So loyal are the Japanese
that every house is supposed to contain a room ready for the Emperor in
case he should stay at the door and need a night's lodging. The Emperor,
of course, never comes, and so the tokonoma is no more than a name.
Usually it is a recess a few feet long and a few inches wide, and over it
hangs the finest kakemono that the house can afford, and in front of it is
a vase whose flowers are arranged in a traditional form which has a certain
allegorical meaning.
At night a Japanese room is lighted by a candle fixed in a large square
paper lantern, the latter placed on a lacquer stand. The light is very
dim, and many are now replacing it with ordinary European lamps. Unluckily
they buy the very commonest and cheapest of these, and so in consequence
accidents and fires are numerous.
Among the coolies of Japan, the people who fill the back streets of the
large towns with long rows of tiny houses, the process of "moving house"
is absolutely literal. They do not merely carry off their furniture--that
would be simple enough--but they swing up the house too, carry it off, set
their furniture in it again, and resume their contented family life. It is
not at all an uncommon thing to meet a pair thus engaged in shifting their
abode. The man is marching along with a building of lath and paper, not
much bigger than a bathing-machine, swung on his shoulders, while his wife
trudges behind him with two or three big bundles tied up in blue cloth.
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