Leaving Yurup [in Hokkaido] in the morning we continued our journey along the beach to Kunnui on the sea. Here leaving the shore we ascended the valley of Kunnui creek. The day was extremely warm, and both horse and rider were tormented beyond endurance by swarms of many kinds of insects. There were large brown flies, nearly an inch long, which inflicted pain, and drew blood through a single thickness of woollen clothing; there were yellow flies barred with black, which buried themselves in swarms in the shaggy hair of our horses, driving the poor animals almost to distraction; there were the common horse-fly, the deer-fly, and clouds of mosquitoes.
Across America and Asia (1870)
Those who read these notes will have gathered that the heat and the rain make summer life in Japan not wholly enjoyable; let me also say some words of warning to the thin-skinned against the mosquitoes, and even more against a horrible little insect which lives in the grass or sand and bites your legs and feet. It is so small that I never succeeded in finding it, but its bite brings up a blister which breaks and leaves troublesome sores. There were few nights from June till October when I was not obliged to get up once or twice and bathe them in cold water to allay the intolerable itching.
Notes in Japan (1896)
Japanese beds not being furnished with sheets, the traveller of course takes his own. But sheets, as I have already found, are no protection against one of the greatest enemies of sleep in this country—the wicked flea. Persian powder and camphor only seem to excite his eagerness for blood. The flea-bag is somewhat of a defence. It consists of two sheets, sewn together in form of a huge sack, with gathering strings at the top. Two sleeves, the length of the arms, but closed, afford some slight facility for the use of the hands. When ready for sleep, you crawl like a worm into your chrysalis, tie the puckering strings about your neck, and there you are! To get inside, the flea must find your neck. Why do they hesitate to approach the face? Does the breath frighten them? Still, hunger is stronger than fear, sometimes, and the demoniacal intelligence of this insect rises occasionally superior to all human efforts to keep him from his prey.
Rambles Through Japan Without a Guide (1892)
I can, alas! no longer look on floors of spotless mats with my old trusting admiration. Too often have I slept, or tried to sleep upon them, on broiling summer nights, tormented from below by those ubiquitous little creatures that hop, and tormented from above by those still more ubiquitous creatures that fly. The underhand nuisance cannot, I find, be combated with any marked degree of success, but the overhead plague may be kept at a distance by a kaya. There is a certain mystery about the name; it suggests possibilities, but in reality it is nothing but a mosquito curtain, arsenic green and about the thickness of flannelette. A pneumonia patient might safely take shelter under it in a typhoon for all the air that comes through.
Behind the Screens (1910)
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