And a very fair illustration of Japanese colloquial “Topsyturvy-dom” is afforded by such a simple sentence as “I feel hungry”-a remark which one would imagine could not materially be turned upside-down. But when one learns that its equivalent cannot be said in Japanese until it has undergone the following metamorphosis, “The honorable inside has became empty” one can realize in some degree the process of topsyturvy-dom that the English language has to undergo before it can be translated into polite Japanese!
In Japan the policeman is not considered by the street gamin as an object of derision, and legitimate subject for insult, as he has been ever since he became an institution with us. A Tokyo “Punch” could never have contained cartoons similar to those made so familiar to the older generation of readers of “London Punch,” by the graphic pencil of the late genial John Leech, when he depicted the many passages-at-arms between the street “Arab,” and the “Bobby,” in which the former always remained master of the situation, for such a condition of things has never existed in Japan, where the policeman-however comical he may appear in our eyes with his diminutive figure, his preposterous boots, his hugely disproportioned sword, white cotton gloves, dark-blue spectacles, and super-solemnity of visage,-
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being to the Japanese the representative of law and order, is respected by all; and as his slightest gesture is immediately obeyed, even in the densest crowd, he is never observed to have recourse to extreme measures in enforcing his orders.
And-speaking of crowds-nothing strikes the stranger in Japan more forcibly than the marked contrast between the order, suavity, good-temper, and absence of all signs of intoxication or rowdyism, noticeable wherever vast concourses of people have been assembled on great public occasions, and the rough and too frequently offensive conduct of any equally large crowd elsewhere.
Upon this point all visitors to Japan are agreed, and it is a national characteristic that certainly redounds greatly to the credit of the lower classes of the people of fair “Dai Nippon”!
Perhaps the most beautiful, as well as the most unique instance of “Japanese Topsyturvy-dom” is to be witnessed-though rarely-in the mountain lake Hakone, when under certain atmospheric conditions the peerless snow-capped mountain “Fuji-san,” although many miles distant, may be seen reflected upsidedown in the blue waters of the lake.
Not often is the tourist sufficiently favored by the “clerk of the weather” to have the privilege of witnessing this extraordinary effect of refraction, but it has been made familiar to all from photograhs, of which the last illustration to this work is a fac-simile. (See back cover.)
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