I confess to a chronic desire to explore the Island Empire in which I dwell.  Having already, in the central provinces of Japan, trodden many a path never before touched by foreign foot, I yearned to explore the twin provinces of Kadzusa and Awa, which form the peninsula lying between the Gulf of Yeddo and the Pacific Ocean.  A timely holiday and a passport from the Japanese foreign office enabled me to start toward the end of March, the time when all Japan is glorious with blossoming plum trees, and the camellia trees in forests of bloom are marshaled by thousands on the mountain-slopes.

I was glad to get away from Yeddo:  I had a fit of anti-Caucasianism, and wished to dwell a while amidst things purely Japanese.  There were too many foreigners in Yeddo.  In that city of only eight hundred thousand Japanese there are now full two hundred foreigners of all nationalities; and of these, fifty or more are Americans.  It was too much like home and too little like Japan.  Should I go to Yokohama, the case was worse.  Nearly twelve hundred of the sons of Japheth dwelt there, and to reach that upstart European city one must travel on a railway and see telegraph-poles all along the line.  What was the use of living in Japan?  Every young Japanese, too, in the capital is brainful of “civilization,” “progress,” “reform,” etc.  I half suspect a few cracks in the craniums belonging to some of the youths who wish to introduce law, religion, steam, language, frock-coats and tight boots by edict and ordinance.  There was too much civilization.  I yearned for something more primitive, something more purely Japanese; and tramping into the country I should find it.  I should eat Japanese food—­profanely dubbed “chow-chow;” sleep in Japanese beds—­on the floor; talk Japanese—­as musical as Italian; and live so much like an old-time native that I should feel as one born on the soil.  By that time, returning to Yeddo as a Japanese of the period, I should of course burn to adopt railways, telegraphs and balloons, codify the laws, improve upon United States postage, coinage and dress-coats, and finish off by annexing the English language after I had cut out all irregularities and made all the crooked spelling straight.

So, resolving to be a heathen for a week at least, I left Yeddo one afternoon, though it took several hours to do so:  the big city is one of distances more magnificent than those of Washington.  I started in a jin-riki-sha, which baby-carriage on adult wheels has already been described, so as to be tolerably familiar to all American readers.  The “team” of this “man-power carriage” consists of two men, pulling tandem—­one in the shafts, the other running ahead with a rope over his shoulder, and, until the recent passage of a law commanding decency, attired only in his cuticle and a loin-cloth two inches wide.  You take three coolies when you wish to be stylish, while four are not an unknown sensation in Yeddo.  With these and fresh relays you can travel sixty, or even eighty, miles a day; and I have known one man to run thirty miles on the stretch.