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 Introduction to
Probability Models
Ninth Edition
This page intentionally left blank
 Introduction to
Probability Models
Ninth Edition

Sheldon M. Ross
University of California
Berkeley, California

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Printed in the United States of America

06 07 08 09 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents

Preface xiii

1. Introduction to Probability Theory 1

1.1. Introduction 1
1.2. Sample Space and Events 1
1.3. Probabilities Defined on Events 4
1.4. Conditional Probabilities 7
1.5. Independent Events 10
1.6. Bayes’ Formula 12
Exercises 15
References 21

2. Random Variables 23
2.1. Random Variables 23
2.2. Discrete Random Variables 27
2.2.1. The Bernoulli Random Variable 28
2.2.2. The Binomial Random Variable 29
2.2.3. The Geometric Random Variable 31
2.2.4. The Poisson Random Variable 32
2.3. Continuous Random Variables 34
2.3.1. The Uniform Random Variable 35
2.3.2. Exponential Random Variables 36
2.3.3. Gamma Random Variables 37
2.3.4. Normal Random Variables 37

v
vi Contents

2.4. Expectation of a Random Variable 38

2.4.1. The Discrete Case 38
2.4.2. The Continuous Case 41
2.4.3. Expectation of a Function of a Random Variable 43
2.5. Jointly Distributed Random Variables 47
2.5.1. Joint Distribution Functions 47
2.5.2. Independent Random Variables 51
2.5.3. Covariance and Variance of Sums of Random Variables 53
2.5.4. Joint Probability Distribution of Functions of Random
Variables 61
2.6. Moment Generating Functions 64
2.6.1. The Joint Distribution of the Sample Mean and Sample
Variance from a Normal Population 74
2.7. Limit Theorems 77
2.8. Stochastic Processes 83
Exercises 85
References 96

3. Conditional Probability and Conditional

Expectation 97
3.1. Introduction 97
3.2. The Discrete Case 97
3.3. The Continuous Case 102
3.4. Computing Expectations by Conditioning 105
3.4.1. Computing Variances by Conditioning 117
3.5. Computing Probabilities by Conditioning 120
3.6. Some Applications 137
3.6.1. A List Model 137
3.6.2. A Random Graph 139
3.6.3. Uniform Priors, Polya’s Urn Model, and
Bose–Einstein Statistics 147
3.6.4. Mean Time for Patterns 151
3.6.5. The k-Record Values of Discrete Random Variables 155
3.7. An Identity for Compound Random Variables 158
3.7.1. Poisson Compounding Distribution 161
3.7.2. Binomial Compounding Distribution 163
3.7.3. A Compounding Distribution Related to the Negative
Binomial 164
Exercises 165
 Contents vii

4. Markov Chains 185

4.1. Introduction 185
4.2. Chapman–Kolmogorov Equations 189
4.3. Classification of States 193
4.4. Limiting Probabilities 204
4.5. Some Applications 217
4.5.1. The Gambler’s Ruin Problem 217
4.5.2. A Model for Algorithmic Efficiency 221
4.5.3. Using a Random Walk to Analyze a Probabilistic Algorithm
for the Satisfiability Problem 224
4.6. Mean Time Spent in Transient States 230
4.7. Branching Processes 233
4.8. Time Reversible Markov Chains 236
4.9. Markov Chain Monte Carlo Methods 247
4.10. Markov Decision Processes 252
4.11. Hidden Markov Chains 256
4.11.1. Predicting the States 261
Exercises 263
References 280

5. The Exponential Distribution and the Poisson

Process 281
5.1. Introduction 281
5.2. The Exponential Distribution 282
5.2.1. Definition 282
5.2.2. Properties of the Exponential Distribution 284
5.2.3. Further Properties of the Exponential Distribution 291
5.2.4. Convolutions of Exponential Random Variables 298
5.3. The Poisson Process 302
5.3.1. Counting Processes 302
5.3.2. Definition of the Poisson Process 304
5.3.3. Interarrival and Waiting Time Distributions 307
5.3.4. Further Properties of Poisson Processes 310
5.3.5. Conditional Distribution of the Arrival Times 316
5.3.6. Estimating Software Reliability 328
5.4. Generalizations of the Poisson Process 330
5.4.1. Nonhomogeneous Poisson Process 330
5.4.2. Compound Poisson Process 337
5.4.3. Conditional or Mixed Poisson Processes 343
viii Contents

Exercises 346
References 364

6. Continuous-Time Markov Chains 365

6.1. Introduction 365
6.2. Continuous-Time Markov Chains 366
6.3. Birth and Death Processes 368
6.4. The Transition Probability Function Pij (t) 375
6.5. Limiting Probabilities 384
6.6. Time Reversibility 392
6.7. Uniformization 401
6.8. Computing the Transition Probabilities 404
Exercises 407
References 415

7. Renewal Theory and Its Applications 417

7.1. Introduction 417
7.2. Distribution of N (t) 419
7.3. Limit Theorems and Their Applications 423
7.4. Renewal Reward Processes 433
7.5. Regenerative Processes 442
7.5.1. Alternating Renewal Processes 445
7.6. Semi-Markov Processes 452
7.7. The Inspection Paradox 455
7.8. Computing the Renewal Function 458
7.9. Applications to Patterns 461
7.9.1. Patterns of Discrete Random Variables 462
7.9.2. The Expected Time to a Maximal Run of Distinct Values 469
7.9.3. Increasing Runs of Continuous Random Variables 471
7.10. The Insurance Ruin Problem 473
Exercises 479
References 492

8. Queueing Theory 493

8.1. Introduction 493
8.2. Preliminaries 494
8.2.1. Cost Equations 495
8.2.2. Steady-State Probabilities 496
 Contents ix

8.3. Exponential Models 499

8.3.1. A Single-Server Exponential Queueing System 499
8.3.2. A Single-Server Exponential Queueing System
Having Finite Capacity 508
8.3.3. A Shoeshine Shop 511
8.3.4. A Queueing System with Bulk Service 514
8.4. Network of Queues 517
8.4.1. Open Systems 517
8.4.2. Closed Systems 522
8.5. The System M/G/1 528
8.5.1. Preliminaries: Work and Another Cost Identity 528
8.5.2. Application of Work to M/G/1 529
8.5.3. Busy Periods 530
8.6. Variations on the M/G/1 531
8.6.1. The M/G/1 with Random-Sized Batch Arrivals 531
8.6.2. Priority Queues 533
8.6.3. An M/G/1 Optimization Example 536
8.6.4. The M/G/1 Queue with Server Breakdown 540
8.7. The Model G/M/1 543
8.7.1. The G/M/1 Busy and Idle Periods 548
8.8. A Finite Source Model 549
8.9. Multiserver Queues 552
8.9.1. Erlang’s Loss System 553
8.9.2. The M/M/k Queue 554
8.9.3. The G/M/k Queue 554
8.9.4. The M/G/k Queue 556
Exercises 558
References 570

9. Reliability Theory 571

9.1. Introduction 571
9.2. Structure Functions 571
9.2.1. Minimal Path and Minimal Cut Sets 574
9.3. Reliability of Systems of Independent Components 578
9.4. Bounds on the Reliability Function 583
9.4.1. Method of Inclusion and Exclusion 584
9.4.2. Second Method for Obtaining Bounds on r(p) 593
9.5. System Life as a Function of Component Lives 595
9.6. Expected System Lifetime 604
9.6.1. An Upper Bound on the Expected Life of a
Parallel System 608
x Contents

9.7. Systems with Repair 610

9.7.1. A Series Model with Suspended Animation 615
Exercises 617
References 624

10. Brownian Motion and Stationary Processes 625

10.1. Brownian Motion 625
10.2. Hitting Times, Maximum Variable, and the Gambler’s Ruin
Problem 629
10.3. Variations on Brownian Motion 631
10.3.1. Brownian Motion with Drift 631
10.3.2. Geometric Brownian Motion 631
10.4. Pricing Stock Options 632
10.4.1. An Example in Options Pricing 632
10.4.2. The Arbitrage Theorem 635
10.4.3. The Black-Scholes Option Pricing Formula 638
10.5. White Noise 644
10.6. Gaussian Processes 646
10.7. Stationary and Weakly Stationary Processes 649
10.8. Harmonic Analysis of Weakly Stationary Processes 654
Exercises 657
References 662

11. Simulation 663

11.1. Introduction 663
11.2. General Techniques for Simulating Continuous Random
Variables 668
11.2.1. The Inverse Transformation Method 668
11.2.2. The Rejection Method 669
11.2.3. The Hazard Rate Method 673
11.3. Special Techniques for Simulating Continuous Random
Variables 677
11.3.1. The Normal Distribution 677
11.3.2. The Gamma Distribution 680
11.3.3. The Chi-Squared Distribution 681
11.3.4. The Beta (n, m) Distribution 681
11.3.5. The Exponential Distribution—The Von Neumann
Algorithm 682
11.4. Simulating from Discrete Distributions 685
11.4.1. The Alias Method 688
 Contents xi

11.5. Stochastic Processes 692

11.5.1. Simulating a Nonhomogeneous Poisson Process 693
11.5.2. Simulating a Two-Dimensional Poisson Process 700
11.6. Variance Reduction Techniques 703
11.6.1. Use of Antithetic Variables 704
11.6.2. Variance Reduction by Conditioning 708
11.6.3. Control Variates 712
11.6.4. Importance Sampling 714
11.7. Determining the Number of Runs 720
11.8. Coupling from the Past 720
Exercises 723
References 731

Appendix: Solutions to Starred Exercises 733

Index 775
This page intentionally left blank
Preface

This text is intended as an introduction to elementary probability theory and sto-

chastic processes. It is particularly well suited for those wanting to see how prob-
ability theory can be applied to the study of phenomena in fields such as engineer-
ing, computer science, management science, the physical and social sciences, and
operations research.
It is generally felt that there are two approaches to the study of probability the-
ory. One approach is heuristic and nonrigorous and attempts to develop in the
student an intuitive feel for the subject which enables him or her to “think prob-
abilistically.” The other approach attempts a rigorous development of probability
by using the tools of measure theory. It is the first approach that is employed in
this text. However, because it is extremely important in both understanding and
applying probability theory to be able to “think probabilistically,” this text should
also be useful to students interested primarily in the second approach.

New to This Edition

The ninth edition contains the following new sections.

• Section3.7 is concerned with compound random variables of the form
SN = N i=1 Xi , where N is independent of the sequence of independent and
identically distributed random variables Xi , i  1. It starts by deriving a gen-
eral identity concerning compound random variables, as well as a corollary
of that identity in the case where the Xi are positive and integer valued. The
corollary is then used in subsequent subsections to obtain recursive formulas
for the probability mass function of SN , when N is a Poisson distribution
(Subsection 3.7.1), a binomial distribution (Subsection 3.7.2), or a negative
binomial distribution (Subsection 3.7.3).

xiii
xiv Preface

• Section 4.11 deals with hidden Markov chains. These models suppose that
a random signal is emitted each time a Markov chain enters a state, with
the distribution of the signal depending on the state entered. The Markov
chain is hidden in the sense that it is supposed that only the signals and not
the underlying states of the chain are observable. As part of our analysis
of these models we present, in Subsection 4.11.1, the Viterbi algorithm for
determining the most probable sequence of first n states, given the first n
signals.
• Section 8.6.4 analyzes the Poisson arrival single server queue under the as-
sumption that the working server will randomly break down and need repair.

There is also new material in almost all chapters. Some of the more significant
additions being the following.

• Example 5.9, which is concerned with the expected number of normal cells
that survive until all cancer cells have been killed. The example supposes
that each cell has a weight, and the probability that a given surviving cell is
the next cell killed is proportional to its weight.
• A new approach—based on time sampling of a Poisson process—is pre-
sented in Subsection 5.4.1 for deriving the probability mass function of the
number of events of a nonhomogeneous Poisson process that occur in any
specified time interval.
• There is additional material in Section 8.3 concerning the M/M/1 queue.
Among other things, we derive the conditional distribution of the number of
customers originally found in the system by a customer who spends a time t
in the system before departing. (The conditional distribution is Poisson.) In
Example 8.3, we illustrate the inspection paradox, by obtaining the probabil-
ity distribution of the number in the system as seen by the first arrival after
some specified time.

Course

Ideally, this text would be used in a one-year course in probability models. Other
possible courses would be a one-semester course in introductory probability the-
ory (involving Chapters 1–3 and parts of others) or a course in elementary sto-
chastic processes. The textbook is designed to be flexible enough to be used in a
variety of possible courses. For example, I have used Chapters 5 and 8, with smat-
terings from Chapters 4 and 6, as the basis of an introductory course in queueing
theory.
 Preface xv

Examples and Exercises

Many examples are worked out throughout the text, and there are also a large
number of exercises to be solved by students. More than 100 of these exercises
have been starred and their solutions provided at the end of the text. These starred
problems can be used for independent study and test preparation. An Instructor’s
Manual, containing solutions to all exercises, is available free to instructors who
adopt the book for class.

Organization

Chapters 1 and 2 deal with basic ideas of probability theory. In Chapter 1 an

axiomatic framework is presented, while in Chapter 2 the important concept of
a random variable is introduced. Subsection 2.6.1 gives a simple derivation of
the joint distribution of the sample mean and sample variance of a normal data
sample.
Chapter 3 is concerned with the subject matter of conditional probability and
conditional expectation. “Conditioning” is one of the key tools of probability the-
ory, and it is stressed throughout the book. When properly used, conditioning of-
ten enables us to easily solve problems that at first glance seem quite difficult. The
final section of this chapter presents applications to (1) a computer list problem,
(2) a random graph, and (3) the Polya urn model and its relation to the Bose-
Einstein distribution. Subsection 3.6.5 presents k-record values and the surprising
Ignatov’s theorem.
In Chapter 4 we come into contact with our first random, or stochastic, process,
known as a Markov chain, which is widely applicable to the study of many real-
world phenomena. Applications to genetics and production processes are pre-
sented. The concept of time reversibility is introduced and its usefulness illus-
trated. Subsection 4.5.3 presents an analysis, based on random walk theory, of a
probabilistic algorithm for the satisfiability problem. Section 4.6 deals with the
mean times spent in transient states by a Markov chain. Section 4.9 introduces
Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. In the final section we consider a model for
optimally making decisions known as a Markovian decision process.
In Chapter 5 we are concerned with a type of stochastic process known as a
counting process. In particular, we study a kind of counting process known as
a Poisson process. The intimate relationship between this process and the expo-
nential distribution is discussed. New derivations for the Poisson and nonhomo-
geneous Poisson processes are discussed. Examples relating to analyzing greedy
algorithms, minimizing highway encounters, collecting coupons, and tracking the
AIDS virus, as well as material on compound Poisson processes, are included
xvi Preface

in this chapter. Subsection 5.2.4 gives a simple derivation of the convolution of

exponential random variables.
Chapter 6 considers Markov chains in continuous time with an emphasis on
birth and death models. Time reversibility is shown to be a useful concept, as it
is in the study of discrete-time Markov chains. Section 6.7 presents the computa-
tionally important technique of uniformization.
Chapter 7, the renewal theory chapter, is concerned with a type of count-
ing process more general than the Poisson. By making use of renewal reward
processes, limiting results are obtained and applied to various fields. Section 7.9
presents new results concerning the distribution of time until a certain pattern oc-
curs when a sequence of independent and identically distributed random variables
is observed. In Subsection 7.9.1, we show how renewal theory can be used to de-
rive both the mean and the variance of the length of time until a specified pattern
appears, as well as the mean time until one of a finite number of specified patterns
appears. In Subsection 7.9.2, we suppose that the random variables are equally
likely to take on any of m possible values, and compute an expression for the
mean time until a run of m distinct values occurs. In Subsection 7.9.3, we sup-
pose the random variables are continuous and derive an expression for the mean
time until a run of m consecutive increasing values occurs.
Chapter 8 deals with queueing, or waiting line, theory. After some preliminar-
ies dealing with basic cost identities and types of limiting probabilities, we con-
sider exponential queueing models and show how such models can be analyzed.
Included in the models we study is the important class known as a network of
queues. We then study models in which some of the distributions are allowed to
be arbitrary. Included are Subsection 8.6.3 dealing with an optimization problem
concerning a single server, general service time queue, and Section 8.8, concerned
with a single server, general service time queue in which the arrival source is a
finite number of potential users.
Chapter 9 is concerned with reliability theory. This chapter will probably be
of greatest interest to the engineer and operations researcher. Subsection 9.6.1
illustrates a method for determining an upper bound for the expected life of a
parallel system of not necessarily independent components and (9.7.1) analyzing
a series structure reliability model in which components enter a state of suspended
animation when one of their cohorts fails.
Chapter 10 is concerned with Brownian motion and its applications. The theory
of options pricing is discussed. Also, the arbitrage theorem is presented and its
relationship to the duality theorem of linear program is indicated. We show how
the arbitrage theorem leads to the Black–Scholes option pricing formula.
Chapter 11 deals with simulation, a powerful tool for analyzing stochastic mod-
els that are analytically intractable. Methods for generating the values of arbitrar-
ily distributed random variables are discussed, as are variance reduction methods
for increasing the efficiency of the simulation. Subsection 11.6.4 introduces the
 Preface xvii

important simulation technique of importance sampling, and indicates the useful-

ness of tilted distributions when applying this method.

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge with thanks the helpful suggestions made by the
many reviewers of the text. These comments have been essential in our attempt to
continue to improve the book and we owe these reviewers, and others who wish
to remain anonymous, many thanks:

Mark Brown, City University of New York

Tapas Das, University of South Florida

Israel David, Ben-Gurion University

Jay Devore, California Polytechnic Institute

Eugene Feinberg, State University of New York, Stonybrook

Ramesh Gupta, University of Maine

Marianne Huebner, Michigan State University

Garth Isaak, Lehigh University

Jonathan Kane, University of Wisconsin Whitewater

Amarjot Kaur, Pennsylvania State University

Zohel Khalil, Concordia University

Eric Kolaczyk, Boston University

Melvin Lax, California State University, Long Beach

Jean Lemaire, University of Pennsylvania

George Michailidis, University of Michigan

Krzysztof Osfaszewski, University of Illinois

Erol Pekoz, Boston University

xviii Preface

Evgeny Poletsky, Syracuse University

Anthony Quas, University of Victoria

David Scollnik, University of Calgary

Mary Shepherd, Northwest Missouri State University

Galen Shorack, University of Washington, Seattle

Osnat Stramer, University of Iowa

Gabor Szekeley, Bowling Green State University

Marlin Thomas, Purdue University

Zhenyuan Wang, University of Binghamton

Julie Zhou, University of Victoria

Special thanks to Donald Minassian of Butler University, for his extremely

careful reading of the text.
Introduction to
Probability Theory

1.1. Introduction
1
Any realistic model of a real-world phenomenon must take into account the possi-
bility of randomness. That is, more often than not, the quantities we are interested
in will not be predictable in advance but, rather, will exhibit an inherent varia-
tion that should be taken into account by the model. This is usually accomplished
by allowing the model to be probabilistic in nature. Such a model is, naturally
enough, referred to as a probability model.
The majority of the chapters of this book will be concerned with different prob-
ability models of natural phenomena. Clearly, in order to master both the “model
building” and the subsequent analysis of these models, we must have a certain
knowledge of basic probability theory. The remainder of this chapter, as well as
the next two chapters, will be concerned with a study of this subject.

1.2. Sample Space and Events

Suppose that we are about to perform an experiment whose outcome is not pre-
dictable in advance. However, while the outcome of the experiment will not be
known in advance, let us suppose that the set of all possible outcomes is known.
This set of all possible outcomes of an experiment is known as the sample space
of the experiment and is denoted by S.
Some examples are the following.

1. If the experiment consists of the flipping of a coin, then

S = {H, T }

where H means that the outcome of the toss is a head and T that it is a tail.

1
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
contributors have since subscribed generous amounts to this fund,
all of whom, by strange coincidence, were from Boston.
On a hill back of the main sanctuaries is a most curious octagonal
temple, filled with the votive offerings of those who have been
restored to health, or received other answers to prayer. The outside
walls are half-hidden by the hundreds of six-inch-square boards,
upon which are painted the suffering pilgrims who have been cured,
and a ledge is heaped high with awls, the conventional offering of
the deaf whose hearing has been restored. Locks of hair, short
swords, daggers, steel mirrors, and devices in coins are hung on the
doors. The circular altar within the stone-floored temple, containing
many old statues and sacred images, has its base completely plated
with overlapping sword-guards, short swords, and little steel mirrors.
Helmets and bits of armor are everywhere, and the long shell hair-
pins of Japanese women have been offered in such numbers that,
woven together with silk cords into curtains or screens, they hang
like banners before and beside the altars. All around the walls and
over the rafters, as far up into the darkness as one can see, hang
short swords, ranged closely side by side, overlapping mirrors,
guards, bows, arrows, curious weapons and pieces of armor, coins,
and hair-pins. Near this extraordinary place is a nunnery, where a
family of holy women have the shaved heads and disfiguring
garments of priests, their altars and images, their daily service, and
the same routine of life in every way.
Rounding the last spur of hills and crossing a broad river, the road
reaches the great Osaka plain, lying in a broad semicircle between
the mountains and the shores of the Inland Sea. On these vast
alluvial flats rice is still the main crop, and the saké made from it is
considered the best in the empire. All over this emerald plain the
farmers could be seen at work, their wide hats showing like so many
big mushrooms when the wearers, sunk deep in the muck of the
paddy fields, bent over their work. On the prairie-like level of the
plain the irrigating system is simple and ingenious. Everywhere the
farmers were plastering up the little dikes that keep the water within
its limit and pattern the plain with a gigantic check-work of narrow
black lines and serve as footwalks from field to field. No fences or
high barriers break the even level, and those strange contrivances,
the primitive Persian water-wheels, may be seen every few rods.
This Persian wheel, with its row of hanging boxes, is put in motion
by a man who climbs it in treadmill fashion, the boxes scooping up
the water from the lower level and discharging their burden into a
trough at the top, whence the stream flows from field to field by
almost imperceptible changes of level. The wheelman wears only the
loin-cloth prescribed by law and a wisp of blue towel knotted about
his head. Occasionally he fastens a big paper umbrella to a long
bamboo pole, and plants it where it will cast a small shadow on him,
but usually he tramps his uncomplaining round in the blaze of the
tropical sun, a solitary and pathetic, but highly picturesque figure,
isolated thus on the vast green plain. More Oriental, even, are the
groups at the wells, shaded by straw mats or umbrellas on long
poles, while they work the same long well-sweeps as the shadoofs of
the Nile.
Far off, like an island in this sea of green, rise the castle towers
and the pagoda-tops of Osaka, and for hours we hardly seemed to
gain upon the vision, but the runners, saving themselves for a last
effort and taking a sip of tea in the suburbs, raced down through the
streets and over the bridges at a gait never before equalled.
 CHAPTER XXXIII
OSAKA

Osaka, the great commercial city of Japan, with its population of

over 361,000 souls, stretches out its square miles of gray-roofed
houses at the edge of the plain, where the waters of the Yodogawa
reach Osaka Bay. Bars and shallows prevent large vessels from
reaching the city, and Kobé-Hiogo, twenty miles across the arc of the
bay, is its seaport. The branching river and the innumerable canals
intersecting the city have given Osaka the name of the “Venice of
Japan;” as if a trading city, built on a level plain, with canals too
wide and houses too low and dull in color to be in the least
picturesque, could be considered even a poor relation of the “Bride
of the Sea.” The “Chicago of Japan” is a fitter title, for if no pork-
packing establishments exist, the whole community is as
energetically absorbed in money-making, the yen, instead of the
almighty dollar, being the god chiefly worshipped, and Osaka’s Board
of Trade the most exciting and busy one in the empire.
Osaka has been prominent in the history of Japan from the very
earliest times, and at the time of the Restoration the rebel Shogun
made his last stand and fought his last battle at Osaka castle. The
next great event in Osaka’s annals was the flood of 1885, which was
without parallel in this country of floods. During the last weeks of
the rainy season of June the rain fell in torrents for more than a
week, and a typhoon, sweeping the region, deluged the adjoining
provinces. Lake Biwa rose many feet above its usual level, the rivers
doubled and redoubled their size, and the whole Osaka plain was a
lake. The rivers having been raised artificially above the level of the
surrounding country for the irrigation of the rice fields, their banks
and levees melted away before the rush of waters, and the plain was
scoured by swift currents running eight and fifteen feet deep over
the rice fields. Farm-houses and villages disappeared in a day, and
the wretched people saved themselves and their few effects by
taking to boats and rafts or seeking refuge in trees. After two weeks
of high-water and continuing rains, the flood subsided and the wreck
was more apparent. A few farmers, by replanting and careful
tending, obtained crops that season, but hundreds and hundreds of
the homeless and destitute were sheltered and fed in the unused
barracks at Osaka castle.
In the city itself only the castle and a few business streets were
left above water, and thousands of houses and godowns were
ruined; the mud-walls under the heavy tiled roofs collapsing like
card-houses in the current. One hundred and forty-six bridges were
carried away, and, for a time, boats were the only vehicles and
means of communication. The suffering and destitution were
terrible, and Osaka’s many industries were paralyzed. But in the
shortest time after the subsidence of the waters temporary bridges
and ferries were established, embankments patched up, houses
rebuilt, and the city returned to its busy ways. Except for the mud-
stained walls and the heaps of drift and débris on roof-tops, little
reminded one of the disaster as we sped through the stone-paved
streets. House-boats went up and down the river each evening with
geisha and maiko singing happily, and koto and samisen ringing on
the air till midnight. Jiutei’s queer hotel, a foreign inn up-stairs and a
Japanese tea-house below stairs, was the scene of as much feasting
as ever, and the recuperative power of Osaka’s people surprised one
at every turn.
The castle is the great show-place of Osaka, and although the
palace, which was the heart of the great fortress, was burned in
1868, much remains to be seen. The area enclosed by the massive
outer walls and the great moat is immense, and the clustered
towers, and buildings, crowning the one elevation on all the Osaka
plain, show commandingly from every point. The angles of the walls
are sharpened and curve inward like the bow of a battle-ship, and on
each corner remain quaint white towers with curving black roofs
piled one upon another. The castle walls are wonders of masonry;
single stones forty-six feet in length and ten or twelve feet square
being built in on either side of the main gate. Other stones, twenty
feet in height, and roughhewn as they came from the quarry, stand
at angles of the walls like miniature El Capitans. Nearly all these
titanic blocks are known to the Japanese by particular names, each
with its legends attached; but the foreigner puzzles long to decide
how those primitive builders brought such masses of granite from
the quarries on the island of Kiushiu and placed them in these walls
without the aid of steam or modern appliances. Three massive walls
of defense, one within another, separate the castle proper from the
surrounding barracks and parade-ground, and the headquarters are
within the third enclosure. A dapper little lieutenant in spotless white
uniform received our party at the temple-like headquarters building,
one scorching August morning, and conducted us through a fourth
wall, and up broad stone stair-ways to the lookout of the old citadel.
His orderly ran ahead with field-glasses, and from that airy perch,
three hundred feet above the city, we could look over an immense
stretch of country and down upon the city roof-tops, from which the
air rose quivering with heat. At eight o’clock in the morning at that
high point the air was intensely hot, and the stones seemed to
scorch our feet; yet up there was a well of deliciously cool water, an
unfailing supply for the garrison at all times and through many
sieges.
Returning to headquarters we met the commandant in such a
beautiful snow-white uniform, covered with so many fine lines of
white braid, as must make any man regret having to lay it aside for
the dark and sombre winter regimentals. The bowing and
interchange of conventionally courteous greetings between the
commandant and the two Tokio officials whom we accompanied was
a charming exhibition of the old etiquette, just a little modified by
the new. The cool, shady room, where tea and cake and wine
awaited us, had been built on the foundations of the old house
where Hideyoshi lived, and its interior was panelled and ceiled with
wondrous paintings and carvings brought from one of the Taiko’s
distant castles. Before it stood a pine-tree, planted by the daughter
of that Napoleon of Japan, and there had been enacted the brilliant
drama of feudal life which Judith Gautier has immortalized in The
Usurper, a story which invests Osaka’s castle with romance.
Then we spent two scorching hours in the gun-foundery and
arsenal outside the castle walls, where the machinery was German
from Chemnitz founderies, and the guns were made on Italian
models. No foreigners were visible about the place, and the
machinery was managed by Japanese workmen.
Next to its arsenal, Osaka takes pride in its mint, which is larger
and better supplied with machinery than any of the Government
mints in the United States. An army of workmen and workwomen in
uniform tend the machines, and melt, cast, cut, stamp, weigh, and
finish the coins, which, under the values of yens and sens,
correspond exactly to our coinage of dollars and cents. The mint
possesses a fine collection of coins, including the coins and medals
of all countries, as well as a complete set of Japanese coins from the
earliest days.
Another interesting Government institution is the bazaar for the
exhibition and sale of goods of Osaka manufacture. All Japanese
cities have these hakurankwai (exposition), but no other is on so
great a scale and so crowded with beautiful things as this one. There
one may see all that any workshop turns out or any dealer has for
sale without the tedious process of bowing, taking off one’s shoes,
and sitting in tailor-fashion for an hour before the desired articles are
shown. All the goods are marked in plain figures, and the fixed price
obviates the bargaining and the rattle of the soroban. There is an
admission fee of a few coppers, and a percentage is charged on all
sales to support the institution. One may spend a day in the
labyrinth of rooms studying Osaka’s many industries; and
everything, from gold and silver ware, crapes, brocades, lacquers,
enamels, porcelains and carvings to food preparations, patent
medicines, and imitations of foreign goods, is to be found there.
There is even a department of plants and flowers, a hall of
antiquities, a section of toys, acres of china shops, and specimens of
everything made, sold, or used in that bustling city. Evening brings
electric lights and a military band, and this industrial fair is made
popular and profitable all the year round.
Osaka is the centre of great iron, copper, and bronze industries.
Its artists decorate the finest modern Satsuma in microscopically fine
designs, and the mark of Gioksen, of Osaka, on tiny vase or koro
stamps the piece as the best example of the day. The soft yellow
and richly-toned wares of Idzumi kilns find their market through
Osaka, and the carving of blackwood into cabinets and stands, or
mounts, for vases and tokonoma ornaments, is held almost as a
monopoly by a great company of Osaka artisans. Its book trade and
dry-goods trade are very great, and its chief silk-store, which is still
purely Japanese, displays the choicest fabrics of Kioto looms, and
stuffs that only after much searching are seen elsewhere. The straw
goods trade is an important one, and its paper industries are on an
even greater scale. Fans are exported from Osaka by millions, the
United States taking one fan for each inhabitant of the great
republic.
Stamped leather is another product of Osaka, but is chiefly
exported to Trieste, to be made up there and at Vienna into the
pocket-books, portfolios, card and cigar cases that cost so much in
American jewelry and stationery stores. At Toyono’s, the largest
leather factory, squares of stamped leather were shown us in more
than a hundred designs of bugs, birds, and fish, covering the
ground, each piece of leather being about twenty-four inches
square, and selling at one or two dollars for the single piece. Larger
pieces, stamped with large and elaborate designs in gold or colors,
and used for the foreign trade as panels for wall decorations,
mounted to ten and fifteen dollars each, the size and quality of the
leather and work of the artist enhancing the price. The cost of one
of the large square brass dies from which the impressions are made
averages one hundred and fifty dollars. In the old days the two-feet-
square surface of brass could be engraved in the finest all-over
designs for half that sum. The leather is stamped from these dies by
a hand-press, and after the stamping workmen sit on their heels and
color the designs.
An industry peculiar to Osaka is the manufacture of floor rugs of
cotton or hemp. These Osaka rugs were much esteemed in feudal
days, when the daimio had the monopoly and sent them as gifts;
but in these prosaic days a stock company and a large factory supply
the home market and the great foreign demand for these
inexpensive and pleasing articles.
Half the kairos sold in Japan are marked with an Osaka
manufacturer’s name, and in cold weather or in illness the possessor
of the kairo calls Osaka blessed. For be it known that the kairo is a
little tin box with perforated sides and a sliding top covered with
cloth. Kairo zumi are three-inch paper cases filled with the finest
persimmon-leaf charcoal. You light one end of a paper, drop it in the
kairo, and blow it until it glows; slip the cover in and wrap the kairo
in a handkerchief or special bag. The little charcoal stick will burn for
three, or even six hours, giving a steady, even heat all the time. It
comes in many sizes, is curved in many ways to fit closely to the
body, and its weight is almost nothing. The commonest kairo, about
four inches long by two inches high, costs three or five cents,
according to the quality of cloth pasted over it, and each package of
the zumi costs a cent and a half. On winter days one often sees the
Japanese holding kairos in their hands, tucking them in their obis,
and slipping them down their backs. They are serviceable in keeping
dampness out of the piles of linen in house-keeper’s closets, and at
night they assume the function of the ancient warming-pan. In
America it has been considered only as a toy, a muff-warmer, or a
pocket-stove. But its best use is in the sick-room, where it will keep
a poultice or hot cloth at an even heat for days. A chill, a cramp, or a
rheumatic pain is charmed away by its steady, gentle heat; and in
neuralgia, bound on the aching nerves, it soothes them. Headaches
have been known to yield to it, and in sea-sickness the kairo
overcomes the agonizing chills and relieves the suffering. Our heavy
rubber hot-water bags, that are always leaking and suddenly
cooling, may well be superseded by the little kairo.
 Osaka has curio-shops that are small museums filled with the
choicest industrial art of old Japan, and this rich commercial city
rivals Tokio and Kioto in its amusement world, and has a theatre
street a mile long. Its theatres, its wrestlers, its maiko and geisha
are as well known as its industries, and its jinrikisha runners are
reckoned the swiftest in the empire. The latter spin over the stone-
paved streets and bridges and round corners at a terrifying pace, all
for six cents an hour, and usually speed the departing guest to the
station early enough to allow him a half-hour at the little tea-houses
in the park, to eat cubes of the superlative Osaka sponge-cake. The
maiko and geisha of this southern capital are renowned for their
grace, beauty, and wit; their taste in arranging the obi and dressing
the hair; their cleverness in inventing new dances; and the
entertainments in which they figure, under the lanterned awnings of
the house-boats as they float up and down the river at night, are
unique among such fêtes.
There are many rich and splendid temples in Osaka that seem to
have suffered little since the protection of the Shogun and the court
were withdrawn. Osaka, Tokio, and Kioto, the three capitals, are the
three religious centres; and the Buddhist establishments, the
extensive yellow-walled monastery grounds in the district beyond the
Osaka castle are worthy of a capital. The numbers of priests in the
streets, the thousands of summer pilgrims, and the scores of shops
for the sale of temple ornaments, altar furnishings, rosaries, and
brocade triangles for the shelf of household images, give a certain
sacerdotal aspect to the busy town. One temple possesses many
relics of the Forty-seven Ronins, and at its annual matsuri, when
these are exhibited, the surrounding courts are almost impassable
with the crowds and the merry fair. The twin Monto temples are
splendid structures, and priests from the Kioto Hongwanjis often
assist in their ceremonials.
As one approaches Osaka from Nara, Tennoji’s roofs and pagoda
are seen at the same moment with the castle towers. This pagoda is
one of the few in Japan which visitors are allowed to climb, and
contains enough wood and rough timber to build twenty like it after
occidental methods. Such steep and clumsy stairs and ladders are
harder to climb than mountains; for the climber crawls over and
creeps under heavy beams, and fairly twists himself upward, getting
an occasional peep down the dark well-hole, where the builders’
secret is hidden. Visitors wonder how pagodas are made to stand in
an earthquake country, and why these spindling edifices should be
built up without regard to the inevitable tremble, until they see in
the hollow chamber, or well, an exaggerated tongue or pendulum
hanging from the topmost beams.
This tongue, made of heavy beams bolted together in a mass, is
equal to about half the weight of the whole structure. It descends
nearly to the base of the pagoda, and at the shock of an earthquake
the large pendulum slowly swings, the structure sways, and settles
back safely to its base.
In a tall sheathed bell-tower near the pagoda there is a most
interesting shrine where parents hang the garments of sick and
dying children. The whole interior is filled with little kimonos and
bibs, and the long rope of the gong overhead is covered with them,
while tearful women cluster round the priests in the small interior,
and a continuous service seems to go on before the altar. In the
court-yard a large stone water-tank, sunk a few steps and covered
with a pavilion roof, contains a stone tortoise pouring a constant
stream of water into the reservoir, on whose surface the faithful,
buying wooden shavings or prayer-papers from the priests, cast
these petitions and go away content.
Others fill little bottles with the water and carry it home as a
specific against many ills. In a pond near by live hundreds of turtles.
The kamé climb up on wooden platforms in the pond and sun
themselves, but at the clap of the hand and the sight of popped
beans floating about, the whole colony dive off and swim towards
their benefactor.
All around Tennoji are the yellow walls of the monasteries, with
miniature moats and heavy gate-ways, and this quarter is a religious
city by itself, which was once a separate suburb with a population of
30,000.
 CHAPTER XXXIV
KOBÉ AND ARIMA

Travellers had cause to rejoice when the Tokaido railroad made it

a twenty-four hours’ journey on dry land from Tokio to Kobé, the
foreign settlement adjoining the ancient town of Hiogo. It is almost
always a miserable trip by water, notwithstanding the beauty of Fuji
and the coast. Chopping seas, cross-currents, and unexpected
pitchings and motions disturb the equilibrium even of an old sailor,
and the trip to Kobé often lays him low, while smiling skies and
seemingly smooth waters seem to make a mock of him. When
typhoons sweep, the province of Kii is a magnet for them, and
frightful seas rage around that point which guards the entrance to
the Inland Sea.
Kobé, as the port of Osaka and Kioto, and the outlet of the great
Yamashiro tea-district, is an important place commercially; its
growth more than equalling Yokohama’s since the opening of the
port. Beginning with less than 10,000 native inhabitants in the town
of Hiogo in 1868, it had risen to more than 80,000 in 1887, and to
215,786 in 1900. The foreign trade of 1888 amounted to
$42,971,976; in 1900 to $97,805,206, of which $60,144,764 were
imports, and $37,660,442 were exports. Ships of all nations lie at
anchor in its busy harbor, and the many American sailing vessels
that come out loaded with kerosene return with cargoes of rags,
camphor, and curios, by which general invoice name are included the
cheaper porcelains, lacquers, fans, lanterns, toys, and trifles made
for the foreign trade.
Kobé, lying at the head of the Inland Sea, sheltered from the
ocean, and screened even from the land by the low range of
mountains back of it, possesses the best and driest climate of any of
the treaty ports now open for the residence of foreigners. The soil is
sandy, and the site, facing southward, enjoys to the full the winter
sun and summer winds. The town, beginning in lines of houses that
run down from each velvet, green ravine in the abrupt hill-wall,
slopes steeply to the water’s edge, and there spreads out in a long
Bund, one part of which, lined with foreign residences, banks, and
consulates, is the pride of Kobé. This foreign Bund is much less
picturesque than the native or Hiogo Bund, off which lie hundreds of
curious junks, that at night display constellations of softly glowing
lanterns on their masts, while the whole harbor and hill-side twinkle
with open lights, and the electric search-lights of the men-of-war
flash broad rays over the scene.
At the end of the native Bund Government buildings close the
street, and the railway wharf and sea-wall follow a long point of land
that runs far out into the bay, and is capped by a fortress with a
round stone tower and a light-house. A double line of ancient trees
marks the course of the Minatogawa, which centuries ago was
turned from its proper channel and made to run along this high
embankment. A steep slope of forty feet in some places leads from
the level of the Hiogo streets to the banks of this watercourse, which
are turfed over, shaded with rows and groves of pines and enormous
camphor-trees, and made gay with garden-plots and picturesque
tea-houses. The dry river-bed is a play-ground for legions of
children, and during matsuris it is crowded with booths and side-
shows. Hiogo, meaning “arsenal,” figures prominently in ancient
history, and here Kusunoki Masashige, that ideal hero and model of
chivalric valor, fought the last battle of the War of the
Chrysanthemums and established the sovereignty of the Emperor
Go-Daigo in the fourteenth century. Kusunoki’s memory is
worshipped everywhere, but the Nanko temple in Hiogo is dedicated
to his memory, and on anniversary days its matsuris are brilliant and
picturesque affairs. Besides this great Shinto temple, Hiogo has a
Buddhist establishment of equal importance—the Shinkoji, outside
whose sanctuary sits a colossal bronze Buddha of serene, majestic
countenance, its granite pedestal rising as an island in the midst of a
lotus pond.
 Properly speaking, the Minatogawa lies in Hiogo, but where
ancient Hiogo ends and modern Kobé begins no mortal can see. The
Motomachi, the main street of Kobé, winds its narrow length from
the banks of the Minatogawa to the Foreign Concession, beyond
which warehouses, tea-firing godowns, and foreign residences
stretch and spread in every way outside the narrow limits of the
tract conceded to alien residents in the treaties. Kobé means “head,”
or “gate of god,” probably in reference to its position at the entrance
of the Inland Sea. While so picturesquely placed it is the model
foreign settlement of the East, and the municipal council—a mixed
board of consular and native officials—has never allowed its right to
that fame to be questioned. A pretty park down in the heart of the
Concession, shaded with ancient camphor-trees and ornamented by
hedges, groups of palms, thatched summer-houses, and a bell-
tower, was once the execution-ground of Hiogo. A small temple that
stood near it has given way to a large tea-firing godown, and native
children tumble and play where the headsman used to bind
mutilated bodies or ghastly heads to high poles and set them up at
the corners, after immemorial usage. The park, or recreation-
grounds for the foreign colony, lies, beside the long embankment of
another elevated river-bed on the opposite side from the
Minatogawa.
Every gap in the Kobé hills leads to some lovely little valley, and
orange groves dot the hill-sides. In one green ravine are the falls of
Nunobiki, where a clear mountain stream takes two long plunges
down sheer granite walls, drops in foaming cascades past old rice-
mills, and courses on over the sloping plain to the sea. The Moon
temple shines, a white spot, far up towards the summit of the steep,
green mountain, and, with the more accessible falls, offers the two
favorite points for visitors’ excursions. Farther along the brow of the
hill stands the Gold Ball temple, a whitewashed structure, looking
like an exaggerated country meeting-house, with its roof
surmounted by a gilded sphere, and with nothing even suggesting
Buddhism in its appearance. While it is an eye-sore to every one
else, the natives, who contributed the money to build this
monstrosity of what they consider foreign architecture, are delighted
with its unique and bizarre appearance. Around it lies a populous
graveyard, many of the stones gray with the mosses of centuries.
Others, newly erected, are family memorials, bearing the names of
those members already buried there written in black characters, and
the names of the living in red. It is a curious custom; but to the
Japanese, who even point with pride to the red letters of their own
names on these family monuments, it is rational and right.
Cremation is the funeral rite preferred, and up a narrow valley
behind the temple is the crematory, much used both by rich and
poor. The process is simple and inexpensive, and the visitor always
encounters some funeral train accompanying a body to that little
white temple of fire, or some family group bearing the ashes down
to the cemetery for final rest.
A line of tea-houses bands the brow of the hill; innumerable
Shinto shrines lost among the pine-trees show their long lines of torii
at the edges of the groves; and at another point the schools and
homes of the large American missionary colony make a settlement
quite to themselves.
Kobé is almost entirely given up to the trade in cheap goods for
the foreign market. The streets are lined and the shops filled with
such porcelain, bronze, paper, and lacquer monstrosities; such
burlesques of embroidery and nightmares of color as crowd the
Japanese stores in the cities of America, chief customers of this
trade. One Chicago importing house takes more of such goods
annually than the whole kingdom of Belgium, one of the oldest,
richest, and most densely populated countries of Europe. The curio-
shops proper have diminished in numbers as the rage for foreign
trade increased, until there remains almost alone the establishment
of an old samurai, who still retains the shaved crown and gun-
hammer cue of his class. Despising modern ways and business
signs, this one simply hung a huge sword over his gate-way and left
his customers to stumble upon him accidentally, push their way
through a rubbish and lumber-room, and pursue their unguided path
across the garden. Of recent years even this old conservative has
relented a little and made his entrance more plainly alluring; but
formerly each comer felt the excitement of discovering some
jealously hidden treasure-house. Within, there is still a room full of
old saddles, state kagos, military trappings, and banners; a place
crowded with spears, lances, and color standards; a chamber piled
high with brocade gowns, uniforms and temple hangings; hundreds
of carved and gilded Buddhas, divine Kwannons more or less
battered and worn, and hoards of old porcelain, lacquer, bronze, and
carvings. The last room looks upon a little garden with its inevitable
miniature pond crossed by a stone bridge with stone lanterns, and
stunted pines on the slope of a small mountain. Beyond this garden
are more stores of armor, coins, and ancient things, and a second
story doubles the whole lower labyrinth of the place. An army might
be equipped from this magazine of military stores, or a pantheon
fitted out with Buddhas, Kwannons, Nios, lesser gods, and gilded
images. All these deities are certified to have come from the Nara or
Mount Hiyeizan temples, which are the miraculous sources of supply
of everything sacerdotal in this part of Japan. One fortunate tourist,
who bought a Buddha of Hari Shin, found that the jewel in the
forehead was a diamond instead of a crystal, which, when cut in
facets, proved to be worth several hundred dollars. Of this incident
the old samurai prefers not to talk, and to change the subject his
agile son refills the tea-cups, unrolls more kakemonos, or displays
the swords and helmets “of my father’s young time.”
Through Kobé the colored straw mosaics of Tajima province on the
west coast find their market, as well as the basket wares of Arima, a
village lying fifteen miles inland. One goes from Kobé to Arima by
jinrikisha, and starting in the dew and freshness of a summer
morning at six o’clock, we reached the grateful shade of the Taiko’s
maple in the tea-house garden soon after nine. As we rose by
degrees through the suburbs of Kobé, and drew nearer its glorious
green hill-wall, we had a superb view of the opaline bay, set with the
black hulls of great merchant ships, the white ones of foreign men-
of-war, and dotted with the square white sails of hundreds of junks
and fishing-boats. A sudden turn in the road took us behind the
sharp spur of a hill, and a narrow cañon lay before us with the road
clinging to one side wall. All the way we followed watercourses—the
road now in some wild ravine, and again running up some emerald
rice valley. All the way we met primitive ox-carts carrying their loads
down to Kobé, each driver bearing an equally heavy load hanging
from the ends of a pole across his shoulders. The oxen’s horns were
bound with fantastic bits of red cloth, their feet shod with straw
sandals; and the cart was braked on the slopes by the main force
and strength of the driver exerted against a long tongue or pole that
also served to guide it. These placid, easy-going oxen, with their
hard-working drivers walking beside them, afford some of the best
pictures of the old road-side scenes. Small boys trudged at their
fathers’ heels with bundles of baskets or firewood over their
shoulders, and women carried their share of the family load.
When the bamboo groves and rice fields of Arima’s neighborhood
appeared, the paddy fields, lying terrace below terrace on a
rounding hill-side in waving, irregular lines, easily suggested the
terraced basins around the Yellowstone hot springs; the Japanese
farmer unconsciously repeating, in larger outlines of vivid green,
what the overflowing waters have built up in snowy deposits in the
Montana Park. Arima, which lines the sides of a steep gorge through
which a wild mountain-stream dashes, is as picturesque as a
mountain village in Switzerland. The houses are built almost one on
top of another, with narrow, winding streets, where the heavy
projecting roofs almost meet. Stone steps ease the steep slopes for
the villagers, and the clatter of clogs and the sight of the peasants
going up and down the stair-ways, half-hidden by the loads of grass
or straw on their backs, recall similar pictures in the crooked little
mountain hamlets of Northern Italy. At the tea-house we wandered
through an intricate garden before reaching the steps of the
detached pavilion, on whose balcony were chairs and hammocks,
and before which loomed a perpendicular green mountain-wall with
its base sunk in the feathery, spray-like tops of bamboo groves. To
us came peddlers and packs with samples of everything the town
could offer, and the rooms were soon a bazaar of bamboo wares.
 FARM LABORERS

All the afternoon we roamed about Arima, climbing its steep

streets and threading its narrow by-ways. In the glaring white
sunlight the shops were caves of cool shadow, and we found them
filled with everything that bamboo will make, from clothes-baskets to
toothpicks, and all selling for a song. Their weight is almost nothing,
but, with the most ingenious packing, the space they consume
makes the cost of shipment to America equal that of production.
Except the necessaries of life, nothing seems to be sold in Arima
save bamboo baskets and straw work; and every house is a basket-
factory, where father, mother, children, and almost babes, weave
baskets or prepare the bamboo. Heredity asserts itself again, and
these descendants of generations of basket-makers work with a
dexterity equalling sleight-of-hand tricksters. Arima’s industrial life is
a fine study in political economy.
The hill-side is musical with the boom of Buddhist bells and
echoing clang of Shinto gongs; but more strangers toil upward for a
drink from the sparkling, ice-cold soda spring beside one temple,
than to pray at its door-way. For centuries Arima’s hot-springs have
wrought their cures, and sufferers from rheumatism and skin
diseases have flocked to its pools. The Government has charge of
the springs, and the waters are conducted to a large bath-house in
the heart of the village, where free baths in the common pool are
open to every one, and where private baths may be obtained at a
trifling charge.
 CHAPTER XXXV
THE TEA TRADE

Since Commodore Perry opened Japan to the world his

countrymen have been consuming more and more of its teas each
year, the United States and Canada being almost her only
customers, England and Russia, the great tea-drinking countries of
Europe, buying hardly enough to serve as samples. Each year the
United States pays over $3,000,000 for the nerve-racking green tea
of Japan. Besides the price of the tea, a trifle of $13,000,000 goes to
Japan for raw silk and cocoons. In return, Japan imports from
America $5,000,000 in kerosene, $13,000,000 in raw cotton, and
$1,000,000 in flour and machinery. In 1889 Japan’s imports from the
United States amounted to $19,107,947, and its exports to this
country to $31,959,635, while its imports from England had a value
of $22,418,497, and its exports to England $5,635,385, a balance of
trade disturbing to American commercial pride. Meanwhile Russian
petroleum arrives by ship-loads, and, handled by the largest English
firm in the East, is being pushed and sold by the smallest retailers at
less than the Standard Oil Company’s fluid.
The tea-plant, as every one knows, is a hardy evergreen of the
camellia family. It grows a thick and solidly-massed bush, and at a
first glance at a field regularly dotted and bordered with the round
bushes setting closely to the ground, one might easily mistake it for
box. In the spring the young leaves crop out at the ends of the
shoots and branches, and when the whole top of the bush is covered
with pale golden-green tips, generally in May, the first picking takes
place. The second picking belongs to the fire-fly season in June, and
after that great festival tea comes in from the plantations in
decreasing quantities until the end of August. The choicer qualities
of tea are never exported, but consumed at home. Choice basket-
fired tea, such as is used in the homes of the rich and well-to-do
Japanese, sells for one and two dollars a pound. There are choicer,
more carefully grown and prepared teas, which cost as high as from
seven to ten dollars a pound; but such teas are shaded from the hot
suns by matted awnings, and the picker, going down lines of these
carefully tended bushes, nips off only the youngest leaves or buds at
the tip of each shoot. The average tea, bought by the exporters for
shipment to the United States and Canada, is of the commonest
quality, and according to Japanese trade statistics, the average value
is eleven cents a pound as it stands, subject to the export duty and
ready for shipment abroad. There are often sales of whole cargoes
of Japan tea at auction in New York for fifteen cents a pound.
Families who buy this same brand from their grocers at forty or sixty
cents a pound may judge to whom the greater profits accrue.
Japan tea came into market as a cheaper substitute for the green
teas of China, those carefully rolled young hysons and gunpowders
of our grandmothers’ fancy. Europe has never received the Japan
teas with favor, but the bulk of American importations is Japanese,
and the taste for black tea is being cultivated very slowly in the great
republic. For green tea, the leaves are dried over hot fires almost
immediately after picking, leaving the theine, or active principle of
the leaf, in full strength. For black tea, the leaves are allowed to wilt
and ferment in heaps for from five to fourteen days, or until the leaf
turns red, and the harmful properties of theine have been partly
destroyed. The Oolong tea of South China is nearest to green tea, its
fermentation being limited to three or five days only, while the richly-
flavored black teas of North China, from the Hangkow, Ningchow,
and Keemung districts, are allowed to ferment for twice that period
to prepare them for the Russian and English markets. The choicest
of these black teas go to Russia, a part of the crop still being carried
by camel trains from the end of the Grand Canal near Pekin to the
terminus of the trans-Siberian railway. It is also shipped by steamers
to Odessa; and as the tea is thoroughly fired and sealed in air-tight
packages, it makes no difference in the quality of the infusion
afterwards whether the tea-chests were jolted by camel caravans
from Tungchow to Irkutsk, or pitched about in a ship’s hold—much
as caravan tea is celebrated in advertisements for the American
public.
The Japanese Government made experiments in the manufacture
of black tea in the province of Ise, but the results were not
satisfactory, and no further efforts have been made to compete in
that line with China. Japan will continue to furnish the world’s supply
of green tea, but as the demand for such stimulants declines, a
great problem will confront its tea-farmers.
Kobé and Yokohama are the great tea ports, each one draining
wide districts, and their streets being fragrant with the peculiarly
sweet odor of toasting tea-leaves all summer long.
At Kobé thirteen firms, of which only two are American, are
engaged in the tea-trade. In Yokohama there are twenty-eight firms,
thirteen being English, eleven American, two German, and two
Japanese. One American firm has invented machinery for firing and
coloring the tea, the leaves being tossed and turned by inanimate
iron instead of by perspiring coolies. About a half-dozen firms now
employ machinery for drying and coloring this green tea, but all of
them also use the old hand process, and toast the leaves over
charcoal pans. Several thousand men, women, and even children are
busily employed during the four months of the busy season—May,
June, July, and August. A steam saw-mill, set up by a speculative
American, makes a business of supplying tea-chests to these firms,
although some still depend on their own carpenters. The matting
and the sheets of lead for covering and lining the boxes come from
China. Each firm, too, has a little art and printing establishment
attached, where the gaudy labels for chests and cans are block-
printed. One firm often has a hundred different pictorial labels for its
packages of tea, that number of names being applied to the one
kind of tea shipped.
Of each consignment made, a sample can of tea is forwarded by
mail, while a duplicate sample can is retained by the exporter.
 The young tea-leaves picked in May and early June comprise more
than half of the whole season’s crop, succeeding growths of leaves
being coarser and having less flavor. This tea, picked by women and
children in the fields, is roughly dried in shallow baskets lined with
paper over charcoal fires, and is then sold to commission dealers in
the interior towns and villages. They sort it into grades, toast it once
more, and ship it to the treaty ports in rough paper sacks, boxes,
and baskets. Some of it comes by junks to Yokohama. Over and over
the tea is tested by sample infusions and the leaves carefully
inspected. All summer, at the exporting houses, the tea-tasters are
busy with their rows of white cups. A certain weight of leaves is put
in each cup, the boiling water is poured on and allowed to stand for
five minutes. The expert notes, meanwhile, the color of the liquid
and the aroma, carefully watches the unrolling of the leaves, and
then tastes the brew by slow sips, meditatively, discriminatingly. The
tea-taster takes care to swallow very little, as its effects are
disastrous in time. Tea-tasters as a rule follow their business but a
few years, severe nerve and stomach trouble being brought on by
the constant sipping of so much powerful stimulant. Of course they
command high salaries. Astonishing stories are told of the acuteness
of their sense of taste and the certainty of their judgments. Their
decision sets the price, and the dickering with the Japanese
commission merchant is always settled by the tea-taster’s estimates.
In the tea-firing godowns the dried leaves are stacked in heaps as
high as a haystack, when it makes a solid, cohesive mass, that can
be cut off like hay with a patent hay-knife. In nearly every case the
firing is superintended by a Chinese compradore, and his assistants
are Japanese.
The tea-firers bring their cooked rice and their own teapots with
them, and snatch refreshment whenever there is a lull in the work.
They are searched at night when they leave, and with the sweet
simplicity of children they keep on trying to secrete the leaves,
always being caught at it. Their work consists in standing over round
iron pots sunk in a brick framework for the thirteen hours of a day’s
work, and stirring and tossing tea-leaves. There are charcoal fires
under the iron pans, and all day they must lean over the hot iron
and brick. The tea is given this extra firing to dry it thoroughly
before its long sea-trip, and at the same time it is “polished,” or
coated with indigo, Prussian blue, gypsum, and other things which
give it the gray lustre that no dried tea-leaf ever naturally wore, but
that American tea-drinkers insist on having. Before the tea-leaves
are put in the pans for the second firing men, whose arms are dyed
with indigo to the elbows, go down the lines and dust a little of the
powder into each pan. Then the tossing and stirring of the leaves
follows, and the dye is worked thoroughly into them, the work being
regulated by overseers, who determine when each lot has been fired
enough. It requires a certain training to keep the tea-leaves in
constant motion, and it is steady, energetic work.
This skilled labor is paid for at rates to make the Knights of Labor
groan, the wage list showing, however, a rise in the scale of prices
since the fall in the price of silver and the increased cost of living
throughout Japan. During the four busy months of the tea season
the firers are paid the equivalent of fourteen and sixteen cents,
United States gold, for a day’s work of thirteen hours. Less expert
hands, who give the second firing, or polishing, receive twelve cents
a day. Those who sort and finally pack the tea, and who work as
rapidly and automatically as machines, get the immense sum of
twenty cents a day. Whole families engage in tea-firing during the
season, earning enough then to support them for the rest of the
year; or, rather, pinching for the rest of the year on what they earn
during this brief season. In autumn little tea is fired, but the whole
force of workmen can be had at the shortest notice, though the
godown may have been closed for weeks. One compradore, notified
at eleven o’clock at night that tea must be fired the next day to fill a
cable order, had four hundred coolies on hand at daybreak, many of
them summoned after midnight from their villages, distant over
seven miles from the godowns. This mysterious underground
telegraphy in the servants’ quarters is one of the astonishing things
of the East.
 Tea-firing begins at six o’clock in the morning, the coolies
clattering into the settlements on their wooden clogs at dawn, and
going home at dusk. They wait patiently outside the compounds
until the lordly Chinaman comes to summon as many workers as he
wants for the day, whether two hundred, three hundred, or four
hundred. All these guilds in the Orient have their established rules of
precedence among themselves; each one knows his rights and his
place, and desperate as may be their need of the small pittance,
there is no pushing or fighting. Foreigners who live near godowns
complain of the babble of the coolies before daylight, and a tea-
firing godown always declares its nearness by the confused hum of
the several hundred cheerful voices all day long. The Japanese lower
classes are the most talkative people under the sun, and rows of
jinrikisha coolies never sit quietly in waiting, like the red-nosed
Parisian cabmen, dozing or reading feuilletons, but are always
jabbering, laughing, playing games and tricks on one another. The
long, hot day’s work does not check the tea-firers’ loquacity in the
least, and at dusk they are as sociable as at dawn. One frenzied
resident, whose door-steps, window-sills, and shady curb-stones
were favorite resting-places for the tea-firing coolies, determined to
know the subjects discussed with such earnestness and sonorous
phrases. His interpreter reported on three consecutive mornings
that, for three mortal hours, one group of ten coolies, sitting on
patient heels, cheerfully discussed the coming rice crop.
Philanthropists see fit to drop a tear over the lives of the workers
in the tea-godowns, although these victims seem as cheerful and
well satisfied with their lot as human beings can be. The women and
young girls are rather picturesque with their blue cotton towels
folded over their heads, and as the Japanese have remarkably pretty
hands, the play of their fingers in the moving streams of tea-leaves
is pleasant to watch. How they endure the slow, killing heat of the
charcoal fires in torrid weather, on their diet of tea, rice, and shreds
of cold fish, is a marvel to indolent, meat-eating foreigners. The
pathetic sights are the women with young babies on their backs
trudging home from the godowns at sunset, the babies having been
danced around on the backs of older children in the godown-yard all
day, or laid down in some safe corner near the mother’s charcoal-
pan. I asked a most humane woman once why charity did not take
the form of a crèche, or day nursery. The answer was that it would
be impossible to support such an institution in so small a community
of foreigners. Each godown would need a large crèche of its own;
the poor women could not afford to spare a half-penny of their
earnings, and the problem must solve itself.
If man cannot live by bread alone, many foreign residents live by
tea alone, and live luxuriously. Great fortunes are made quickly in
the tea trade no longer, as in earlier days. Romance departed with
the clipper ships, and the cable and freight steamers reduced the tea
trade to prosaic lines. Only the best and most experienced men now
succeed in this trade, but the tea-merchant toils in his counting-
room and godown only from April to October. Then he closes and
locks it all behind him, and usually goes over to the United States to
look after his interests and orders there. Tea has its fluctuations, like
corn or cotton, although it is a crop that never fails, with the added
disadvantages of the great distance from the final markets and the
expensive cable communications to make it uncertain and full of
speculation. As it takes fifty days for the fast tea steamers to reach
New York by way of the Suez Canal, the tea-picking season is over
when the exporter learns of the arrival and sale of his invoices. On
account of the heavier freight charges that way, only a fraction of
the crop crosses the Pacific to be shipped by rail across the continent
from San Francisco, the New York steamers by way of the Suez
Canal requiring but a little longer time, saving half the cost to the
shipper, and adding the convenience of a single handling of the
cargo.
The first of the season’s crop is fired and hurried off as quickly as
possible; tea steamers racing through Suez to New York, and the
overland railroads rushing cargoes across the United States in
special trains, as if they were perishable. With the exception of the
Pacific Mail steamers running to San Francisco, English and Japanese
ships carry all this tea to America. The tea steamers discharging
cargo at New York usually load there for Liverpool, and arrive in
Japan in time for the next season, or sometimes make two trips to
New York in one season. While the tea is moving freights are high,
but in the autumn they decline. Sailing vessels no longer carry tea,
and the glory of the American fast clipper ships is but a tradition, a
romance of the Eastern trade. The greatest market for Japan teas in
America is now centering at Chicago instead of New York, and
prophetic tea-merchants expect to have San Francisco become the
headquarters and great distributing-point.
 CHAPTER XXXVI
THE INLAND SEA AND NAGASAKI

In making six trips through the Inland Sea I have seen its
beautiful shores by daylight and moonlight and in all seasons—
clothed in the filmy green of spring, golden with ripened grain or
stubble, blurred with the haze of midsummer heat, and clear in the
keen, midwinter winds that, sweeping from the encircling mountains,
sting with an arctic touch.
My first sail on its enchanted waters was a September holiday, the
dim horizon and purple lights prophesying of the autumn. From
sunrise to dark, shadowy vistas opened, peaceful shores slipped by,
and heights and islands rearranged themselves. The coast of
southeastern Alaska is often compared to the Inland Sea, but the
narrow channels, wild cañons, and mountain-walls of the Alaska
passage have no counterpart in this Arcadian region. The landlocked
Japanese water is a broad lake over two hundred miles long, filled
with islands, and sheltered by uneven shores. Its jagged mountains
of intensest green nowhere become wild enough to disturb the
dream-like calm. Its verdant islands lie in groups, the channel is
always broad and plain, and signs of human life and achievement
are always in sight. Along the shores stretch chains of villages, with
stone sea-walls, castles, and temples soaring above the clustered
roofs or peeping from wooded slopes, and the terraced fields of rice
and grains ridging every hill to its summit and covering every lower
level. Stone lanterns and torii mark the way to temple groves, and
cemeteries with ancient Buddhas of granite and bronze attest that
these little communities are centuries old. Junks and sampans lie
anchored in fleets, or creep idly across the water, and small coasting
steamers thread their way in and out among the islands. The railway
follows the west shore of the sea, touching many old castle towns,
most important of which is Hiroshima, whose great citadel is army
headquarters, and was occupied by the Emperor during the war of
1894-95. The chief naval station of the empire is at Kure, a few
miles away, and the naval college is on the island of Etajima. The
sacred island of Miajima, facing Hiroshima, is one of the Sankei, or
three most beautiful sights of Japan. Miajima is more enchanting
and idyllic than Nara, and offers more of landscape beauty, of
picturesque architecture, of historic and legendary interest than the
others of the Sankei—either “the thousand pine-clad islands of
Matsushima,” in the bay of Sendai, or “the Bridge of Heaven,” the
fairy peninsula of Ama-no-Hashidate, in the bay of Miyazu. No one
has been born, no one has been allowed to die, on Miajima, and
formerly no woman could set foot there, although the great temple
and its galleries, built on piles in the water and approached by boats
through a giant torii in the water, is dedicated to the Shinto goddess,
Itsukushima, and her two sisters. Hundreds of votive lanterns line
the shores and are frequently lighted; sacred deer roam everywhere,
and the place is so idyllic and peaceful that one cannot realize that
every wooded point and height conceals a battery, and that
sketching and photographing within this fortified area are as
rigorously prohibited as in France and Germany.
At Shimonoseki, the Inland Sea ends, and ships pass out by the
narrowest of its channels—a channel that boils with tide-rips and
across which a chain once held all craft at bay. New forts replace the
old ones bombarded by the combined English, Dutch, French, and
American fleets in September, 1868. The “Shimonoseki Affair” is
conspicuous in the annals of the scandalous diplomacy and
international bullying that has constituted the policy of Christian
nations in their relations with Japan. The United States did, indeed,
make a late and lame apology for its disgraceful share in the
plundering of a weaker people, by restoring its portion of the
indemnity, thus tardily acknowledging the injustice of its conduct.
As travel increases, the harbor of Nagasaki will be everywhere
known as one of the most picturesque in the world. Green
mountains, terraced and wooded to their very summits, have parted
far enough to let an arm of the sea cleave its way inland, and chains
of islands with precipitous shores guard the entrance of the tortuous
reach. The town seems to have run down from the ravines and
spread itself out at the end of the inlet, and temples, tea-houses,
and the villas of foreign residents cling to the hill-side and dot the
groves on the heights.
Nagasaki lost commercial importance for some years after the
opening of the port of Kobé, since that took the tea trade to the
upper end of the Inland Sea, around which lie the great tea districts
of Japan. Its coal mines and its million-dollar dry-dock make it a
harbor that no ships pass by, more vessels entering annually than at
Yokohama. The American occupation of the Philippines, the events
occurring in China in 1900, the progress and completion of the
Trans-Siberian Railway, and the development of Vladivostock and
Dalny have all greatly increased the business of Nagasaki, which
now looks upon the busiest and most crowded harbor of Japan. It is
coal and supply station for all fleets, the American soldier scatters
money wildly when transports anchor, and a large Russian colony
comes down from the frozen North each winter. The picturesqueness
of Nagasaki has appealed to the novelist and short-story writer, and
certain villas and tea-houses have romantic interests.
Its people are conservative and cling to old customs tenaciously.
The old festivals are kept up with as much spirit as ever, and boat-
loads of farmers praying for rain often make Nagasaki’s harbor ring
with their shouts and drum-beating. Twenty of these rustics, sitting
by the gunwales in one long boat, and paddling like so many Indians
in a war-canoe, go up and down the narrow fiord waving banners
and tasselled emblems.
While the inhabitants kept it, Nagasaki’s observance of the Bon,
the festival of the dead, was even more picturesque than the
Daimonji of Kioto. On the night when Nagasaki’s spirits were
doomed to return to the place of the departed, lights twinkled in all
the graveyards, and the mourners carried down to the water’s edge
tiny straw boats set with food offerings. These they lighted and