To the Editor of the Norru-Cumsa Dany New:
Dean Sin,—You asked me to let you know what a July passage across from Shanghai to this new Canadian Pacific port was like, so I snatch a short interval before starting on our progress further East, to end you a few Ines about the voyage thus far.
We left Shanghai on the 27th June, this day three weeks—and had a hot exceedingly muggy five days in the direct steamer which landed usin Yokohama on the Ist July. There we found the weather delightful; almost cold, every one wearing European' summer clothes, making it hard to realise we were so short a time distant from China and oppressive heat and damp. We employed our three days in Japan in a visit to Tokio, staying at the comfortable Tokio hotel. We saw the sights there—those that are left; for (Shiba always: excepted) the main sight, the life of the old Japanese people such as it might still be observed in the seventies, is fast disappearing and will soon be gone entirely. This is a literal fact—in the capital at least. A few of the old Yashikis ill be traced in remnants of the old enceinte—more often apparently let out in lodging-houses with shabby garments of European cut drying from the windows, The main trading thoroughfare, the Ginza, with its double row of tramways and its overhead telegraph wires, a street of which the Japs are inordinately proud, judging by the frequent coloured photos of its vista offered for sale, is a cross between Whitechapel High Street and the Bowery. The many open shops occupying the ground floors of the low shabby Europeanised stucco houses are mostly occupied with cheap ready-made garments and furniture of hideous Western design, together with grogshops displaying an extraordinarily varied assortment of bottled Western drinks, from Milwaukee lager to Copenhagen brandy. To add to the illusion (or rather disillusion) English second-hand book-stalls are to be found at intervals with an acc sional hospital for broken-down cycles English street signs jostle those in Japanese, and it only remains for these alert people to entirely abolish their own language for the transformation to be complete, The newspapers ure, however, still published in the vernacular, and the newspaper offices which are numerous in Tokio are surrounded by crowds diligently perusing the latest edition which is posted up outside the office, as at home. Even at, the large bazaar which has been erected in the grounds of the Shiba shrines by the merchants of Tokio-fu" to enable visitors to find collected in one spot the specimens of the arts and industries of the capital, one finds numerous stalls filled with 't passementerie" and "'galanterie" articles from Vienna and Paris, besides Japanese imitations of the same, most neatly executed and in many cases improved upon. European costume seems almost de rigueur when out of doors for all but the ricsha men, wko now wear tight-fitting blue drawers, and it is strange to see, in July, policemen and soldiers going about in long hooded serge ulsters (the weather was rainy) covering their white uniforms. As is well-known, the officials and the nobility all affect the Western superior villa style of residence, and the consequent general effect is much that of a second-rate Western American city. Those, then, who wish to see Japan while it still holds Some of the charms of the romantic East must hurry their visit ere the whole country is transformed as is (to the sorrow of the esthete though possibly to the joy of the political economist) the capital city of the country.
Bell, we are thankful for the railway, in spite of the Philistiniam it brings in its train, which carries us back to Yokohama on the morning of the 4th July in time to
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.