BUILDING.
WHILE yet a new-comer in this land of strange experiences, the writer happened to remark to a boy of European parentage, but born and bred in Japan, who appeared to be setting about a thing in a very back-handed manner, “Why! that is about as wise as if you were to begin and build a house roof first”!
Needless to say that the point of the sarcasm was entirely lost when he immediately retorted “But that is exactly what they do here!”
Yes-the Japanese do commence building a house roof first! Then the scaffolding and posts for the walls are erected beside it, and when these are ready to receive it, the roof is taken to pieces, and re-constructed in its proper position.
The rooms of a house are measured and built to fit the mats, not the mats measured and cut to fit the rooms.
Japanese keys are made to lock the reverse way to ours, and doors close by turning their handles to the right, and open by turning them to the left.
Carpenters use the saw towards, instead of from them, and by this means, and also from the construction of the saw itself, it is impossible for the tool to “buckle”-to use a technical term-as it often does with us. The plane is also drawn towards, instead of being pushed from the workman, and in fact so many tools are used differently from
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ours, that the European mechanic would be apt to say, no good work could pcssibly be turned out from tools handled in such a fashion. But in point of fact, Japanese carpentering is of such exquisite neatness and finish, as to approach nearly to the dignity of an art.
The unpainted simplicity of Japanese dwellings gives strangers at first an impression of incompleteness; but when the eye has become habituated to them, the suggestion of painting a Japanese house, with its delicate tracery of pure white wood window-frames, or to desecrate with varnish or polish its stairs and other interior fittings, which are planed and finished until they are as smooth to the touch as the softest satin, would appear as inappropriate and superfluous as paint and powder on the cheek of youthful beauty.
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