At last, from the verge of an enormous ridge, the roadway suddenly
slopes down into a vista of high peaked roofs of thatch and green-mossed
eaves--into a village like a coloured print out of old Hiroshige's
picture-books, a village with all its tints and colours precisely
like the tints and colours of the landscape in which it lies. This is
Kami-Ichi, in the land of Hoki.
We halt before a quiet, dingy little inn, whose host, a very aged man,
comes forth to salute me; while a silent, gentle crowd of villagers,
mostly children and women, gather about the kuruma to see the stranger,
to wonder at him, even to touch his clothes with timid smiling
curiosity. One glance at the face of the old innkeeper decides me to
accept his invitation. I must remain here until to-morrow: my runners
are too wearied to go farther to-night.
Weather-worn as the little inn seemed without, it is delightful within.
Its polished stairway and balconies are speckless, reflecting like
mirror-surfaces the bare feet of the maid-servants; its luminous rooms
are fresh and sweet-smelling as when their soft mattings were first laid
down. The carven pillars of the alcove (toko) in my chamber, leaves and
flowers chiselled in some black rich wood, are wonders; and the kakemono
or scroll-picture hanging there is an idyll, Hotei, God of Happiness,
drifting in a bark down some shadowy stream into evening mysteries of
vapoury purple. Far as this hamlet is from all art-centres, there is no
object visible in the house which does not reveal the Japanese sense of
beauty in form. The old gold-flowered lacquer-ware, the astonishing
box in which sweetmeats (kwashi) are kept, the diaphanous porcelain
wine-cups dashed with a single tiny gold figure of a leaping shrimp, the
tea-cup holders which are curled lotus-leaves of bronze, even the iron
kettle with its figurings of dragons and clouds, and the brazen hibachi
whose handles are heads of Buddhist lions, delight the eye and surprise
the fancy. Indeed, wherever to-day in Japan one sees something totally
uninteresting in porcelain or metal, something commonplace and ugly,
one may be almost sure that detestable something has been shaped under
foreign influence. But here I am in ancient Japan; probably no European
eyes ever looked upon these things before.
A window shaped like a heart peeps out upon the garden, a wonderful
little garden with a tiny pond and miniature bridges and dwarf trees,
like the landscape of a tea-cup; also some shapely stones of course, and
some graceful stone-lanterns, or toro, such as are placed in the courts
of temples. And beyond these, through the warm dusk, I see lights,
coloured lights, the lanterns of the Bonku, suspended before each home
to welcome the coming of beloved ghosts; for by the antique calendar,
according to which in this antique place the reckoning of time is still
made, this is the first night of the Festival of the Dead.
As in all the other little country villages where I have been stopping,
I find the people here kind to me with a kindness and a courtesy
unimaginable, indescribable, unknown in any other country, and even in
Japan itself only in the interior. Their simple politeness is not
an art; their goodness is absolutely unconscious goodness; both come
straight from the heart. And before I have been two hours among these
people, their treatment of me, coupled with the sense of my utter
inability to repay such kindness, causes a wicked wish to come into
my mind. I wish these charming folk would do me some unexpected wrong,
something surprisingly evil, something atrociously unkind, so that I
should not be obliged to regret them, which I feel sure I must begin to
do as soon as I go away.
While the aged landlord conducts me to the bath, where he insists upon
washing me himself as if I were a child, the wife prepares for us a
charming little repast of rice, eggs, vegetables, and sweetmeats. She
is painfully in doubt about her ability to please me, even after I have
eaten enough for two men, and apologises too much for not being able to
offer me more.
'There is no fish,' she says, 'for to-day is the first day of the Bonku,
the Festival of the Dead; being the thirteenth day of the month. On the
thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth of the month nobody may eat fish.
But on the morning of the sixteenth day, the fishermen go out to catch
fish; and everybody who has both parents living may eat of it. But if
one has lost one's father or mother then one must not eat fish, even
upon the sixteenth day.'
While the good soul is thus explaining I become aware of a strange
remote sound from without, a sound I recognise through memory of
tropical dances, a measured clapping of hands. But this clapping is very
soft and at long intervals. And at still longer intervals there comes to
us a heavy muffled booming, the tap of a great drum, a temple drum.
'Oh! we must go to see it,' cries Akira; 'it is the Bon-odori, the Dance
of the Festival of the Dead. And you will see the Bon-odori danced here
as it is never danced in cities--the Bon-odori of ancient days. For
customs have not changed here; but in the cities all is changed.'
So I hasten out, wearing only, like the people about me, one of those
light wide-sleeved summer robes--yukata--which are furnished to male
guests at all Japanese hotels; but the air is so warm that even thus
lightly clad, I find myself slightly perspiring. And the night is
divine, still, clear, vaster than nights of Europe, with a big white
moon flinging down queer shadows of tilted eaves and horned gables and
delightful silhouettes of robed Japanese. A little boy, the grandson of
our host, leads the way with a crimson paper lantern; and the sonorous
echoing of geta, the koro-koro of wooden sandals, fills all the street,
for many are going whither we are going, to see the dance.
A little while we proceed along the main street; then, traversing a
narrow passage between two houses, we find ourselves in a great open
space flooded by moonlight. This is the dancing-place; but the dance has
ceased for a time. Looking about me, I perceive that we are in the
court of an ancient Buddhist temple. The temple building itself remains
intact, a low long peaked silhouette against the starlight; but it is
void and dark and unhallowed now; it has been turned, they tell me, into
a schoolhouse. The priests are gone; the great bell is gone; the Buddhas
and the Bodhisattvas have vanished, all save one--a broken-handed Jizo
of stone, smiling with eyelids closed, under the moon.
In the centre of the court is a framework of bamboo supporting a
great drum; and about it benches have been arranged, benches from the
schoolhouse, on which villagers are resting. There is a hum of voices,
voices of people speaking very low, as if expecting something solemn;
and cries of children betimes, and soft laughter of girls. And far
behind the court, beyond a low hedge of sombre evergreen shrubs, I see
soft white lights and a host of tall grey shapes throwing long shadows;
and I know that the lights are the white lanterns of the dead (those
hung in cemeteries only), and that the grey shapes are shapes of tombs.
Suddenly a girl rises from her seat, and taps the huge drum once. It is
the signal for the Dance of Souls.