BOATS
THERE are few prettier scenes in Japan than those afforded by the innumerable fishing villages that nestle so cosily in every little sheltered nook under the cliffs of the whole sea-board of the country, when viewed from a distance at which the olfactory nerves cannot be offended; and amongst the many details that strike the observer as interesting or novel, the most noticeable is that all the fishermens' boats are drawn up on the beach sternforemost.
This certainly has its advantages when the boats are being launched, for as Japanese boatmen row with their faces the way they are going, the boat is no sooner run out than it goes straight away without any of the delay or difficulty
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of turning so often observeable when our boats are being hastily launched.
To our eyes, accustomed to the shapely straightness of the English oar, the Japanese propeller appears as though it had been accidentally broken in two, and clumsily and ineffectually spliced together again; but this oar, in two pieces bent at a peculiar angle, is admirably adapted to its purpose. Instead of resting in rowlocks like ours when used, it is balanced on a short wooden peg on the gunwale of the boat, giving the impression that it will slip off at every stroke, which however it never does.
The boats of the Japanese, like their houses are unpainted, and are kept scrubbed as scrupulously clean inside and out, as a notable house-wife's deal kitchen table. Their sails, instead of being in one large unmanageable sheet like ours, are in narrow strips laced together, which when drawn up, fall into graceful festoons resembling the present style of draping window blinds.
This kind of rig adds greatly to the beauty of the sea-view when the blue ocean is covered with these unpainted boats gently floating under their white festooned sails into the soft haze of a Japanese horizon.
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