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You are looking nearly east across part of the broad arm of the Pacific that reaches up past Yokohama to Tokio [[Tokyo]]. A road runs along this shore for some distance connecting a series of little villages with Yokohama and affording fine sea-views. Those high, precipitous rocks are known as the Mikado Cliffs.

The lady in the jinrikisha has been riding along the cliff road. The figured stuff of her graceful kimono is of silk - though ordinary working people have to wear cotton, silks here are not expensive, according to western standards. Many jinrikisha men themselves wear kimonos of coarse cotton material, with short, tight trousers reaching to the knee; this one is following the lead of his social superiors and imitating the masculine garb of Europe. The tendency just now is so strong towards the adoption of western manners and customs that those who love old-fashioned Japan fear lest its picturesque flavor be lost.

It is an amazing state of things, when you consider that only fifty years ago (1854) Commodore Perry's American fleet lay anchored in this very bay awaiting the Shogun's reply to President Fillmore's letter, which asked that Japan open her ports to the rest of the world. Fifty years ago this charming Land of the Rising Sun was a world by itself, a little world whose affairs were all conducted in a picturesque, feudal fashion corresponding to that of Europe in the Middle Ages. To-day, while men still vigorously, energetically alive can remember well the dramatic splendors of the old regime, Japan has adopted and assimilated so many of the most advanced scientific ideas and methods of the age that she is amazing the whole world with the demonstration of her fitness for a recognized place among the great modern Powers.

(See Ransome's "Japan in Transition"; Scherer's "Japan To-day," etc.)
From Notes of Travel, No. 8, copyright, 1904, by Underwood & Underwood.


East over "Mississippi Bay" near Yokohama, Japan.

Vue à l'Est sur la "Naie Mississippi" près de Yokohama, Japon.

Deiticher Blid über die „Mississippi Bucht" bei Yokohama, Japen.

Vista al Este por Eneima de la "Bahia Mississippi" cerca de Yokohama, Japon.

Östlight öfver "Mississippi bukten" nära Yokohama, Japan.

Видь cь вoctoka ha Mиccиccипcкiй зaливь вблчзч Ioкoramьl. Япoнiя.

Transcription Notes:
I did my best with the Cyrillic