Jinrikisha Days in Japan

Osaka, the great commercial city of Japan, with its population of over 361,000 souls, stretches out its square miles of gray-roofed houses at the edge of the plain, where the waters of the Yodogawa reach Osaka Bay. Bars and shallows prevent large vessels from reaching the city, and Kobé-Hiogo, twenty miles across the arc of the bay, is its seaport. The branching river and the innumerable canals intersecting the city have given Osaka the name of the "Venice of Japan; " as if a trading city, built on a level plain, with canals too wide and houses too low and dull in color to be in the least picturesque, could be considered even a poor relation of the "Bride of the Sea. " The "Chicago of Japan" is a fitter title, for if no pork-packing establishments exist, the whole community is as energetically absorbed in money-making, the yen, instead of the almighty dollar, being the god chiefly worshipped, and Osaka's Board of Trade the most exciting and busy one in the empire.

Osaka has been prominent in the history of Japan from the very earliest times, and at the time of the Restoration the rebel Shogun made his last stand and fought his last battle at Osaka castle. The next great event in Osaka's annals was the flood of 1885, which was without parallel in this country of floods. During the last weeks of the rainy season of June the rain fell in torrents for more than a week, and a typhoon, sweeping the region, deluged the adjoining provinces. Lake Biwa rose many feet above its usual level, the rivers doubled and redoubled their size, and the whole Osaka plain was a lake. The rivers having been raised artificially above the level of the surrounding country for the irrigation of the rice fields, their banks and levees melted away before the rush of waters, and the plain was scoured by swift currents running eight and fifteen feet deep over the rice fields. Farm-houses and villages disappeared in a day, and the wretched people saved themselves and their few effects by taking to boats and rafts or seeking refuge in trees. After two weeks of high-water and continuing rains, the flood subsided and the wreck was more apparent. A few farmers, by replanting and careful tending, obtained crops that season, but hundreds and hundreds of the homeless and destitute were sheltered and fed in the unused barracks at Osaka castle.