CHAPTER II

TRAVELLING AND ACCOMMODATION

NINE people out of ten who go to Japan land in the first instance at Yokohama or Nagasaki, both of which places have been immortalized times out of number by writers of many nations. The opinions concerning those places vary very widely. As a rule, the man who wishes to make a study of the country does not care for the treaty-ports, for he has come to Japan to learn something of the Japanese people and their methods, and the treatyports will not help him in any way to obtain that knowledge. The casual visitor, however, usually makes one or other of those places his headquarters, and from time to time runs into the country over the regular routes which are followed by tourists, along all of which he finds accommodation which, if not first-class, is at all events passable, and sufficiently Western to make real discomfort almost an impossibility.

The European hotels in the treaty-ports can only be classed as being good in that they are, as a rule, somewhat better than those which one finds at the ports in other countries east of India, and this is not saying much for them. The best hotels run on

European lines in Japan are found in certain of the big holiday resorts in the interior, such as Miyanoshita and Nikko, and are owned and managed by Japanese. Such good hotels, however, can very easily be numbered on the fingers of one hand. The finest hotel on the European style, as far as appearance is concerned, is the Imperial Hotel at Tokio. It is owned and run by a Japanese company, and subsidized by the Imperial household, but is so eccentrically managed that, while possessing all the features which go to make up first-class accommodation, in the shape of good rooms, good furniture, and good cooking, it lacks just that knowledge on the part of its directors the possession of which would transform it from a rather uncomfortable place of abode into an excellent one.

As a matter of fact, the Imperial Hotel was established by the Japanese for the purpose of affording a place where official and other receptions on European lines could be held, and dinners given as occasion demanded, and the ordinary visitor who puts up there does so at his own risk. He finds plenty of managers and clerks who are civil enough, but he will find that his instructions are ignored, his letters mislaid, and his bell unanswered. He finds plenty of servants, through whom he will have to elbow his way in the passages and public rooms; and should he require to play billiards, he must push them from the table. He finds a splendid dining-room, attended without any system, and a good though limited bill of fare, which, to his dismay, is identical every day.

I think that the transition Japan is exemplified in its very worst phases at the Imperial Hotel in Tokio; for while no doubt everybody about the place is doing what he believes to be the right thing, the people connected with it have not yet learned to understand the foreigner. They have fallen into the error-an error which is not uncommon in Japan just now among people who, having no personal acquaintance with foreign countries, endeavor to assume foreign ways-of believing that, because we are less ceremonious in our manner than they, they should in dealing with us divest their manner of any sort of courtesy. As the Englishman who, without a thorough understanding of Japanese etiquette, endeavors to adopt their style invariably makes himself ridiculous, so those Japanese who mistake our comparatively abrupt ways for a want of courtesy, and endeavor to follow our example, appear to us to be merely boorish and rude.

It is a pity that the Imperial Hotel is not better managed, for it is here that a very large percentage of the foreign visitors acquire their first impressions of Japan and the Japanese after leaving the treatyports. Such as it is, however, the Imperial Hotel is almost the only hostelry on "foreign" lines worthy of the name in the immense metropolis of Japan.

The reasons why the casual visitor stays in the treaty-ports, and only visits such places in the interior as may be termed treaty-port haunts, are— firstly, that he cannot make himself understood elsewhere; and, secondly, that he finds a difficulty, which

is as a rule an insurmountable one, in living for any length of time in Japanese houses and on Japanese food.

Then, again, there is plenty to interest him for a time inside the beaten track without going farther afield. If I were called upon to offer advice to the flying visitor, I should recommend him to stick to such places while he is in the country, unless he happens to be able to travel with some one, other than a professional guide, who knows Japan, speaks the language, and can arrange to supplement the Japanese diet with European necessaries from time to time.

Of life in the treaty-ports, I can only say that as a rule the people who live there dislike doing so; or, at all events, it is their general habit to say that they wish they were not living in Japan.

But, except geographically speaking, they are not in Japan, for the daily routine of the foreigner in the treaty - ports has nothing in common with life elsewhere in that country. It is as accurate a reproduction of life in Europe and America as can be made by so cosmopolitan a community. That the reproduction is not a very faithful one is, under the circumstances, only to be expected, when we take into consideration the conditions of the case. And the most that can be said of it from the point of view of a stranger is that the people have tried to make the conditions of life as bearable as possible, and with considerable success.

I got into terribly hot water when out there for

mentioning in one of my articles that the treatyport communities were of a mixed nature, and I was told that this statement implied that they contained no gentlefolks. This was not my intention, for among the residents are many of birth, education, and wealth; and as trading communities go, those of the treaty-ports may be described as being of a distinctly creditable standard. But it is difficult to speak of a community drawn from the people of every country of the earth, beginning with Europeans and Americans, and finishing up with Chinamen and mixed Asiatic breeds, and composed of every grade of society, between the professional man and opulent trader on the one hand, and on the other the long-shore loafer and the hanger-on, as otherwise than very mixed.

The visitor who, wearied with a plethora of temples and Daibutzu, and of a fish and rice diet, finds himself back among his own countrymen in the treaty-ports has occasion-an occasion, by the way, of which he rarely avails himself-to thank these residents, from the bottom of his heart, for providing him with the necessaries and luxuries of life, for which he has longed in vain when upcountry.

Though, in the treaty-ports or elsewhere, one does not find much in the way of really good hotel accommodation, many of the residents have charming and extremely well-appointed houses; for the man who has command of even a moderate supply of money can surround himself with many, if not most,