132 AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY. 



Europe, were the decrees of their mighty contemporaries, of the 

 Ming-dynasty in China and lyeyasu in Japan. Indeed, of all the 

 laws of the founder of the Tokugawa rule, probably none has 

 proved so ineffectual as the edict of 1612 against smoking and 

 planting tobacco. 



The KiserUy the Japanese pipe, with its shining metal mouthpiece 

 and the elegant little bowl of brass or silver at its other end — 

 the stem is of thin bamboo — is quite a different apparatus from our 

 smoking implement, and demands a different kind of treatment. The 

 little ball of fine-cut tobacco with which its possessor fills the bowl, 

 which in shape and size resembles the cup of a large acorn, suffices 

 for only two or three whiffs. Then the bowl must be knocked 

 against the edge of an ash-basin and filled anew. The case and 

 tobacco-pouch, of stamped leather-paper, are as delicately made 

 as the little pipe itself, and often artistically decorated with lacquer 

 or silver-work, as shown in the illustration. Both are hung to the 

 girdle-cloth by means of a netzuke (of which an account is given 

 under art-industries), a sort of carved button. The form of such a 

 pipe, which, with tobacco, every one carries in Japan, does not 

 permit of smoking on the road nor at work. On the other hand 

 no opportunity before or after is wasted ; out comes the pipe and 

 at least a couple of whiffs are taken, a good deal of time being often 

 spent with it. When any one enters a house, the first attention 

 shown him by the female servants, after the customary greeting, 

 is to set the tobacco-tray (Tabako-bon) before him, even before 

 offering him tea. Upon this tray stands, however, the Hi-ire or 

 fire-pot, with giowing coals, and a big ash-basin (Hai-fuki) of 

 bamboo-cane, which serves also as a spittoon. 



The Japanese tobacco-pipe resembles the shell of a snail of 

 the genus Clausilia, which is represented by many forms in that 

 country. This has not escaped the attention of the Japanese, 

 who call them kiseru-gai, pipe-snails. In his book, ** Himalayan 

 Journals," Table III. fig. 7, Hooker gives an illustration of a 

 Thibetan tobacco pipe, very similar to the Japanese Kiseru. 



Tobacco-smoking is much more common in Japan than with us, 

 and I always caused astonishment by the phrase I used so much, 

 "Arigato, tobako-o nomimasen," ("Thank you, I don't drink 

 tobacco "), for they can hardly imagine a foreigner who does not 

 like tobacco. The Japanese says, not incorrectly, "Tabako-o 

 nomimas," " I drink tobacco," since he sips in the smoke and expels 

 it through his nose. In Germany too it was called at first "drinking 

 tobacco," instead of smoking, as, among others, Freytag teaches us 

 in his " Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit." 



On the paper-lined screen that divides a Japanese tobacco shop 

 from the street, a tobacco-leaf is painted instead of a sign, and 

 beside this stand two Chinese hieroglyphics which in other cases 

 might perhaps be translated " chief town of the country," but which 

 mean in this case Kokubu, a district of Osumi in southern Kiushiu, 



