often beautifully painted, and in each room is hung a kakemono (a wall
picture, a painting finely executed on a strip of silk). A favourite
subject is a branch of blossoming cherry, and this, painted upon white
silk, gives an effect of wonderful freshness and beauty.

There is no chimney, for a Japanese house knows nothing of a fireplace. The
simple cooking is done over a stove burning charcoal, the fumes of which
wander through the house and disperse through the hundred openings afforded
by the loosely-fitting paper walls. To keep warm in cold weather the
Japanese hug to themselves and hang over smaller stoves, called hibachi,
metal vessels containing a handful of smouldering charcoal.

In the rooms there are neither tables nor chairs. The floor is covered
with most beautiful mats, as white as snow and as soft as a cushion, for
they are often a couple of inches thick. They are woven of fine straw,
and on these the Japanese sit, with their feet tucked away under them.
At dinner-time small, low tables are brought in, and when the meal is
finished, the tables are taken away again. Chairs are never used, and the
Japanese who wishes to follow Western ways has to practise carefully how to
sit on a chair, just as we should have to practise how to sit on our feet
as he does at home.

When bedtime comes, there is no change of room. The sitting-room by day
becomes the bedroom by night. A couple of wooden pillows and some quilts
are fetched from a cupboard; the quilts are spread on the floor, the
pillows are placed in position, and the bed is ready. The pillows would
strike us as most uncomfortable affairs. They are mere wooden neckrests,
and European travellers who have tried them declare that it is like trying
to go to sleep with your head hanging over a wooden door-scraper.