Glimpses of Japan and Formosa

It is nearly a score of years now since the many private "iron roads" of the island empire were combined under a cabinet minister, yet when all is said and done the Imperial Government Railways of Japan are a refutation of an almost universal experience elsewhere, that trains will not run properly under government ownership. Perhaps it is the combination of religion and patriotism of which Shintoism seems to be concocted, the semi-deification of the mikado and all his belongings; perhaps it is due to mere habit, or racial temperament; the fact remains that government ownership and employment do not mean carelessness and neglect, indolence and waste, in Japan. One has, to be sure, the impression, at sight of the swarms of men and boys in the dull-blue railway uniform, that the system is over-staffed; but nothing, one recalls, is more plentiful in Japan than human beings. If improvement and extension languish a bit, there are reminders that the railways, like schools and many another ward of the mikado's Government, must often be content with modest rations, that its favorite sons, the army and navy, may lose none of their sturdy corpulence.

A narrow gauge is not conducive to reckless speed; the Japanese express-train that covers a mile in two minutes congratulates itself on a feat, while the locals that fulfil most of the promises, nearly always to the minute, of a bulky national time-table consume an incredible amount of time both at stations and between them. But few sports in Japan are far beyond the reach of rail, and the risk to life and limb is negligible. The adolescent squeal of the European-copied locomotives may be annoying to Americans, who will probably regret that the two car-length cushions on either side in first- and second-class are better suited to squatting on one's heels or stretching out at full shoeless length than to ease in viewing the passing landscape; one may question the Japanese conception of certain indispensable conveniences, but such as he conceives them they are always in order. Diligent scrub-women at the terminals are no more so than the train-boy, in no way related to the commerce-minded nuisance of the same name in our own land, who come hourly to sweep out the carriages with but slight disturbance to its occupants, and several times a day to mop them. All cars are smoking-cars; there is no division by sex even of wash-rooms. But in what other land does the guard, whom we would call conductor, uncover with a regal bow as he enters to announce the regretful necessity of troubling the honorable passengers to display their respectable tickets, or pause to rearrange a rug over a sleeping traveler and to set aright the shoes, clogs, sandals, _getas_, and slippers scattered along his way through the train?