feather pillow. European residents in Japan live in solemn splendour in the foreign settlements of the large towns. In Yokohama they live on the Bluff, a flat-topped volcanic hill on the outskirts of the native town. It was against the etiquette of the European residents, when I was there, to take the slightest interest in Japan. If an enthusiastic or intelligent traveller brought introductions with him, he was looked upon as an objectionable globetrotter and interloper. This little bit of prejudiced England perched up on the Bluff liked to regulate its houses and habits on as strictly English principles as it was possible to maintain in houses where the housemaids and parlourmaids and cooks were all Japanese "boys." Anything duller and narrowerthan these English communities in the East it is difficult to imagine. You never by any chance met any of these Pharisees indulging in any form of entertainment except a dinner or a tea-party at each other's houses. They did not know anything about Japan except the pony-racing, nor did they wish to, ...