Jinrikisha Days in Japan
gawa Bridge, two miles farther north, on the edge of a bold bluff, where the Tokaido—the East Sea Road—leading up from Kioto, reaches the Bay. In diplomatic papers Kanagawa is still recognized as the name of the great port on Yeddo Bay, although the consulates, banks, hotels, clubs, and business streets are miles away.
At the hatoba, or landing-place, the traveller is confronted by the jinrikisha, that big, two-wheeled baby-carriage of the country, which, invented by an American, has been adopted all over the East. The jinrikisha (or kuruma, as the linguist and the upper class more politely call it) ranges in price from seventeen to forty dollars, twenty being the average cost of those on the public stands. Some thrifty coolies own their vehicles, but the greater number either rent them from, or work for, companies, and each jinrikisha pays a small annual tax to the Government. An unwritten rule of the road compels these carriages to follow one another in regulated single file. The oldest or most honored person rides at the head of the line, and only a boor would attempt to change the order of arrangement. Spinning down the Bund, at the rate of ten cents a single trip to hotel or station, ten cents an hour, or seventy-five cents a day, one finds the jinrikisha to be a comfortable, flying arm-chair—a little private, portable throne. The coolie wears a loose coat and waistcoat, and tights of dark-blue cotton, with straw sandals on his bare feet, and an inverted washbowl of straw covered with cotton on his head. When it rains he is converted into a prickly porcupine by his straw rain-coat, or he dons a queer apron and cloak of oiled paper, and, pulling up the hood of the little carriage, ties a second apron of oiled paper across the knees of his fare. At night the shafts are ornamented with a paper lantern bearing his name and his license number; and these glowworm lights, flitting through the streets and country roads in the darkness, seem only another
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