Unbeaten Tracks in Japan
by Isabella L. Bird · English · Gutenberg #2184 · 717,040 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Unbeaten Tracks in Japan
Author: Isabella L. Bird
Release date: May 1, 2000 [eBook #2184]
Most recently updated: September 12, 2019
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2184
Credits: Transcribed from the 1911 John Murray edition by David Price. Second proofing by Kate Ruffell
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UNBEATEN TRACKS IN JAPAN ***
Transcribed from the 1911 John Murray edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org. Second proofing by Kate Ruffell.
[Picture: Book cover]
[Picture: The Yomei Gate, Shrines of Nikkô]
UNBEATEN TRACKS
IN JAPAN
AN ACCOUNT OF TRAVELS IN THE INTERIOR
INCLUDING VISITS TO THE ABORIGINES OF YEZO AND
THE SHRINE OF NIKKÔ
BY ISABELLA L. BIRD
AUTHOR OF ‘SIX MONTHS IN THE SANDWICH ISLANDS’
‘A LADY’S LIFE IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS’
ETC. ETC.
* * * * *
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
* * * * *
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
1911
* * * * *
FIRST EDITION, _January_ 1905
_Reprinted_, _June_ 1907
SECOND EDITION (1/-) _October_ 1911
* * * * *
To the Memory
OF
LADY PARKES,
WHOSE KINDNESS AND FRIENDSHIP
ARE AMONG
MY MOST TREASURED REMEMBRANCES OF JAPAN,
THIS VOLUME IS
GRATEFULLY AND REVERENTLY
DEDICATED.
PREFACE
HAVING been recommended to leave home, in April 1878, in order to recruit
my health by means which had proved serviceable before, I decided to
visit Japan, attracted less by the reputed excellence of its climate than
by the certainty that it possessed, in an especial degree, those sources
of novel and sustained interest which conduce so essentially to the
enjoyment and restoration of a solitary health-seeker. The climate
disappointed me, but, though I found the country a study rather than a
rapture, its interest exceeded my largest expectations.
This is not a “Book on Japan,” but a narrative of travels in Japan, and
an attempt to contribute something to the sum of knowledge of the present
condition of the country, and it was not till I had travelled for some
months in the interior of the main island and in Yezo that I decided that
my materials were novel enough to render the contribution worth making.
From Nikkô northwards my route was altogether off the beaten track, and
had never been traversed in its entirety by any European. I lived among
the Japanese, and saw their mode of living, in regions unaffected by
European contact. As a lady travelling alone, and the first European
lady who had been seen in several districts through which my route lay,
my experiences differed more or less widely from those of preceding
travellers; and I am able to offer a fuller account of the aborigines of
Yezo, obtained by actual acquaintance with them, than has hitherto been
given. These are my chief reasons for offering this volume to the
public.
It was with some reluctance that I decided that it should consist mainly
of letters written on the spot to my sister and a circle of personal
friends, for this form of publication involves the sacrifice of artistic
arrangement and literary treatment, and necessitates a certain amount of
egotism; but, on the other hand, it places the reader in the position of
the traveller, and makes him share the vicissitudes of travel,
discomfort, difficulty, and tedium, as well as novelty and enjoyment.
The “beaten tracks,” with the exception of Nikkô, have been dismissed in
a few sentences, but where their features have undergone marked changes
within a few years, as in the case of Tôkiyô (Yedo), they have been
sketched more or less slightly. Many important subjects are necessarily
passed over.
In Northern Japan, in the absence of all other sources of information, I
had to learn everything from the people themselves, through an
interpreter, and every fact had to be disinterred by careful labour from
amidst a mass of rubbish. The Ainos supplied the information which is
given concerning their customs, habits, and religion; but I had an
opportunity of comparing my notes with some taken about the same time by
Mr. Heinrich Von Siebold of the Austrian Legation, and of finding a most
satisfactory agreement on all points.
Some of the Letters give a less pleasing picture of the condition of the
peasantry than the one popularly presented, and it is possible that some
readers may wish that it had been less realistically painted; but as the
scenes are strictly representative, and I neither made them nor went in
search of them, I offer them in the interests of truth, for they
illustrate the nature of a large portion of the material with which the
Japanese Government has to work in building up the New Civilisation.
Accuracy has been my first aim, but the sources of error are many, and it
is from those who have studied Japan the most carefully, and are the best
acquainted with its difficulties, that I shall receive the most kindly
allowance if, in spite of carefulness, I have fallen into mistakes.
The Transactions of the English and German Asiatic Societies of Japan,
and papers on special Japanese subjects, including “A Budget of Japanese
Notes,” in the _Japan Mail_ and _Tôkiyô Times_, gave me valuable help;
and I gratefully acknowledge the assistance afforded me in many ways by
Sir Harry S. Parkes, K.C.B., and Mr. Satow of H.B.M.’s Legation,
Principal Dyer, Mr. Chamberlain of the Imperial Naval College, Mr. F. V.
Dickins, and others, whose kindly interest in my work often encouraged me
when I was disheartened by my lack of skill; but, in justice to these and
other kind friends, I am anxious to claim and accept the fullest measure
of personal responsibility for the opinions expressed, which, whether
right or wrong, are wholly my own.
The illustrations, with the exception of three, which are by a Japanese
artist, have been engraved from sketches of my own or Japanese
photographs.
I am painfully conscious of the defects of this volume, but I venture to
present it to the public in the hope that, in spite of its demerits, it
may be accepted as an honest attempt to describe things as I saw them in
Japan, on land journeys of more than 1400 miles.
Since the letters passed through the press, the beloved and only sister
to whom, in the first instance, they were written, to whose able and
careful criticism they owe much, and whose loving interest was the
inspiration alike of my travels and of my narratives of them, has passed
away.
ISABELLA L. BIRD.
CONTENTS.
LETTER I.
First View of Japan—A Vision of Fujisan—Japanese Pages 1–7
_Sampans_—“Pullman Cars”—Undignified Locomotion—Paper
Money—The Drawbacks of Japanese Travelling
LETTER II.
Sir Harry Parkes—An “Ambassador’s Carriage”—Cart 8–9
Coolies
LETTER III.
Yedo and Tôkiyô—The Yokohama Railroad—The Effect of 10–14
Misfits—The Plain of Yedo—Personal Peculiarities—First
Impressions of Tôkiyô—H. B. M.’s Legation—An English
Home
LETTER IV.
“John Chinaman”—Engaging a Servant—First Impressions 15–20
of Ito—A Solemn Contract—The Food Question
LETTER V.
Kwan-non Temple—Uniformity of Temple Architecture—A 21–31
_Kuruma_ Expedition—A Perpetual Festival—The
_Ni-ô_—The Limbo of Vanity—Heathen Prayers—Binzuru—A
Group of Devils—Archery Galleries—New Japan—An
_Élégante_
LETTER VI.
Fears—Travelling Equipments—Passports—Coolie Costume—A 32–42
Yedo Diorama—Rice—Fields—Tea-Houses—A Traveller’s
Reception—The Inn at Kasukabé—Lack of Privacy—A
Concourse of Noises—A Nocturnal Alarm—A Vision of
Policemen—A Budget from Yedo
LETTER VI.—(_Continued_.)
A Coolie falls ill—Peasant Costume—Varieties in 43–50
Threshing—The Tochigi _Yadoya_—Farming Villages—A
Beautiful Region—An _In Memoriam_ Avenue—A Doll’s
Street—Nikkô—The Journey’s End—Coolie Kindliness
LETTER VII.
A Japanese Idyll—Musical Stillness—My Rooms—Floral 51–53
Decorations—Kanaya and his Household—Table Equipments
LETTER VIII
The Beauties of Nikkô—The Burial of Iyéyasn—The 54–61
Approach to the Great Shrines—The Yomei Gate—Gorgeous
Decorations—Simplicity of the Mausoleum—The Shrine of
Iyémitsu—Religious Art of Japan and India—An
Earthquake—Beauties of Wood-carving
LETTER IX.
A Japanese Pack-Horse and Pack-Saddle—_Yadoya_ and 62–65
Attendant—A Native Watering-Place—The Sulphur Baths—A
“Squeeze”
LETTER X.
Peaceful Monotony—A Japanese School—A Dismal 66–72
Ditty—Punishment—A Children’s Party—A Juvenile
Belle—Female Names—A Juvenile
Drama—Needlework—Caligraphy—Arranging
Flowers—Kanaya—Daily Routine—An Evening’s
Entertainment—Planning Routes—The God-shelf
LETTER X.—(_Continued_.)
Darkness visible—Nikkô Shops—Girls and Matrons—Night 73–76
and Sleep—Parental Love—Childish
Docility—Hair-dressing—Skin Diseases
LETTER X.—(_Completed_.)
Shops and Shopping—The Barber’s Shop—A Paper 77–79
Waterproof—Ito’s Vanity—Preparations for the
Journey—Transport and Prices—Money and Measurements
LETTER XI.
Comfort disappears—Fine Scenery—An Alarm—A 80–91
Farm-house—An unusual Costume—Bridling a Horse—Female
Dress and Ugliness—Babies—My _Mago_—Beauties of the
Kinugawa—Fujihara—My Servant—Horse-shoes—An absurd
Mistake
LETTER XII.
A Fantastic Jumble—The “Quiver” of Poverty—The 92–95
Water-shed—From Bad to Worse—The Rice Planter’s
Holiday—A Diseased Crowd—Amateur Doctoring—Want of
Cleanliness—Rapid Eating—Premature Old Age
LETTER XII.—(_Concluded_.)
A Japanese Ferry—A Corrugated Road—The Pass of 96–98
Sanno—Various Vegetation—An Unattractive
Undergrowth—Preponderance of Men
LETTER XIII.
The Plain of Wakamatsu—Light Costume—The Takata 99–105
Crowd—A Congress of Schoolmasters—Timidity of a
Crowd—Bad Roads—Vicious Horses—Mountain Scenery—A
Picturesque Inn—Swallowing a Fish-bone—Poverty and
Suicide—An Inn-kitchen—England Unknown!—My Breakfast
Disappears
LETTER XIV.
An Infamous Road—Monotonous Greenery—Abysmal Dirt—Low 106–108
Lives—The Tsugawa _Yadoya_—Politeness—A Shipping
Port—A “Barbarian Devil”
LETTER XV.
A Hurry—The Tsugawa Packet-boat—Running the 109–112
Rapids—Fantastic Scenery—The
River-life—Vineyards—Drying Barley—Summer Silence—The
Outskirts of Niigata—The Church Mission House
LETTER XVI.
Abominable Weather—Insect Pests—Absence of Foreign 114–119
Trade—A Refractory River—Progress—The Japanese
City—Water Highways—Niigata Gardens—Ruth Fyson—The
Winter Climate—A Population in Wadding
LETTER XVII.
The Canal-side at Niigata—Awful 120–127
Loneliness—Courtesy—Dr. Palm’s Tandem—A Noisy
_Matsuri_—A Jolting Journey—The Mountain
Villages—Winter Dismalness—An Out-of-the-world
Hamlet—Crowded Dwellings—Riding a Cow—“Drunk and
Disorderly”—An Enforced Rest—Local
Discouragements—Heavy Loads—Absence of Beggary—Slow
Travelling
LETTER XVIII.
Comely Kine—Japanese Criticism on a Foreign Usage—A 128–136
Pleasant Halt—Renewed Courtesies—The Plain of
Yonezawa—A Curious Mistake—The Mother’s
Memorial—Arrival at Komatsu—Stately Accommodation—A
Vicious Horse—An Asiatic Arcadia—A Fashionable
Watering-place—A Belle—“Godowns”
LETTER XIX.
Prosperity—Convict Labour—A New 137–142
Bridge—Yamagata—Intoxicating Forgeries—The Government
Buildings—Bad Manners—Snow Mountains—A Wretched Town
LETTER XX.
The Effect of a Chicken—Poor Fare—Slow 143–145
Travelling—Objects of Interest—_Kak’ké_—The Fatal
Close—A Great Fire—Security of the _Kuras_
LETTER XX.—(_Continued_.)
Lunch in Public—A Grotesque Accident—Police 146–151
Inquiries—Man or Woman?—A Melancholy Stare—A Vicious
Horse—An Ill-favoured Town—A Disappointment—A _Torii_
LETTER XX.—(_Concluded_.)
A Casual Invitation—A Ludicrous Incident—Politeness of 152–154
a Policeman—A Comfortless Sunday—An Outrageous
Irruption—A Privileged Stare
LETTER XXI.
The Necessity of Firmness—Perplexing 155–158
Misrepresentations—Gliding with the Stream—Suburban
Residences—The Kubota Hospital—A Formal Reception—The
Normal School
LETTER XXII.
A Silk Factory—Employment for Women—A Police 159–160
Escort—The Japanese Police Force
LETTER XXIII.
“A Plague of Immoderate Rain”—A Confidential 161–164
Servant—Ito’s Diary—Ito’s Excellences—Ito’s Faults—A
Prophecy of the Future of Japan—Curious
Queries—Superfine English—Economical Travelling—The
Japanese Pack-horse again
LETTER XXIV.
The Symbolism of Seaweed—Afternoon Visitors—An Infant 165–169
Prodigy—A Feat in Caligraphy—Child Worship—A Borrowed
Dress—A _Trousseau_—House Furniture—The Marriage
Ceremony
LETTER XXV.
A Holiday Scene—A _Matsuri_—Attractions of the 170–174
Revel—_Matsuri_ Cars—Gods and Demons—A Possible
Harbour—A Village Forge—Prosperity of _Saké_ Brewers—A
“Great Sight”
LETTER XXVI.
The Fatigues of Travelling—Torrents and Mud—Ito’s 175–182
Surliness—The Blind Shampooers—A Supposed Monkey
Theatre—A Suspended Ferry—A Difficult Transit—Perils
on the Yonetsurugawa—A Boatman Drowned—Nocturnal
Disturbances—A Noisy _Yadoya_—Storm-bound
Travellers—_Hai_! _Hai_!—More Nocturnal Disturbances
LETTER XXVII.
Good-tempered Intoxication—The Effect of Sunshine—A 183–186
tedious Altercation—Evening Occupations—Noisy
Talk—Social Gatherings—Unfair Comparisons
LETTER XXVIII.
Torrents of Rain—An unpleasant Detention—Devastations 187–192
produced by Floods—The Yadate Pass—The Force of
Water—Difficulties thicken—A Primitive _Yadoya_—The
Water rises
LETTER XXVIII.—(_Continued_.)
Scanty Resources—Japanese Children—Children’s Games—A 193–196
Sagacious Example—A Kite Competition—Personal
Privations
LETTER XXIX.
Hope deferred—Effects of the Flood—Activity of the 197–199
Police—A Ramble in Disguise—The _Tanabata_
Festival—Mr. Satow’s Reputation
LETTER XXX.
A Lady’s Toilet—Hair-dressing—Paint and 200–202
Cosmetics—Afternoon Visitors—Christian Converts
LETTER XXXI.
A Travel Curiosity—Rude Dwellings—Primitive 203–205
Simplicity—The Public Bath-house
LETTER XXXII.
A Hard Day’s Journey—An Overturn—Nearing the 206–209
Ocean—Joyful Excitement—Universal Greyness—Inopportune
Policemen—A Stormy Voyage—A Wild Welcome—A Windy
Landing—The Journey’s End
LETTER XXXIII.
Form and Colour—A Windy Capital—Eccentricities in 212–213
House Roof
LETTER XXXIV.
Ito’s Delinquency—“Missionary Manners”—A Predicted 214–215
Failure
LETTER XXXV.
A Lovely Sunset—An Official Letter—A “Front 216–230
Horse”—Japanese Courtesy—The Steam Ferry—Coolies
Abscond—A Team of Savages—A Drove of Horses—Floral
Beauties—An Unbeaten Track—A Ghostly Dwelling—Solitude
and Eeriness
LETTER XXXV.—(_Continued_.)
The Harmonies of Nature—A Good Horse—A Single 231–233
Discord—A Forest—Aino Ferrymen—“_Les Puces_! _Les
Puces_!”—Baffled Explorers—Ito’s Contempt for Ainos—An
Aino Introduction
LETTER XXXVI.
Savage Life—A Forest Track—Cleanly Villages—A 234–243
Hospitable Reception—The Chief’s Mother—The Evening
Meal—A Savage _Séance_—Libations to the Gods—Nocturnal
Silence—Aino Courtesy—The Chief’s Wife
LETTER XXXVI.—(_Continued_.)
A Supposed Act of Worship—Parental Tenderness—Morning 244–253
Visits.—Wretched Cultivation—Honesty and Generosity—A
“Dug-out”—Female Occupations—The Ancient Fate—A New
Arrival—A Perilous Prescription—The Shrine of
Yoshitsuné—The Chief’s Return
LETTER XXXVII.
Barrenness of Savage Life—Irreclaimable Savages—The 254–261
Aino Physique—Female Comeliness—Torture and
Ornament—Child Life—Docility and Obedience
LETTER XXXVII.—(_Continued_.)
Aino Clothing—Holiday Dress—Domestic 262–272
Architecture—Household Gods—Japanese Curios—The
Necessaries of Life—Clay Soup—Arrow Poison—Arrow
Traps—Female Occupations—Bark Cloth—The Art of Weaving
LETTER XXXVII.—(_Continued_.)
A Simple Nature-Worship—Aino Gods—A Festival 273–284
Song—Religious Intoxication—Bear-Worship—The Annual
Saturnalia—The Future State—Marriage and
Divorce—Musical Instruments—Etiquette—The
Chieftainship—Death and Burial—Old Age—Moral Qualities
LETTER XXXVIII.
A Parting Gift—A Delicacy—Generosity—A Seaside 285–288
Village—Pipichari’s Advice—A Drunken Revel—Ito’s
Prophecies—The _Kôckô’s_ Illness—Patent Medicines
LETTER XXXIX.
A Welcome Gift—Recent Changes—Volcanic 289–295
Phenomena—Interesting Tufa Cones—Semi-strangulation—A
Fall into a Bear-trap—The Shiraôi Ainos—Horsebreaking
and Cruelty
LETTER XXXIX.—(_Continued_.)
The Universal Language—The Yezo _Corrals_—A “Typhoon 296–298
Rain”—Difficult Tracks—An Unenviable Ride—Drying
Clothes—A Woman’s Remorse
LETTER XL.
“More than Peace”—Geographical 299–305
Difficulties—Usu-taki—Swimming the Osharu—A Dream of
Beauty—A Sunset Effect—A Nocturnal Alarm—The Coast
Ainos
LETTER XL.—(_Continued_.)
The Sea-shore—A “Hairy Aino”—A Horse Fight—The Horses 306–311
of Yezo—“Bad Mountains”—A Slight Accident—Magnificent
Scenery—A Bleached Halting-Place—A Musty Room—Aino
“Good-breeding”
LETTER XLI.
A Group of Fathers—The Lebungé Ainos—The _Salisburia 312–319
adiantifolia_—A Family Group—The Missing
Link—Oshamambé—Disorderly Horses—The River Yurapu—The
Seaside—Aino Canoes—The Last Morning—Dodging Europeans
LETTER XLII.
Pleasant Last Impressions—The Japanese Junk—Ito 320–321
Disappears—My Letter of Thanks
LETTER XLIII.
Pleasant Prospects—A Miserable Disappointment—Caught 322–324
in a Typhoon—A Dense Fog—Alarmist Rumours—A Welcome at
Tôkiyô—The Last of the Mutineers
LETTER XLIV.
Fine Weather—Cremation in Japan—The Governor of 325–328
Tôkiyô—An Awkward Question—An Insignificant
Building—Economy in Funeral Expenses—Simplicity of the
Cremation Process—The Last of Japan
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
The Yomei Gate, Shrines of Nikkô _Frontispiece_
Fujisan 2
Travelling Restaurant 5
Japanese Man-Cart 9
A Lake Biwa Tea-House 20
Stone Lanterns 28
A Kuruma 35
Road-Side Tea-House 38
Sir Harry’s Messenger 42
Kanaya’s House 52
Japanese Pack-Horse 63
Attendant at Tea-House 64
Summer and Winter Costume 82
Buddhist Priests 112
Street and Canal 117
The Flowing Invocation 130
The Belle of Kaminoyama 135
Torii 149
Daikoku, the God of Wealth 154
Myself in a Straw Rain-Cloak 176
A Lady’s Mirror 201
Akita Farm-House 204
Aino Store-House at Horobets 223
Aino Lodges. (_From a Japanese Sketch_) 224
Aino Houses 234
Ainos at Home. (_From a Japanese Sketch_) 235
Aino Millet-Mill and Pestle 238
Aino Store-House 247
Ainos of Yezo 256
An Aino Patriarch 258
Tattooed Female Hand 260
Aino Gods 266
Plan of an Aino House 267
Weaver’s Shuttle 270
A Hiogo Buddha 272
The Rokkukado 288
My Kuruma-Runner 305
Temple Gateway at Isshinden 311
Entrance to Shrine of Seventh Shôgun, Shiba, Tôkiyô 323
Fujisan, from a Village on the Tokaido 326
LETTER I.
First View of Japan—A Vision of Fujisan—Japanese Sampans—“Pullman
Cars”—Undignified Locomotion—Paper Money—The Drawbacks of Japanese
Travelling.
ORIENTAL HOTEL, YOKOHAMA,
_May_ 21.
EIGHTEEN days of unintermitted rolling over “desolate rainy seas” brought
the “City of Tokio” early yesterday morning to Cape King, and by noon we
were steaming up the Gulf of Yedo, quite near the shore. The day was
soft and grey with a little faint blue sky, and, though the coast of
Japan is much more prepossessing than most coasts, there were no
startling surprises either of colour or form. Broken wooded ridges,
deeply cleft, rise from the water’s edge, gray, deep-roofed villages
cluster about the mouths of the ravines, and terraces of rice
cultivation, bright with the greenness of English lawns, run up to a
great height among dark masses of upland forest. The populousness of the
coast is very impressive, and the gulf everywhere was equally peopled
with fishing-boats, of which we passed not only hundreds, but thousands,
in five hours. The coast and sea were pale, and the boats were pale too,
their hulls being unpainted wood, and their sails pure white duck. Now
and then a high-sterned junk drifted by like a phantom galley, then we
slackened speed to avoid exterminating a fleet of triangular-looking
fishing-boats with white square sails, and so on through the grayness and
dumbness hour after hour.
For long I looked in vain for Fujisan, and failed to see it, though I
heard ecstasies all over the deck, till, accidentally looking heavenwards
instead of earthwards, I saw far above any possibility of height, as one
would have thought, a huge, truncated cone of pure snow, 13,080 feet
above the sea, from which it sweeps upwards in a glorious curve, very
wan, against a very pale blue sky, with its base and the intervening
country veiled in a pale grey mist. {2} It was a wonderful vision, and
shortly, as a vision, vanished. Except the cone of Tristan d’Acunha—also
a cone of snow—I never saw a mountain rise in such lonely majesty, with
nothing near or far to detract from its height and grandeur. No wonder
that it is a sacred mountain, and so dear to the Japanese that their art
is never weary of representing it. It was nearly fifty miles off when we
first saw it.
The air and water were alike motionless, the mist was still and pale,
grey clouds lay restfully on a bluish sky, the reflections of the white
sails of the fishing-boats scarcely quivered; it was all so pale, wan,
and ghastly, that the turbulence of crumpled foam which we left behind
us, and our noisy, throbbing progress, seemed a boisterous intrusion upon
sleeping Asia.
[Picture: Fujisan]
The gulf narrowed, the forest-crested hills, the terraced ravines, the
picturesque grey villages, the quiet beach life, and the pale blue masses
of the mountains of the interior, became more visible. Fuji retired into
the mist in which he enfolds his grandeur for most of the summer; we
passed Reception Bay, Perry Island, Webster Island, Cape Saratoga, and
Mississippi Bay—American nomenclature which perpetuates the successes of
American diplomacy—and not far from Treaty Point came upon a red
lightship with the words “Treaty Point” in large letters upon her.
Outside of this no foreign vessel may anchor.
The bustle among my fellow-passengers, many of whom were returning home,
and all of whom expected to be met by friends, left me at leisure, as I
looked at unattractive, unfamiliar Yokohama and the pale grey land
stretched out before me, to speculate somewhat sadly on my destiny on
these strange shores, on which I have not even an acquaintance. On
mooring we were at once surrounded by crowds of native boats called by
foreigners _sampans_, and Dr. Gulick, a near relation of my Hilo friends,
came on board to meet his daughter, welcomed me cordially, and relieved
me of all the trouble of disembarkation. These _sampans_ are very
clumsy-looking, but are managed with great dexterity by the boatmen, who
gave and received any number of bumps with much good nature, and without
any of the shouting and swearing in which competitive boatmen usually
indulge.
The partially triangular shape of these boats approaches that of a
salmon-fisher’s punt used on certain British rivers. Being floored gives
them the appearance of being absolutely flat-bottomed; but, though they
tilt readily, they are very safe, being heavily built and fitted together
with singular precision with wooden bolts and a few copper cleets. They
are _sculled_, not what we should call rowed, by two or four men with
very heavy oars made of two pieces of wood working on pins placed on
outrigger bars. The men scull standing and use the thigh as a rest for
the oar. They all wear a single, wide-sleeved, scanty, blue cotton
garment, not fastened or girdled at the waist, straw sandals, kept on by
a thong passing between the great toe and the others, and if they wear
any head-gear, it is only a wisp of blue cotton tied round the forehead.
The one garment is only an apology for clothing, and displays lean
concave chests and lean muscular limbs. The skin is very yellow, and
often much tattooed with mythical beasts. The charge for _sampans_ is
fixed by tariff, so the traveller lands without having his temper ruffled
by extortionate demands.
The first thing that impressed me on landing was that there were no
loafers, and that all the small, ugly, kindly-looking, shrivelled,
bandy-legged, round-shouldered, concave-chested, poor-looking beings in
the streets had some affairs of their own to mind. At the top of the
landing-steps there was a portable restaurant, a neat and most compact
thing, with charcoal stove, cooking and eating utensils complete; but it
looked as if it were made by and for dolls, and the mannikin who kept it
was not five feet high. At the custom-house we were attended to by
minute officials in blue uniforms of European pattern and leather boots;
very civil creatures, who opened and examined our trunks carefully, and
strapped them up again, contrasting pleasingly with the insolent and
rapacious officials who perform the same duties at New York.
Outside were about fifty of the now well-known _jin-ti-ki-shas_, and the
air was full of a buzz produced by the rapid reiteration of this uncouth
word by fifty tongues. This conveyance, as you know, is a feature of
Japan, growing in importance every day. It was only invented seven years
ago, and already there are nearly 23,000 in one city, and men can make so
much more by drawing them than by almost any kind of skilled labour, that
thousands of fine young men desert agricultural pursuits and flock into
the towns to make draught-animals of themselves, though it is said that
the average duration of a man’s life after he takes to running is only
five years, and that the runners fall victims in large numbers to
aggravated forms of heart and lung disease. Over tolerably level ground
a good runner can trot forty miles a day, at a rate of about four miles
an hour. They are registered and taxed at 8s. a year for one carrying
two persons, and 4s. for one which carries one only, and there is a
regular tariff for time and distance.
[Picture: Travelling Restaurant]
The _kuruma_, or jin-ri-ki-sha, {5} consists of a light perambulator
body, an adjustable hood of oiled paper, a velvet or cloth lining and
cushion, a well for parcels under the seat, two high slim wheels, and a
pair of shafts connected by a bar at the ends. The body is usually
lacquered and decorated according to its owner’s taste. Some show little
except polished brass, others are altogether inlaid with shells known as
Venus’s ear, and others are gaudily painted with contorted dragons, or
groups of peonies, hydrangeas, chrysanthemums, and mythical personages.
They cost from £2 upwards. The shafts rest on the ground at a steep
incline as you get in—it must require much practice to enable one to
mount with ease or dignity—the runner lifts them up, gets into them,
gives the body a good tilt backwards, and goes off at a smart trot. They
are drawn by one, two, or three men, according to the speed desired by
the occupants. When rain comes on, the man puts up the hood, and ties
you and it closely up in a covering of oiled paper, in which you are
invisible. At night, whether running or standing still, they carry
prettily-painted circular paper lanterns 18 inches long. It is most
comical to see stout, florid, solid-looking merchants, missionaries, male
and female, fashionably-dressed ladies, armed with card cases, Chinese
compradores, and Japanese peasant men and women flying along Main Street,
which is like the decent respectable High Street of a dozen forgotten
country towns in England, in happy unconsciousness of the ludicrousness
of their appearance; racing, chasing, crossing each other, their lean,
polite, pleasant runners in their great hats shaped like inverted bowls,
their incomprehensible blue tights, and their short blue over-shirts with
badges or characters in white upon them, tearing along, their yellow
faces streaming with perspiration, laughing, shouting, and avoiding
collisions by a mere shave.
After a visit to the Consulate I entered a _kuruma_ and, with two ladies
in two more, was bowled along at a furious pace by a laughing little
mannikin down Main Street—a narrow, solid, well-paved street with
well-made side walks, kerb-stones, and gutters, with iron lamp-posts,
gas-lamps, and foreign shops all along its length—to this quiet hotel
recommended by Sir Wyville Thomson, which offers a refuge from the nasal
twang of my fellow-voyagers, who have all gone to the caravanserais on
the Bund. The host is a Frenchman, but he relies on a Chinaman; the
servants are Japanese “boys” in Japanese clothes; and there is a Japanese
“groom of the chambers” in faultless English costume, who perfectly
appals me by the elaborate politeness of his manner.
Almost as soon as I arrived I was obliged to go in search of Mr. Fraser’s
office in the settlement; I say _search_, for there are no names on the
streets; where there are numbers they have no sequence, and I met no
Europeans on foot to help me in my difficulty. Yokohama does not improve
on further acquaintance. It has a dead-alive look. It has irregularity
without picturesqueness, and the grey sky, grey sea, grey houses, and
grey roofs, look harmoniously dull. No foreign money except the Mexican
dollar passes in Japan, and Mr. Fraser’s compradore soon metamorphosed my
English gold into Japanese _satsu_ or paper money, a bundle of yen nearly
at par just now with the dollar, packets of 50, 20, and 10 sen notes, and
some rouleaux of very neat copper coins. The initiated recognise the
different denominations of paper money at a glance by their differing
colours and sizes, but at present they are a distracting mystery to me.
The notes are pieces of stiff paper with Chinese characters at the
corners, near which, with exceptionally good eyes or a magnifying glass,
one can discern an English word denoting the value. They are very neatly
executed, and are ornamented with the chrysanthemum crest of the Mikado
and the interlaced dragons of the Empire.
I long to get away into real Japan. Mr. Wilkinson, H.B.M.’s acting
consul, called yesterday, and was extremely kind. He thinks that my plan
for travelling in the interior is rather too ambitious, but that it is
perfectly safe for a lady to travel alone, and agrees with everybody else
in thinking that legions of fleas and the miserable horses are the great
drawbacks of Japanese travelling.
I. L. B.
LETTER II.
Sir Harry Parkes—An “Ambassador’s Carriage”—Cart Coolies.
YOKOHAMA, _May_ 22.
TO-DAY has been spent in making new acquaintances, instituting a search
for a servant and a pony, receiving many offers of help, asking questions
and receiving from different people answers which directly contradict
each other. Hours are early. Thirteen people called on me before noon.
Ladies drive themselves about the town in small pony carriages attended
by running grooms called _bettos_. The foreign merchants keep _kurumas_
constantly standing at their doors, finding a willing, intelligent coolie
much more serviceable than a lazy, fractious, capricious Japanese pony,
and even the dignity of an “Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister
Plenipotentiary” is not above such a lowly conveyance, as I have seen
to-day. My last visitors were Sir Harry and Lady Parkes, who brought
sunshine and kindliness into the room, and left it behind them. Sir
Harry is a young-looking man scarcely in middle life, slight, active,
fair, blue-eyed, a thorough Saxon, with sunny hair and a sunny smile, a
sunshiny geniality in his manner, and bearing no trace in his appearance
of his thirty years of service in the East, his sufferings in the prison
at Peking, and the various attempts upon his life in Japan. He and Lady
Parkes were most truly kind, and encourage me so heartily in my largest
projects for travelling in the interior, that I shall start as soon as I
have secured a servant. When they went away they jumped into _kurumas_,
and it was most amusing to see the representative of England hurried down
the street in a perambulator with a tandem of coolies.
As I look out of the window I see heavy, two-wheeled man-carts drawn and
pushed by four men each, on which nearly all goods, stones for building,
and all else, are carried. The two men who pull press with hands and
thighs against a cross-bar at the end of a heavy pole, and the two who
push apply their shoulders to beams which project behind, using their
thick, smoothly-shaven skulls as the motive power when they push their
heavy loads uphill. Their cry is impressive and melancholy. They draw
incredible loads, but, as if the toil which often makes every breath a
groan or a gasp were not enough, they shout incessantly with a coarse,
guttural grunt, something like _Ha huida_, _Ho huida_, _wa ho_, _Ha
huida_, etc.
I. L. B.
[Picture: Japanese Man-Cart]
LETTER III.
Yedo and Tôkiyô—The Yokohama Railroad—The Effect of Misfits—The Plain of
Yedo—Personal Peculiarities—First Impressions of Tôkiyô—H. B. M.’s
Legation—An English Home.
H.B.M.’s LEGATION, YEDO, _May_ 24.
I HAVE dated my letter Yedo, according to the usage of the British
Legation, but popularly the new name of Tôkiyô, or Eastern Capital, is
used, Kiyôto, the Mikado’s former residence, having received the name of
Saikiô, or Western Capital, though it has now no claim to be regarded as
a capital at all. Yedo belongs to the old régime and the Shôgunate,
Tôkiyô to the new régime and the Restoration, with their history of ten
years. It would seem an incongruity to travel to _Yedo_ by railway, but
quite proper when the destination is Tôkiyô.
The journey between the two cities is performed in an hour by an
admirable, well-metalled, double-track railroad, 18 miles long, with iron
bridges, neat stations, and substantial roomy termini, built by English
engineers at a cost known only to Government, and opened by the Mikado in
1872. The Yokohama station is a handsome and suitable stone building,
with a spacious approach, ticket-offices on our plan, roomy waiting-rooms
for different classes—uncarpeted, however, in consideration of Japanese
clogs—and supplied with the daily papers. There is a department for the
weighing and labelling of luggage, and on the broad, covered, stone
platform at both termini a barrier with turnstiles, through which, except
by special favour, no ticketless person can pass. Except the
ticket-clerks, who are Chinese, and the guards and engine-drivers, who
are English, the officials are Japanese in European dress. Outside the
stations, instead of cabs, there are _kurumas_, which carry luggage as
well as people. Only luggage in the hand is allowed to go free; the rest
is weighed, numbered, and charged for, a corresponding number being given
to its owner to present at his destination. The fares are—3d class, an
_ichibu_, or about 1s.; 2d class, 60 _sen_, or about 2s. 4d.; and 1st
class, a _yen_, or about 3s. 8d. The tickets are collected as the
passengers pass through the barrier at the end of the journey. The
English-built cars differ from ours in having seats along the sides, and
doors opening on platforms at both ends. On the whole, the arrangements
are Continental rather than British. The first-class cars are
expensively fitted up with deeply-cushioned, red morocco seats, but carry
very few passengers, and the comfortable seats, covered with fine
matting, of the 2d class are very scantily occupied; but the 3d class
vans are crowded with Japanese, who have taken to railroads as readily as
to _kurumas_. This line earns about $8,000,000 a year.
The Japanese look most diminutive in European dress. Each garment is a
misfit, and exaggerates the miserable _physique_ and the national defects
of concave chests and bow legs. The lack of “complexion” and of hair
upon the face makes it nearly impossible to judge of the ages of men. I
supposed that all the railroad officials were striplings of 17 or 18, but
they are men from 25 to 40 years old.
It was a beautiful day, like an English June day, but hotter, and though
the _Sakura_ (wild cherry) and its kin, which are the glory of the
Japanese spring, are over, everything is a young, fresh green yet, and in
all the beauty of growth and luxuriance. The immediate neighbourhood of
Yokohama is beautiful, with abrupt wooded hills, and small picturesque
valleys; but after passing Kanagawa the railroad enters upon the immense
plain of Yedo, said to be 90 miles from north to south, on whose northern
and western boundaries faint blue mountains of great height hovered
dreamily in the blue haze, and on whose eastern shore for many miles the
clear blue wavelets of the Gulf of Yedo ripple, always as then,
brightened by the white sails of innumerable fishing-boats. On this
fertile and fruitful plain stand not only the capital, with its million
of inhabitants, but a number of populous cities, and several hundred
thriving agricultural villages. Every foot of land which can be seen
from the railroad is cultivated by the most careful spade husbandry, and
much of it is irrigated for rice. Streams abound, and villages of grey
wooden houses with grey thatch, and grey temples with strangely curved
roofs, are scattered thickly over the landscape. It is all homelike,
liveable, and pretty, the country of an industrious people, for not a
weed is to be seen, but no very striking features or peculiarities arrest
one at first sight, unless it be the crowds everywhere.
You don’t take your ticket for Tôkiyô, but for Shinagawa or Shinbashi,
two of the many villages which have grown together into the capital.
Yedo is hardly seen before Shinagawa is reached, for it has no smoke and
no long chimneys; its temples and public buildings are seldom lofty; the
former are often concealed among thick trees, and its ordinary houses
seldom reach a height of 20 feet. On the right a blue sea with fortified
islands upon it, wooded gardens with massive retaining walls, hundreds of
fishing-boats lying in creeks or drawn up on the beach; on the left a
broad road on which _kurumas_ are hurrying both ways, rows of low, grey
houses, mostly tea-houses and shops; and as I was asking “Where is Yedo?”
the train came to rest in the terminus, the Shinbashi railroad station,
and disgorged its 200 Japanese passengers with a combined clatter of 400
clogs—a new sound to me. These clogs add three inches to their height,
but even with them few of the men attained 5 feet 7 inches, and few of
the women 5 feet 2 inches; but they look far broader in the national
costume, which also conceals the defects of their figures. So lean, so
yellow, so ugly, yet so pleasant-looking, so wanting in colour and
effectiveness; the women so very small and tottering in their walk; the
children so formal-looking and such dignified burlesques on the adults, I
feel as if I had seen them all before, so like are they to their pictures
on trays, fans, and tea-pots. The hair of the women is all drawn away
from their faces, and is worn in chignons, and the men, when they don’t
shave the front of their heads and gather their back hair into a quaint
queue drawn forward over the shaven patch, wear their coarse hair about
three inches long in a refractory undivided mop.
Davies, an orderly from the Legation, met me,—one of the escort cut down
and severely wounded when Sir H. Parkes was attacked in the street of
Kiyôto in March 1868 on his way to his first audience of the Mikado.
Hundreds of _kurumas_, and covered carts with four wheels drawn by one
miserable horse, which are the omnibuses of certain districts of Tôkiyô,
were waiting outside the station, and an English brougham for me, with a
running _betto_. The Legation stands in Kôjimachi on very elevated
ground above the inner moat of the historic “Castle of Yedo,” but I
cannot tell you anything of what I saw on my way thither, except that
there were miles of dark, silent, barrack-like buildings, with highly
ornamental gateways, and long rows of projecting windows with screens
made of reeds—the feudal mansions of Yedo—and miles of moats with lofty
grass embankments or walls of massive masonry 50 feet high, with
kiosk-like towers at the corners, and curious, roofed gateways, and many
bridges, and acres of lotus leaves. Turning along the inner moat, up a
steep slope, there are, on the right, its deep green waters, the great
grass embankment surmounted by a dismal wall overhung by the branches of
coniferous trees which surrounded the palace of the Shôgun, and on the
left sundry _yashikis_, as the mansions of the _daimiyô_ were called, now
in this quarter mostly turned into hospitals, barracks, and Government
offices. On a height, the most conspicuous of them all, is the great red
gateway of the _yashiki_, now occupied by the French Military Mission,
formerly the residence of Ii Kamon no Kami, one of the great actors in
recent historic events, who was assassinated not far off, outside the
Sakaruda gate of the castle. Besides these, barracks, parade-grounds,
policemen, _kurumas_, carts pulled and pushed by coolies, pack-horses in
straw sandals, and dwarfish, slatternly-looking soldiers in European
dress, made up the Tôkiyô that I saw between Shinbashi and the Legation.
H.B.M.’s Legation has a good situation near the Foreign Office, several
of the Government departments, and the residences of the ministers, which
are chiefly of brick in the English suburban villa style. Within the
compound, with a brick archway with the Royal Arms upon it for an
entrance, are the Minister’s residence, the Chancery, two houses for the
two English Secretaries of Legation, and quarters for the escort.
It is an English house and an English home, though, with the exception of
a venerable nurse, there are no English servants. The butler and footman
are tall Chinamen, with long pig-tails, black satin caps, and long blue
robes; the cook is a Chinaman, and the other servants are all Japanese,
including one female servant, a sweet, gentle, kindly girl about 4 feet 5
in height, the wife of the head “housemaid.” None of the servants speak
anything but the most aggravating “pidgun” English, but their deficient
speech is more than made up for by the intelligence and service of the
orderly in waiting, who is rarely absent from the neighbourhood of the
hall door, and attends to the visitors’ book and to all messages and
notes. There are two real English children of six and seven, with great
capacities for such innocent enjoyments as can be found within the limits
of the nursery and garden. The other inmate of the house is a beautiful
and attractive terrier called “Rags,” a Skye dog, who unbends “in the
bosom of his family,” but ordinarily is as imposing in his demeanour as
if he, and not his master, represented the dignity of the British Empire.
The Japanese Secretary of Legation is Mr. Ernest Satow, whose reputation
for scholarship, especially in the department of history, is said by the
Japanese themselves to be the highest in Japan {14}—an honourable
distinction for an Englishman, and won by the persevering industry of
fifteen years. The scholarship connected with the British Civil Service
is not, however, monopolised by Mr. Satow, for several gentlemen in the
consular service, who are passing through the various grades of student
interpreters, are distinguishing themselves not alone by their facility
in colloquial Japanese, but by their researches in various departments of
Japanese history, mythology, archæology, and literature. Indeed it is to
their labours, and to those of a few other Englishmen and Germans, that
the Japanese of the rising generation will be indebted for keeping alive
not only the knowledge of their archaic literature, but even of the
manners and customs of the first half of this century.
I. L. B.
LETTER IV.
“John Chinaman”—Engaging a Servant—First Impressions of Ito—A Solemn
Contract—The Food Question.
H.B.M.’s LEGATION, YEDO,
_June_ 7.
I WENT to Yokohama for a week to visit Dr. and Mrs. Hepburn on the Bluff.
Bishop and Mrs. Burdon of Hong Kong were also guests, and it was very
pleasant.
One cannot be a day in Yokohama without seeing quite a different class of
orientals from the small, thinly-dressed, and usually poor-looking
Japanese. Of the 2500 Chinamen who reside in Japan, over 1100 are in
Yokohama, and if they were suddenly removed, business would come to an
abrupt halt. Here, as everywhere, the Chinese immigrant is making
himself indispensable. He walks through the streets with his swinging
gait and air of complete self-complacency, as though he belonged to the
ruling race. He is tall and big, and his many garments, with a handsome
brocaded robe over all, his satin pantaloons, of which not much is seen,
tight at the ankles, and his high shoes, whose black satin tops are
slightly turned up at the toes, make him look even taller and bigger than
he is. His head is mostly shaven, but the hair at the back is plaited
with a quantity of black purse twist into a queue which reaches to his
knees, above which, set well back, he wears a stiff, black satin
skull-cap, without which he is never seen. His face is very yellow, his
long dark eyes and eyebrows slope upwards towards his temples, he has not
the vestige of a beard, and his skin is shiny. He looks thoroughly
“well-to-do.” He is not unpleasing-looking, but you feel that as a
Celestial he looks down upon you. If you ask a question in a merchant’s
office, or change your gold into _satsu_, or take your railroad or
steamer ticket, or get change in a shop, the inevitable Chinaman appears.
In the street he swings past you with a purpose in his face; as he flies
past you in a _kuruma_ he is bent on business; he is sober and reliable,
and is content to “squeeze” his employer rather than to rob him—his one
aim in life is money. For this he is industrious, faithful,
self-denying; and he has his reward.
Several of my kind new acquaintances interested themselves about the (to
me) vital matter of a servant interpreter, and many Japanese came to “see
after the place.” The speaking of intelligible English is a _sine quâ
non_, and it was wonderful to find the few words badly pronounced and
worse put together, which were regarded by the candidates as a sufficient
qualification. Can you speak English? “Yes.” What wages do you ask?
“Twelve dollars a month.” This was always said glibly, and in each case
sounded hopeful. Whom have you lived with? A foreign name distorted out
of all recognition, as was natural, was then given. Where have you
travelled? This question usually had to be translated into Japanese, and
the usual answer was, “The Tokaido, the Nakasendo, to Kiyôto, to Nikkô,”
naming the beaten tracks of countless tourists. Do you know anything of
Northern Japan and the Hokkaido? “No,” with a blank wondering look. At
this stage in every case Dr. Hepburn compassionately stepped in as
interpreter, for their stock of English was exhausted. Three were
regarded as promising. One was a sprightly youth who came in a well-made
European suit of light-coloured tweed, a laid-down collar, a tie with a
diamond (?) pin, and a white shirt, so stiffly starched, that he could
hardly bend low enough for a bow even of European profundity. He wore a
gilt watch-chain with a locket, the corner of a very white cambric
pocket-handkerchief dangled from his breast pocket, and he held a cane
and a felt hat in his hand. He was a Japanese dandy of the first water.
I looked at him ruefully. To me starched collars are to be an unknown
luxury for the next three months. His fine foreign clothes would enhance
prices everywhere in the interior, and besides that, I should feel a
perpetual difficulty in asking menial services from an exquisite. I was
therefore quite relieved when his English broke down at the second
question.
The second was a most respectable-looking man of thirty-five in a good
Japanese dress. He was highly recommended, and his first English words
were promising, but he had been cook in the service of a wealthy English
official who travelled with a large retinue, and sent servants on ahead
to prepare the way. He knew really only a few words of English, and his
horror at finding that there was “no master,” and that there would be no
woman-servant, was so great, that I hardly know whether he rejected me or
I him.
The third, sent by Mr. Wilkinson, wore a plain Japanese dress, and had a
frank, intelligent face. Though Dr. Hepburn spoke with him in Japanese,
he thought that he knew more English than the others, and that what he
knew would come out when he was less agitated. He evidently understood
what I said, and, though I had a suspicion that he would turn out to be
the “master,” I thought him so prepossessing that I nearly engaged him on
the spot. None of the others merit any remark.
However, when I had nearly made up my mind in his favour, a creature
appeared without any recommendation at all, except that one of Dr.
Hepburn’s servants was acquainted with him. He is only eighteen, but
this is equivalent to twenty-three or twenty-four with us, and only 4
feet 10 inches in height, but, though bandy-legged, is well proportioned
and strong-looking. He has a round and singularly plain face, good
teeth, much elongated eyes, and the heavy droop of his eyelids almost
caricatures the usual Japanese peculiarity. He is the most
stupid-looking Japanese that I have seen, but, from a rapid, furtive
glance in his eyes now and then, I think that the stolidity is partly
assumed. He said that he had lived at the American Legation, that he had
been a clerk on the Osaka railroad, that he had travelled through
northern Japan by the eastern route, and in Yezo with Mr. Maries, a
botanical collector, that he understood drying plants, that he could cook
a little, that he could write English, that he could walk twenty-five
miles a day, and that he thoroughly understood getting through the
interior! This would-be paragon had no recommendations, and accounted
for this by saying that they had been burned in a recent fire in his
father’s house. Mr. Maries was not forthcoming, and more than this, I
suspected and disliked the boy. However, he understood my English and I
his, and, being very anxious to begin my travels, I engaged him for
twelve dollars a month, and soon afterwards he came back with a contract,
in which he declares by all that he holds most sacred that he will serve
me faithfully for the wages agreed upon, and to this document he affixed
his seal and I my name. The next day he asked me for a month’s wages in
advance, which I gave him, but Dr. H. consolingly suggested that I should
never see him again!
Ever since the solemn night when the contract was signed I have felt
under an incubus, and since he appeared here yesterday, punctual to the
appointed hour, I have felt as if I had a veritable “old man of the sea”
upon my shoulders. He flies up stairs and along the corridors as
noiselessly as a cat, and already knows where I keep all my things.
Nothing surprises or abashes him, he bows profoundly to Sir Harry and
Lady Parkes when he encounters them, but is obviously “quite at home” in
a Legation, and only allowed one of the orderlies to show him how to put
on a Mexican saddle and English bridle out of condescension to my wishes.
He seems as sharp or “smart” as can be, and has already arranged for the
first three days of my journey. His name is Ito, and you will doubtless
hear much more of him, as he will be my good or evil genius for the next
three months.
As no English lady has yet travelled alone through the interior, my
project excites a very friendly interest among my friends, and I receive
much warning and dissuasion, and a little encouragement. The strongest,
because the most intelligent, dissuasion comes from Dr. Hepburn, who
thinks that I ought not to undertake the journey, and that I shall never
get through to the Tsugaru Strait. If I accepted much of the advice
given to me, as to taking tinned meats and soups, claret, and a Japanese
maid, I should need a train of at least six pack-horses! As to fleas,
there is a lamentable concensus of opinion that they are the curse of
Japanese travelling during the summer, and some people recommend me to
sleep in a bag drawn tightly round the throat, others to sprinkle my
bedding freely with insect powder, others to smear the skin all over with
carbolic oil, and some to make a plentiful use of dried and powdered
flea-bane. All admit, however, that these are but feeble palliatives.
Hammocks unfortunately cannot be used in Japanese houses.
The “Food Question” is said to be the most important one for all
travellers, and it is discussed continually with startling earnestness,
not alone as regards my tour. However apathetic people are on other
subjects, the mere mention of this one rouses them into interest. All
have suffered or may suffer, and every one wishes to impart his own
experience or to learn from that of others. Foreign ministers,
professors, missionaries, merchants—all discuss it with becoming gravity
as a question of life and death, which by many it is supposed to be. The
fact is that, except at a few hotels in popular resorts which are got up
for foreigners, bread, butter, milk, meat, poultry, coffee, wine, and
beer, are unattainable, that fresh fish is rare, and that unless one can
live on rice, tea, and eggs, with the addition now and then of some
tasteless fresh vegetables, food must be taken, as the fishy and
vegetable abominations known as “Japanese food” can only be swallowed and
digested by a few, and that after long practice. {19}
Another, but far inferior, difficulty on which much stress is laid is the
practice common among native servants of getting a “squeeze” out of every
money transaction on the road, so that the cost of travelling is often
doubled, and sometimes trebled, according to the skill and capacity of
the servant. Three gentlemen who have travelled extensively have given
me lists of the prices which I ought to pay, varying in different
districts, and largely increased on the beaten track of tourists, and Mr.
Wilkinson has read these to Ito, who offered an occasional remonstrance.
Mr. W. remarked after the conversation, which was in Japanese, that he
thought I should have to “look sharp after money matters”—a painful
prospect, as I have never been able to manage anybody in my life, and
shall surely have no control over this clever, cunning Japanese youth,
who on most points will be able to deceive me as he pleases.
On returning here I found that Lady Parkes had made most of the necessary
preparations for me, and that they include two light baskets with covers
of oiled paper, a travelling bed or stretcher, a folding-chair, and an
india-rubber bath, all which she considers as necessaries for a person in
feeble health on a journey of such long duration. This week has been
spent in making acquaintances in Tôkiyô, seeing some characteristic
sights, and in trying to get light on my tour; but little seems known by
foreigners of northern Japan, and a Government department, on being
applied to, returned an itinerary, leaving out 140 miles of the route
that I dream of taking, on the ground of “insufficient information,” on
which Sir Harry cheerily remarked, “You will have to get your information
as you go along, and that will be all the more interesting.” Ah! but
how?
I. L. B.
[Picture: A Lake Biwa Tea-House]
LETTER V.
Kwan-non Temple—Uniformity of Temple Architecture—A _Kuruma_ Expedition—A
Perpetual Festival—The Ni-ô—The Limbo of Vanity—Heathen Prayers—Binzuru—A
Group of Devils—Archery Galleries—New Japan—An Élégante.
H.B.M.’s LEGATION, YEDO,
_June_ 9.
ONCE for all I will describe a Buddhist temple, and it shall be the
popular temple of Asakusa, which keeps fair and festival the whole year
round, and is dedicated to the “thousand-armed” Kwan-non, the goddess of
mercy. Writing generally, it may be said that in design, roof, and
general aspect, Japanese Buddhist temples are all alike. The sacred
architectural idea expresses itself in nearly the same form always.
There is a single or double-roofed gateway, with highly-coloured figures
in niches on either side; the paved temple-court, with more or fewer
stone or bronze lanterns; _amainu_, or heavenly dogs, in stone on stone
pedestals; stone sarcophagi, roofed over or not, for holy water; a flight
of steps; a portico, continued as a verandah all round the temple; a roof
of tremendously disproportionate size and weight, with a peculiar curve;
a square or oblong hall divided by a railing from a “chancel” with a high
and low altar, and a shrine containing Buddha, or the divinity to whom
the chapel is dedicated; an incense-burner, and a few ecclesiastical
ornaments. The symbols, idols, and adornments depend upon the sect to
which the temple belongs, or the wealth of its votaries, or the fancy of
the priests. Some temples are packed full of gods, shrines, banners,
bronzes, brasses, tablets, and ornaments, and others, like those of the
Monto sect, are so severely simple, that with scarcely an alteration they
might be used for Christian worship to-morrow.
The foundations consist of square stones on which the uprights rest.
These are of elm, and are united at intervals by longitudinal pieces.
The great size and enormous weight of the roofs arise from the trusses
being formed of one heavy frame being built upon another in diminishing
squares till the top is reached, the main beams being formed of very
large timbers put on in their natural state. They are either very
heavily and ornamentally tiled, or covered with sheet copper ornamented
with gold, or thatched to a depth of from one to three feet, with fine
shingles or bark. The casing of the walls on the outside is usually
thick elm planking either lacquered or unpainted, and that of the inside
is of thin, finely-planed and bevelled planking of the beautiful wood of
the _Retinospora obtusa_. The lining of the roof is in flat panels, and
where it is supported by pillars they are invariably circular, and formed
of the straight, finely-grained stem of the _Retinospora obtusa_. The
projecting ends of the roof-beams under the eaves are either elaborately
carved, lacquered in dull red, or covered with copper, as are the joints
of the beams. Very few nails are used, the timbers being very
beautifully joined by mortices and dovetails, other methods of junction
being unknown.
Mr. Chamberlain and I went in a _kuruma_ hurried along by three liveried
coolies, through the three miles of crowded streets which lie between the
Legation and Asakusa, once a village, but now incorporated with this
monster city, to the broad street leading to the Adzuma Bridge over the
Sumida river, one of the few stone bridges in Tôkiyô, which connects east
Tôkiyô, an uninteresting region, containing many canals, storehouses,
timber-yards, and inferior _yashikis_, with the rest of the city. This
street, marvellously thronged with pedestrians and _kurumas_, is the
terminus of a number of city “stage lines,” and twenty wretched-looking
covered waggons, with still more wretched ponies, were drawn up in the
middle, waiting for passengers. Just there plenty of real Tôkiyô life is
to be seen, for near a shrine of popular pilgrimage there are always
numerous places of amusement, innocent and vicious, and the vicinity of
this temple is full of restaurants, tea-houses, minor theatres, and the
resorts of dancing and singing girls.
A broad-paved avenue, only open to foot passengers, leads from this
street to the grand entrance, a colossal two-storied double-roofed _mon_,
or gate, painted a rich dull red. On either side of this avenue are
lines of booths—which make a brilliant and lavish display of their
contents—toy-shops, shops for smoking apparatus, and shops for the sale
of ornamental hair-pins predominating. Nearer the gate are booths for
the sale of rosaries for prayer, sleeve and bosom idols of brass and wood
in small shrines, amulet bags, representations of the jolly-looking
Daikoku, the god of wealth, the most popular of the household gods of
Japan, shrines, memorial tablets, cheap _ex votos_, sacred bells,
candlesticks, and incense-burners, and all the endless and various
articles connected with Buddhist devotion, public and private. Every day
is a festival-day at Asakusa; the temple is dedicated to the most popular
of the great divinities; it is the most popular of religious resorts; and
whether he be Buddhist, Shintôist, or Christian, no stranger comes to the
capital without making a visit to its crowded courts or a purchase at its
tempting booths. Not to be an exception, I invested in bouquets of
firework flowers, fifty flowers for 2 _sen_, or 1d., each of which, as it
slowly consumes, throws off fiery coruscations, shaped like the most
beautiful of snow crystals. I was also tempted by small boxes at 2 _sen_
each, containing what look like little slips of withered pith, but which,
on being dropped into water, expand into trees and flowers.
Down a paved passage on the right there is an artificial river, not over
clean, with a bridge formed of one curved stone, from which a flight of
steps leads up to a small temple with a magnificent bronze bell. At the
entrance several women were praying. In the same direction are two fine
bronze Buddhas, seated figures, one with clasped hands, the other holding
a lotus, both with “The light of the world” upon their brows. The grand
red gateway into the actual temple courts has an extremely imposing
effect, and besides, it is the portal to the first great heathen temple
that I have seen, and it made me think of another temple whose courts
were equally crowded with buyers and sellers, and of a “whip of small
cords” in the hand of One who claimed both the temple and its courts as
His “Father’s House.” Not with less righteous wrath would the gentle
founder of Buddhism purify the unsanctified courts of Asakusa. Hundreds
of men, women, and children passed to and fro through the gateway in
incessant streams, and so they are passing through every daylight hour of
every day in the year, thousands becoming tens of thousands on the great
_matsuri_ days, when the _mikoshi_, or sacred car, containing certain
symbols of the god, is exhibited, and after sacred mimes and dances have
been performed, is carried in a magnificent, antique procession to the
shore and back again. Under the gateway on either side are the _Ni-ô_,
or two kings, gigantic figures in flowing robes, one red and with an open
mouth, representing the _Yo_, or male principle of Chinese philosophy,
the other green and with the mouth firmly closed, representing the _In_,
or female principle. They are hideous creatures, with protruding eyes,
and faces and figures distorted and corrupted into a high degree of
exaggerated and convulsive action. These figures guard the gates of most
of the larger temples, and small prints of them are pasted over the doors
of houses to protect them against burglars. Attached to the grating in
front were a number of straw sandals, hung up by people who pray that
their limbs may be as muscular as those of the _Ni-ô_.
Passing through this gate we were in the temple court proper, and in
front of the temple itself, a building of imposing height and size, of a
dull red colour, with a grand roof of heavy iron grey tiles, with a
sweeping curve which gives grace as well as grandeur. The timbers and
supports are solid and of great size, but, in common with all Japanese
temples, whether Buddhist or Shintô, the edifice is entirely of wood. A
broad flight of narrow, steep, brass-bound steps lead up to the porch,
which is formed by a number of circular pillars supporting a very lofty
roof, from which paper lanterns ten feet long are hanging. A gallery
runs from this round the temple, under cover of the eaves. There is an
outer temple, unmatted, and an inner one behind a grating, into which
those who choose to pay for the privilege of praying in comparative
privacy, or of having prayers said for them by the priests, can pass.
In the outer temple the noise, confusion, and perpetual motion, are
bewildering. Crowds on clattering clogs pass in and out; pigeons, of
which hundreds live in the porch, fly over your head, and the whirring of
their wings mingles with the tinkling of bells, the beating of drums and
gongs, the high-pitched drone of the priests, the low murmur of prayers,
the rippling laughter of girls, the harsh voices of men, and the general
buzz of a multitude. There is very much that is highly grotesque at
first sight. Men squat on the floor selling amulets, rosaries, printed
prayers, incense sticks, and other wares. _Ex votos_ of all kinds hang
on the wall and on the great round pillars. Many of these are rude
Japanese pictures. The subject of one is the blowing-up of a steamer in
the Sumidagawa with the loss of 100 lives, when the donor was saved by
the grace of Kwan-non. Numbers of memorials are from people who offered
up prayers here, and have been restored to health or wealth. Others are
from junk men whose lives have been in peril. There are scores of men’s
queues and a few dusty braids of women’s hair offered on account of vows
or prayers, usually for sick relatives, and among them all, on the left
hand, are a large mirror in a gaudily gilt frame and a framed picture of
the P. M. S. _China_! Above this incongruous collection are splendid
wood carvings and frescoes of angels, among which the pigeons find a home
free from molestation.
Near the entrance there is a superb incense-burner in the most massive
style of the older bronzes, with a mythical beast rampant upon it, and in
high relief round it the Japanese signs of the zodiac—the rat, ox, tiger,
rabbit, dragon, serpent, horse, goat, monkey, cock, dog, and hog. Clouds
of incense rise continually from the perforations round the edge, and a
black-toothed woman who keeps it burning is perpetually receiving small
coins from the worshippers, who then pass on to the front of the altar to
pray. The high altar, and indeed all that I should regard as properly
the temple, are protected by a screen of coarsely-netted iron wire. This
holy of holies is full of shrines and gods, gigantic candlesticks,
colossal lotuses of gilded silver, offerings, lamps, lacquer, litany
books, gongs, drums, bells, and all the mysterious symbols of a faith
which is a system of morals and metaphysics to the educated and
initiated, and an idolatrous superstition to the masses. In this
interior the light was dim, the lamps burned low, the atmosphere was
heavy with incense, and amidst its fumes shaven priests in chasubles and
stoles moved noiselessly over the soft matting round the high altar on
which Kwan-non is enshrined, lighting candles, striking bells, and
murmuring prayers. In front of the screen is the treasury, a wooden
chest 14 feet by 10, with a deep slit, into which all the worshippers
cast copper coins with a ceaseless clinking sound.
There, too, they pray, if that can be called prayer which frequently
consists only in the repetition of an uncomprehended phrase in a foreign
tongue, bowing the head, raising the hands and rubbing them, murmuring a
few words, telling beads, clapping the hands, bowing again, and then
passing out or on to another shrine to repeat the same form. Merchants
in silk clothing, soldiers in shabby French uniforms, farmers, coolies in
“vile raiment,” mothers, maidens, swells in European clothes, even the
_samurai_ policemen, bow before the goddess of mercy. Most of the
prayers were offered rapidly, a mere momentary interlude in the gurgle of
careless talk, and without a pretence of reverence; but some of the
petitioners obviously brought real woes in simple “faith.”
In one shrine there is a large idol, spotted all over with pellets of
paper, and hundreds of these are sticking to the wire netting which
protects him. A worshipper writes his petition on paper, or, better
still, has it written for him by the priest, chews it to a pulp, and
spits it at the divinity. If, having been well aimed, it passes through
the wire and sticks, it is a good omen, if it lodges in the netting the
prayer has probably been unheard. The _Ni-ô_ and some of the gods
outside the temple are similarly disfigured. On the left there is a
shrine with a screen, to the bars of which innumerable prayers have been
tied. On the right, accessible to all, sits Binzuru, one of Buddha’s
original sixteen disciples. His face and appearance have been calm and
amiable, with something of the quiet dignity of an elderly country
gentleman of the reign of George III.; but he is now worn and defaced,
and has not much more of eyes, nose, and mouth than the Sphinx; and the
polished, red lacquer has disappeared from his hands and feet, for
Binzuru is a great medicine god, and centuries of sick people have rubbed
his face and limbs, and then have rubbed their own. A young woman went
up to him, rubbed the back of his neck, and then rubbed her own. Then a
modest-looking girl, leading an ancient woman with badly inflamed eyelids
and paralysed arms, rubbed his eyelids, and then gently stroked the
closed eyelids of the crone. Then a coolie, with a swelled knee, applied
himself vigorously to Binzuru’s knee, and more gently to his own.
Remember, this is the great temple of the populace, and “not many rich,
not many noble, not many mighty,” enter its dim, dirty, crowded halls.
{27}
But the great temple to Kwan-non is not the only sight of Asakusa.
Outside it are countless shrines and temples, huge stone _Amainu_, or
heavenly dogs, on rude blocks of stone, large cisterns of stone and
bronze with and without canopies, containing water for the ablutions of
the worshippers, cast iron _Amainu_ on hewn stone pedestals—a recent
gift—bronze and stone lanterns, a stone prayer-wheel in a stone post,
figures of Buddha with the serene countenance of one who rests from his
labours, stone idols, on which devotees have pasted slips of paper
inscribed with prayers, with sticks of incense rising out of the ashes of
hundreds of former sticks smouldering before them, blocks of hewn stone
with Chinese and Sanskrit inscriptions, an eight-sided temple in which
are figures of the “Five Hundred Disciples” of Buddha, a temple with the
roof and upper part of the walls richly coloured, the circular Shintô
mirror in an inner shrine, a bronze treasury outside with a bell, which
is rung to attract the god’s attention, a striking, five-storied pagoda,
with much red lacquer, and the ends of the roof-beams very boldly carved,
its heavy eaves fringed with wind bells, and its uppermost roof
terminating in a graceful copper spiral of great height, with the “sacred
pearl” surrounded by flames for its finial. Near it, as near most
temples, is an upright frame of plain wood with tablets, on which are
inscribed the names of donors to the temple, and the amount of their
gifts.
There is a handsome stone-floored temple to the south-east of the main
building, to which we were the sole visitors. It is lofty and very
richly decorated. In the centre is an octagonal revolving room, or
rather shrine, of rich red lacquer most gorgeously ornamented. It rests
on a frame of carved black lacquer, and has a lacquer gallery running
round it, on which several richly decorated doors open. On the
application of several shoulders to this gallery the shrine rotates. It
is, in fact, a revolving library of the Buddhist Scriptures, and a single
turn is equivalent to a single pious perusal of them. It is an
exceedingly beautiful specimen of ancient decorative lacquer work. At
the back part of the temple is a draped brass figure of Buddha, with one
hand raised—a dignified piece of casting. All the Buddhas have Hindoo
features, and the graceful drapery and oriental repose which have been
imported from India contrast singularly with the grotesque extravagances
of the indigenous Japanese conceptions. In the same temple are four
monstrously extravagant figures carved in wood, life-size, with clawed
toes on their feet, and two great fangs in addition to the teeth in each
mouth. The heads of all are surrounded with flames, and are backed by
golden circlets. They are extravagantly clothed in garments which look
as if they were agitated by a violent wind; they wear helmets and partial
suits of armour, and hold in their right hands something between a
monarch’s sceptre and a priest’s staff. They have goggle eyes and open
mouths, and their faces are in distorted and exaggerated action. One,
painted bright red, tramples on a writhing devil painted bright pink;
another, painted emerald green, tramples on a sea-green devil, an indigo
blue monster tramples on a sky-blue fiend, and a bright pink monster
treads under his clawed feet a flesh-coloured demon. I cannot give you
any idea of the hideousness of their aspect, and was much inclined to
sympathise with the more innocent-looking fiends whom they were
maltreating. They occur very frequently in Buddhist temples, and are
said by some to be assistant-torturers to Yemma, the lord of hell, and
are called by others “The gods of the Four Quarters.”
[Picture: Stone Lanterns]
The temple grounds are a most extraordinary sight. No English fair in
the palmiest days of fairs ever presented such an array of attractions.
Behind the temple are archery galleries in numbers, where girls, hardly
so modest-looking as usual, smile and smirk, and bring straw-coloured tea
in dainty cups, and tasteless sweetmeats on lacquer trays, and smoke
their tiny pipes, and offer you bows of slender bamboo strips, two feet
long, with rests for the arrows, and tiny cherry-wood arrows,
bone-tipped, and feathered red, blue, and white, and smilingly, but quite
unobtrusively, ask you to try your skill or luck at a target hanging in
front of a square drum, flanked by red cushions. A click, a boom, or a
hardly audible “thud,” indicate the result. Nearly all the archers were
grown-up men, and many of them spend hours at a time in this childish
sport.
All over the grounds booths with the usual charcoal fire, copper boiler,
iron kettle of curious workmanship, tiny cups, fragrant aroma of tea, and
winsome, graceful girls, invite you to drink and rest, and more solid but
less inviting refreshments are also to be had. Rows of pretty paper
lanterns decorate all the stalls. Then there are photograph galleries,
mimic tea-gardens, tableaux in which a large number of groups of
life-size figures with appropriate scenery are put into motion by a
creaking wheel of great size, matted lounges for rest, stands with
saucers of rice, beans and peas for offerings to the gods, the pigeons,
and the two sacred horses, Albino ponies, with pink eyes and noses,
revoltingly greedy creatures, eating all day long and still craving for
more. There are booths for singing and dancing, and under one a
professional story-teller was reciting to a densely packed crowd one of
the old, popular stories of crime. There are booths where for a few
_rin_ you may have the pleasure of feeding some very ugly and greedy
apes, or of watching mangy monkeys which have been taught to prostrate
themselves Japanese fashion.
This letter is far too long, but to pass over Asakusa and its novelties
when the impression of them is fresh would be to omit one of the most
interesting sights in Japan. On the way back we passed red mail carts
like those in London, a squadron of cavalry in European uniforms and with
European saddles, and the carriage of the Minister of Marine, an English
brougham with a pair of horses in English harness, and an escort of six
troopers—a painful precaution adopted since the political assassination
of Okubo, the Home Minister, three weeks ago. So the old and the new in
this great city contrast with and jostle each other. The Mikado and his
ministers, naval and military officers and men, the whole of the civil
officials and the police, wear European clothes, as well as a number of
dissipated-looking young men who aspire to represent “young Japan.”
Carriages and houses in English style, with carpets, chairs, and tables,
are becoming increasingly numerous, and the bad taste which regulates the
purchase of foreign furnishings is as marked as the good taste which
everywhere presides over the adornment of the houses in purely Japanese
style. Happily these expensive and unbecoming innovations have scarcely
affected female dress, and some ladies who adopted our fashions have
given them up because of their discomfort and manifold difficulties and
complications.
The Empress on State occasions appears in scarlet satin _hakama_, and
flowing robes, and she and the Court ladies invariably wear the national
costume. I have only seen two ladies in European dress; and this was at
a dinner-party here, and they were the wives of Mr. Mori, the go-ahead
Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, and of the Japanese Consul at Hong
Kong; and both by long residence abroad have learned to wear it with
ease. The wife of Saigo, the Minister of Education, called one day in an
exquisite Japanese dress of dove-coloured silk _crêpe_, with a pale pink
under-dress of the same material, which showed a little at the neck and
sleeves. Her girdle was of rich dove-coloured silk, with a ghost of a
pale pink blossom hovering upon it here and there. She had no frills or
fripperies of any description, or ornaments, except a single pin in her
chignon, and, with a sweet and charming face, she looked as graceful and
dignified in her Japanese costume as she would have looked exactly the
reverse in ours. Their costume has one striking advantage over ours. A
woman is perfectly _clothed_ if she has one garment and a girdle on, and
perfectly _dressed_ if she has two. There is a difference in features
and expression—much exaggerated, however, by Japanese artists—between the
faces of high-born women and those of the middle and lower classes. I
decline to admire fat-faces, pug noses, thick lips, long eyes, turned up
at the outer corners, and complexions which owe much to powder and paint.
The habit of painting the lips with a reddish-yellow pigment, and of
heavily powdering the face and throat with pearl powder, is a repulsive
one. But it is hard to pronounce any unfavourable criticism on women who
have so much kindly grace of manner.
I. L. B.
LETTER VI.
Fears—Travelling Equipments—Passports—Coolie Costume—A Yedo
Diorama—Rice-Fields—Tea-Houses—A Traveller’s Reception—The Inn at
Kasukabé—Lack of Privacy—A Concourse of Noises—A Nocturnal Alarm—A Vision
of Policemen—A Budget from Yedo.
KASUKABÉ, _June_ 10.
FROM the date you will see that I have started on my long journey, though
not upon the “unbeaten tracks” which I hope to take after leaving Nikkô,
and my first evening alone in the midst of this crowded Asian life is
strange, almost fearful. I have suffered from nervousness all day—the
fear of being frightened, of being rudely mobbed, as threatened by Mr.
Campbell of Islay, of giving offence by transgressing the rules of
Japanese politeness—of, I know not what! Ito is my sole reliance, and he
may prove a “broken reed.” I often wished to give up my project, but was
ashamed of my cowardice when, on the best authority, I received
assurances of its safety. {32}
The preparations were finished yesterday, and my outfit weighed 110 lbs.,
which, with Ito’s weight of 90 lbs., is as much as can be carried by an
average Japanese horse. My two painted wicker boxes lined with paper and
with waterproof covers are convenient for the two sides of a pack-horse.
I have a folding-chair—for in a Japanese house there is nothing but the
floor to sit upon, and not even a solid wall to lean against—an
air-pillow for _kuruma_ travelling, an india-rubber bath, sheets, a
blanket, and last, and more important than all else, a canvas stretcher
on light poles, which can be put together in two minutes; and being 2½
feet high is supposed to be secure from fleas. The “Food Question” has
been solved by a modified rejection of all advice! I have only brought a
small supply of Liebig’s extract of meat, 4 lbs. of raisins, some
chocolate, both for eating and drinking, and some brandy in case of need.
I have my own Mexican saddle and bridle, a reasonable quantity of
clothes, including a loose wrapper for wearing in the evenings, some
candles, Mr. Brunton’s large map of Japan, volumes of the Transactions of
the English Asiatic Society, and Mr. Satow’s Anglo-Japanese Dictionary.
My travelling dress is a short costume of dust-coloured striped tweed,
with strong laced boots of unblacked leather, and a Japanese hat, shaped
like a large inverted bowl, of light bamboo plait, with a white cotton
cover, and a very light frame inside, which fits round the brow and
leaves a space of 1½ inches between the hat and the head for the free
circulation of air. It only weighs 2½ ounces, and is infinitely to be
preferred to a heavy pith helmet, and, light as it is, it protects the
head so thoroughly, that, though the sun has been unclouded all day and
the mercury at 86°, no other protection has been necessary. My money is
in bundles of 50 _yen_, and 50, 20, and 10 _sen_ notes, besides which I
have some rouleaux of copper coins. I have a bag for my passport, which
hangs to my waist. All my luggage, with the exception of my saddle,
which I use for a footstool, goes into one _kuruma_, and Ito, who is
limited to 12 lbs., takes his along with him.
I have three _kurumas_, which are to go to Nikkô, ninety miles, in three
days, without change of runners, for about eleven shillings each.
Passports usually define the route over which the foreigner is to travel,
but in this case Sir H. Parkes has obtained one which is practically
unrestricted, for it permits me to travel through all Japan north of
Tôkiyô and in Yezo without specifying any route. This precious document,
without which I should be liable to be arrested and forwarded to my
consul, is of course in Japanese, but the cover gives in English the
regulations under which it is issued. A passport must be applied for,
for reasons of “health, botanical research, or scientific investigation.”
Its bearer must not light fires in woods, attend fires on horseback,
trespass on fields, enclosures, or game-preserves, scribble on temples,
shrines, or walls, drive fast on a narrow road, or disregard notices of
“No thoroughfare.” He must “conduct himself in an orderly and
conciliating manner towards the Japanese authorities and people;” he
“must produce his passport to any officials who may demand it,” under
pain of arrest; and while in the interior “is forbidden to shoot, trade,
to conclude mercantile contracts with Japanese, or to rent houses or
rooms for a longer period than his journey requires.”
NIKKÔ, _June_ 13.—This is one of the paradises of Japan! It is a
proverbial saying, “He who has not seen Nikkô must not use the word
kek’ko” (splendid, delicious, beautiful); but of this more hereafter. My
attempt to write to you from Kasukabé failed, owing to the onslaught of
an army of fleas, which compelled me to retreat to my stretcher, and the
last two nights, for this and other reasons, writing has been out of the
question.
I left the Legation at 11 a.m. on Monday and reached Kasukabé at 5 p.m.,
the runners keeping up an easy trot the whole journey of twenty-three
miles; but the halts for smoking and eating were frequent.
These kuruma-runners wore short blue cotton drawers, girdles with tobacco
pouch and pipe attached, short blue cotton shirts with wide sleeves, and
open in front, reaching to their waists, and blue cotton handkerchiefs
knotted round their heads, except when the sun was very hot, when they
took the flat flag discs, two feet in diameter, which always hang behind
_kurumas_, and are used either in sun or rain, and tied them on their
heads. They wore straw sandals, which had to be replaced twice on the
way. Blue and white towels hung from the shafts to wipe away the sweat,
which ran profusely down the lean, brown bodies. The upper garment
always flew behind them, displaying chests and backs elaborately tattooed
with dragons and fishes. Tattooing has recently been prohibited; but it
was not only a favourite adornment, but a substitute for perishable
clothing.
Most of the men of the lower classes wear their hair in a very ugly
fashion,—the front and top of the head being shaved, the long hair from
the back and sides being drawn up and tied, then waxed, tied again, and
cut short off, the stiff queue being brought forward and laid, pointing
forwards, along the back part of the top of the head. This top-knot is
shaped much like a short clay pipe. The shaving and dressing the hair
thus require the skill of a professional barber. Formerly the hair was
worn in this way by the _samurai_, in order that the helmet might fit
comfortably, but it is now the style of the lower classes mostly and by
no means invariably.
[Picture: A Kuruma]
Blithely, at a merry trot, the coolies hurried us away from the kindly
group in the Legation porch, across the inner moat and along the inner
drive of the castle, past gateways and retaining walls of Cyclopean
masonry, across the second moat, along miles of streets of sheds and
shops, all grey, thronged with foot-passengers and _kurumas_, with
pack-horses loaded two or three feet above their backs, the arches of
their saddles red and gilded lacquer, their frontlets of red leather,
their “shoes” straw sandals, their heads tied tightly to the saddle-girth
on either side, great white cloths figured with mythical beasts in blue
hanging down loosely under their bodies; with coolies dragging heavy
loads to the guttural cry of _Hai_! _huida_! with children whose heads
were shaved in hideous patterns; and now and then, as if to point a moral
lesson in the midst of the whirling diorama, a funeral passed through the
throng, with a priest in rich robes, mumbling prayers, a covered barrel
containing the corpse, and a train of mourners in blue dresses with white
wings. Then we came to the fringe of Yedo, where the houses cease to be
continuous, but all that day there was little interval between them. All
had open fronts, so that the occupations of the inmates, the “domestic
life” in fact, were perfectly visible. Many of these houses were
road-side _chayas_, or tea-houses, and nearly all sold sweet-meats, dried
fish, pickles, _mochi_, or uncooked cakes of rice dough, dried
persimmons, rain hats, or straw shoes for man or beast. The road, though
wide enough for two carriages (of which we saw none), was not good, and
the ditches on both sides were frequently neither clean nor sweet. Must
I write it? The houses were mean, poor, shabby, often even squalid, the
smells were bad, and the people looked ugly, shabby, and poor, though all
were working at something or other.
The country is a dead level, and mainly an artificial mud flat or swamp,
in whose fertile ooze various aquatic birds were wading, and in which
hundreds of men and women were wading too, above their knees in slush;
for this plain of Yedo is mainly a great rice-field, and this is the busy
season of rice-planting; for here, in the sense in which we understand
it, they do not “cast their bread upon the waters.” There are eight or
nine leading varieties of rice grown in Japan, all of which, except an
upland species, require mud, water, and much puddling and nasty work.
Rice is the staple food and the wealth of Japan. Its revenues were
estimated in rice. Rice is grown almost wherever irrigation is possible.
The rice-fields are usually very small and of all shapes. A quarter of
an acre is a good-sized field. The rice crop planted in June is not
reaped till November, but in the meantime it needs to be “puddled” three
times, i.e. for all the people to turn into the slush, and grub out all
the weeds and tangled aquatic plants, which weave themselves from tuft to
tuft, and puddle up the mud afresh round the roots. It grows in water
till it is ripe, when the fields are dried off. An acre of the best land
produces annually about fifty-four bushels of rice, and of the worst
about thirty.
On the plain of Yedo, besides the nearly continuous villages along the
causewayed road, there are islands, as they may be called, of villages
surrounded by trees, and hundreds of pleasant oases on which wheat ready
for the sickle, onions, millet, beans, and peas, were flourishing. There
were lotus ponds too, in which the glorious lily, _Nelumbo nucifera_, is
being grown for the sacrilegious purpose of being eaten! Its splendid
classical leaves are already a foot above the water.
After running cheerily for several miles my men bowled me into a
tea-house, where they ate and smoked while I sat in the garden, which
consisted of baked mud, smooth stepping-stones, a little pond with some
goldfish, a deformed pine, and a stone lantern. Observe that foreigners
are wrong in calling the Japanese houses of entertainment
indiscriminately “tea-houses.” A tea-house or _chaya_ is a house at
which you can obtain tea and other refreshments, rooms to eat them in,
and attendance. That which to some extent answers to an hotel is a
_yadoya_, which provides sleeping accommodation and food as required.
The licenses are different. Tea-houses are of all grades, from the
three-storied erections, gay with flags and lanterns, in the great cities
and at places of popular resort, down to the road-side tea-house, as
represented in the engraving, with three or four lounges of dark-coloured
wood under its eaves, usually occupied by naked coolies in all attitudes
of easiness and repose. The floor is raised about eighteen inches above
the ground, and in these tea-houses is frequently a matted platform with
a recess called the _doma_, literally “earth-space,” in the middle, round
which runs a ledge of polished wood called the _itama_, or “board space,”
on which travellers sit while they bathe their soiled feet with the water
which is immediately brought to them; for neither with soiled feet nor in
foreign shoes must one advance one step on the matted floor. On one side
of the _doma_ is the kitchen, with its one or two charcoal fires, where
the coolies lounge on the mats and take their food and smoke, and on the
other the family pursue their avocations. In almost the smallest
tea-house there are one or two rooms at the back, but all the life and
interest are in the open front. In the small tea-houses there is only an
_irori_, a square hole in the floor, full of sand or white ash, on which
the live charcoal for cooking purposes is placed, and small racks for
food and eating utensils; but in the large ones there is a row of
charcoal stoves, and the walls are garnished up to the roof with shelves,
and the lacquer tables and lacquer and china ware used by the guests.
The large tea-houses contain the possibilities for a number of rooms
which can be extemporised at once by sliding paper panels, called
_fusuma_, along grooves in the floor and in the ceiling or cross-beams.
[Picture: Road-Side Tea-House]
When we stopped at wayside tea-houses the runners bathed their feet,
rinsed their mouths, and ate rice, pickles, salt fish, and “broth of
abominable things,” after which they smoked their tiny pipes, which give
them three whiffs for each filling. As soon as I got out at any of
these, one smiling girl brought me the _tabako-bon_, a square wood or
lacquer tray, with a china or bamboo charcoal-holder and ash-pot upon it,
and another presented me with a _zen_, a small lacquer table about six
inches high, with a tiny teapot with a hollow handle at right angles with
the spout, holding about an English tea-cupful, and two cups without
handles or saucers, with a capacity of from ten to twenty thimblefuls
each. The hot water is merely allowed to rest a minute on the
tea-leaves, and the infusion is a clear straw-coloured liquid with a
delicious aroma and flavour, grateful and refreshing at all times. If
Japanese tea “stands,” it acquires a coarse bitterness and an unwholesome
astringency. Milk and sugar are not used. A clean-looking wooden or
lacquer pail with a lid is kept in all tea-houses, and though hot rice,
except to order, is only ready three times daily, the pail always
contains cold rice, and the coolies heat it by pouring hot tea over it.
As you eat, a tea-house girl, with this pail beside her, squats on the
floor in front of you, and fills your rice bowl till you say, “Hold,
enough!” On this road it is expected that you leave three or four _sen_
on the tea-tray for a rest of an hour or two and tea.
All day we travelled through rice swamps, along a much-frequented road,
as far as Kasukabé, a good-sized but miserable-looking town, with its
main street like one of the poorest streets in Tôkiyô, and halted for the
night at a large _yadoya_, with downstairs and upstairs rooms, crowds of
travellers, and many evil smells. On entering, the house-master or
landlord, the _teishi_, folded his hands and prostrated himself, touching
the floor with his forehead three times. It is a large, rambling old
house, and fully thirty servants were bustling about in the _daidokoro_,
or great open kitchen. I took a room upstairs (i.e. up a steep
step-ladder of dark, polished wood), with a balcony under the deep eaves.
The front of the house upstairs was one long room with only sides and a
front, but it was immediately divided into four by drawing sliding
screens or panels, covered with opaque wall papers, into their proper
grooves. A back was also improvised, but this was formed of frames with
panes of translucent paper, like our tissue paper, with sundry holes and
rents. This being done, I found myself the possessor of a room about
sixteen feet square, without hook, shelf, rail, or anything on which to
put anything—nothing, in short, but a matted floor. Do not be misled by
the use of this word matting. Japanese house-mats, _tatami_, are as
neat, refined, and soft a covering for the floor as the finest Axminster
carpet. They are 5 feet 9 inches long, 3 feet broad, and 2½ inches
thick. The frame is solidly made of coarse straw, and this is covered
with very fine woven matting, as nearly white as possible, and each mat
is usually bound with dark blue cloth. Temples and rooms are measured by
the number of mats they contain, and rooms must be built for the mats, as
they are never cut to the rooms. They are always level with the polished
grooves or ledges which surround the floor. They are soft and elastic,
and the finer qualities are very beautiful. They are as expensive as the
best Brussels carpet, and the Japanese take great pride in them, and are
much aggrieved by the way in which some thoughtless foreigners stamp over
them with dirty boots. Unfortunately they harbour myriads of fleas.
Outside my room an open balcony with many similiar rooms ran round a
forlorn aggregate of dilapidated shingle roofs and water-butts. These
rooms were all full. Ito asked me for instructions once for all, put up
my stretcher under a large mosquito net of coarse green canvas with a
fusty smell, filled my bath, brought me some tea, rice, and eggs, took my
passport to be copied by the house-master, and departed, I know not
whither. I tried to write to you, but fleas and mosquitoes prevented it,
and besides, the _fusuma_ were frequently noiselessly drawn apart, and
several pairs of dark, elongated eyes surveyed me through the cracks; for
there were two Japanese families in the room to the right, and five men
in that to the left. I closed the sliding windows, with translucent
paper for window panes, called _shôji_, and went to bed, but the lack of
privacy was fearful, and I have not yet sufficient trust in my
fellow-creatures to be comfortable without locks, walls, or doors! Eyes
were constantly applied to the sides of the room, a girl twice drew aside
the _shôji_ between it and the corridor; a man, who I afterwards found
was a blind man, offering his services as a shampooer, came in and said
some (of course) unintelligible words, and the new noises were perfectly
bewildering. On one side a man recited Buddhist prayers in a high key;
on the other a girl was twanging a _samisen_, a species of guitar; the
house was full of talking and splashing, drums and tom-toms were beaten
outside; there were street cries innumerable, and the whistling of the
blind shampooers, and the resonant clap of the fire-watchman who
perambulates all Japanese villages, and beats two pieces of wood together
in token of his vigilance, were intolerable. It was a life of which I
knew nothing, and the mystery was more alarming than attractive; my money
was lying about, and nothing seemed easier than to slide a hand through
the _fusuma_ and appropriate it. Ito told me that the well was badly
contaminated, the odours were fearful; illness was to be feared as well
as robbery! So unreasonably I reasoned! {41}
My bed is merely a piece of canvas nailed to two wooden bars. When I lay
down the canvas burst away from the lower row of nails with a series of
cracks, and sank gradually till I found myself lying on a sharp-edged
pole which connects the two pair of trestles, and the helpless victim of
fleas and mosquitoes. I lay for three hours, not daring to stir lest I
should bring the canvas altogether down, becoming more and more nervous
every moment, and then Ito called outside the _shôji_, “It would be best,
Miss Bird, that I should see you.” What horror can this be? I thought,
and was not reassured when he added, “Here’s a messenger from the
Legation and two policemen want to speak to you.” On arriving I had done
the correct thing in giving the house-master my passport, which,
according to law, he had copied into his book, and had sent a duplicate
copy to the police-station, and this intrusion near midnight was as
unaccountable as it was unwarrantable. Nevertheless the appearance of
the two mannikins in European uniforms, with the familiar batons and
bull’s-eye lanterns, and with manners which were respectful without being
deferential, gave me immediate relief. I should have welcomed twenty of
their species, for their presence assured me of the fact that I am known
and registered, and that a Government which, for special reasons, is
anxious to impress foreigners with its power and omniscience is
responsible for my safety.
While they spelt through my passport by their dim lantern I opened the
Yedo parcel, and found that it contained a tin of lemon sugar, a most
kind note from Sir Harry Parkes, and a packet of letters from you. While
I was attempting to open the letters, Ito, the policemen, and the lantern
glided out of my room, and I lay uneasily till daylight, with the letters
and telegram, for which I had been yearning for six weeks, on my bed
unopened!
Already I can laugh at my fears and misfortunes, as I hope you will. A
traveller must buy his own experience, and success or failure depends
mainly on personal idiosyncrasies. Many matters will be remedied by
experience as I go on, and I shall acquire the habit of feeling secure;
but lack of privacy, bad smells, and the torments of fleas and mosquitoes
are, I fear, irremediable evils.
I. L. B.
[Picture: Sir Harry’s Messenger]
LETTER VI.—(_Continued_.)
A Coolie falls ill—Peasant Costume—Varieties in Threshing—The Tochigi
_yadoya_—Farming Villages—A Beautiful Region—An _In Memoriam_ Avenue—A
Doll’s Street—Nikkô—The Journey’s End—Coolie Kindliness.
BY seven the next morning the rice was eaten, the room as bare as if it
had never been occupied, the bill of 80 _sen_ paid, the house-master and
servants with many _sayo naras_, or farewells, had prostrated themselves,
and we were away in the _kurumas_ at a rapid trot. At the first halt my
runner, a kindly, good-natured creature, but absolutely hideous, was
seized with pain and vomiting, owing, he said, to drinking the bad water
at Kasukabé, and was left behind. He pleased me much by the honest
independent way in which he provided a substitute, strictly adhering to
his bargain, and never asking for a gratuity on account of his illness.
He had been so kind and helpful that I felt quite sad at leaving him
there ill,—only a coolie, to be sure, only an atom among the 34,000,000
of the Empire, but not less precious to our Father in heaven than any
other. It was a brilliant day, with the mercury 86° in the shade, but
the heat was not oppressive. At noon we reached the Toné, and I rode on
a coolie’s tattooed shoulders through the shallow part, and then, with
the _kurumas_, some ill-disposed pack-horses, and a number of travellers,
crossed in a flat-bottomed boat. The boatmen, travellers, and
cultivators, were nearly or altogether without clothes, but the richer
farmers worked in the fields in curved bamboo hats as large as umbrellas,
_kimonos_ with large sleeves not girt up, and large fans attached to
their girdles. Many of the travellers whom we met were without hats, but
shielded the front of the head by holding a fan between it and the sun.
Probably the inconvenience of the national costume for working men partly
accounts for the general practice of getting rid of it. It is such a
hindrance, even in walking, that most pedestrians have “their loins
girded up” by taking the middle of the hem at the bottom of the _kimono_
and tucking it under the girdle. This, in the case of many, shows woven,
tight-fitting, elastic, white cotton pantaloons, reaching to the ankles.
After ferrying another river at a village from which a steamer plies to
Tôkiyô, the country became much more pleasing, the rice-fields fewer, the
trees, houses, and barns larger, and, in the distance, high hills loomed
faintly through the haze. Much of the wheat, of which they don’t make
bread, but vermicelli, is already being carried. You see wheat stacks,
ten feet high, moving slowly, and while you are wondering, you become
aware of four feet moving below them; for all the crop is carried on
horses’ if not on human backs. I went to see several
threshing-floors,—clean, open spaces outside barns,—where the grain is
laid on mats and threshed by two or four men with heavy revolving flails.
Another method is for women to beat out the grain on racks of split
bamboo laid lengthwise; and I saw yet a third practised both in the
fields and barn-yards, in which women pass handfuls of stalks backwards
through a sort of carding instrument with sharp iron teeth placed in a
slanting position, which cuts off the ears, leaving the stalk unbruised.
This is probably “the sharp threshing instrument having teeth” mentioned
by Isaiah. The ears are then rubbed between the hands. In this region
the wheat was winnowed altogether by hand, and after the wind had driven
the chaff away, the grain was laid out on mats to dry. Sickles are not
used, but the reaper takes a handful of stalks and cuts them off close to
the ground with a short, straight knife, fixed at a right angle with the
handle. The wheat is sown in rows with wide spaces between them, which
are utilised for beans and other crops, and no sooner is it removed than
_daikon_ (_Raphanus sativus_), cucumbers, or some other vegetable, takes
its place, as the land under careful tillage and copious manuring bears
two, and even three, crops, in the year. The soil is trenched for wheat
as for all crops except rice, not a weed is to be seen, and the whole
country looks like a well-kept garden. The barns in this district are
very handsome, and many of their grand roofs have that concave sweep with
which we are familiar in the pagoda. The eaves are often eight feet
deep, and the thatch three feet thick. Several of the farm-yards have
handsome gateways like the ancient “lychgates” of some of our English
churchyards much magnified. As animals are not used for milk, draught,
or food, and there are no pasture lands, both the country and the
farm-yards have a singular silence and an inanimate look; a mean-looking
dog and a few fowls being the only representatives of domestic animal
life. I long for the lowing of cattle and the bleating of sheep.
At six we reached Tochigi, a large town, formerly the castle town of a
_daimiyô_. Its special manufacture is rope of many kinds, a great deal
of hemp being grown in the neighbourhood. Many of the roofs are tiled,
and the town has a more solid and handsome appearance than those that we
had previously passed through. But from Kasukabé to Tochigi was from bad
to worse. I nearly abandoned Japanese travelling altogether, and, if
last night had not been a great improvement, I think I should have gone
ignominiously back to Tôkiyô. The _yadoya_ was a very large one, and, as
sixty guests had arrived before me, there was no choice of accommodation,
and I had to be contented with a room enclosed on all sides not by
_fusuma_ but _shôji_, and with barely room for my bed, bath, and chair,
under a fusty green mosquito net which was a perfect nest of fleas. One
side of the room was against a much-frequented passage, and another
opened on a small yard upon which three opposite rooms also opened,
crowded with some not very sober or decorous travellers. The _shôji_
were full of holes, and often at each hole I saw a human eye. Privacy
was a luxury not even to be recalled. Besides the constant application
of eyes to the _shôji_, the servants, who were very noisy and rough,
looked into my room constantly without any pretext; the host, a bright,
pleasant-looking man, did the same; jugglers, musicians, blind
shampooers, and singing girls, all pushed the screens aside; and I began
to think that Mr. Campbell was right, and that a lady should not travel
alone in Japan. Ito, who had the room next to mine, suggested that
robbery was quite likely, and asked to be allowed to take charge of my
money, but did not decamp with it during the night! I lay down on my
precarious stretcher before eight, but as the night advanced the din of
the house increased till it became truly diabolical, and never ceased
till after one. Drums, tom-toms, and cymbals were beaten; _kotos_ and
_samisens_ screeched and twanged; _geishas_ (professional women with the
accomplishments of dancing, singing, and playing) danced,—accompanied by
songs whose jerking discords were most laughable; story-tellers recited
tales in a high key, and the running about and splashing close to my room
never ceased. Late at night my precarious _shôji_ were accidentally
thrown down, revealing a scene of great hilarity, in which a number of
people were bathing and throwing water over each other.
The noise of departures began at daylight, and I was glad to leave at
seven. Before you go the _fusuma_ are slidden back, and what was your
room becomes part of a great, open, matted space—an arrangement which
effectually prevents fustiness. Though the road was up a slight incline,
and the men were too tired to trot, we made thirty miles in nine hours.
The kindliness and courtesy of the coolies to me and to each other was a
constant source of pleasure to me. It is most amusing to see the
elaborate politeness of the greetings of men clothed only in hats and
_maros_. The hat is invariably removed when they speak to each other,
and three profound bows are never omitted.
Soon after leaving the _yadoya_ we passed through a wide street with the
largest and handsomest houses I have yet seen on both sides. They were
all open in front; their highly-polished floors and passages looked like
still water; the _kakemonos_, or wall-pictures, on their side-walls were
extremely beautiful; and their mats were very fine and white. There were
large gardens at the back, with fountains and flowers, and streams,
crossed by light stone bridges, sometimes flowed through the houses.
From the signs I supposed them to be _yadoyas_, but on asking Ito why we
had not put up at one of them, he replied that they were all
_kashitsukeya_, or tea-houses of disreputable character—a very sad fact.
{46}
As we journeyed the country became prettier and prettier, rolling up to
abrupt wooded hills with mountains in the clouds behind. The farming
villages are comfortable and embowered in wood, and the richer farmers
seclude their dwellings by closely-clipped hedges, or rather screens, two
feet wide, and often twenty feet high. Tea grew near every house, and
its leaves were being gathered and dried on mats. Signs of silk culture
began to appear in shrubberies of mulberry trees, and white and sulphur
yellow cocoons were lying in the sun along the road in flat trays.
Numbers of women sat in the fronts of the houses weaving cotton cloth
fifteen inches wide, and cotton yarn, mostly imported from England, was
being dyed in all the villages—the dye used being a native indigo, the
_Polygonum tinctorium_. Old women were spinning, and young and old
usually pursued their avocations with wise-looking babies tucked into the
backs of their dresses, and peering cunningly over their shoulders. Even
little girls of seven and eight were playing at children’s games with
babies on their backs, and those who were too small to carry real ones
had big dolls strapped on in similar fashion. Innumerable villages,
crowded houses, and babies in all, give one the impression of a very
populous country.
As the day wore on in its brightness and glory the pictures became more
varied and beautiful. Great snow-slashed mountains looked over the
foothills, on whose steep sides the dark blue green of pine and
cryptomeria was lighted up by the spring tints of deciduous trees. There
were groves of cryptomeria on small hills crowned by Shintô shrines,
approached by grand flights of stone stairs. The red gold of the harvest
fields contrasted with the fresh green and exquisite leafage of the hemp;
rose and white azaleas lighted up the copse-woods; and when the broad
road passed into the colossal avenue of cryptomeria which overshadows the
way to the sacred shrines of Nikkô, and tremulous sunbeams and shadows
flecked the grass, I felt that Japan was beautiful, and that the mud
flats of Yedo were only an ugly dream!
Two roads lead to Nikkô. I avoided the one usually taken by Utsunomiya,
and by doing so lost the most magnificent of the two avenues, which
extends for nearly fifty miles along the great highway called the
Oshiu-kaido. Along the Reiheishi-kaido, the road by which I came, it
extends for thirty miles, and the two, broken frequently by villages,
converge upon the village of Imaichi, eight miles from Nikkô, where they
unite, and only terminate at the entrance of the town. They are said to
have been planted as an offering to the buried Shôguns by a man who was
too poor to place a bronze lantern at their shrines. A grander monument
could not have been devised, and they are probably the grandest things of
their kind in the world. The avenue of the Reiheishi-kaido is a good
carriage road with sloping banks eight feet high, covered with grass and
ferns. At the top of these are the cryptomeria, then two grassy walks,
and between these and the cultivation a screen of saplings and brushwood.
A great many of the trees become two at four feet from the ground. Many
of the stems are twenty-seven feet in girth; they do not diminish or
branch till they have reached a height of from 50 to 60 feet, and the
appearance of altitude is aided by the longitudinal splitting of the
reddish coloured bark into strips about two inches wide. The trees are
pyramidal, and at a little distance resemble cedars. There is a deep
solemnity about this glorious avenue with its broad shade and dancing
lights, and the rare glimpses of high mountains. Instinct alone would
tell one that it leads to something which must be grand and beautiful
like itself. It is broken occasionally by small villages with big bells
suspended between double poles; by wayside shrines with offerings of rags
and flowers; by stone effigies of Buddha and his disciples, mostly
defaced or overthrown, all wearing the same expression of beatified rest
and indifference to mundane affairs; and by temples of lacquered wood
falling to decay, whose bells sent their surpassingly sweet tones far on
the evening air.
Imaichi, where the two stately aisles unite, is a long uphill street,
with a clear mountain stream enclosed in a stone channel, and crossed by
hewn stone slabs running down the middle. In a room built over the
stream, and commanding a view up and down the street, two policemen sat
writing. It looks a dull place without much traffic, as if oppressed by
the stateliness of the avenues below it and the shrines above it, but it
has a quiet _yadoya_, where I had a good night’s rest, although my canvas
bed was nearly on the ground. We left early this morning in drizzling
rain, and went straight up hill under the cryptomeria for eight miles.
The vegetation is as profuse as one would expect in so damp and hot a
summer climate, and from the prodigious rainfall of the mountains; every
stone is covered with moss, and the road-sides are green with the
_Protococcus viridis_ and several species of _Marchantia_. We were among
the foothills of the Nantaizan mountains at a height of 1000 feet, abrupt
in their forms, wooded to their summits, and noisy with the dash and
tumble of a thousand streams. The long street of Hachiishi, with its
steep-roofed, deep-eaved houses, its warm colouring, and its steep
roadway with steps at intervals, has a sort of Swiss picturesqueness as
you enter it, as you must, on foot, while your _kurumas_ are hauled and
lifted up the steps; nor is the resemblance given by steep roofs, pines,
and mountains patched with coniferæ, altogether lost as you ascend the
steep street, and see wood carvings and quaint baskets of wood and grass
offered everywhere for sale. It is a truly dull, quaint street, and the
people come out to stare at a foreigner as if foreigners had not become
common events since 1870, when Sir H. and Lady Parkes, the first
Europeans who were permitted to visit Nikkô, took up their abode in the
Imperial Hombô. It is a doll’s street with small low houses, so finely
matted, so exquisitely clean, so finically neat, so light and delicate,
that even when I entered them without my boots I felt like a “bull in a
china shop,” as if my mere weight must smash through and destroy. The
street is so painfully clean that I should no more think of walking over
it in muddy boots than over a drawing-room carpet. It has a silent
mountain look, and most of its shops sell specialties, lacquer work,
boxes of sweetmeats made of black beans and sugar, all sorts of boxes,
trays, cups, and stands, made of plain, polished wood, and more grotesque
articles made from the roots of trees.
It was not part of my plan to stay at the beautiful _yadoya_ which
receives foreigners in Hachiishi, and I sent Ito half a mile farther with
a note in Japanese to the owner of the house where I now am, while I sat
on a rocky eminence at the top of the street, unmolested by anybody,
looking over to the solemn groves upon the mountains, where the two
greatest of the Shôguns “sleep in glory.” Below, the rushing Daiyagawa,
swollen by the night’s rain, thundered through a narrow gorge. Beyond,
colossal flights of stone stairs stretch mysteriously away among
cryptomeria groves, above which tower the Nikkôsan mountains. Just where
the torrent finds its impetuosity checked by two stone walls, it is
spanned by a bridge, 84 feet long by 18 wide, of dull red lacquer,
resting on two stone piers on either side, connected by two transverse
stone beams. A welcome bit of colour it is amidst the masses of dark
greens and soft greys, though there is nothing imposing in its structure,
and its interest consists in being the Mihashi, or Sacred Bridge, built
in 1636, formerly open only to the Shôguns, the envoy of the Mikado, and
to pilgrims twice a year. Both its gates are locked. Grand and lonely
Nikkô looks, the home of rain and mist. _Kuruma_ roads end here, and if
you wish to go any farther, you must either walk, ride, or be carried.
Ito was long away, and the coolies kept addressing me in Japanese, which
made me feel helpless and solitary, and eventually they shouldered my
baggage, and, descending a flight of steps, we crossed the river by the
secular bridge, and shortly met my host, Kanaya, a very bright,
pleasant-looking man, who bowed nearly to the earth. Terraced roads in
every direction lead through cryptomerias to the shrines; and this one
passes many a stately enclosure, but leads away from the temples, and
though it is the highway to Chiuzenjii, a place of popular pilgrimage,
Yumoto, a place of popular resort, and several other villages, it is very
rugged, and, having flights of stone steps at intervals, is only
practicable for horses and pedestrians.
At the house, with the appearance of which I was at once delighted, I
regretfully parted with my coolies, who had served me kindly and
faithfully. They had paid me many little attentions, such as always
beating the dust out of my dress, inflating my air-pillow, and bringing
me flowers, and were always grateful when I walked up hills; and just
now, after going for a frolic to the mountains, they called to wish me
good-bye, bringing branches of azaleas.
I. L. B.
LETTER VII.
A Japanese Idyll—Musical Stillness—My Rooms—Floral Decorations—Kanaya and
his Household—Table Equipments.
KANAYA’S, NIKKÔ, _June_ 15.
I DON’T know what to write about my house. It is a Japanese idyll; there
is nothing within or without which does not please the eye, and, after
the din of _yadoyas_, its silence, musical with the dash of waters and
the twitter of birds, is truly refreshing. It is a simple but irregular
two-storied pavilion, standing on a stone-faced terrace approached by a
flight of stone steps. The garden is well laid out, and, as peonies,
irises, and azaleas are now in blossom, it is very bright. The mountain,
with its lower part covered with red azaleas, rises just behind, and a
stream which tumbles down it supplies the house with water, both cold and
pure, and another, after forming a miniature cascade, passes under the
house and through a fish-pond with rocky islets into the river below.
The grey village of Irimichi lies on the other side of the road, shut in
with the rushing Daiya, and beyond it are high, broken hills, richly
wooded, and slashed with ravines and waterfalls.
Kanaya’s sister, a very sweet, refined-looking woman, met me at the door
and divested me of my boots. The two verandahs are highly polished, so
are the entrance and the stairs which lead to my room, and the mats are
so fine and white that I almost fear to walk over them, even in my
stockings. The polished stairs lead to a highly polished, broad verandah
with a beautiful view, from which you enter one large room, which, being
too large, was at once made into two. Four highly polished steps lead
from this into an exquisite room at the back, which Ito occupies, and
another polished staircase into the bath-house and garden. The whole
front of my room is composed of _shôji_, which slide back during the day.
The ceiling is of light wood crossed by bars of dark wood, and the posts
which support it are of dark polished wood. The panels are of wrinkled
sky-blue paper splashed with gold. At one end are two alcoves with
floors of polished wood, called _tokonoma_. In one hangs a _kakemono_,
or wall-picture, a painting of a blossoming branch of the cherry on white
silk—a perfect piece of art, which in itself fills the room with
freshness and beauty. The artist who painted it painted nothing but
cherry blossoms, and fell in the rebellion. On a shelf in the other
alcove is a very valuable cabinet with sliding doors, on which peonies
are painted on a gold ground. A single spray of rose azalea in a pure
white vase hanging on one of the polished posts, and a single iris in
another, are the only decorations. The mats are very fine and white, but
the only furniture is a folding screen with some suggestions of landscape
in Indian ink. I almost wish that the rooms were a little less
exquisite, for I am in constant dread of spilling the ink, indenting the
mats, or tearing the paper windows. Downstairs there is a room equally
beautiful, and a large space where all the domestic avocations are
carried on. There is a _kura_, or fire-proof storehouse, with a tiled
roof, on the right of the house.
[Picture: Kanaya’s House]
Kanaya leads the discords at the Shintô shrines; but his duties are few,
and he is chiefly occupied in perpetually embellishing his house and
garden. His mother, a venerable old lady, and his sister, the sweetest
and most graceful Japanese woman but one that I have seen, live with him.
She moves about the house like a floating fairy, and her voice has music
in its tones. A half-witted servant-man and the sister’s boy and girl
complete the family. Kanaya is the chief man in the village, and is very
intelligent and apparently well educated. He has divorced his wife, and
his sister has practically divorced her husband. Of late, to help his
income, he has let these charming rooms to foreigners who have brought
letters to him, and he is very anxious to meet their views, while his
good taste leads him to avoid Europeanising his beautiful home.
Supper came up on a _zen_, or small table six inches high, of old gold
lacquer, with the rice in a gold lacquer bowl, and the teapot and cup
were fine Kaga porcelain. For my two rooms, with rice and tea, I pay 2s.
a day. Ito forages for me, and can occasionally get chickens at 10d.
each, and a dish of trout for 6d., and eggs are always to be had for 1d.
each. It is extremely interesting to live in a private house and to see
the externalities, at least, of domestic life in a Japanese middle-class
home.
I. L. B.
LETTER VIII.
The Beauties of Nikkô—The Burial of Iyéyasu—The Approach to the Great
Shrines—The Yomei Gate—Gorgeous Decorations—Simplicity of the
Mausoleum—The Shrine of Iyémitsu—Religious Art of Japan and India—An
Earthquake—Beauties of Wood-carving.
KANAYA’S, NIKKÔ, _June_ 21.
I HAVE been at Nikkô for nine days, and am therefore entitled to use the
word “_Kek’ko_!”
Nikkô means “sunny splendour,” and its beauties are celebrated in poetry
and art all over Japan. Mountains for a great part of the year clothed
or patched with snow, piled in great ranges round Nantaizan, their
monarch, worshipped as a god; forests of magnificent timber; ravines and
passes scarcely explored; dark green lakes sleeping in endless serenity;
the deep abyss of Kêgon, into which the waters of Chiuzenjii plunge from
a height of 250 feet; the bright beauty of the falls of Kiri Furi, the
loveliness of the gardens of Dainichido; the sombre grandeur of the
passes through which the Daiyagawa forces its way from the upper regions;
a gorgeousness of azaleas and magnolias; and a luxuriousness of
vegetation perhaps unequalled in Japan, are only a few of the attractions
which surround the shrines of the two greatest Shôguns.
To a glorious resting-place on the hill-slope of Hotoké Iwa, sacred since
767, when a Buddhist saint, called Shôdô Shônin, visited it, and declared
the old Shintô deity of the mountain to be only a manifestation of
Buddha, Hidetada, the second Shôgun of the Tokugawa dynasty, conveyed the
corpse of his father, Iyéyasu, in 1617. It was a splendid burial. An
Imperial envoy, a priest of the Mikado’s family, court nobles from
Kivôto, and hundreds of _daimiyôs_, captains, and nobles of inferior
rank, took part in the ceremony. An army of priests in rich robes during
three days intoned a sacred classic 10,000 times, and Iyéyasu was deified
by a decree of the Mikado under a name signifying “light of the east,
great incarnation of Buddha.” The less important Shôguns of the line of
Tokugawa are buried in Uyeno and Shiba, in Yedo. Since the restoration,
and what may be called the disestablishment of Buddhism, the shrine of
Iyéyasu has been shorn of all its glories of ritual and its magnificent
Buddhist paraphernalia; the 200 priests who gave it splendour are
scattered, and six Shintô priests alternately attend upon it as much for
the purpose of selling tickets of admission as for any priestly duties.
All roads, bridges, and avenues here lead to these shrines, but the grand
approach is by the Red Bridge, and up a broad road with steps at
intervals and stone-faced embankments at each side, on the top of which
are belts of cryptomeria. At the summit of this ascent is a fine granite
_torii_, 27 feet 6 inches high, with columns 3 feet 6 inches in diameter,
offered by the _daimiyô_ of Chikuzen in 1618 from his own quarries.
After this come 118 magnificent bronze lanterns on massive stone
pedestals, each of which is inscribed with the posthumous title of
Iyéyasu, the name of the giver, and a legend of the offering—all the
gifts of _daimiyô_—a holy water cistern made of a solid block of granite,
and covered by a roof resting on twenty square granite pillars, and a
bronze bell, lantern, and candelabra of marvellous workmanship, offered
by the kings of Corea and Liukiu. On the left is a five-storied pagoda,
104 feet high, richly carved in wood and as richly gilded and painted.
The signs of the zodiac run round the lower story.
The grand entrance gate is at the top of a handsome flight of steps forty
yards from the _torii_. A looped white curtain with the Mikado’s crest
in black, hangs partially over the gateway, in which, beautiful as it is,
one does not care to linger, to examine the gilded _amainu_ in niches, or
the spirited carvings of tigers under the eaves, for the view of the
first court overwhelms one by its magnificence and beauty. The whole
style of the buildings, the arrangements, the art of every kind, the
thought which inspires the whole, are exclusively Japanese, and the
glimpse from the _Ni-ô_ gate is a revelation of a previously undreamed-of
beauty, both in form and colour.
Round the neatly pebbled court, which is enclosed by a bright red timber
wall, are three gorgeous buildings, which contain the treasures of the
temple, a sumptuous stable for the three sacred Albino horses, which are
kept for the use of the god, a magnificent granite cistern of holy water,
fed from the Sômendaki cascade, and a highly decorated building, in which
a complete collection of Buddhist Scriptures is deposited. From this a
flight of steps leads into a smaller court containing a bell-tower “of
marvellous workmanship and ornamentation,” a drum-tower, hardly less
beautiful, a shrine, the candelabra, bell, and lantern mentioned before,
and some very grand bronze lanterns.
From this court another flight of steps ascends to the Yomei gate, whose
splendour I contemplated day after day with increasing astonishment. The
white columns which support it have capitals formed of great red-throated
heads of the mythical _Kirin_. Above the architrave is a projecting
balcony which runs all round the gateway with a railing carried by
dragons’ heads. In the centre two white dragons fight eternally.
Underneath, in high relief, there are groups of children playing, then a
network of richly painted beams, and seven groups of Chinese sages. The
high roof is supported by gilded dragons’ heads with crimson throats. In
the interior of the gateway there are side-niches painted white, which
are lined with gracefully designed arabesques founded on the _botan_ or
peony. A piazza, whose outer walls of twenty-one compartments are
enriched with magnificent carvings of birds, flowers, and trees, runs
right and left, and encloses on three of its sides another court, the
fourth side of which is a terminal stone wall built against the side of
the hill. On the right are two decorated buildings, one of which
contains a stage for the performance of the sacred dances, and the other
an altar for the burning of cedar wood incense. On the left is a
building for the reception of the three sacred cars which were used
during festivals. To pass from court to court is to pass from splendour
to splendour; one is almost glad to feel that this is the last, and that
the strain on one’s capacity for admiration is nearly over.
In the middle is the sacred enclosure, formed of gilded trellis-work with
painted borders above and below, forming a square of which each side
measures 150 feet, and which contains the _haiden_ or chapel. Underneath
the trellis work are groups of birds, with backgrounds of grass, very
boldly carved in wood and richly gilded and painted. From the imposing
entrance through a double avenue of cryptomeria, among courts, gates,
temples, shrines, pagodas, colossal bells of bronze, and lanterns inlaid
with gold, you pass through this final court bewildered by magnificence,
through golden gates, into the dimness of a golden temple, and there
is—simply a black lacquer table with a circular metal mirror upon it.
Within is a hall finely matted, 42 feet wide by 27 from front to back,
with lofty apartments on each side, one for the Shôgun and the other “for
his Holiness the Abbot.” Both, of course, are empty. The roof of the
hall is panelled and richly frescoed. The Shôgun’s room contains some
very fine _fusuma_, on which _kirin_ (fabulous monsters) are depicted on
a dead gold ground, and four oak panels, 8 feet by 6, finely carved, with
the phoenix in low relief variously treated. In the Abbot’s room there
are similar panels adorned with hawks spiritedly executed. The only
ecclesiastical ornament among the dim splendours of the chapel is the
plain gold _gohei_. Steps at the back lead into a chapel paved with
stone, with a fine panelled ceiling representing dragons on a dark blue
ground. Beyond this some gilded doors lead into the principal chapel,
containing four rooms which are not accessible; but if they correspond
with the outside, which is of highly polished black lacquer relieved by
gold, they must be severely magnificent.
But not in any one of these gorgeous shrines did Iyéyasu decree that his
dust should rest. Re-entering the last court, it is necessary to leave
the enclosures altogether by passing through a covered gateway in the
eastern piazza into a stone gallery, green with mosses and hepaticæ.
Within, wealth and art have created a fairyland of gold and colour;
without, Nature, at her stateliest, has surrounded the great Shôgun’s
tomb with a pomp of mournful splendour. A staircase of 240 stone steps
leads to the top of the hill, where, above and behind all the stateliness
of the shrines raised in his honour, the dust of Iyéyasu sleeps in an
unadorned but Cyclopean tomb of stone and bronze, surmounted by a bronze
urn. In front is a stone table decorated with a bronze incense-burner, a
vase with lotus blossoms and leaves in brass, and a bronze stork bearing
a bronze candlestick in its mouth. A lofty stone wall, surmounted by a
balustrade, surrounds the simple but stately enclosure, and cryptomeria
of large size growing up the back of the hill create perpetual twilight
round it. Slant rays of sunshine alone pass through them, no flower
blooms or bird sings, only silence and mournfulness surround the grave of
the ablest and greatest man that Japan has produced.
Impressed as I had been with the glorious workmanship in wood, bronze,
and lacquer, I scarcely admired less the masonry of the vast retaining
walls, the stone gallery, the staircase and its balustrade, all put
together without mortar or cement, and so accurately fitted that the
joints are scarcely affected by the rain, damp, and aggressive vegetation
of 260 years. The steps of the staircase are fine monoliths, and the
coping at the side, the massive balustrade, and the heavy rail at the
top, are cut out of solid blocks of stone from 10 to 18 feet in length.
Nor is the workmanship of the great granite cistern for holy water less
remarkable. It is so carefully adjusted on its bed that the water
brought from a neighbouring cascade rises and pours over each edge in
such carefully equalised columns that, as Mr. Satow says, “it seems to be
a solid block of water rather than a piece of stone.”
The temples of Iyémitsu are close to those of Iyéyasu, and though
somewhat less magnificent are even more bewildering, as they are still in
Buddhist hands, and are crowded with the gods of the Buddhist Pantheon
and the splendid paraphernalia of Buddhist worship, in striking contrast
to the simplicity of the lonely Shintô mirror in the midst of the blaze
of gold and colour. In the grand entrance gate are gigantic _Ni-ô_, the
Buddhist Gog and Magog, vermilion coloured, and with draperies painted in
imitation of flowered silk. A second pair, painted red and green,
removed from Iyémitsu’s temple, are in niches within the gate. A flight
of steps leads to another gate, in whose gorgeous niches stand hideous
monsters, in human form, representing the gods of wind and thunder. Wind
has crystal eyes and a half-jolly, half-demoniacal expression. He is
painted green, and carries a wind-bag on his back, a long sack tied at
each end, with the ends brought over his shoulders and held in his hands.
The god of thunder is painted red, with purple hair on end, and stands on
clouds holding thunderbolts in his hand. More steps, and another gate
containing the Tennô, or gods of the four quarters, boldly carved and in
strong action, with long eye-teeth, and at last the principal temple is
reached. An old priest who took me over it on my first visit, on passing
the gods of wind and thunder said, “We used to believe in these things,
but we don’t now,” and his manner in speaking of the other deities was
rather contemptuous. He requested me, however, to take off my hat as
well as my shoes at the door of the temple. Within there was a gorgeous
shrine, and when an acolyte drew aside the curtain of cloth of gold the
interior was equally imposing, containing Buddha and two other figures of
gilded brass, seated cross-legged on lotus-flowers, with rows of petals
several times repeated, and with that look of eternal repose on their
faces which is reproduced in the commonest road-side images. In front of
the shrine several candles were burning, the offerings of some people who
were having prayers said for them, and the whole was lighted by two lamps
burning low. On a step of the altar a much-contorted devil was crouching
uneasily, for he was subjugated and, by a grim irony, made to carry a
massive incense-burner on his shoulders. In this temple there were more
than a hundred idols standing in rows, many of them life-size, some of
them trampling devils under their feet, but all hideous, partly from the
bright greens, vermilions, and blues with which they are painted.
Remarkable muscular development characterises all, and the figures or
faces are all in vigorous action of some kind, generally grossly
exaggerated.
While we were crossing the court there were two shocks of earthquake; all
the golden wind-bells which fringe the roofs rang softly, and a number of
priests ran into the temple and beat various kinds of drums for the space
of half an hour. Iyémitsu’s tomb is reached by flights of steps on the
right of the chapel. It is in the same style as Iyéyasu’s, but the gates
in front are of bronze, and are inscribed with large Sanskrit characters
in bright brass. One of the most beautiful of the many views is from the
uppermost gate of the temple. The sun shone on my second visit and
brightened the spring tints of the trees on Hotoké Iwa, which was
vignetted by a frame of dark cryptomeria.
Some of the buildings are roofed with sheet-copper, but most of them are
tiled. Tiling, however, has been raised almost to the dignity of a fine
art in Japan. The tiles themselves are a coppery grey, with a suggestion
of metallic lustre about it. They are slightly concave, and the joints
are covered by others quite convex, which come down like massive tubes
from the ridge pole, and terminate at the eaves with discs on which the
Tokugawa badge is emblazoned in gold, as it is everywhere on these
shrines where it would not be quite out of keeping. The roofs are so
massive that they require all the strength of the heavy carved timbers
below, and, like all else, they gleam with gold, or that which simulates
it.
The shrines are the most wonderful work of their kind in Japan. In their
stately setting of cryptomeria, few of which are less than 20 feet in
girth at 3 feet from the ground, they take one prisoner by their beauty,
in defiance of all rules of western art, and compel one to acknowledge
the beauty of forms and combinations of colour hitherto unknown, and that
lacquered wood is capable of lending itself to the expression of a very
high idea in art. Gold has been used in profusion, and black, dull red,
and white, with a breadth and lavishness quite unique. The bronze
fret-work alone is a study, and the wood-carving needs weeks of earnest
work for the mastery of its ideas and details. One screen or railing
only has sixty panels, each 4 feet long, carved with marvellous boldness
and depth in open work, representing peacocks, pheasants, storks,
lotuses, peonies, bamboos, and foliage. The fidelity to form and colour
in the birds, and the reproduction of the glory of motion, could not be
excelled.
Yet the flowers please me even better. Truly the artist has revelled in
his work, and has carved and painted with joy. The lotus leaf retains
its dewy bloom, the peony its shades of creamy white, the bamboo leaf
still trembles on its graceful stem, in contrast to the rigid needles of
the pine, and countless corollas, in all the perfect colouring of
passionate life, unfold themselves amidst the leafage of the gorgeous
tracery. These carvings are from 10 to 15 inches deep, and single
feathers in the tails of the pheasants stand out fully 6 inches in front
of peonies nearly as deep.
The details fade from my memory daily as I leave the shrines, and in
their place are picturesque masses of black and red lacquer and gold,
gilded doors opening without noise, halls laid with matting so soft that
not a footfall sounds, across whose twilight the sunbeams fall aslant on
richly arabesqued walls and panels carved with birds and flowers, and on
ceilings panelled and wrought with elaborate art, of inner shrines of
gold, and golden lilies six feet high, and curtains of gold brocade, and
incense fumes, and colossal bells and golden ridge poles; of the mythical
fauna, _kirin_, dragon, and _howo_, of elephants, apes, and tigers,
strangely mingled with flowers and trees, and golden tracery, and diaper
work on a gold ground, and lacquer screens, and pagodas, and groves of
bronze lanterns, and shaven priests in gold brocade, and Shintô
attendants in black lacquer caps, and gleams of sunlit gold here and
there, and simple monumental urns, and a mountain-side covered with a
cryptomeria forest, with rose azaleas lighting up its solemn shade.
I. L. B.
LETTER IX.
A Japanese Pack-Horse and Pack-Saddle—_Yadoya_ and Attendant—A Native
Watering-Place—The Sulphur Baths—A “Squeeze.”
YASHIMAYA, YUMOTO, NIKKÔZAN MOUNTAINS,
_June_ 22.
TO-DAY I have made an experimental journey on horseback, have done
fifteen miles in eight hours of continuous travelling, and have
encountered for the first time the Japanese pack-horse—an animal of which
many unpleasing stories are told, and which has hitherto been as mythical
to me as the _kirin_, or dragon. I have neither been kicked, bitten, nor
pitched off, however, for mares are used exclusively in this district,
gentle creatures about fourteen hands high, with weak hind-quarters, and
heads nearly concealed by shaggy manes and forelocks. They are led by a
rope round the nose, and go barefoot, except on stony ground, when the
_mago_, or man who leads them, ties straw sandals on their feet. The
pack-saddle is composed of two packs of straw eight inches thick, faced
with red, and connected before and behind by strong oak arches gaily
painted or lacquered. There is for a girth a rope loosely tied under the
body, and the security of the load depends on a crupper, usually a piece
of bamboo attached to the saddle by ropes strung with wooden counters,
and another rope round the neck, into which you put your foot as you
scramble over the high front upon the top of the erection. The load must
be carefully balanced or it comes to grief, and the _mago_ handles it all
over first, and, if an accurate division of weight is impossible, adds a
stone to one side or the other. Here, women who wear enormous rain hats
and gird their _kimonos_ over tight blue trousers, both load the horses
and lead them. I dropped upon my loaded horse from the top of a wall,
the ridges, bars, tags, and knotted rigging of the saddle being smoothed
over by a folded _futon_, or wadded cotton quilt, and I was then fourteen
inches above the animal’s back, with my feet hanging over his neck. You
must balance yourself carefully, or you bring the whole erection over;
but balancing soon becomes a matter of habit. If the horse does not
stumble, the pack-saddle is tolerable on level ground, but most severe on
the spine in going up hill, and so intolerable in going down that I was
relieved when I found that I had slid over the horse’s head into a
mud-hole; and you are quite helpless, as he does not understand a bridle,
if you have one, and blindly follows his leader, who trudges on six feet
in front of him.
[Picture: Japanese Pack-Horse]
The hard day’s journey ended in an exquisite _yadoya_, beautiful within
and without, and more fit for fairies than for travel-soiled mortals.
The _fusuma_ are light planed wood with a sweet scent, the matting nearly
white, the balconies polished pine. On entering, a smiling girl brought
me some plum-flower tea with a delicate almond flavour, a sweetmeat made
of beans and sugar, and a lacquer bowl of frozen snow. After making a
difficult meal from a fowl of much experience, I spent the evening out of
doors, as a Japanese watering-place is an interesting novelty.
[Picture: Attendant at Tea-House]
There is scarcely room between the lake and the mountains for the
picturesque village with its trim neat houses, one above another, built
of reddish cedar newly planed. The snow lies ten feet deep here in
winter, and on October 10 the people wrap their beautiful dwellings up in
coarse matting, not even leaving the roofs uncovered, and go to the low
country till May 10, leaving one man in charge, who is relieved once a
week. Were the houses mine I should be tempted to wrap them up on every
rainy day! I did quite the wrong thing in riding here. It is proper to
be carried up in a _kago_, or covered basket.
The village consists of two short streets, 8 feet wide composed entirely
of _yadoyas_ of various grades, with a picturesquely varied frontage of
deep eaves, graceful balconies, rows of Chinese lanterns, and open lower
fronts. The place is full of people, and the four bathing-sheds were
crowded. Some energetic invalids bathe twelve times a day! Every one
who was walking about carried a blue towel over his arm, and the rails of
the balconies were covered with blue towels hanging to dry. There can be
very little amusement. The mountains rise at once from the village, and
are so covered with jungle that one can only walk in the short streets or
along the track by which I came. There is one covered boat for
excursions on the lake, and a few _geishas_ were playing the _samisen_;
but, as gaming is illegal, and there is no place of public resort except
the bathing-sheds, people must spend nearly all their time in bathing,
sleeping, smoking, and eating. The great spring is beyond the village,
in a square tank in a mound. It bubbles up with much strength, giving
off fetid fumes. There are broad boards laid at intervals across it, and
people crippled with rheumatism go and lie for hours upon them for the
advantage of the sulphurous steam. The temperature of the spring is 130°
F.; but after the water has travelled to the village, along an open
wooden pipe, it is only 84°. Yumoto is over 4000 feet high, and very
cold.
IRIMICHI.—Before leaving Yumoto I saw the _modus operandi_ of a
“squeeze.” I asked for the bill, when, instead of giving it to me, the
host ran upstairs and asked Ito how much it should be, the two dividing
the overcharge. Your servant gets a “squeeze” on everything you buy, and
on your hotel expenses, and, as it is managed very adroitly, and you
cannot prevent it, it is best not to worry about it so long as it keeps
within reasonable limits.
I. L. B.
LETTER X.
Peaceful Monotony—A Japanese School—A Dismal Ditty—Punishment—A
Children’s Party—A Juvenile Belle—Female Names—A Juvenile
Drama—Needlework—Calligraphy—Arranging Flowers—Kanaya—Daily Routine—An
Evening’s Entertainment—Planning Routes—The God-shelf.
IRIMICHI, Nikkô, _June_ 23.
My peacefully monotonous life here is nearly at an end. The people are
so quiet and kindly, though almost too still, and I have learned to know
something of the externals of village life, and have become quite fond of
the place.
The village of Irimichi, which epitomises for me at present the village
life of Japan, consists of about three hundred houses built along three
roads, across which steps in fours and threes are placed at intervals.
Down the middle of each a rapid stream runs in a stone channel, and this
gives endless amusement to the children, specially to the boys, who
devise many ingenious models and mechanical toys, which are put in motion
by water-wheels. But at 7 a.m. a drum beats to summon the children to a
school whose buildings would not discredit any school-board at home. Too
much Europeanised I thought it, and the children looked very
uncomfortable sitting on high benches in front of desks, instead of
squatting, native fashion. The school apparatus is very good, and there
are fine maps on the walls. The teacher, a man about twenty-five, made
very free use of the black-board, and questioned his pupils with much
rapidity. The best answer moved its giver to the head of the class, as
with us. Obedience is the foundation of the Japanese social order, and
with children accustomed to unquestioning obedience at home the teacher
has no trouble in securing quietness, attention, and docility. There was
almost a painful earnestness in the old-fashioned faces which pored over
the school-books; even such a rare event as the entrance of a foreigner
failed to distract these childish students. The younger pupils were
taught chiefly by object lessons, and the older were exercised in reading
geographical and historical books aloud, a very high key being adopted,
and a most disagreeable tone, both with the Chinese and Japanese
pronunciation. Arithmetic and the elements of some of the branches of
natural philosophy are also taught. The children recited a verse of
poetry which I understood contained the whole of the simple syllabary.
It has been translated thus:—
“Colour and perfume vanish away.
What can be lasting in this world?
To-day disappears in the abyss of nothingness;
It is but the passing image of a dream, and causes only a slight
trouble.”
It is the echo of the wearied sensualist’s cry, “Vanity of vanities, all
is vanity,” and indicates the singular Oriental distaste for life, but is
a dismal ditty for young children to learn. The Chinese classics,
formerly the basis of Japanese education, are now mainly taught as a
vehicle for conveying a knowledge of the Chinese character, in acquiring
even a moderate acquaintance with which the children undergo a great deal
of useless toil.
The penalties for bad conduct used to be a few blows with a switch on the
front of the leg, or a slight burn with the _moxa_ on the
forefinger—still a common punishment in households; but I understood the
teacher to say that detention in the school-house is the only punishment
now resorted to, and he expressed great disapprobation of our plan of
imposing an added task. When twelve o’clock came the children marched in
orderly fashion out of the school grounds, the boys in one division and
the girls in another, after which they quietly dispersed.
On going home the children dine, and in the evening in nearly every house
you hear the monotonous hum of the preparation of lessons. After dinner
they are liberated for play, but the girls often hang about the house
with babies on their backs the whole afternoon nursing dolls. One
evening I met a procession of sixty boys and girls, all carrying white
flags with black balls, except the leader, who carried a white flag with
a gilded ball, and they sang, or rather howled, as they walked; but the
other amusements have been of a most sedentary kind. The mechanical
toys, worked by water-wheels in the stream, are most fascinating.
Formal children’s parties have been given in this house, for which formal
invitations, in the name of the house-child, a girl of twelve, are sent
out. About 3 p.m. the guests arrive, frequently attended by servants;
and this child, Haru, receives them at the top of the stone steps, and
conducts each into the reception room, where they are arranged according
to some well-understood rules of precedence. Haru’s hair is drawn back,
raised in front, and gathered into a double loop, in which some scarlet
_crépe_ is twisted. Her face and throat are much whitened, the paint
terminating in three points at the back of the neck, from which all the
short hair has been carefully extracted with pincers. Her lips are
slightly touched with red paint, and her face looks like that of a cheap
doll. She wears a blue, flowered silk _kimono_, with sleeves touching
the ground, a blue girdle lined with scarlet, and a fold of scarlet
_crépe_ lies between her painted neck and her _kimono_. On her little
feet she wears white _tabi_, socks of cotton cloth, with a separate place
for the great toe, so as to allow the scarlet-covered thongs of the
finely lacquered clogs, which she puts on when she stands on the stone
steps to receive her guests, to pass between it and the smaller toes.
All the other little ladies were dressed in the same style, and all
looked like ill-executed dolls. She met them with very formal but
graceful bows.
When they were all assembled, she and her very graceful mother, squatting
before each, presented tea and sweetmeats on lacquer trays, and then they
played at very quiet and polite games till dusk. They addressed each
other by their names with the honorific prefix _O_, only used in the case
of women, and the respectful affix _San_; thus Haru becomes O-Haru-San,
which is equivalent to “Miss.” A mistress of a house is addressed as
_O-Kami-San_, and _O-Kusuma_—something like “my lady”—is used to married
ladies. Women have no surnames; thus you do not speak of Mrs. Saguchi,
but of the wife of Saguchi _San_; and you would address her as
_O-Kusuma_. Among the children’s names were _Haru_, Spring; _Yuki_,
Snow; _Hana_, Blossom; _Kiku_, Chrysanthemum; _Gin_, Silver.
One of their games was most amusing, and was played with some spirit and
much dignity. It consisted in one child feigning sickness and another
playing the doctor, and the pompousness and gravity of the latter, and
the distress and weakness of the former, were most successfully imitated.
Unfortunately the doctor killed his patient, who counterfeited the
death-sleep very effectively with her whitened face; and then followed
the funeral and the mourning. They dramatise thus weddings,
dinner-parties, and many other of the events of life. The dignity and
self-possession of these children are wonderful. The fact is that their
initiation into all that is required by the rules of Japanese etiquette
begins as soon as they can speak, so that by the time they are ten years
old they know exactly what to do and avoid under all possible
circumstances. Before they went away tea and sweetmeats were again
handed round, and, as it is neither etiquette to refuse them or to leave
anything behind that you have once taken, several of the small ladies
slipped the residue into their capacious sleeves. On departing the same
formal courtesies were used as on arriving.
Yuki, Haru’s mother, speaks, acts, and moves with a charming
gracefulness. Except at night, and when friends drop in to afternoon
tea, as they often do, she is always either at domestic avocations, such
as cleaning, sewing, or cooking, or planting vegetables, or weeding them.
All Japanese girls learn to sew and to make their own clothes, but there
are none of the mysteries and difficulties which make the sewing lesson a
thing of dread with us. The _kimono_, _haori_, and girdle, and even the
long hanging sleeves, have only parallel seams, and these are only tacked
or basted, as the garments, when washed, are taken to pieces, and each
piece, after being very slightly stiffened, is stretched upon a board to
dry. There is no underclothing, with its bands, frills, gussets, and
button-holes; the poorer women wear none, and those above them wear, like
Yuki, an under-dress of a frothy-looking silk _crépe_, as simply made as
the upper one. There are circulating libraries here, as in most
villages, and in the evening both Yuki and Haru read love stories, or
accounts of ancient heroes and heroines, dressed up to suit the popular
taste, written in the easiest possible style. Ito has about ten volumes
of novels in his room, and spends half the night in reading them.
Yuki’s son, a lad of thirteen, often comes to my room to display his
skill in writing the Chinese character. He is a very bright boy, and
shows considerable talent for drawing. Indeed, it is only a short step
from writing to drawing. Giotto’s O hardly involved more breadth and
vigour of touch than some of these characters. They are written with a
camel’s-hair brush dipped in Indian ink, instead of a pen, and this boy,
with two or three vigorous touches, produces characters a foot long, such
as are mounted and hung as tablets outside the different shops. Yuki
plays the _samisen_, which may be regarded as the national female
instrument, and Haru goes to a teacher daily for lessons on the same.
The art of arranging flowers is taught in manuals, the study of which
forms part of a girl’s education, and there is scarcely a day in which my
room is not newly decorated. It is an education to me; I am beginning to
appreciate the extreme beauty of solitude in decoration. In the alcove
hangs a _kakemono_ of exquisite beauty, a single blossoming branch of the
cherry. On one panel of a folding screen there is a single iris. The
vases which hang so gracefully on the polished posts contain each a
single peony, a single iris, a single azalea, stalk, leaves, and
corolla—all displayed in their full beauty. Can anything be more
grotesque and barbarous than our “florists’ bouquets,” a series of
concentric rings of flowers of divers colours, bordered by maidenhair and
a piece of stiff lace paper, in which stems, leaves, and even petals are
brutally crushed, and the grace and individuality of each flower
systematically destroyed?
Kanaya is the chief man in this village, besides being the leader of the
dissonant squeaks and discords which represent music at the Shintô
festivals, and in some mysterious back region he compounds and sells
drugs. Since I have been here the beautification of his garden has been
his chief object, and he has made a very respectable waterfall, a rushing
stream, a small lake, a rustic bamboo bridge, and several grass banks,
and has transplanted several large trees. He kindly goes out with me a
good deal, and, as he is very intelligent, and Ito is proving an
excellent, and, I think, a faithful interpreter, I find it very pleasant
to be here.
They rise at daylight, fold up the wadded quilts or _futons_ on and under
which they have slept, and put them and the wooden pillows, much like
stereoscopes in shape, with little rolls of paper or wadding on the top,
into a press with a sliding door, sweep the mats carefully, dust all the
woodwork and the verandahs, open the _amado_—wooden shutters which, by
sliding in a groove along the edge of the verandah, box in the whole
house at night, and retire into an ornamental projection in the day—and
throw the paper windows back. Breakfast follows, then domestic
avocations, dinner at one, and sewing, gardening, and visiting till six,
when they take the evening meal.
Visitors usually arrive soon afterwards, and stay till eleven or twelve.
Japanese chess, story-telling, and the _samisen_ fill up the early part
of the evening, but later, an agonising performance, which they call
singing, begins, which sounds like the very essence of heathenishness,
and consists mainly in a prolonged vibrating “No.” As soon as I hear it
I feel as if I were among savages. _Saké_, or rice beer, is always
passed round before the visitors leave, in little cups with the gods of
luck at the bottom of them. _Saké_, when heated, mounts readily to the
head, and a single small cup excites the half-witted man-servant to some
very foolish musical performances. I am sorry to write it, but his
master and mistress take great pleasure in seeing him make a fool of
himself, and Ito, who is from policy a total abstainer, goes into
convulsions of laughter.
One evening I was invited to join the family, and they entertained me by
showing me picture and guide books. Most Japanese provinces have their
guide-books, illustrated by wood-cuts of the most striking objects, and
giving itineraries, names of _yadoyas_, and other local information. One
volume of pictures, very finely executed on silk, was more than a century
old. Old gold lacquer and china, and some pieces of antique embroidered
silk, were also produced for my benefit, and some musical instruments of
great beauty, said to be more than two centuries old. None of these
treasures are kept in the house, but in the _kura_, or fireproof
storehouse, close by. The rooms are not encumbered by ornaments; a
single _kakemono_, or fine piece of lacquer or china, appears for a few
days and then makes way for something else; so they have variety as well
as simplicity, and each object is enjoyed in its turn without
distraction.
Kanaya and his sister often pay me an evening visit, and, with Brunton’s
map on the floor, we project astonishing routes to Niigata, which are
usually abruptly abandoned on finding a mountain-chain in the way with
never a road over it. The life of these people seems to pass easily
enough, but Kanaya deplores the want of money; he would like to be rich,
and intends to build a hotel for foreigners.
The only vestige of religion in his house is the _kamidana_, or
god-shelf, on which stands a wooden shrine like a Shintô temple, which
contains the memorial tablets to deceased relations. Each morning a
sprig of evergreen and a little rice and _saké_ are placed before it, and
every evening a lighted lamp.
LETTER X.—(_Continued_.)
Darkness visible—Nikkô Shops—Girls and Matrons—Night and Sleep—Parental
Love—Childish Docility—Hair-dressing—Skin Diseases.
I DON’T wonder that the Japanese rise early, for their evenings are
cheerless, owing to the dismal illumination. In this and other houses
the lamp consists of a square or circular lacquer stand, with four
uprights, 2½ feet high, and panes of white paper. A flatted iron dish is
suspended in this full of oil, with the pith of a rush with a weight in
the centre laid across it, and one of the projecting ends is lighted.
This wretched apparatus is called an _andon_, and round its wretched
“darkness visible” the family huddles—the children to play games and
learn lessons, and the women to sew; for the Japanese daylight is short
and the houses are dark. Almost more deplorable is a candlestick of the
same height as the _andon_, with a spike at the top which fits into a
hole at the bottom of a “farthing candle” of vegetable wax, with a thick
wick made of rolled paper, which requires constant snuffing, and, after
giving for a short time a dim and jerky light, expires with a bad smell.
Lamps, burning mineral oils, native and imported, are being manufactured
on a large scale, but, apart from the peril connected with them, the
carriage of oil into country districts is very expensive. No Japanese
would think of sleeping without having an _andon_ burning all night in
his room.
These villages are full of shops. There is scarcely a house which does
not sell something. Where the buyers come from, and how a profit can be
made, is a mystery. Many of the things are eatables, such as dried
fishes, 1½ inch long, impaled on sticks; cakes, sweetmeats composed of
rice, flour, and very little sugar; circular lumps of rice dough, called
_mochi_; roots boiled in brine; a white jelly made from beans; and ropes,
straw shoes for men and horses, straw cloaks, paper umbrellas, paper
waterproofs, hair-pins, tooth-picks, tobacco pipes, paper _mouchoirs_,
and numbers of other trifles made of bamboo, straw, grass, and wood.
These goods are on stands, and in the room behind, open to the street,
all the domestic avocations are going on, and the housewife is usually to
be seen boiling water or sewing with a baby tucked into the back of her
dress. A lucifer factory has recently been put up, and in many house
fronts men are cutting up wood into lengths for matches. In others they
are husking rice, a very laborious process, in which the grain is pounded
in a mortar sunk in the floor by a flat-ended wooden pestle attached to a
long horizontal lever, which is worked by the feet of a man, invariably
naked, who stands at the other extremity.
In some women are weaving, in others spinning cotton. Usually there are
three or four together—the mother, the eldest son’s wife, and one or two
unmarried girls. The girls marry at sixteen, and shortly these comely,
rosy, wholesome-looking creatures pass into haggard, middle-aged women
with vacant faces, owing to the blackening of the teeth and removal of
the eyebrows, which, if they do not follow betrothal, are resorted to on
the birth of the first child. In other houses women are at their toilet,
blackening their teeth before circular metal mirrors placed in folding
stands on the mats, or performing ablutions, unclothed to the waist.
Early the village is very silent, while the children are at school; their
return enlivens it a little, but they are quiet even at play; at sunset
the men return, and things are a little livelier; you hear a good deal of
splashing in baths, and after that they carry about and play with their
younger children, while the older ones prepare lessons for the following
day by reciting them in a high, monotonous twang. At dark the paper
windows are drawn, the _amado_, or external wooden shutters, are closed,
the lamp is lighted before the family shrine, supper is eaten, the
children play at quiet games round the _andon_; and about ten the quilts
and wooden pillows are produced from the press, the _amado_ are bolted,
and the family lies down to sleep in one room. Small trays of food and
the _tabako-bon_ are always within reach of adult sleepers, and one grows
quite accustomed to hear the sound of ashes being knocked out of the pipe
at intervals during the night. The children sit up as late as their
parents, and are included in all their conversation.
I never saw people take so much delight in their offspring, carrying them
about, or holding their hands in walking, watching and entering into
their games, supplying them constantly with new toys, taking them to
picnics and festivals, never being content to be without them, and
treating other people’s children also with a suitable measure of
affection and attention. Both fathers and mothers take a pride in their
children. It is most amusing about six every morning to see twelve or
fourteen men sitting on a low wall, each with a child under two years in
his arms, fondling and playing with it, and showing off its physique and
intelligence. To judge from appearances, the children form the chief
topic at this morning gathering. At night, after the houses are shut up,
looking through the long fringe of rope or rattan which conceals the
sliding door, you see the father, who wears nothing but a _maro_ in “the
bosom of his family,” bending his ugly, kindly face over a gentle-looking
baby, and the mother, who more often than not has dropped the _kimono_
from her shoulders, enfolding two children destitute of clothing in her
arms. For some reasons they prefer boys, but certainly girls are equally
petted and loved. The children, though for our ideas too gentle and
formal, are very prepossessing in looks and behaviour. They are so
perfectly docile and obedient, so ready to help their parents, so good to
the little ones, and, in the many hours which I have spent in watching
them at play, I have never heard an angry word or seen a sour look or
act. But they are little men and women rather than children, and their
old-fashioned appearance is greatly aided by their dress, which, as I
have remarked before, is the same as that of adults.
There are, however, various styles of dressing the hair of girls, by
which you can form a pretty accurate estimate of any girl’s age up to her
marriage, when the _coiffure_ undergoes a definite change. The boys all
look top-heavy and their heads of an abnormal size, partly from a hideous
practice of shaving the head altogether for the first three years. After
this the hair is allowed to grow in three tufts, one over each ear, and
the other at the back of the neck; as often, however, a tuft is grown at
the top of the back of the head. At ten the crown alone is shaved and a
forelock is worn, and at fifteen, when the boy assumes the
responsibilities of manhood, his hair is allowed to grow like that of a
man. The grave dignity of these boys, with the grotesque patterns on
their big heads, is most amusing.
Would that these much-exposed skulls were always smooth and clean! It is
painful to see the prevalence of such repulsive maladies as _scabies_,
scald-head, ringworm, sore eyes, and unwholesome-looking eruptions, and
fully 30 per cent of the village people are badly seamed with smallpox.
LETTER X.—(_Completed_.)
Shops and Shopping—The Barber’s Shop—A Paper Waterproof—Ito’s
Vanity—Preparations for the Journey—Transport and Prices—Money and
Measurements.
I HAVE had to do a little shopping in Hachiishi for my journey. The
shop-fronts, you must understand, are all open, and at the height of the
floor, about two feet from the ground, there is a broad ledge of polished
wood on which you sit down. A woman everlastingly boiling water on a
bronze _hibachi_, or brazier, shifting the embers about deftly with brass
tongs like chopsticks, and with a baby looking calmly over her shoulders,
is the shopwoman; but she remains indifferent till she imagines that you
have a definite purpose of buying, when she comes forward bowing to the
ground, and I politely rise and bow too. Then I or Ito ask the price of
a thing, and she names it, very likely asking 4s. for what ought to sell
at 6d. You say 3s., she laughs and says 3s. 6d.; you say 2s., she laughs
again and says 3s., offering you the _tabako-bon_. Eventually the matter
is compromised by your giving her 1s., at which she appears quite
delighted. With a profusion of bows and “_sayo naras_” on each side, you
go away with the pleasant feeling of having given an industrious woman
twice as much as the thing was worth to her, and less than what it is
worth to you!
There are several barbers’ shops, and the evening seems a very busy time
with them. This operation partakes of the general want of privacy of the
life of the village, and is performed in the raised open front of the
shop. Soap is not used, and the process is a painful one. The victims
let their garments fall to their waists, and each holds in his left hand
a lacquered tray to receive the croppings. The ugly Japanese face at
this time wears a most grotesque expression of stolid resignation as it
is held and pulled about by the operator, who turns it in all directions,
that he may judge of the effect that he is producing. The shaving the
face till it is smooth and shiny, and the cutting, waxing, and tying of
the queue with twine made of paper, are among the evening sights of
Nikkô.
Lacquer and things curiously carved in wood are the great attractions of
the shops, but they interest me far less than the objects of utility in
Japanese daily life, with their ingenuity of contrivance and perfection
of adaptation and workmanship. A seed shop, where seeds are truly
idealised, attracts me daily. Thirty varieties are offered for sale, as
various in form as they are in colour, and arranged most artistically on
stands, while some are put up in packages decorated with what one may
call a facsimile of the root, leaves, and flower, in water-colours. A
lad usually lies on the mat behind executing these very creditable
pictures—for such they are—with a few bold and apparently careless
strokes with his brush. He gladly sold me a peony as a scrap for a
screen for 3 _sen_. My purchases, with this exception, were necessaries
only—a paper waterproof cloak, “a circular,” black outside and yellow
inside, made of square sheets of oiled paper cemented together, and some
large sheets of the same for covering my baggage; and I succeeded in
getting Ito out of his obnoxious black wide-awake into a basin-shaped hat
like mine, for, ugly as I think him, he has a large share of personal
vanity, whitens his teeth, and powders his face carefully before a
mirror, and is in great dread of sunburn. He powders his hands too, and
polishes his nails, and never goes out without gloves.
To-morrow I leave luxury behind and plunge into the interior, hoping to
emerge somehow upon the Sea of Japan. No information can be got here
except about the route to Niigata, which I have decided not to take, so,
after much study of Brunton’s map, I have fixed upon one place, and have
said positively, “I go to Tajima.” If I reach it I can get farther, but
all I can learn is, “It’s a very bad road, it’s all among the mountains.”
Ito, who has a great regard for his own comforts, tries to dissuade me
from going by saying that I shall lose mine, but, as these kind people
have ingeniously repaired my bed by doubling the canvas and lacing it
into holes in the side poles, {79} and as I have lived for the last three
days on rice, eggs, and coarse vermicelli about the thickness and colour
of earth-worms, this prospect does not appal me! In Japan there is a
Land Transport Company, called _Riku-un-kaisha_, with a head-office in
Tôkiyô, and branches in various towns and villages. It arranges for the
transport of travellers and merchandise by pack-horses and coolies at
certain fixed rates, and gives receipts in due form. It hires the horses
from the farmers, and makes a moderate profit on each transaction, but
saves the traveller from difficulties, delays, and extortions. The
prices vary considerably in different districts, and are regulated by the
price of forage, the state of the roads, and the number of hireable
horses. For a _ri_, nearly 2½ miles, they charge from 6 to 10 _sen_ for
a horse and the man who leads it, for a _kuruma_ with one man from 4 to 9
_sen_ for the same distance, and for baggage coolies about the same.
[This Transport Company is admirably organised. I employed it in
journeys of over 1200 miles, and always found it efficient and reliable.]
I intend to make use of it always, much against Ito’s wishes, who
reckoned on many a prospective “squeeze” in dealings with the farmers.
My journey will now be entirely over “unbeaten tracks,” and will lead
through what may be called “Old Japan;” and as it will be natural to use
Japanese words for money and distances, for which there are no English
terms, I give them here. A _yen_ is a note representing a dollar, or
about 3s. 7d. of our money; a _sen_ is something less than a halfpenny; a
_rin_ is a thin round coin of iron or bronze, with a square hole in the
middle, of which 10 make a _sen_, and 1000 a _yen_; and a _tempo_ is a
handsome oval bronze coin with a hole in the centre, of which 5 make 4
_sen_. Distances are measured by _ri_, _chô_, and _ken_. Six feet make
one _ken_, sixty _ken_ one _chô_, and thirty-six _chô_ one _ri_, or
nearly 2½ English miles. When I write of a road I mean a bridle-path
from four to eight feet wide, _kuruma_ roads being specified as such.
I. L. B.
LETTER XI.
Comfort disappears—Fine Scenery—An Alarm—A Farm-house—An unusual
Costume—Bridling a Horse—Female Dress and Ugliness—Babies—My
_Mago_—Beauties of the Kinugawa—Fujihara—My Servant—Horse-shoes—An absurd
Mistake.
FUJIHARA, _June_ 24.
ITO’S informants were right. Comfort was left behind at Nikkô!
A little woman brought two depressed-looking mares at six this morning;
my saddle and bridle were put on one, and Ito and the baggage on the
other; my hosts and I exchanged cordial good wishes and obeisances, and,
with the women dragging my sorry mare by a rope round her nose, we left
the glorious shrines and solemn cryptomeria groves of Nikkô behind,
passed down its long, clean street, and where the _In Memoriam_ avenue is
densest and darkest turned off to the left by a path like the bed of a
brook, which afterwards, as a most atrocious trail, wound about among the
rough boulders of the Daiya, which it crosses often on temporary bridges
of timbers covered with branches and soil. After crossing one of the low
spurs of the Nikkôsan mountains, we wound among ravines whose steep sides
are clothed with maple, oak, magnolia, elm, pine, and cryptomeria, linked
together by festoons of the redundant _Wistaria chinensis_, and
brightened by azalea and syringa clusters. Every vista was blocked by
some grand mountain, waterfalls thundered, bright streams glanced through
the trees, and in the glorious sunshine of June the country looked most
beautiful.
We travelled less than a _ri_ an hour, as it was a mere flounder either
among rocks or in deep mud, the woman in her girt-up dress and straw
sandals trudging bravely along, till she suddenly flung away the rope,
cried out, and ran backwards, perfectly scared by a big grey snake, with
red spots, much embarrassed by a large frog which he would not let go,
though, like most of his kind, he was alarmed by human approach, and made
desperate efforts to swallow his victim and wriggle into the bushes.
After crawling for three hours we dismounted at the mountain farm of
Kohiaku, on the edge of a rice valley, and the woman counted her packages
to see that they were all right, and without waiting for a gratuity
turned homewards with her horses. I pitched my chair in the verandah of
a house near a few poor dwellings inhabited by peasants with large
families, the house being in the barn-yard of a rich _saké_ maker. I
waited an hour, grew famished, got some weak tea and boiled barley,
waited another hour, and yet another, for all the horses were eating
leaves on the mountains. There was a little stir. Men carried sheaves
of barley home on their backs, and stacked them under the eaves.
Children, with barely the rudiments of clothing, stood and watched me
hour after hour, and adults were not ashamed to join the group, for they
had never seen a foreign woman, a fork, or a spoon. Do you remember a
sentence in Dr. Macgregor’s last sermon? “What strange sights some of
you will see!” Could there be a stranger one than a decent-looking
middle-aged man lying on his chest in the verandah, raised on his elbows,
and intently reading a book, clothed only in a pair of spectacles?
Besides that curious piece of still life, women frequently drew water
from a well by the primitive contrivance of a beam suspended across an
upright, with the bucket at one end and a stone at the other.
When the horses arrived the men said they could not put on the bridle,
but, after much talk, it was managed by two of them violently forcing
open the jaws of the animal, while a third seized a propitious moment for
slipping the bit into her mouth. At the next change a bridle was a thing
unheard of, and when I suggested that the creature would open her mouth
voluntarily if the bit were pressed close to her teeth, the standers-by
mockingly said, “No horse ever opens his mouth except to eat or to bite,”
and were only convinced after I had put on the bridle myself. The new
horses had a rocking gait like camels, and I was glad to dispense with
them at Kisagoi, a small upland hamlet, a very poor place, with
poverty-stricken houses, children very dirty and sorely afflicted by skin
maladies, and women with complexions and features hardened by severe work
and much wood smoke into positive ugliness, and with figures anything but
statuesque.
[Picture: Summer and Winter Costume]
I write the truth as I see it, and if my accounts conflict with those of
tourists who write of the Tokaido and Nakasendo, of Lake Biwa and Hakone,
it does not follow that either is inaccurate. But truly this is a new
Japan to me, of which no books have given me any idea, and it is not
fairyland. The men may be said to wear nothing. Few of the women wear
anything but a short petticoat wound tightly round them, or blue cotton
trousers very tight in the legs and baggy at the top, with a blue cotton
garment open to the waist tucked into the band, and a blue cotton
handkerchief knotted round the head. From the dress no notion of the sex
of the wearer could be gained, nor from the faces, if it were not for the
shaven eyebrows and black teeth. The short petticoat is truly
barbarous-looking, and when a woman has a nude baby on her back or in her
arms, and stands staring vacantly at the foreigner, I can hardly believe
myself in “civilised” Japan. A good-sized child, strong enough to hold
up his head, sees the world right cheerfully looking over his mother’s
shoulders, but it is a constant distress to me to see small children of
six and seven years old lugging on their backs gristly babies, whose
shorn heads are frizzling in the sun and “wobbling” about as though they
must drop off, their eyes, as nurses say, “looking over their heads.” A
number of silk-worms are kept in this region, and in the open barns
groups of men in nature’s costume, and women unclothed to their waists,
were busy stripping mulberry branches. The houses were all poor, and the
people dirty both in their clothing and persons. Some of the younger
women might possibly have been comely, if soap and water had been
plentifully applied to their faces; but soap is not used, and such
washing as the garments get is only the rubbing them a little with sand
in a running stream. I will give you an amusing instance of the way in
which one may make absurd mistakes. I heard many stories of the
viciousness and aggressiveness of pack-horses, and was told that they
were muzzled to prevent them from pasturing upon the haunches of their
companions and making vicious snatches at men. Now, I find that the
muzzle is only to prevent them from eating as they travel. Mares are
used exclusively in this region, and they are the gentlest of their race.
If you have the weight of baggage reckoned at one horse-load, though it
should turn out that the weight is too great for a weakly animal, and the
Transport agent distributes it among two or even three horses, you only
pay for one; and though our _cortège_ on leaving Kisagoi consisted of
four small, shock-headed mares who could hardly see through their bushy
forelocks, with three active foals, and one woman and three girls to lead
them, I only paid for two horses at 7 _sen_ a _ri_.
My _mago_, with her toil-hardened, thoroughly good-natured face rendered
hideous by black teeth, wore straw sandals, blue cotton trousers with a
vest tucked into them, as poor and worn as they could be, and a blue
cotton towel knotted round her head. As the sky looked threatening she
carried a straw rain-cloak, a thatch of two connected capes, one
fastening at the neck, the other at the waist, and a flat hat of flags,
2½ feet in diameter, hung at her back like a shield. Up and down, over
rocks and through deep mud, she trudged with a steady stride, turning her
kind, ugly face at intervals to see if the girls were following. I like
the firm hardy gait which this unbecoming costume permits better than the
painful shuffle imposed upon the more civilised women by their tight
skirts and high clogs.
From Kohiaku the road passed through an irregular grassy valley between
densely-wooded hills, the valley itself timbered with park-like clumps of
pine and Spanish chestnuts; but on leaving Kisagoi the scenery changed.
A steep rocky tract brought us to the Kinugawa, a clear rushing river,
which has cut its way deeply through coloured rock, and is crossed at a
considerable height by a bridge with an alarmingly steep curve, from
which there is a fine view of high mountains, and among them Futarayama,
to which some of the most ancient Shintô legends are attached. We rode
for some time within hearing of the Kinugawa, catching magnificent
glimpses of it frequently—turbulent and locked in by walls of porphyry,
or widening and calming and spreading its aquamarine waters over great
slabs of pink and green rock, lighted fitfully by the sun, or spanned by
rainbows, or pausing to rest in deep shady pools, but always beautiful.
The mountains through which it forces its way on the other side are
precipitous and wooded to their summits with coniferæ, while the less
abrupt side, along which the tract is carried, curves into green knolls
in its lower slopes, sprinkled with grand Spanish chestnuts scarcely yet
in blossom, with maples which have not yet lost the scarlet which they
wear in spring as well as autumn, and with many flowering trees and
shrubs which are new to me, and with an undergrowth of red azaleas,
syringa, blue hydrangea—the very blue of heaven—yellow raspberries,
ferns, clematis, white and yellow lilies, blue irises, and fifty other
trees and shrubs entangled and festooned by the wistaria, whose beautiful
foliage is as common as is that of the bramble with us. The redundancy
of the vegetation was truly tropical, and the brilliancy and variety of
its living greens, dripping with recent rain, were enhanced by the slant
rays of the afternoon sun.
The few hamlets we passed are of farm-houses only, the deep-eaved roofs
covering in one sweep dwelling-house, barn, and stable. In every barn
unclothed people were pursuing various industries. We met strings of
pack-mares, tied head and tail, loaded with rice and _saké_, and men and
women carrying large creels full of mulberry leaves. The ravine grew
more and more beautiful, and an ascent through a dark wood of arrowy
cryptomeria brought us to this village exquisitely situated, where a
number of miniature ravines, industriously terraced for rice, come down
upon the great chasm of the Kinugawa. Eleven hours of travelling have
brought me eighteen miles!
IKARI, June 25.—Fujihara has forty-six farm-houses and a _yadoya_—all
dark, damp, dirty, and draughty, a combination of dwelling-house, barn,
and stable. The _yadoya_ consisted of a _daidokoro_, or open kitchen,
and stable below, and a small loft above, capable of division, and I
found on returning from a walk six Japanese in extreme _déshabillé_
occupying the part through which I had to pass. On this being remedied I
sat down to write, but was soon driven upon the balcony, under the eaves,
by myriads of fleas, which hopped out of the mats as sandhoppers do out
of the sea sand, and even in the balcony, hopped over my letter. There
were two outer walls of hairy mud with living creatures crawling in the
cracks; cobwebs hung from the uncovered rafters. The mats were brown
with age and dirt, the rice was musty, and only partially cleaned, the
eggs had seen better days, and the tea was musty.
I saw everything out of doors with Ito—the patient industry, the
exquisitely situated village, the evening avocations, the quiet
dulness—and then contemplated it all from my balcony and read the
sentence (from a paper in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society) which
had led me to devise this journey, “There is a most exquisitely
picturesque, but difficult, route up the course of the Kinugawa, which
seems almost as unknown to Japanese as to foreigners.” There was a pure
lemon-coloured sky above, and slush a foot deep below. A road, at this
time a quagmire, intersected by a rapid stream, crossed in many places by
planks, runs through the village. This stream is at once “lavatory” and
“drinking fountain.” People come back from their work, sit on the
planks, take off their muddy clothes and wring them out, and bathe their
feet in the current. On either side are the dwellings, in front of which
are much-decayed manure heaps, and the women were engaged in breaking
them up and treading them into a pulp with their bare feet. All wear the
vest and trousers at their work, but only the short petticoats in their
houses, and I saw several respectable mothers of families cross the road
and pay visits in this garment only, without any sense of impropriety.
The younger children wear nothing but a string and an amulet. The
persons, clothing, and houses are alive with vermin, and if the word
squalor can be applied to independent and industrious people, they were
squalid. Beetles, spiders, and wood-lice held a carnival in my room
after dark, and the presence of horses in the same house brought a number
of horseflies. I sprinkled my stretcher with insect powder, but my
blanket had been on the floor for one minute, and fleas rendered sleep
impossible. The night was very long. The _andon_ went out, leaving a
strong smell of rancid oil. The primitive Japanese dog—a cream-coloured
wolfish-looking animal, the size of a collie, very noisy and aggressive,
but as cowardly as bullies usually are—was in great force in Fujihara,
and the barking, growling, and quarrelling of these useless curs
continued at intervals until daylight; and when they were not
quarrelling, they were howling. Torrents of rain fell, obliging me to
move my bed from place to place to get out of the drip. At five Ito came
and entreated me to leave, whimpering, “I’ve had no sleep; there are
thousands and thousands of fleas!” He has travelled by another route to
the Tsugaru Strait through the interior, and says that he would not have
believed that there was such a place in Japan, and that people in
Yokohama will not believe it when he tells them of it and of the costume
of the women. He is “ashamed for a foreigner to see such a place,” he
says. His cleverness in travelling and his singular intelligence
surprise me daily. He is very anxious to speak _good_ English, as
distinguished from “common” English, and to get new words, with their
correct pronunciation and spelling. Each day he puts down in his
note-book all the words that I use that he does not quite understand, and
in the evening brings them to me and puts down their meaning and spelling
with their Japanese equivalents. He speaks English already far better
than many professional interpreters, but would be more pleasing if he had
not picked up some American vulgarisms and free-and-easy ways. It is so
important to me to have a good interpreter, or I should not have engaged
so young and inexperienced a servant; but he is so clever that he is now
able to be cook, laundryman, and general attendant, as well as courier
and interpreter, and I think it is far easier for me than if he were an
older man. I am trying to manage him, because I saw that he meant to
manage me, specially in the matter of “squeezes.” He is intensely
Japanese, his patriotism has all the weakness and strength of personal
vanity, and he thinks everything inferior that is foreign. Our manners,
eyes, and modes of eating appear simply odious to him. He delights in
retailing stories of the bad manners of Englishmen, describes them as
“roaring out _ohio_ to every one on the road,” frightening the tea-house
nymphs, kicking or slapping their coolies, stamping over white mats in
muddy boots, acting generally like ill-bred Satyrs, exciting an
ill-concealed hatred in simple country districts, and bringing themselves
and their country into contempt and ridicule. {87} He is very anxious
about my good behaviour, and as I am equally anxious to be courteous
everywhere in Japanese fashion, and not to violate the general rules of
Japanese etiquette, I take his suggestions as to what I ought to do and
avoid in very good part, and my bows are growing more profound every day!
The people are so kind and courteous, that it is truly brutal in
foreigners not to be kind and courteous to them. You will observe that I
am entirely dependent on Ito, not only for travelling arrangements, but
for making inquiries, gaining information, and even for companionship,
such as it is; and our being mutually embarked on a hard and adventurous
journey will, I hope, make us mutually kind and considerate. Nominally,
he is a Shintôist, which means nothing. At Nikkô I read to him the
earlier chapters of St. Luke, and when I came to the story of the
Prodigal Son I was interrupted by a somewhat scornful laugh and the
remark, “Why, all this is our Buddha over again!”
To-day’s journey, though very rough, has been rather pleasant. The rain
moderated at noon, and I left Fujihara on foot, wearing my American
“mountain dress” and Wellington boots,—the only costume in which ladies
can enjoy pedestrian or pack-horse travelling in this country,—with a
light straw mat—the waterproof of the region—hanging over my shoulders,
and so we plodded on with two baggage horses through the ankle-deep mud,
till the rain cleared off, the mountains looked through the mist, the
augmented Kinugawa thundered below, and enjoyment became possible, even
in my half-fed condition. Eventually I mounted a pack-saddle, and we
crossed a spur of Takadayama at a height of 2100 feet on a well-devised
series of zigzags, eight of which in one place could be seen one below
another. The forest there is not so dense as usual, and the lower
mountain slopes are sprinkled with noble Spanish chestnuts. The descent
was steep and slippery, the horse had tender feet, and, after stumbling
badly, eventually came down, and I went over his head, to the great
distress of the kindly female _mago_. The straw shoes tied with wisps
round the pasterns are a great nuisance. The “shoe strings” are always
coming untied, and the shoes only wear about two _ri_ on soft ground, and
less than one on hard. They keep the feet so soft and spongy that the
horses can’t walk without them at all, and as soon as they get thin your
horse begins to stumble, the _mago_ gets uneasy, and presently you stop;
four shoes, which are hanging from the saddle, are soaked in water and
are tied on with much coaxing, raising the animal fully an inch above the
ground. Anything more temporary and clumsy could not be devised. The
bridle paths are strewn with them, and the children collect them in heaps
to decay for manure. They cost 3 or 4 _sen_ the set, and in every
village men spend their leisure time in making them.
At the next stage, called Takahara, we got one horse for the baggage,
crossed the river and the ravine, and by a steep climb reached a solitary
_yadoya_ with the usual open front and _irori_, round which a number of
people, old and young, were sitting. When I arrived a whole bevy of
nice-looking girls took to flight, but were soon recalled by a word from
Ito to their elders. Lady Parkes, on a side-saddle and in a
riding-habit, has been taken for a man till the people saw her hair, and
a young friend of mine, who is very pretty and has a beautiful
complexion, when travelling lately with her husband, was supposed to be a
man who had shaven off his beard. I wear a hat, which is a thing only
worn by women in the fields as a protection from sun and rain, my
eyebrows are unshaven, and my teeth are unblackened, so these girls
supposed me to be a foreign man. Ito in explanation said, “They haven’t
seen any, but everybody brings them tales how rude foreigners are to
girls, and they are awful scared.” There was nothing eatable but rice
and eggs, and I ate them under the concentrated stare of eighteen pairs
of dark eyes. The hot springs, to which many people afflicted with sores
resort, are by the river, at the bottom of a rude flight of steps, in an
open shed, but I could not ascertain their temperature, as a number of
men and women were sitting in the water. They bathe four times a day,
and remain for an hour at a time.
We left for the five miles’ walk to Ikari in a torrent of rain by a
newly-made path completely shut in with the cascading Kinugawa, and
carried along sometimes low, sometimes high, on props projecting over it
from the face of the rock. I do not expect to see anything lovelier in
Japan.
The river, always crystal-blue or crystal
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