Foreigners in Mikadoland by Harold S. Williams

Author:Harold S. Williams
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0-8048-1049-4
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing

The Kobe and Osaka railway, which was opened in 1874, was a success right from the opening day. The promoters announced with pride that the gross receipts on the first day amounted to $442 (i.e. Yen) and to $525 on the second day!10 Certainly most of those passengers bought tickets for the thrill of travelling at the high speed of something more than twenty miles per hour, but even when the novelty had worn off, the popularity of the railway as a means of travel to Osaka was firmly established, as may be judged from the fact that during the last week of September of the same year, 16,775 passengers11 travelled from Kobe to Osaka!

In February, 1873, the Hiogo News, with a hint of better things to come, had announced with prophetic pride, “ . . . the small beginning of that which some day must become an important enterprise. At 1 o'clock the first passenger horse coach left Kioto for Osaka. According to the illustrated placards which are to be seen in various parts of this city, these coaches are to run each way twice a day." Those uncomfortable coaches, little better than boxes on wheels, were considered fast means of travel, but not as fast as the railway which three years later linked Osaka to Kyoto, to the great dismay of many, such as the porters, ferrymen, and jinrikisha-men, who thereby lost their livelihood. The river boatmen also took fright and began planning to carry passengers from Osaka up to Kyoto for 6 sen (sixteen trips for a yen!) and down stream from Kyoto to Osaka for 3 sen (thirty-three trips for a yen!)12

In the years that followed, travelling to Osaka by land or sea ceased to be an adventure worth talking about, until of recent years, with the immense increase in motor traffic, the dangers to life and limb, encountered by all who travel on the road to Osaka, have become far greater than they ever were in the less enlightened past.13

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