Glimpses of Japan and Formosa

As a matter of fact, while it is picturesque at a distance of space or time, actual living in the flimsy toy houses of Japan is far from convenient to one "raised" in Western fashion. It is glorious to be able to nudge one's neighbor during a performance of "Madame Butterfly" and hoarsely to boast, "I once lived like that"-I am, of course, speaking of the stage-setting, not of the story-but it is equally inglorious to forget for a moment the frailty of paper walls and thrust a hand through one of those sliding _shoji_. To be able-and expected-to run about indoors on bare or stockinged feet, leaving all the dust or mud of the street-and, from Tokyo down, one or both are rarely lacking in Japan-at the threshold has an Elysian sound, a suggestion of speckless Golden Stairs and noiselessly flitting angels. It is an unusual Westerner, however, who does not feel his dignity swiftly evaporating when deprived of his customary footwear. Nor is it merely his shoes which are _de trop_ in a Japanese house; for ideal convenience he should leave his legs, too, at the door. The awkward school-boy's difficulty in disposing of his hands and arms is mild indeed beside that of the Occidental guest faced with the problem of what to do with his superfluous lower limbs on the cushion-scattered matting of a Japanese room. In flowing kimono it is bad enough; in trousers, which custom decrees shall retain the suggestion of a crease, it is disheartening. It is all very well, of course, to be able to tuck beds in a closet during the day, to have a room uncluttered by furniture, but the total lack of drawers, shelves, or hooks leaves Japan the original land for hanging things on the floor.

More troublesome still to us of an ungregarious race is the utter absence of seclusion in Japanese dwellings. Since that initiation in Tokyo we have inhabited a score of them, mainly inns and public hostelries; and of the petty annoyances of life, of which Japan has her share, even as other lands, perhaps the most exasperating, certainly the most wearying, is the impossibility of sometimes being alone. No wonder so many Japanese turn Shinto or Buddhist recluses and retire to temple or monastery-though even for them there is little genuine seclusion. The romantic paper walls have very slight capacity for deflecting sound. Let the man four rooms removed from you in a native inn turn over in his sleep, and you spring awake ready to do battle with an intruder. Let a pair of fellow-guests engage in one of those interminable conversations which seem to be the most frequent toward midnight and beyond, and a megaphone could scarcely increase the din.