Tokio
hot stones and tiles. The amazing quickness with which Japanese houses rise from their ashes defies comparison. In twelve hours after a conflagration the little shopkeepers will resume business at the old stand. Fire insurance is not suited to this country of wood and straw dwellings; but thatched roofs are giving way to tiles in the cities, and brick is more and more used for walls. Stone is too expensive, and, in this earthquake country, open to greater objections than brick. The stone walls sometimes seen are a sham, the stones being thin slabs nailed on the wooden framework of a house, like tiles or shingles, to rattle down in a harmless shower when the earth heaves and rocks. Steam fire-engines are unknown, and hand-grenades are inevitably forgotten in the excitement of a conflagration.
Earthquakes, though frequent, are fortunately not severe, and no alarming catastrophe has been suffered since the convulsions of 1854 and 1855, which the malcontents attributed to the wrath of the gods at the spectacle of foreign barbarians entering the country. The old myth, that the earth—meaning the islands of Japan—rests upon the back of a huge fish, whose writhings cause these disturbances, places the head of the leviathan beneath Vezo, its tail under the southern island, and its vital and active body below Yokohama and Tokio. Now the Government has a seismologist on its university staff, and each tremor or palpitation is accurately recorded, the average number reaching four hundred annually. Kobé and Kioto seldom experience even the slightest motion, but in the vicinity of the capital one becomes fairly accustomed to the unpleasant visitation. A slight disturbance sets lamps and chandeliers vibrating; with a heavier rock all bric-à-brac not wired fast to cabinets, mantels, or tables, slides to the floor; and a harder shock loosens tiles, wrenches timbers, and sends brick chimneys, not boxed in wood or sheet-iron, crashing through
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