The Critic in the Orient

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Fitch George Hamlin. The Critic in the Orient

Introduction

The Best Results of Travel in the Orient

JAPAN, THE PICTURE COUNTRY OF THE ORIENT

First Impressions of Japan and The Life of The Japanese

The Japanese Capital and Its Parks and Temples

The Most Famous City of Temples in All Japan

In Kyoto, The Ancient Capital of Japan

Kobe, Osaka, The Inland Sea and Nagasaki

Development of the Japanese Sense of Beauty

Conclusions on Japanese Life and Character

Will the Japanese Retain Their Good Traits?

MANILA, TRANSFORMED BY THE AMERICANS

First Impressions of Manila and Its Picturesque People

American Work in the Philippine Islands

Scenes in the City of Manila and Suburbs

HONGKONG, CANTON, SINGAPORE AND RANGOON

Hongkong, the Greatest British Port in the Orient

A Visit to Canton in Days of Wild Panic

Singapore The Meeting Place of Many Races

Strange Night Scenes in the City of Singapore

Characteristic Sights in Burma's Largest City

INDIA, THE LAND OF TEMPLES, PALACES AND MONUMENTS

Calcutta, The Most Beautiful of Oriental Cities

Bathing and Burning the Dead at Benares

Lucknow and Cawnpore, Cities of The Mutiny

The Taj Mahal, The World's Loveliest Building

Delhi and Its Ancient Mohammedan Ruins

Scenes in Bombay When the King Arrived

Religion and Customs of the Bombay Parsees

EGYPT, THE HOME OF HIEROGLYPHS, TOMBS AND MUMMIES

Picturesque Oriental Life as Seen in Cairo

Among the Ruins of Luxor and Karnak

Tombs of The Kings at Ancient Thebes

Sailing Down The Nile on a Small Steamer

Before the Pyramids and the Sphinx

APPENDIX. Hints for Travelers

Bibliography. Books Which Help One to Understand the Orient and Its People

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This volume includes impressions of the first half of a trip around the world. The remainder of the journey will fill a companion volume, which will comprise two chapters devoted to New York and the effect it produced on me after seeing the great cities of the world. As I have said in the preface, these are necessarily first impressions, jotted down when fresh and clear; but it is doubtful whether a month spent in any of these places would have forced a revision of these first glimpses, set in the mordant of curiosity and enthusiasm. When the mind is saturated with the literature of a place, it is quick to seize on what appeals to the imagination, and this appeal is the one which must be considered in every case where there is an historical or legendary background to give salient relief to palace or temple, statue or painting. Without this background the noblest work seems dull and lifeless. With it the palace stamps itself upon the imagination, the temple stirs the emotions, the statue speaks, the painting has a direct spiritual message.

Certain parts of the Orient are not rich in this imaginative material which appeals to one fond of history or art; but this defect is compensated for by an extraordinary picturesqueness of life and a wonderful luxuriance of nature. The Oriental trip also makes less demand on one's reading than even a hasty journey through Europe. There are few pictures, few statues. Only India and Egypt appeal to the sense of the historical, Japan stands alone, alien to all our ways of life and thought, but so intensely artistic, so saturated with the intellectual spirit that it seems to belong to another world than this material, commercial existence that stamps all European and American life. The new China furnishes an attractive field of study, but unfortunately when I visited the country it was in the throes of revolution and travel was dangerous anywhere outside the great treaty ports.

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A short distance from Uyeno Park is the great Buddhist temple known as Asakusa Kwannon, dedicated to Kwannon, the goddess of mercy. The approaches to this temple on any pleasant day look like a country fair. The crowd is so dense that jinrikishas can not approach within one hundred yards. The shrine dates back to the sixth century and the temple is the most popular resort of its kind in Tokio. On each side of the entrance lane are shops, where all kinds of curios, toys, cakes, et cetera, are sold. The temple itself is crowded with votaries who offer coins to the various idols, while below (near the stairs that give entrance to the temple) are various side booths that are patronized by worshipers. Some of these gods promise long life; others give happiness, and several insure big families to women who offer money and say prayers.

One of the remarkable jinrikisha rides in Japan is that from Uyeno to Shimbashi station through the heart of Tokio by night. This takes about a half hour and it gives a series of pictures of the great Japanese city that can be gained in no other way. Here may be seen miles of little shops lining alleys not over ten or twelve feet wide, in most of which work is going on busily as late as eleven o'clock. In places the sleepy proprietors are putting up their shutters, preparatory to going to bed, but in others the work of artisan or baker or weaver goes on as though the day had only fairly begun. Most of these shops are lighted by electricity, but this light is the only modern thing about them. The weaver sits at the loom precisely as he sat two thousand years ago, and the baker kneads his dough and bakes his cakes precisely as he did before the days of the first shogun. This ride gives a panorama of oriental life which can be equaled in few cities in the world. Occasionally the jinrikisha dashes up a little bank and across a bridge that spans a canal and one catches a glimpse of long lines of house boats, with dim lights, nestling under overhanging balconies. Overall is that penetrating odor of the Far East, mingled with the smell of bilge water and the reek of thousands of sweating human beings. These smells are of the earth earthy and they led one to dream that night of weird and terrible creatures such as De Quincey paints in his Confessions of an English Opium Eater.

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