440 EXPEDITION TO JAPAN. 



which being arranged as rolling maps are with us, is moveable at pleasure. The stork or crane, 

 a bird held sacred by the Japanese, and the winged tortoise, and the porpoise, or dolphin of the 

 ancients, are favorite designs in all these decorations, whether of wood, carving, or painting, in 

 the various buildings. 



The furniture of a Japanese house is particularly meagre, consisting invariably of nothing but 

 the floor mats and the household utensils, which are few and simple. As squatting, not sitting, 

 is almost the invariable practice, there seems no occasion for chairs, although they were 

 sometimes found, and invariably supplied on state occasions. These are clumsy contrivances 

 with coarse leathern seats, and a framework like that of the common camp stool, which is 

 readily folded up when not used. At the conferences with the authorities, the subordinate 

 officers, both American and Japanese, were seated on sedans or benches covered with a red 

 crape, while the Commodore and the highest native dignitaries were honored with stools, which 

 occasionally had the comfortable addition of arms and backs to them. The national posture of 

 all classes, however, in Japan, when at rest, is crouching either upon the knees, or on the 

 haunches with their legs crossed. The latter is common among the lower classes, and is 

 pronounced by the fashionables as decidedly vulgar, who invariably assume the former. 



Tables are not generally used, but on the occasion of the public entertainments given to the 

 American officers, the narrow red crape covered benches were appropriated for the spread of the 

 feast, the dishes being raised to the proper height for the guest by means of the ordinary 

 lacqxiered stands of a foot in height and fourteen inches square. The Japanese eat from these 

 raised trays while squatting upon their mats, and the unsocial practice thus obtains of each 

 person taking his food by himself. Some lacquered cups, bowls, and porcelain vessels, the 

 invariable chopsticks, and an occasional earthenware spoon, comprise the ordinary utensils used 

 in eating. They drink their soups directly out of the bowl, as a hungry child might, after 

 seizing with their chopsticks the pieces offish which are generally floating in the liquid. Their 

 tea-kettles, which are always at hand simmering over the fire in the kitchen, are made of bronze, 

 silver, or of fire-proof earthenware. In the centre of the common sitting room there is a square 

 hole built in with tiles and filled with sand, in which a charcoal fire is always kept burning, 

 and suspended above is the tea-kettle supported by a tripod. There is thus constantly a supply 

 of hot water for making tea, which is invariably handed to the visitor on his arrival. The 

 beverage is prepared as with us, but very weak. The cup is generally of porcelain, with a 

 wooden lacquered cover. The tea is not ordinarily sweetened, though at Hakodadi sugar was 

 often used. The better houses are warmed, but very imperfectly, by metal braziers placed on 

 lacquered stands containing burning charcoal, which are moved readily from room to room as 

 they may be required. In the cottages of the poor, there being but little ventilation from their 

 contracted size, and no places of issue for the smoke, the burning charcoal in the fixed central 

 fire places becomes a great nuisance. In the more pretentious establishments, where there is 

 plenty of space and holes in the roof or in the walls for the escape of smoke, while the charcoal 

 is not brought in until perfectly ignited, this mode of heating the apartments is more endurable. 

 At Hakodadi the people seemed to suffer a great deal from the wintry weather, the poorer 

 classes kept much within doors huddled about their meagre fires in their hovels, which, without 

 chimneys, and with but a scant light from the paper windows, were exceedingly cold, gloomy, 

 and comfortless. The richer people strove to make themselves more comfortable by enveloping 



