Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/353

 illness the possessor of the kairo calls Osaka blessed. For be it known that the kairo is a little tin box with perforated sides and a sliding top covered with cloth. Kairo zumi are three-inch paper cases filled with the finest persimmon-leaf charcoal. You light one end of a paper, drop it in the kairo, and blow it until it glows; slip the cover in and wrap the kairo in a handkerchief or special bag. The little charcoal stick will burn for three, or even six hours, giving a steady, even heat all the time. It comes in many sizes, is curved in many ways to fit closely to the body, and its weight is almost nothing. The commonest kairo, about four inches long by two inches high, costs three or five cents, according to the quality of cloth pasted over it, and each package of the zumi costs a cent and a half. On winter days one often sees the Japanese holding kairos in their hands, tucking them in their obis, and slipping them down their backs. They are serviceable in keeping dampness out of the piles of linen in house-keeper’s closets, and at night they assume the function of the ancient warming-pan. In America it has been considered only as a toy, a muff-warmer, or a pocket-stove. But its best use is in the sick-room, where it will keep a poultice or hot cloth at an even heat for days. A chill, a cramp, or a rheumatic pain is charmed away by its steady, gentle heat; and in neuralgia, bound on the aching nerves, it soothes them. Headaches have been known to yield to it, and in sea-sickness the kairo overcomes the agonizing chills and relieves the suffering. Our heavy rubber hot-water bags, that are always leaking and suddenly cooling, may well be superseded by the little kairo.

Osaka has curio-shops that are small museums filled with the choicest industrial art of old Japan, and this rich commercial city rivals Tokio and Kioto in its amusement world, and has a theatre street a mile long. Its theatres, its wrestlers, its maiko and geisha are as 337