Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/227

 our landlord engaged places for us in the house of a shoe-dealer in the main street. The dealer in geta and dzori dealt only in those national foot coverings, but, yielding to foreign fashions, had set up a sign of

The sliding screens of the front wall of the room over the shop were removed, and bright red blankets thrown over the ledge and spread out on the eaves of the lower story. All the houses were open and decorated in this same way, and lanterns hung in rows from the eaves and from upright posts at the door-way.

The worthy shoe-dealer’s blankets and lanterns were just like his neighbors’, but when three foreigners appeared at the low balcony, then the multitude stopped and stared open-mouthed at that unusual spectacle, and we divided popular interest with the procession as long as we remained there. Policemen were perplexed between their duty of making the crowds move on and their own pleasure of having a look at the strangers. Soldiers from the garrison stared by hundreds, and the policemen requested them to depart, as well as the rustics and townspeople. Policemen rank much higher, in a way, than the soldiers, the guardians of the peace being nearly all descendants of the old samurai, the two-sworded, privileged retainers of feudal days, while the common soldier is enlisted from the farm laborers; and one quickly sees how much more regard the lower classes have for the gunsa than for the soldier.

The procession began with high ornamental wooden cars, or dasha, set on wheels hewn from single blocks of wood, and drawn by ropes, to which every pious person was supposed to lend a hand. Regular coolies were engaged for the steady wheel-horse work, and sang a wild chorus as men with stout sticks pried the clumsy 211