Things Japanese: Being Notes on Various Subjects Connected with Japan for the Use of Travellers and Others |
Other editions - View all
Things Japanese; Being Notes on Various Subjects Connected with Japan, for ... Basil Hall Chamberlain No preview available - 2015 |
Common terms and phrases
Ainos ancient Article Asiatic Transactions bamboo beautiful birds Books recommended Buddhist called century character chief China Chinese Chinese characters Chōshū Christian civilisation classes cloisonné colour Confucian Court Curate custom Daimyōs early Emperor empire English Europe European Europeanisation fact Fairy favour favourite feudal flowers foreign Formosa Fuji hand honour hundred ideas Imperial instance island Izanagi Japanese art Japanese language Japanese literature jinrikisha Kōbe Kojiki Korea Kyōto Kyūshū lacquer land language less living matter means Mikado mind missionaries modern moon mountain Nagasaki nation native nature never official Old Japan origin Ōsaka paper perhaps persons poetry popular practical present priests provinces railway reader religion residents Shinto Shōgun side Society sometimes sort species style tea ceremonies temple Tennō things tion Tōkyō various Western whole woman women word writing Yedo Yezo Yokohama
Popular passages
Page 277 - Traveller lies Which he forbears again to look upon ; Pleased rather with some soft ideal scene The work of Fancy, or some happy tone Of meditation, slipping in between The beauty coming and the beauty gone. — If Thought and Love desert us, from that day Let us break off all commerce with the Muse : With Thought and Love companions of our way — Whate'er the senses take or may refuse, — The Mind's internal heaven shall shed her dews Of inspiration on the humblest lay.
Page 505 - ... duties that lie before her very eyes, perceives not the actions that will bring down blame upon her own head, and comprehends not even the things that will bring down calamities on the heads of her husband and children.
Page 192 - ... Fujiyama rear his head on high ! The clouds of heaven in reverent wonder pause, Nor may the birds those giddy heights assay Where melt thy snows amid thy fires away, Or thy fierce fires lie quenched beneath thy snows. What name might fitly tell, what accents sing, Thine awful, godlike grandeur ? "1'is thy breast That holdeth Narusawa's flood at rest, Thy side whence Fujikawa's waters spring.
Page 39 - Kudanzaka in Yedo they are shown in the proper position, projecting from the inside of the shingling, but in the majority of cases they merely consist of two pieces of wood in the form of the letter X, which rest on the ridge of the roof like a pack-saddle on a horse's back, to make use of a Japanese writer's comparison*.
Page 40 - Satow's, it should be added that fences were in use, and that the wooden doors, sometimes fastened by means of hooks, resembled those with which we are familiar in Europe rather than the sliding, screen-like doors of modern Japan. The windows seem to have been mere holes. Rush-matting and rugs consisting of skins were occasionally brought in to sit upon, and we even hear once or twice of "silk rugs " being used for the same purpose by the noble and wealthy.
Page 514 - ... pi pu pe po In this way the number of letters is raised considerably. Very few books are written in hira-gana alone, — none in kata-kana alone. Almost all are written in a mixture of Chinese characters and kana of one kind or the other, the Chinese characters being employed to convey ideas in nouns and the stems of words, while the kana serve to transcribe particles and terminations. Kana is also often printed at the side of Chinese characters, especially difficult ones, as a sort of running...
Page 260 - I know," says SIR EWEN CAMERON, late Manager of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank in Shanghai, " of no people in the world I would sooner trust than the Chinese merchant or banker For the last twenty-five years the bank has been doing a very large business with Chinese in Shanghai, amounting, I should say, to hundreds of millions of taels, and we have never met with a defaulting Chinaman.
Page 38 - ... against decay had not occurred to the ancients, who planted the uprights in holes dug in the ground. The ground plan of the hut was oblong, with four corner uprights, and one in the middle of each of the four sides, those in the sides which formed the ends being long enough to support the ridge-pole. Other trees were fastened horizontally from corner to corner, one set near the • Gunsho ruijiu. Vol. I. p. 7J. ground, one near the top and one set on the top, the latter of which formed what we...
Page 40 - The floor must have been low down, so that the occupants of the building, as they squatted or lay on their mats, were exposed to the stealthy attacks of venomous snakes, which were probably far more numerous in the earliest ages, when the country was for the most part uncultivated, than at the present day.... There seems some reason to think that...
Page 502 - With regard to this point, there are seven faults, which are termed 'the Seven Reasons for Divorce:' (i) A woman shall be divorced for disobedience to her father-in-law or mother-in-law, (ii) A woman shall be * See page 310. t Confucins. divorced if she fail to bear children, the reason for this rule being that women are sought in marriage for the purpose of giving men posterity. A barren woman should, however, be retained if her heart...