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ONCE A WEEK.
[September 15, 1860.
We see an instance of it whilst dismounting from our uncomfortable chair. A bell is heard! Out of the way!—out of the way! shouts a Japanese official, and two men hasten out of the house and look expectantly up the road; the crowd divides as if cleft with a sword, and at a swinging pace the couriers are seen approaching,—a pair of stalwart bronze-hued fellows, strong of limb and sound of wind; their garments are few, and those few of the official black-colour, stamped with the imperial crest, a white trefoil. One of the runners has a short bamboo-pole over his shoulder, and suspended from it a black lacquer despatch-box, formidable for its size, and we recognise the strength that has brought it to our feet so rapidly—no, not to our feet, for it never touches the ground. In a second it is slipped from the tired man’s shoulder to that of the fresh runner, who starts down the road like a hare, his comrade’s bell ringing to warn all travellers to make way. Thus the Taikoon’s despatches speed through the land; if one man drops, the other takes up the burden. If a bridge is broken down they must swim the torrent. Haste!—post haste!—must be seen in Japan to be understood.
People enjoying themselves in Harvest-Time. (Fac-simile.)
Whilst our morning meal is preparing, we stand under the over-hanging porch, and look upon the throng in the road. “How clean it is!” is the first involuntary exclamation; even the ordinary dirt created by the passage of so many animals and men disappears as fast as it is created. They are great economists these good Japanese, and they know how precious for the field is the dirt of the highroad; there is quite a competition for it; women and children, with little baskets and brooms, are collecting it for the husbandman, whose intelligent industry is so conspicuous in the well-tilled fields and terrace-sided hills. Agriculture in Japan, as in China, is considered the most honourable of pursuits; and, by the many pictorial allusions to the peace, contentment, and abundance resulting from agricultural labours, we see that it is still as esteemed as in the days of the great Taiko-sama, who told the soldiers and priests of Europe that he especially viewed with favour the tillers of the ground; “for they,” said the Japanese conqueror, “by their labours fill my kingdom with abundance.” Naked, swarthy, coarse, but hearty, look those tillers of the fields, as we view them in the midst of their labours transplanting the rice plants from their damp bed, in which they have been closely reared, into more open order, where each stem shall have room to grow and ripen. Mark the neat regularity of the drills, the cleanliness of the soil—not a weed or tare—what an abundance of labour must be at command. That the grateful soil fully repays farmer and labourer for time and trouble, we have proof in many a Japanese sketch. Behold the harvest time of Nipon—the reapers enjoying their noon-tide meal. Was there ever a more perfect picture of animal enjoyment? Luke Stodges, the farmer’s-boy, may pray for a belly-full of fat bacon, and to be allowed to pass life swinging on a gate; but even then, in that state of bliss, he would hardly excel our Japanese friends in sensual delight; filled to distension with rice, a ripe harvest waving around them, smoking, drinking, and basking under a sun of Italian fervour. Nay more, we question whether the contrast between the condition of the tramp, who begs food at the English farm-labourer’s door, and the honest fellow himself, is as great as we have authority for saying must be the case in Japan, when we contemplate the lean and hungry creature who is holding out his platter to the well-fed woman on the left of our engraving. What a
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