A Glimpse into Yokohama Through Isabella Bird’s Eyes
At the time of Isabella Bird’s arrival in Japan in May 1878, Yokohama was rapidly evolving as a new gateway to the country. Following the opening of Japan at the end of the Tokugawa period, nations such as Britain, the United States, France, Russia, and the Netherlands had established a presence there. Upon passing through the customs house, Bird’s first stop was at the British Legation. This marked the beginning of her travel narrative, “Unbeaten Tracks in Japan,” which is filled with keen observations from a traveler encountering an unfamiliar land for the first time.
The First Impressions
ORIENTAL HOTEL, YOKOHAMA, May 21.
The first thing that struck Bird upon landing was the absence of loafers and the sense of purpose among the people in the streets. She described the small, unattractive, and frail-looking individuals as having their own affairs to attend to. At the top of the landing-steps, there was a portable restaurant, compact and neat, complete with a charcoal stove and cooking utensils. However, it seemed to be made for dolls, and the mannikin who operated it was not more than five feet tall. At the customs house, she encountered officials in blue uniforms and leather boots, who were very civil and carefully examined her trunks before re-strapping them. This contrasted with the insolent and greedy officials she had encountered at New York.
Outside, there were about fifty of the now well-known jin-ri-ki-shas, and the air was filled with the buzz of this word being repeated by fifty voices. These conveyances, a feature of Japan, were growing in importance every day. They had only been invented seven years prior and already numbered nearly 23,000 in one city. Many young men abandoned agricultural pursuits to become runners, despite the short life expectancy and health risks associated with the job.
The Rickshaw: A New Means of Transport
The kuruma, or jin-ri-ki-sha, consists of a light perambulator body, an adjustable hood of oiled paper, a velvet or cloth lining and cushion, a well for parcels under the seat, two high slim wheels, and a pair of shafts connected by a bar at the ends. The body is usually lacquered and decorated according to its owner’s taste. Some show little except polished brass, others are inlaid with shells known as Venus’s ear, and others are gaudily painted with dragons, peonies, hydrangeas, chrysanthemums, and mythical personages. They cost from £2 upwards.
When rain comes on, the man puts up the hood, and ties you and it closely up in a covering of oiled paper, in which you are invisible. At night, they carry prettily-painted circular paper lanterns 18 inches long. It is most comical to see stout, florid, solid-looking merchants, missionaries, and fashionably-dressed ladies flying along Main Street, in happy unconsciousness of the ludicrousness of their appearance.
Life in Yokohama
The passage gives a vivid sense of the lives of ordinary people in Yokohama, who, though poor, continued to live with resilience in this newly emerging town. Bird’s comparison of the customs officials’ demeanor with that of their counterparts in New York reflects the perspective of a seasoned traveler who had seen many parts of the world.
The customs house was located on what is now part of the Kanagawa Prefectural Government complex, with the Consulate situated close by. The second British Consulate building survives today as the former main building of the Yokohama Archives of History, where valuable materials conveying the atmosphere of the period are on display.
Bird’s illustrations include scenes of street stalls and rickshaws, among other subjects, and they more than adequately supplement her written descriptions. Of these, the rickshaw – developed in 1870 (the third year of the Meiji era) by the inventor Yosuke Izumi and others – proved to be an invaluable new means of transport, replacing the traditional carrying palanquin.
The Oriental Hotel
After a visit to the Consulate, Bird entered a kuruma and, with two ladies in two more, was bowled along at a furious pace by a laughing little mannikin down Main Street. The street was narrow, well-paved, with well-made sidewalks, kerb-stones, and gutters, and iron lamp-posts, gas-lamps, and foreign shops all along its length. She arrived at the quiet hotel recommended by Sir Wyville Thomson, which offered a refuge from the nasal twang of her fellow-voyagers.
The host was a Frenchman, but he relied on a Chinaman; the servants were Japanese “boys” in Japanese clothes; and there was a Japanese “groom of the chambers” in faultless English costume, who perfectly appalled her by the elaborate politeness of his manner.
Currency Exchange and Travel Plans
Almost as soon as she arrived, Bird was obliged to search for Mr. Fraser’s office in the settlement, for there were no names on the streets. Yokohama did not improve on further acquaintance. It had a dead-alive look, with irregularity without picturesqueness, and the grey sky, grey sea, grey houses, and grey roofs looked harmoniously dull.
No foreign money except the Mexican dollar passed in Japan, and Mr. Fraser’s compradore soon metamorphosed her English gold into Japanese satsu or paper money. The notes were pieces of stiff paper with Chinese characters at the corners, and they were ornamented with the chrysanthemum crest of the Mikado and the interlaced dragons of the Empire.
Bird longed to get away into real Japan. Mr. Wilkinson, H.B.M.’s acting consul, called yesterday, and was extremely kind. He thought her plan for traveling in the interior was rather too ambitious, but assured her that it was perfectly safe for a lady to travel alone.
By the year before Bird’s arrival, 1877, Japan’s first domestically produced Western-style paper currency, the national bank notes (new issues), had only just been put into circulation. The unusual banknotes that passed through her hands were, in other words, products of a monetary system still in its infancy. Their designs were the work of the Italian engraver Edoardo Chiossone, often regarded as the father of modern Japanese banknote design.
The Oriental Hotel, where Bird first stayed, stood close to what is now Yokohama’s Chinatown. Opened in 1872 by a Frenchman named Bonnat, it was a Western-style hotel situated on a quiet street at night. She remained there for about three days, using the time to prepare for the long journey that lay ahead.
What, then, was her purpose in coming to Japan? Various conjectures are possible, but in the end, it is best summed up by her own simple words: “I long to get away into real Japan.” Equally revealing is the reaction of Mr. Wilkinson, who described her plans as “rather too ambitious.” He also assured her that “it is perfectly safe for a lady to travel alone” – but was it truly so?
Incidentally, an issue of the Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun, the predecessor of the Mainichi Shimbun, published on May 20 – the very day Bird arrived – carried an article on an incident a short time earlier in which a sailor on a British warship committed an act of violence against a Japanese woman. It can hardly be said, therefore, that the situation was ever truly “perfectly safe.”
