Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 February 1883 — Life in Tokio. [ARTICLE]

Life in Tokio.

The Rev. W. E. Griffs writes from Tokio, Japan, to the Christian Intelligencer: Yeddo began to be a large city in 1603, when Japan’s greatest ruler, Eseyasu, made the place his headquarters. Until 1854 it was never visited by foreigners, except the Dutch merchants from Nagasaki; but in 1868 the mikado left Kioto; which had been tlie old capital for over nine hundred years, and made Bay-door the kio, or capital. Then *it became “The Wonderful City of Tokio,” about which Mr. ' Greer has written a lively book, as full of pictures as a Japanese novel. Those who read “The Young Americans in Japan,” will know at once without any introduction who Mr. and Mrs. Jewett, and Fritz and Sallio and Otto Nambo are. *Tfciey are living in Tokio, and many a pleasant walk do they take through its lively streets. They live in a Japanesfe house, which consists chiefly of paper, matting, thin wood and tiled, and which rocks in the frequent earthquakes like a cradle. They don’t plaster the ceilings or Avails, chiefly because sculls are softer than hard lime, and a lively earthquake, which shivers as though old mother earth had a chill, ’tumbles over the lamps, so that fires are numerous. For a whole village to be wiped off the face of the earth like rows of chalk-figures off a black board is no uncommon sight. I have seen, at one time,-three or four miles of burning houses in Tokio. The Japanestake it, as a matter of course, as a thing that cannot be helped. But it is rather hard for people from less combustible cities, who see their more expensive houses, churches and stores laid in ashes because the natives are as careless os foolish children. Now the old swamps of Bay-door are filled up, and Tsuki-ji (filled-iniland) is the part of Tokio in which our missionaries live and Christian houses of worship are built—though our Reformed church has other chapels in this great wilderness of houses. Nowadays when our parlors, dining and bed-rooms and summer cottages are decorated Avith gay Japanese fans, parasols, curtains, racks, napkins, and all the brightly colored paper finery and lacquered woodwork, it is fine fun to read of the Jewetts visiting the Japanese fan-makers at' home, seeing the porcelain-painters at work, and going shopping in .Tokio stores where every one sits on the floor and sips tea, while the clerks add up their columns of figures on rows of sticks full of sliding bnttons. Notwithstanding all their pretty things,Hnany of them are very costly, the greater part of the people are very poor, and earn but a few cents daily.

The cotton-manufacturing industry, long a Northern monopoly, is moving toward the neighborhood of the cottonlields, and Southern newspapers confidently. say the erection of Southern cotton-mills has already made itself sensibv felt in the Northern market; that the manufacturers of coarse yams find themselves unable to withstand the pressure of Southern competition, and that Southern manufacturers are declaring handsome dividends, while the Northern mills are running on short lime and reduced wages. *