<SPAN name="startofbook"></SPAN>
<h1>A JAPANESE BOY</h1>
<h3>BY</h3>
<h2>HIMSELF</h2>
<h5>NEW YORK</h5>
<h5>HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY</h5>
<h5>1890</h5>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h5><i>COPYRIGHTED</i>, 1889.</h5>
<h5>By SHIUKICHI SHIGEMI.</h5>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h4>CONTENTS.</h4>
<h5><SPAN href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.</SPAN></h5>
<p class="contents">MY BIRTHPLACE—MY GRANDFATHER—TENJINSAN.</p>
<h5><SPAN href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.</SPAN></h5>
<p class="contents">OLD-FASHIONED SCHOOL—MY SCHOOLMASTER—THE SCHOOL-HOUSE.</p>
<h5><SPAN href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.</SPAN></h5>
<p class="contents">THE KITCHEN—DINNER—FOOD.</p>
<h5><SPAN href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.</SPAN></h5>
<p class="contents">GAMES—NEW SCHOOL—IMITATING THE WEST—MORE ABOUT MY SCHOOLMASTER—PUNISHMENTS AT SCHOOL.</p>
<h5><SPAN href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.</SPAN></h5>
<p class="contents">BATHS—EVENINGS AT HOME—JAPANESE DANCING AND MUSIC.</p>
<h5><SPAN href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.</SPAN></h5>
<p class="contents">AMATEUR ACTORS AND REAL ACTORS AND ACTRESSES—JAPANESE THEATRE.</p>
<h5><SPAN href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII.</SPAN></h5>
<p class="contents">WRESTLING—STORY-TELLERS—PICNIC AND PICNIC GROUNDS—AN OLD CASTLE
AND A TRADITION.</p>
<h5><SPAN href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII.</SPAN></h5>
<p class="contents">ANGLING—A PIOUS OLD LADY AND HER ADVENTURES.</p>
<h5><SPAN href="#CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX.</SPAN></h5>
<p class="contents">THE YAITO—A WITCH-WOMAN—AUNT OTSUNÉ, MISS CHRYSANTHEMUM AND
MR. PROSPERITY.</p>
<h6><SPAN href="#CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X.</SPAN></h6>
<p class="contents">NEW-YEAR'S DAY—THE MOCHI-MAKING—OLD-TIME OBSERVANCES.</p>
<h5><SPAN href="#CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI.</SPAN></h5>
<p class="contents">KITE-FLYING—HOW I MADE MY KITE—MY UNCLE AND HIS RIG KIT—OTHER
NEW-YEAR GAMES—HOW WE END OUR NEW-YEAR HOLIDAYS.</p>
<h5><SPAN href="#CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII.</SPAN></h5>
<p class="contents">OTHER JAPANESE HOLIDAYS—TANABATA AND INOKO, THE BOYS' DAYS—THE SHINTOISTIC
AND BUDDHISTIC ABLUTION MASS.</p>
<h5><SPAN href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII.</SPAN></h5>
<p class="contents">OUR PRIEST AND BOY-PRIEST—OUR DOG GEM—SHAKA'S BIRTHDAY.</p>
<h5><SPAN href="#CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV.</SPAN></h5>
<p class="contents">THE FESTIVALS OF LOCAL DEITIES—SCHOOL AGAIN, AND SOME ACCOUNT
OF MY SCHOOL-FELLOWS—CONCLUSION.</p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h3>PREFATORY LETTER.</h3>
<p>PROF. HENRY W. FARNAM:</p>
<p><i>Dear Sir:</i>—My motives in writing this jejune little volume are, as you
are aware, two:</p>
<p>1st. There seems to be no story told in this country of the Japanese
boy's life by a Japanese boy himself. The following rambling sketches
are incoherent and extremely meagre, I own; but you must remember that
they are a boy's talks. Give him encouragement, and he will tell you
more.</p>
<p>2d. The most important of my reasons is my desire to obtain the means to
prosecute the studies I have taken up in America. Circumstances have
obliged me to make my own way in this hard world. If I knew of a better
step I should not have resorted to an indiscreet juvenile publication—a
publication, moreover, of my own idle experiences, and in a language the
alphabet of which I learned but a few years ago.</p>
<p>To you my sincere acknowledgments are due for encouraging me to write
these pages. This kindness is but one of many, of which the public has
no knowledge.</p>
<p><span style="margin-left: 20em;">I am, sir,</span><br/>
<span style="margin-left: 21em;">Yours very truly.</span><br/>
<span style="margin-left: 22em;">SHIUKICHI SHIGEMI</span><br/>
<br/>
<span style="margin-left: 1em;">NEW HAVEN. CT., September, 1889.</span><br/></p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2>A JAPANESE BOY.</h2>
<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h3><SPAN name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></SPAN>CHAPTER I.</h3>
<p>I was born in a small seaport town called Imabari, which is situated on
the western coast of the island of Shikoku, the eastern of the two
islands lying south of Hondo. The Imabari harbor is a miserable ditch;
at low tide the mouth shows its shallow bottom, and one can wade across.
People go there for clam-digging. Two or three little streams empty
their waters into the harbor. A few junks and a number of boats are
always seen standing in this pool of salt-water. In the houses
surrounding it, mostly very old and ramshackle, are sold eatables and
provisions, fishes are bought from the boats, or shelter is given to
sailors.</p>
<p>When a junk comes in laden with rice, commission merchants get on board
and strike for bargains. The capacity of the vessel is measured by the
amount of rice it can carry. The grain merchant carries about him a
good-sized bamboo a few inches long, one end of which is sharpened and
the other closed, being cut just at a joint. He thrusts the pointed end
into bags of the rice. The bags are rice-straw, knitted together roughly
into the shape of barrels. Having taken out samples in the hollow inside
of the bamboo stick, the merchant first examines critically the physical
qualities of the grains on the palm of his hand, and then proceeds to
chew them in order to see how they taste. Years of practice enable him
to state, after such simple tests, precisely what section of the country
the article in question came from, although the captain of the vessel
may claim to have shipped it from a famous rice-producing province.</p>
<p>About the harbor are coolies waiting for work. They are strong, muscular
men, thinly clad, with easy straw sandals on. Putting a little cushion
on the left shoulder, a coolie rests the rice-bag upon it and walks away
from the ship to a store-house; his left hand passed around the burden
and his right holding a short, stout, beak-like, iron hook fastened in
the bag. In idle moments the coolies get together and indulge in tests
of strength, lifting heavy weights, etc.</p>
<p>At a short distance to the right from the entrance of the harbor is a
sanitarium. It is a huge, artificial cave, built of stone and mortar and
heated by burning wood-fires in the inside. After it is sufficiently
warmed the fire is extinguished, the smoke-escape shut, and the oven is
ready for use. Invalids flock in with wet mats, which they use in
sitting on the scalding rocky floor of the oven. Lifting the mat that
hangs like a curtain at the entrance, they plunge into the suffocating
hot air and remain there some time and emerge again into daylight,
fairly roasted and smothered. Then they speedily make for the sea and
bathe in it. This process of alternate heating and cooling is repeated
several times a day. It is to cook out, as it were, diseases from the
body. For some constitutions the first breath of the oven immediately
after the warming is considered best, for others the mild warmth of
later hours is thought more commendable. I, for myself, who have
accompanied my mother and gone through the torture, do not like either
very much. The health-seekers rent rooms in a few large cottages
standing near by. In fact, they live out of town, free from business and
domestic cares, pass time at games, or saunter and breathe pure air
under pine-trees in the neighborhood. The establishment is opened only
during summer time. A person ought to get well in whiling away in free
air those glorious summer days without the aid of the roasting scheme.</p>
<p>To the left of the harbor along the shore stands the main body of
Imabari. Mt. Myozin heaves in sight long before anything of the town can
be seen. It is not remarkable as a mountain, but being so near my town,
whenever I have espied it on my return I have felt at home. I can
remember its precise outline. As we draw nearer, white-plastered
warehouses, the sea-god's shrine jutting out into the water, and the
castle stone walls come in our view. You observe no church-steeple, that
pointed object so characteristically indicative of a city at a distance
in the Christian community. To be sure, the pagoda towers toward the sky
in the community of Buddhists; but it is more elaborate and costly a
thing than the steeple, and Imabari is too poor to have one.</p>
<p>Facing the town, in the sea, rises a mountainous island; it encloses
with the neighboring islets the Imabari sound. A report goes that on
this island lies a gigantic stone, apparently immovable by human agency,
so situated that a child can rock it with one hand. Also that a monster
of a tortoise, centuries old, floats up occasionally from an
immeasurable abyss near the island to sun itself; and those who had seen
it thought it was an island.</p>
<p>Very picturesque if viewed from the sea but painfully poverty-stricken
to the sight when near, is a quarter closely adjoining Imabari on the
north. It is on the shore and entirely made up of fisher-men's homes.
The picturesque, straw-thatched cottages stand under tall, knotty
pine-trees and send up thin curls of smoke. Their occupants are,
however, untidy, careless, ignorant, dirty; the squalid children let
loose everywhere in ragged dress, bareheaded and barefooted. The men,
naked all summer and copper-colored, go fishing for days at a time in
their boats; the women sell the fishes in the streets of Imabari. A
fisher-woman carries her fishes in a large, shallow, wooden tub that
rests on her head; she also carries on her breast a babe that cannot be
left at home.</p>
<p>Imabari has about a dozen streets. They are narrow, dirty, and have no
sidewalks; man and beast walk the same path. As no carriages and wagons
rush by, it is perfectly safe for one to saunter along the streets half
asleep. The first thing I noticed upon my landing in New York was, that
in America a man had to look out every minute for his personal safety.
From time to time I was collared by the captain who had charge of me
with, "Here, boy!" and I frequently found great truck horses or an
express wagon almost upon me. In crossing the streets, horse-cars
surprised me more than once in a way I did not like, and the thundering
engine on the Manhattan road caused me to crouch involuntarily. Imabari
is quite a different place; all is peace and quiet there. In one section
of the town blacksmiths reside exclusively, making the street black with
coal dust. In another granite workers predominate, rendering the street
white with fine stone chips. On Temple street, you remark temples of
different Buddhist denominations, standing side by side in good
fellowship; and in Fishmongers' alley all the houses have fish-stalls,
and are filled with the odor of fish. The Japanese do not keep house in
one place and store in another; they live in their stores. Neither do we
have that singular system of boarding houses. Our people have homes of
their own, however poor.</p>
<p>My family lived on the main street, which is divided into four
subdivisions or "blocks." The second block is the commercial centre, so
to speak, of the town, and there my father kept a store. My grandfather,
I understood, resided in another street before he moved with his
son-in-law, my father, to the main street. He lived to the great age of
eighty: I shall always remember him with honor and respect. Of my
grandmother I know absolutely nothing, she having passed away before I
was born.</p>
<p>It is customary in Japan that a man too old for business and whose head
is white with the effect of many weary winters, should retire and
hibernate in a quiet chamber, or in a cottage called inkyo (hiding
place), and be waited upon by his eldest son or son-in-law who succeeds
him in business. My good grandfather—his kindly face and pleasant words
come back to me this moment—lived in a nice little house in the rear of
my father's. Although strong in mind he was bent with age and went about
with the help of a bamboo cane. He lived alone, had little to do, but
read a great deal, and thought much, and when tired did some light
manual work. It was a great pleasure for me to visit him often. In cold
winter days he would be found sitting by kotatsu, a native heating
apparatus. It is constructed on the following plan: a hole a foot square
is cut in the centre of the matted floor, wherein a stone vessel is
fitted, and a frame of wood about a foot high laid on it so as to
protect the quilt that is to be spread over it, from burning. The vessel
is filled with ashes, and a charcoal fire is burned in it. I used to
take my position near my grandfather, with my hands and feet beneath the
quilt, and ask him to tell stories. My feet were either bare or in a
pair of socks, for before getting on the floor we leave our shoes in the
yard. Our shoes, by the way, are more like the ancient Jewish sandals
than the modern leather shoes.</p>
<p>In this little house of my grandfather's I erected my own private shrine
of Tenjinsan, the god of penmanship. The Japanese and the Chinese value
highly a skilful hand at writing; a famous scroll-writer gets a large
sum of money with a few strokes of his brush; he is looked up to like a
celebrated painter. We school-boys occasionally proposed penmanship
contests. On the same sheet of paper each of us wrote, one beside
another, his favorite character, or did his best at one character we had
mutually agreed upon, and took it to our teacher to decide upon the
finest hand. The best specimens of a school are sometimes framed and
hung on the walls of a public temple of Tenjin. He is worshiped by all
school-boys, and I also followed the fashion. My image of him was made
of clay; I laid it on a shelf and offered saké (rice-wine) in two tiny
earthen bottles, lighted a little lamp every night and put up prayers in
childish zeal. The family rejoiced at my devotion; they finally bought
me, one holiday, a miniature toy temple. It was painted in gay colors; I
was delighted with it beyond expression, and my devotion increased
tenfold.</p>
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