THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN,
559
Above there will probably be a small closet, with decorated or plain gilt sliding doors.
The beauty of the tokonoma is in both the artistic design and the fine finish of the wood. Some of the woods used are very valuable, and the tokcnioma alone may cost three hundred dollars or more, and yet not be of the richest quality. The more costly kinds of wood are imported from China. The most honored guest is always seated in front of the tokonoma. The ceiling of the room is very neat, usually made of plain, unvarnished and uncolored wood. The space between the ceiling and the beams that run around above the doors may be closed, but it is more likely to be filled with an open fretwork of wood, which the Japanese are very skillful in making. The best rooms are found at the back of the house, where the veranda overlooks a beautiful garden, a landscape in miniature, such as only the Japanese can imagine and create. The people love shrubs and flowers, and the poorest of them will have some green thing about, even though they have only a tube of bamboo for a holder.
They are famous for dwarfing plants. Pine trees a foot high are grown like forest giants in miniature. Oranges ripen on trees scarcely larger. It requires years of patient care and watching to attain this result, and a climate such as Japan alone affords.
They are great lovers of natural scenery. Around every city and town there are resorts for pleasure and recreation. Usually these are temple inclosures, but wherever there are plum or cherry trees in blossom there the people gather for a holiday.
There are two articles which the Japanese deem indispensable to their comfort, and these are the hibachi and the tobacco-box. The former is a brazier of bronze or wood, copper lined, holding glowing coals by which the rooms are heated. In the coldest weather this small brazier is the only source of heat in a Japanese house. The cooking is done on stoves without chimneys, over fires of burning wood, but the people depend for bodily comfort upon warm clothing, putting on suit after suit, one over the other, and toast their hands over the hibachi. The tobacco-box also contains glowing coals for lighting pipes and cigarettes, with a piece of bamboo to serve as a cuspidor.
A Yankee invention, called a ji?i-rik-i-sha, is a comfortable two-wheeled carriage, with a coolie in place of a horse trotting in the shafts, a veritable baby carriage, also called a Pullman car. In this one travels over the plains and through the cities. A sort of bamboo basket is used to travel over the mountains. This basket, called a hago, is suspended from two poles, which are carried on the shoulders of coolies.
A Japanese hotel differs in proportion as the Japanese houses, ways of living and customs differ from our own. A foreigner entering a hotel for the first time is at a loss to know what to do. First he must take off his boots immediately inside the entrance, which may be through a special doorway, although more commonly the entire front of the house is open to the street; one finds a passageway leading along the main floor, which is raised about two feet above the ground. This main floor is divided into a number of rooms by means of the sliding doors. Probably these doors will be open, and one can then see through the house into the garden behind. In the passageway outside the rooms are stained and polished floors which would be marred and scratched by boots or shoes. Having entered as an unexpected guest, the room will be absolutely bare of furniture. A servant, or perhaps the proprietor himself, will immediately bring some cushions about twenty inches square'to sit on, and then a hibachi and tobacco-box. Then follows an iron tea-kettle which is set on a tripod over the coals, and a small tray on which is a tea-set. The teacups are very small and without handles, very different from ours. There will also be an ornamented dish containing confections, probably thin, dry, twisted or curled cakes made of rice flour. The guest will now have been provided with all the luxuries of a native hotel.
The hot water, not boiling, is no sooner poured over the tea than it is poured out into the cups. You will probably be surprised that the tea is made so quickly and