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Every great city in the world is believed to give a special character to its inhabitants; and in Japan the man of saka is said to be recognizable almost at sight. I think it can be said that the character of the man of the capital is less marked than that of the man of saka,—as in America the man of Chicago is more quickly recognized than the New Yorker or Bostonian. He has a certain quickness of perception, ready energy, and general air of being "well up to date," or even a little in advance of it, which represent the result of industrial and commercial intercompetition. At all events, the saka merchant or manufacturer has a much longer inheritance of business experience than his rival of the political capital. Perhaps this may partly account for the acknowledged superiority of saka commercial travelers; a modernized class, offering some remarkable types. While journeying by rail or steamer you may happen to make the casual acquaintance of a gentleman whose nationality you cannot safely decide even after some conversation. He is dressed with the most correct taste in the latest and best mode; he can talk to you equally well in French, German, or English; he is perfectly courteous, but able to adapt himself to the most diverse characters; he knows Europe; and he can give you extraordinary information about parts of the Far East which you have visited, and also about other parts of which you do not even know the names. As for Japan, he is familiar with the special products of every district, their comparative merits, their history. His face is pleasing,—nose straight or slightly aquiline,—mouth veiled by a heavy black moustache: the eye-lids alone give you some right to suppose that you are conversing with an Oriental. Such is one type of the saka commercial traveler of 1896,—a being as far superior to the average Japanese petty official as a prince to a lackey. Should you meet the same man in his own city, you would probably find him in Japanese costume,—dressed as only a man of fine taste can learn how to dress, and looking rather like a Spaniard or Italian in disguise than a Japanese.
[1] There are upwards of four hundred commercial companies in Osaka.
From the reputation of saka as a centre of production and distribution, one would imagine it the most modernized, the least characteristically Japanese, of all Japanese cities. But saka is the reverse. Fewer Western costumes are to be seen in saka than in any other large city of Japan. No crowds are more attractively robed, and no streets more picturesque, than those of the great mart.
saka is supposed to set many fashions; and the present ones show an agreeable tendency to variety, of tint. When I first came to Japan the dominant colors of male costume were dark,—especially dark blue; any crowd of men usually presenting a mass of this shade. To-day the tones are lighter; and greys—warm greys, steel greys, bluish greys, purplish greys—seem to predominate. But there are also many pleasing variations,—bronze-colors, gold-browns, "tea-colors," for example. Women's costumes are of course more varied; but the character of the fashions for adults of either sex indicates no tendency to abandon the rules of severe good taste;—gay colors appearing only in the attire of children and of dancing-girls,—to whom are granted the privileges of perpetual youth. I may observe that the latest fashion in the silk upper-dress, or haori, of geisha, is a burning sky—blue,—a tropical color that makes the profession of the wearer distinguishable miles away. The higher-class geisha, however, affect sobriety in dress. I must also speak of the long overcoats or overcloaks worn out-of-doors in cold weather by both sexes. That of the men looks like an adaptation and modification of our "ulster," and has a little cape attached to it: the material is wool, and the color usually light brown or grey. That of the ladies, which has no cape, is usually of black broadcloth, with much silk binding, and a collar cut low in front. It is buttoned from throat to feet, and looks decidedly genteel, though left very wide and loose at the back to accommodate the bow of the great heavy silk girdle beneath.
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Architecturally not less than fashionably, saka remains almost as Japanese as anybody could wish. Although some wide thoroughfares exist, most of the streets are very narrow,—even more narrow than those of Kyto. There are streets of three-story houses and streets of two-story houses; but there are square miles of houses one story high. The great mass of the city is an agglomeration of low wooden buildings with tiled roofs. Nevertheless the streets are more interesting, brighter, quainter in their signs and sign-painting, than the streets of Tky; and the city as a whole is more picturesque than Tky because of its waterways. It has not inaptly been termed the Venice of Japan; for it is traversed in all directions by canals, besides being separated into several large portions by the branchings of the Yodogawa. The streets facing the river are, however, much less interesting than the narrow canals.
Anything more curious in the shape of a street vista than the view looking down one of these waterways can scarcely be found in Japan. Still as a mirror surface, the canal flows between high stone embankments supporting the houses,—houses of two or three stories, all sparred out from the stonework so that their faades bodily overhang the water. They are huddled together in a way suggesting pressure from behind; and this appearance of squeezing and crowding is strengthened by the absence of regularity in design,—no house being exactly like another, but all having an indefinable Far-Eastern queerness,—a sort of racial character,—that gives the sensation of the very-far-away in place and time. They push out funny little galleries with balustrades; barred, projecting, glassless windows with elfish balconies under them, and rootlets over them like eyebrows; tiers of tiled and tilted awnings; and great eaves which, in certain hours, throw shadows down to the foundation. As most of the timber-work is dark,—either with age or staining,—the shadows look deeper than they really are. Within them you catch glimpses of balcony pillars, bamboo ladders from gallery to gallery, polished angles of joinery,—all kinds of jutting things. At intervals you can see mattings hanging out, and curtains of split bamboo, and cotton hangings with big white ideographs upon them; and all this is faithfully repeated upside down in the water. The colors ought to delight an artist,—umbers and chocolates and chestnut-browns of old polished timber; warm yellows of mattings and bamboo screens; creamy tones of stuccoed surfaces; cool greys of tiling.... The last such vista I saw was bewitched by a spring haze. It was early morning. Two hundred yards from the bridge on which I stood, the house fronts began to turn blue; farther on, they were transparently vapory; and yet farther, they seemed to melt away suddenly into the light,—a procession of dreams. I watched the progress of a boat propelled by a peasant in straw hat and straw coat,—like the peasants of the old picture-books. Boat and man turned bright blue and then grey, and then, before my eyes,——glided into Nirvana. The notion of immateriality so created by that luminous haze was supported by the absence of sound; for these canal-streets are as silent as the streets of shops are noisy.
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No other city in Japan has so many bridges as saka: wards are named after them, and distances marked by them,—reckoning always from Koraibashi, the Bridge of the Koreans, as a centre. saka people find their way to any place most readily by remembering the name of the bridge nearest to it. But as there are one hundred and eighty-nine principal bridges, this method of reckoning can be of little service to a stranger. If a business man, he can find whatever he wants without learning the names of the bridges. saka is the best-ordered city, commercially, in the empire, and one of the best-ordered in the world. It has always been a city of guilds; and the various trades and industries are congregated still, according to ancient custom, in special districts or particular streets. Thus all the money-changers are in Kitahama,—the Lombard Street of Japan; the dry-goods trade monopolizes Honmachi; the timber merchants are all in Nagabori and Nishi-Yokobori; the toy-makers are in Minami Kiuhojimachi and Kita Midmae; the dealers in metal wares have Andojibashidri to themselves; the druggists are in Doshimachi, and the cabinet-makers in Hachimansuji. So with many other trades; and so with the places of amusement. The theatres are in the Dtombori; the jugglers, singers, dancers, acrobats, and fortune-tellers in the Sennichimae, close by.
