March i, 1905.] 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



185 



A GLIMPSE OF JAPAN AND ITS RUBBER INDUSTRY. 



By The Editor of " The India Rubber World." 



THIS story begins in Nagasaki harbor, where lay the 

 steamship China,.v!\\.\\ a varied assortment of Ameri- 

 cans, Germans, English, Coreans, Chinese, Japanese, 

 and one full fledged Russian spy for passengers. 

 The harbor is one of the prettiest in the world ; it is quite nar- 

 row, some three miles in length, with many bays and sheltered 

 by wooded hills. The entrance, scarcely a quarter of a mile in 

 width, is between a number of islands on which stand modern 

 lighthouses. After the polite little Japanese health officers got 

 through with us, we went ashore, hired rickshaws at 20 sen an 

 hour, and rode about the town. 



Everybody knows that the climate of southern Japan is 

 lovely — that it is a land of cherry blossoms, with flowers bloom- 

 ing everywhere, and the happy laugh of the contented coolie is 

 heard on every hand. At least that is what the books say, but 

 truth to tell we rode through one thick snow squall after 

 another, and the whole town shivered in its paper houses, 

 while the people on the street looked blue and discouraged. 

 We got back in time to see a 

 great crowd of coolie girls 

 coaling the ship. Some sort 

 of conveying belt or mechani- 

 cal apparatus might have been 

 more modern, but it could not 

 have been cheaper, quicker, 

 or more picturesque. Passing 

 the coal up in baskets from 

 hand to hand, they put 1300 

 tons into the hold between 10 

 in the morning and 2 in the 

 afternoon. 



When this was finished, we 

 went ashore again for a short 

 time to see the big bronze 

 horse in front of one of the 

 temples, which, so we were 

 told, was left there one night 

 by an angel that brought it 

 down from heaven. The an- 

 gelic sculptor must have been * view of the inland sea 

 Japanese, for his work was characteristic of the country. Al- 

 most at once we were struck by the prevalent ambition of the 

 people to Improve themselves. Very many spoke English and 

 wisely improved every occasion to practice it. One of our pass- 

 engers, a sedate Englishman, was first astounded and then con- 

 vulsed when a young Japanese student approached with a text 

 book of conversational English in one hand, raised his hat, and 

 said pleasantly : 



" Good morning sir or madam as the case may be !" 

 The day following was a memorable one, for the course of the 

 boat took us through the beautiful inland sea, with its pictur- 

 esque mountains, sugar loaf islands, and silvery beaches, with 

 here and there quaint Japanese fishing and farming towns and 

 .Tiany trading junks and fishing boats, big and little. The sea 

 was smooth, the sun bright, but the wind cold enough to call 

 for an overcoat. The total number of islands in this sea is not 

 known, but it runs into thousands, of every conceivable shape, 

 some wooded and some mere barren rocks, some with tiny vil- 

 lages on them, others with but a lonely shrine. Scattered in 



all directions are they, but often lying so close together that 

 there seems to be hardly room for the steamer to pass. In the 

 wider reaches the water is very smooth, but in the narrow ones 

 the current boils and eddies so that the utmost care is neces- 

 sary to take a vessel through in safety. 



When we got to Kobe a friendly merchant sent a steam 

 launch to the ship and took us ofl early in the morning, giving 

 us time to ride to the Sannomiya station and catch the train 

 for Kyoto. The last named city is nearly 50 miles from the 

 coast, and the journey gave us an excellent opportunity to see 

 the Kamigata district. The land was far from rich naturally, 

 but every inch of arable surface was cultivated, irrigated, and 

 plotted ofT into what looked like thousands of toy gardens, the 

 farms extending far up the sides of the mountains. Along the 

 wayside were huge billboards on which were pasted the same 

 kind of advertisements that one sees at home, along a railway, 

 only in Japanese instead of English. 



We passed through the great city of Osaka and finally 



reached Kyoto, where a three 

 mile rickshaw ride, all the way 

 up hill, the vehicle being 

 drawn by one coolie and 

 pushed by two others, took us 

 to the Miyako hotel, where 

 we had breakfast served by 

 the prettiest waitresses imag- 

 inable. Pottery and porcelain 

 are the chief manufactures 

 here, the goods being largely 

 for export. In visiting the 

 works we were shown every 

 attention, the choicest and 

 most fragile articles being 

 brought out for inspection. 

 A line of work that is a spec- 

 ialty in this city is the famous 

 Cloisonn6 product, usually 

 made in a private house by 

 the owner and two or three 

 apprentices. It consists of 

 copper vases, etc., on which are brazed bits of gold, silver, 

 and other metals, the result being most beautiful. One little 

 vase that I coveted was marked 20 yen. I offered 8 and was 

 firmly turned down. That evening, however, the manufac- 

 turer boarded the train as I was leaving, and, explaining that, 

 I was not remaining in town to publish his hame, it was mine 

 at 8 yen. 



For some reason it was not possible to visit the great Nijo 

 castle, so we rode out to and around it. This palace castle, 

 erected in 1569, is noted as the place where in 1868 the present 

 mikado granted to Japan a full deliberative assembly, and the 

 right to decide all measures by public opinion. The outside of 

 the castle is grim and fortress like, but within it is said to be a 

 dream of golden magnificence. 



San-ju-san-gen-do. the temple of the 33.333 images of Kwan, 

 the Goddess of Mercy, and the great Daibutsu, (an image of 

 Buddha consistingof head and shoulders only, yet 58 feet high), 

 were visited in turn. We trod musical floors made of polished 

 planking that gave out a faint sweet sound, rung the 63 ton 



