Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IX.djvu/557

Rh and moxa (Jap. mogusa, burning grass), both of which, though now generally superseded, were long practised in Europe, into which they had been introduced from Japan. The Japanese people are troubled with a disease which is not known in other countries, called kakke (leg humor), which baffles the skill of both native and foreign physicians. Its diagnosis is as yet very obscure. It is especially prevalent in Tokio, and the summer of 1873 was noted for the mortality caused there by this disease. It begins in the feet; the legs swell, the patient has great difficulty in walking, and has to remain quiet; the legs continue to swell, and after headache, palpitation of the heart, and excruciating pains in the small intestines, death ensues. Their so-called "remarkable medical discovery," the dosha powder, which Titsingh asserted could restore flexibility to a stiffened human corpse, and cure disease in the living body, refresh the spirits, &c., is and always was a pious fraud. It is made of common quartz sand, drawn from certain bubbling springs in the provinces of Kii and Hitachi, by priests of the Buddhist Shin Gon sect, with long prayers to Buddha to give it efficacy. With this a few grains of mica are mixed. It is not now believed in except by the lowest and most ignorant people. In chemistry, botany, and astronomy, the Japanese have gained considerable knowledge by means of translations from the Dutch and English. In the fine arts they have made but little progress. Their music is very disagreeable to European ears, though the people take a passionate delight in it. The Japanese gamut is very rude, and most of the music is in the minor key. They have a considerable body of printed music, among which is a collection of very ancient classical pieces performed on public occasions. The bands for the army and navy are now trained by European instructors, in European style. The use of the samisen or three-stringed banjo is always a part of female education. The koto and the biwa are the principal other stringed instruments. They have a large variety of wind instruments, and several kinds of drums and cymbals. In the arts of design and painting they show great taste, but only a resident in the country itself can fully appreciate their delineations. There are several distinct styles or schools of drawing and painting, easily recognized by a connoisseur. The style used on fans, battledoors, story books, broadsides, caricatures, &c., is most popular and pleases the vulgar eye. Another style is used on the kakemono or hanging pictures and scrolls seen in every house; and still another on folding screens and pictorial scroll books. In this last style the coloring is very rich, and the details are minutely portrayed. In the second, the salient points are emphasized, but the pictures, while very suggestive, leave much to the imagination. The first named style combines the qualities of the second and third. Cultivated Japanese do not like foreign pictures, on account of their intense realism. Their delineations of birds, flowers, and fruits are exquisitely beautiful. Not only does their lacquered, porcelain, and inlaid work of all kinds show this, but the walls of the palaces in Kioto and Tokio, and the tombs at Nikko and Shiba, are renowned for the remarkable beauty and correctness of their carvings and paintings. They are not very successful in portraying the human form. They know little of the higher plastic art, and have scarcely a conception of that ideal human form which is such a passion with Europeans. Their best sculptured representations of sacred animals are fair specimens of clever chisel work rather than of ideals. Printers and booksellers are numerous, and keep the market well supplied with cheap books, many of them profusely illustrated with woodcuts. They print only on one side of the paper, using cut wooden blocks for type. Kioto was formerly the chief seat of the book trade, and was eminently the centre of literature, the fine arts, and religion. Tokio is now fast robbing it of all its glories, and becoming the manufacturing, fine-art, literary, and religious, as well as the political capital of the empire. All the people are fond of reading, and circulating libraries, carried on men's backs from house to house, are very common. Their dramas, of which the people are passionately fond, are nearly always founded on national history or tradition, or the exploits, lives, or adventures of Japanese heroes and gods. Many of them are designed to enforce and illustrate moral precepts. Their general tendency is elevating, patriotic, and decorous, though some of them are strongly tainted with the old national passion for revenge, and have horrible exhibitions of cruel punishments. The actor is most esteemed who can most frequently change parts in the same play. The female parts are usually taken by men or boys, though women are now becoming actresses. The best actors receive $1,000 a season, which is a high salary in Japan. The theatrical stage is a turn-table, which can be turned and made to present a new scene in a moment. The scenes are perfectly true to Japanese life and fact, the actual scene of the play being always laid in Japan. The theatres as yet are very rude structures. The playing begins in the morning and lasts all day, the spectators bringing their food with them. The actors are looked upon as a very low class.—The two great religions of Japan are Shinto and Buppo, or Shintoism and Buddhism. Shinto is supposed to be the ancient religion of Japan. Buddhism was brought from Corea. The word shinto is Chinese. The Japanese name for the same is kami no michi, "the way of the gods." Shin means god; to, way, doctrine, cult. The essence of Shinto is ancestral worship and sacrifice to departed heroes. Mori says: "The Shintos believe in a past life, and they live in fear or reverence of the spirits of the dead." The number of Shinto deities is enormous, and variously estimated, but