The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4, July, 1851Various
History
The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4, July, 1851
Various
Art, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- History -- Periodicals
has; and if there be no more ground than just the supplementary
triangles on each side to complete the square, still there is always
that, and that is always quite enough, for want of more. It is enough to
spend a fortune upon, in dwarf trees and vegetable curiosities. The
Japanese shine like the Chinese in monstrosities. They can dwarf trees
so well, that in a little box four inches square, President Meylan saw
growing a fir, a bamboo, and a plum-tree, in full blossom. Or they
hypertrophy plants if they please, until a radish is produced as large
as a boy six years old. Their gardens, however small, are always laid
out in landscape style, and each is adorned with a temple, not a mere
ornamental summerhouse, but the real shrine of a household god. Into
this garden walks the lady, and returns with a few flowers. She takes
these to an elegant shelf fixed in a recess of the apartment, upon which
a bouquet stands, and is engaged upon her nosegay. An act of taste? O
dear, no; every drawing-room in Japan has such a shelf, with flowers
placed upon it; every lady entering who found her husband there, and
meant to talk with him, would in the first place make the nosegay talk,
and say, "The wife and husband are alone together." If company arrive,
the flowers must be otherwise adjusted; the position of every flower,
and even of green leaves in that bouquet, is fixed by custom, which is
law, to vary with the use to which the room is put. One of the most
difficult and necessary parts of female education in Japan is to acquire
a perfect knowledge of the rules laid down in a large book on the
arrangements of the drawing-room nosegay, in a manner suitable to every
case. It is the Japanese "use of the globes" to ladies' schools. To boys
and girls, after reading and writing, which are taught (hear, England!)
to the meanest Japanese, the most necessary part of education is an
elaborate training in the ceremonial rules of life. Bows proper for
every occasion, elegant kotoos, the whole science and practice of
good-breeding, have to be learned through many tedious years. To boys
there is given special training in the hara-kiri, or the art of ripping
one's self up. Many occasions present themselves on which it as much
concerns the honor of a Japanese to cut himself open, as it concerned an
Englishman some years ago to fire a pistol at his friend. The occasions
are so frequent, that a Japanese boys' school would be incomplete in
which instruction was not given in this art of suicide. Boys practise
all the details in dramatic fashion, and in after life, if a day come
when disgrace, caused often by the deeds of other men, appears
inevitable, he appoints a day, and according to the exigencies of the
case, before his family or his assembled connections, ceremoniously cuts
open his own belly at a solemn dinner. Dying in this way, he is said to
have died in the course of nature; dying before shame came to him, he is
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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