Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/220

 with flails, and winnowing it in the primitive way by pouring it down from a flat scoop-basket held high overhead. Nobody wore any clothes to speak of, and the whole population turned out to watch the amazing spectacle of foreigners standing spell-bound until our jinrikishas had gone by.

At Arimatsu village we passed through a street of shops where the curiously dyed cotton goods peculiar to the place are sold. For several hundred years all Arimatsu has been tying knots down the lengths of cotton, twisting it in skeins, and wrapping it regularly with a double-dyed indigo thread, and then, by immersion in boiling water, dyeing the fabric in curious lines and star-spotted patterns. A more clumsy and primitive way of dyeing could not be imagined in this day of steam-looms and roller-printing, but Arimatsu keeps it up and prospers.

At sunset we saw the towers of Nagoya castle in the distance, and after crossing the broad plain of ripening rape and wheat, the coolies sped through the town at a fearful pace and deposited us, dazed, dusted, and weary, at the door of the Shiurokindo, to enjoy the beautiful rooms just kindly vacated by Prince Bernard, of Saxe-Weimar.

The Shiurokindo is one of the handsomest and largest of the tea-houses a foreigner finds, its interior a labyrinth of rooms and suites of rooms, each with a balcony and private outlook on some pretty court. The walls, the screens, recesses, ceilings, and balcony rails afford studies and models of the best Japanese interior decorations. The samisen’s wail and a clapping chorus announced that a great dinner was going on, and in the broader corridors there was a passing and repassing of people arrayed in hotel kimonos.

As the wise traveller carries little baggage, the tea-houses furnish their customers with ukatas, or plain 204