the deck overflowed with the rest. The brown-skinned, bullet-headed,
ugly, good-natured Japanese peasant, sitting on his heels with his dark
blue _kimono_ tucked up above his brown legs, and his fan in his hand;
or his little wife, wrinkled and meek, her white cotton towel, with
its bamboo design in blue, folded round her head and tucked up under
her hair behind in something between a night-cap and a sun-bonnet;
quiet and sweet, but never abject, and always respected. Here and
there a shopkeeper or a clerk, or some one from the town in a grey
_kimono_, with a face pale yellow against the other’s brown. We all sat
bare-footed on the matting to keep it clean, with our _gheta_ in our
hands, fanning ourselves with rice-paper fans decorated with storks
flying across the moon, or sprays of plum-blossom or pine-trees, each
man of us showing his well-turned leg and thigh, with all the muscles
brought into strong relief by the weight of the body on the toes. All
polite, all amused, all conversational.
After a great deal of snorting on the part of our very small steamer,
we casually left the wharf and shot into the lagoon. Matsué, hidden by
the sunlight, disappeared; and even the wide sweep of waters wavered
indistinct beneath the hard glitter of the morning light. It was not
yet nine o’clock, and already the distant blue shore was blurred
with the shimmering heat, and the near green one fitful with the
scissor-grinding of the _semmi_. The heat was dropping down on the
world with the swiftness of a tropical night and the glitter of it hurt.
Away over the surface of the waters a red-brown head floated, lazy,
the nimbus of straw hat against the light glowing yellow as a halo.
Slowly, idly, the head moved over the water, suspended between blue and
blue. Too hot to doubt or question or deny, I accepted the head and
shut my eyes, only to find on opening them again two, three, a dozen
heads strolling slowly over the lagoon.
“Honourably please to understand, dredging for mussels,” said a voice
at my elbow. And the passengers repeated the information in a sort of
Greek chorus with many bows.
Matsué’s only representative of the vast world of the _Ijin San_
is one missionary; but these peasants, with the refinement of true
breeding, accepted our outlandish dress and faces, our boots on their
matting too, without a stare of curiosity, although when our attention
was apparently absorbed elsewhere, the whiteness of our skins, the
aristocratic bridge of our noses (it is only the _noblesse_ in Japan,
and not all of them, who possess an aquiline nose), were commented on
with interest and admiration.
* * * * *
The near green shore ran in and out, and in and out, wooded thick with
the slim green fingers of the bamboo, until it opened into a tiny green
bay, with a thin bamboo landing-stage running out into the silent
water. Here we stopped with such an amount of “ay-aying” on the part
of the captain--a short man in a grey _kimono_, who sat in a hole in
the deck the other side of the funnel reading Chinese poetry--and the
crew, a tall youth in “foreign” trousers, who greased wheels, that we
might have been an Atlantic liner approaching an unknown shore. There
were no passengers for the invisible village behind the landing-stage
but the captain, who climbed over the side of the boat up on to the
landing-stage, and disappeared.
By-and-by from out of the green there came a charming little figure in
a sea-blue _kimono_, lined with lacquer-red, followed by a maid bearing
neatly matted parcels. The crew wiped its hands and moved forward,
while the sea-blue _kimono_, kneeling on the landing-stage, handed down
the parcels on to the boat for safe carriage to Shobara. They seemed
to require quantities of explanation those parcels, accompanied by
irrepressible giggles, principal giggles on the part of the mistress,
and secondary giggles on the part of the maid; while the crew listened,
replied, grew eloquent. It was one of the most effective flirtations
I ever saw, but alas! conducted in that Izumo dialect so hard for the
Tokyo-taught foreigner to understand. And it went on like the hum of
the _semmi_, while the water, the world, and the boat drowsed in the
heat.
* * * * *
Suddenly, from out of the nowhere, appeared our captain, who swung
himself down from the landing-stage on to the boat as imperturbably as
a stone Buddha. The sea-blue _kimono_, still on its knees at the edge
of the water, swayed in one last enchanting giggle that showed all
the lacquer-red linings in a quiver of flame, while the supplementary
giggles of the stout little maid followed us regretfully out of the bay.
With more “ay-aying” we shot back into the hard glitter of the lagoon.
The captain retired to his hole and his Chinese poetry, the crew had
completely disappeared, but the big-headed boy, emerging from some
unknown region behind the captain, carried out a _hibachi_ and a
kettle. He set the kettle on the brass tripod over the _hibachi_ and
blew up the charcoal fire with a large fan; and we all watched him
with interest as he made Japanese tea in a green china teapot, rather
larger than the kettle, with a black handle and with dividing lines of
black separating the green into leaf-like petals. At this we all sat
up, thirstier with anticipation, and the little china bowls filled from
the green kettle-teapot vanished from the tray. Then the big-headed boy
handed round _manju_ cakes (like boiled chestnuts in a white coat of
sweet rice-paste), and collected payment, one _sen_ (a farthing). We
all promptly demanded more tea, and the little bowls were filled and
refilled until the green kettle-teapot ran dry; and we all subsided
again. Only the _tink, tink_, of the metal pipes, knocking out the
glowing wad of tobacco on to the deck in order to light a fresh pipeful
from the burning remains of the old one, broke the drowsy silence.
Three little whiffs and the acorn bowl of a Japanese pipe is empty, so
the _tink, tink_, of the metal on the deck was rhythmic as the _vee-um_
of the _semmi_. They were all smoking, men and women, and the scent of
the bright brown tobacco, fine-cut as hair, lay under the awning.
* * * * *
The near green shore ran in and out, and in and out, until all the wide
sheet of glittering light, spread over the blue waters, lay behind
us; in front a bright green bank of rushes hemmed in the light. The
lagoon was ended, and still we went on, seemingly with the intention
of stranding ourselves among the bulrushes. But the bulrushes stood
back as we came on, and ranging themselves on either hand, left a water
pathway down which we went, until the bank of rushes following the
lagoon lay far behind, and we found ourselves in a narrow river that
seemed half natural stream and half artificial canal.
Our unnautical captain, who, ever since we had entered the rushes,
had been intoning directions to the invisible crew as though he were
reading poetry aloud, got up out of his hole. The _tink, tink_, of
the metal pipes on the wooden deck died gradually away as each smoker
knocked out his last wad of tobacco and put away his pipe. Then with a
sudden and terrific snort the absurd little steamer, an end in either
bank, stood still. The big-headed boy, hanging over the side of the
boat, kicked violently with his heels, while the unexpected apparition
of the crew’s head rose up at our feet. The head took a look round
and sank again, and the engines rattled. Still with an end in either
bank, and with the big-headed boy clasping the gunwale in his arms, we
proceeded to turn slowly round, and then, assisted by several ropes and
several haulers, to back majestically into the main street of Shobara.
Our journey was ended. The big-headed boy, leaving the gunwale, rushed
to reshoe the first-class passengers as they wriggled from the saloon
on to the roadway. The bullet-headed peasants and their little brown
wives bowing low bows to each other, the captain and to the _Ijin
San_, took up their bundles and trudged off, while we, like a Royal
arrival, were received by the authorities of Shobara, in the person of
a fierce little policeman in a new white suit, and duly escorted the
three-and-a-half paces from the ship’s side to the tea-house door in a
procession, the people lining up the way.
And the last we saw of that absurd little steamer, as we turned into
the tea-house, was a glimpse of the crew looking down the funnel, while
the big-headed boy, standing amidships, handed out the cargo to its
owners on either bank.
II
TO KIZUKI
The green earth lay burning in the sun, wrapt round and round with
heat. Between the tall blue lines of hills it stretched, the flat green
floor of a deep blue cavern, whose roof-top was the sky. And through
the green the long white road ran out of sight. The only living thing
that moved was the running _kurumaya_, all else lay sleeping in the
bright night-time of heat, a heavy drugged sleep that neither rested
nor refreshed.
Inert the green earth stretched between the blue hills, weighed down
with heat; a palpable heat through which we moved as a fish moves
through water; a visible heat which was lying there heavy on the land,
floating round the blue hills, quivering against the white sky, humming
in the still air, rolling in great drops down the bronzed back of the
_kurumaya_, drowsing me to sleep as with the soft waving of a heated
fan, a heavy, encompassing heat that stunned.
And always the white road ran on through the green earth, and the long,
straight lines of hills on either side shut off the sky.
Between the fields of rice, here and there among the green, a
brown-thatched house like an open shed rose up, its roof supported on
the square pillars of the four corner posts, its walls rolled out of
sight. And on the matted floor the women and children lay sleeping,
their necks supported on a narrow stool; the men stretched on their
backs, or lying prone, their heads between their arms.
Not a living thing in house or field, in land or road, was moving save
the running _kurumaya_. Heat had slain the world and life itself was
senseless.
* * * * *
On either side the straight blue hills stretched out of sight, the
green earth lay like a narrow passage-way between; and on and on we
ran, until the green floor contracted, and the white road became a
broad still street, where brown houses shut out the hills.
A rapid spurt through the empty village, for a _kurumaya_ never stops
except at the top of his speed, and we arrive at the tea-house. Dazed,
weary, and stiff with two hours of continuous running, we struggle from
under the shawls and wraps that keep out the sun, and sink on to the
matting; while the crowd which has grown no man knoweth how, from out
of an empty village, stands silently, staring. With equal suddenness
a small policeman starts up in front. He inquires our names, ages,
residence and destination; orders back the crowd with one wave of his
arm, commands that we be taken into an inner apartment, remote from
public gaze; and, in short, declares we may repose on him.
We are taken into an inner apartment, a room that is almost cool, while
the crowd drifts patiently round the house trying to look in. One
little wide-eyed _nēsan_ brings us tea, and then house and world sink
back into slumber again.
The _nēsan_, reluctant, but at last dismissed, lies down on the
matting, beyond the courtyard, and falls asleep. Her neck rests on a
narrow wooden pillow that has the curves of a _torī_; she lies like a
long-stalked flower on the ground, rigid, quite graceful. Every fold of
her _kimono_, every twist of her hair, is in place. She is fast asleep,
unconscious, perfectly tidy, with a neatness that has passed into its
essence, grace, and is natural as the feathers to a bird.
We cannot sleep, the mere transition from the greater heat outside
to the cooler heat of this open matted space makes us wakeful. It is
cooler here actually, in degree, and imaginatively, from the green
palms of the baby garden. The garden of a doll’s house, which any
moderate-sized bath-towel would have roofed, yet with a forest of dwarf
palm-trees in one corner, a winding pool in another, the cool grey
outlines of a stone lantern to hold the eyes, and a sense of still
greenness, of limpid freshness, which not rivers of water or forests of
giant trees could more distinctly convey. To look at that garden was to
take a mental bath and drown out the sense of heat. But the heat itself
remained, intense and stagnant, a heavy presence in the house that
permeated all things.
Out in the courtyard one shaft of burning light shone down, turning the
cotton towel on its bamboo line to a white-hot banner, the polished
passage to a molten pool, while the water in the big stone font was
warm as condensed steam. Like the flaming sword of the Archangel
Michael, the shaft of burning light cut the passage-way in two, and the
sharp white-heat of it seemed to cut. It was absolutely still, only the
heat moved awake in a house and a world asleep.
* * * * *
Very slowly the little _nēsan_ sat up; some one had called her. A
moment, and she was on her feet, neat as a growing flower.
“The _kurumaya_ awaits,” she said, kneeling on the matting, “when it
honourably pleases the august ones to come.”
Then she touched her forehead to the floor and waited for what it
honourably pleased the august ones to do.
They came, down the polished passage, under the flaming sword of
light, out into the open space before the tea-house, where the little
policeman waited to command them to be packed into their _kuruma_, to
deliver stringent orders for their safe conduct to the _kurumaya_, to
authoritatively bid them the politest of _sayonara_.
The crowd had disappeared, harangued out of existence; the village
street was empty as a desert, the houses dead; and then the steep line
of blue hills grew up on either side, shutting in the sky, and the long
white road stretched away through the green earth.
Palpable, visible, the heat lay over the land, quivering against the
white sky, floating round the blue hills, humming in the still air,
drowsing me into a somnambulant life that was neither sleep nor waking.
Between the green earth and the white sky the telegraph wires cut a
bronze line against the quivering blue; and the rows of little birds,
all sitting with their tails to the road, hung drowsily there, rows on
rows of them. And still the long white road ran on and on.
Beneath the short thick hair of the _kurumaya_ the heat gathered in
wet patches on the white scalp, rolled in big drops over the black
head, trickled down the bronze neck, and was wiped off with one rapid
movement of the blue cotton towel, as the running _kurumaya_ sped
swiftly on; gathered again, rolled again, trickled again, was wiped
dry again; gathered, rolled, trickled, until the automatic movements,
repeated and repeated, grew part of Time itself. They were Time.
* * * * *
Then I awoke. It was as if some one had slid a thin lining of fresh
air along the tops of the blue hills, beneath the burning sky. A thin,
thin sheet of fresh air, but the green earth gave a great sigh, the
_kurumaya_ a little shake, and I awoke.
The peasants in their brown thatched houses, open as a shed, were
stirring, the naked red figures in their white cloths were moving down
the road.
In the fields the long bamboo poles that shot up out of the green earth
like masts were dipping up and down, drawing water for the thirsty rice.
The little birds on the telegraph wires were chirping sleepily, flying
off in twos and threes, and settling down again, audibly fussing over
the laziness of their friends and relations.
The bright night-time of heat was over and gone.
I sat up in my _kuruma_ and looked. We were running through green
rice-fields, under a blue sky. And it was a hot summer’s afternoon.
III
IZUMO’S GREAT TEMPLE
“So they made fast the temple pillars on the nethermost rock-bottom,
and they made high the cross-beams to the plain of high heaven;” and
the god Onamuji, the “Master of the Great Land,” King of Izumo, in
accordance with his compact with high heaven, entered into that temple
and dwelt there.
So the province of Izumo and the kingdom of Western Japan passed under
the rule of the great Sun-Goddess whose descendants endure to this day.
But the Master of the Great Land, the god Onamuji, is worshipped from
end to end of the Emperor’s dominions, and his temple and his priests
are sacred as the mirror of the Sun-Goddess in their eyes.
All through the year, the pilgrims in thousands journey into Izumo to
remote Kizuki, whose name to their ears is still resonant with the
beating (_tsuku_) of the pestles (_ki_) which made the foundations of
that first great temple firm and everlasting, while in the month of
October the immortal gods themselves, from every shrine throughout
the land, come to visit Onamuji, and that desolate month known in
Japan as _kami-na-zuki_ (month without gods) is called in Izumo alone
_kami-ari-zuki_ (the month with gods).
At the foot of the everlasting hills the temple stands, and the far-off
ripple of the Western Sea, half a memory, half a dream, wanders through
its sunlit courts, a sound to listening ears.
The long dark avenue of twisted trees, so old that many are almost
limbless, the three giant _torī_, hewn in solid granite, lie behind
us; we have reached the white sunlight of the outer temple space, and
the scattered buildings of the shrine are in front. Our landlord, in
his Sunday-best _kimono_ of silver-grey, leads the way. He has walked,
since we left the inn, exactly three paces behind us, while three paces
behind him came our _kurumaya_. In Kizuki it has not been considered
consonant with our dignity to allow us to move anywhere without them.
Our landlord, with the profoundest bow, moves on in front. He has a
letter to deliver on our behalf, so that when we reach the long, low
building at the end of the first enclosure, an authoritative young
priest in long white robes is there to greet us. He wears a wonderful
head-dress of black lacquer, the model of a meat-cover, tied on under
the chin, with two red cords in the manner of a doll’s bonnet; but his
chin is human, not inflexible, so I watch to see the meat-cover tumble.
It never does, not even when with a low bow he invites us up the steep
polished steps into the room above. We take off our shoes and climb.
The room is long and low, with a “foreign” table covered with a green
baize cloth. There are bright blue velvet chairs, an inkstand, pens;
just a second-hand committee-room greatly the worse for wear, which
impresses our landlord, so that his strangled h’s of admiration sound
like paroxysms of coughing. We sit on the velvet chairs and wait. Our
landlord, the letter and the priest have disappeared into an inner
apartment. And the sound of much discussion comes to our ears. “How
far are we to be allowed to go?” And then the terms “learned _Ijin
San_,” and “august sage” reach us. At last they are all agreed. The
“learned _Ijin San_,” the “honourable teacher,” the “august sage” shall
be permitted to enter the very Holy of Holies; but the “honourable
interior,” being a woman, must not cross the sacred threshold. Then
there is a long pause before the authoritative young priest comes out
and explains the position to us. We bow the profoundest thanks and
follow him down the steps, and the reason for the pause is evident. He
has changed his clothes, and is now in the fullest and most resplendent
of sacerdotal robes.
* * * * *
Under the shadow of the gate of the _ita-gaki_, the second enclosing
fence, stands the High Priest himself, whose fathers for two thousand
years have led the temple rites. He is the eighty-second descendant of
the mythic Susa-no-wo, and is still termed by many _Iki-gami_, which is
the “Living God.” An old, old man, whose face is almost white, a mystic
sacred face, quiet as the eternal smile of the Eternal Buddha. He wears
a lacquered head-dress, the most imposing of meat-covers, and his robes
are of white and purple adorned with gold.
We pass within the _ita-gaki_, and the landlord, the _kurumaya_, the
crowd of other worshippers are left behind. Before us rises the low
fence of the “jewelled hedge,” which encloses the sacred shrine itself.
Again before the gateway there is a pause. The minor priests, even
our authoritative young friend, do not enter here. It is explained to
us that the “honourable interior” must not pass within the temple.
She is a woman, but it is permitted to her, as the wife of the most
“honourable one,” to look into the shrine from a room above the
gateway. The High Priest removes his sandals, we our shoes, and over
the rounded, water-washed, grey pebbles, hot as burning plough-shares,
we enter the holy court.
A long, low wooden building is the temple, primæval in its form, the
broad ends of its roof-tree sticking up like pointed anchors through
the roof. Six feet around it on every side the pebbles stop, and the
space is filled with the whitest, smoothest sand. All those who go up
to the god leave the mark of their feet behind.
Within the temple there is nothing; bare space, dim, obscure; but the
High Priest, reverently kneeling on the matting, creates the god. And
into that narrow empty space the shadow of the Eternal Presence comes.
Slowly the splash of the breaking waves drifts into the stillness,
faint as the whisper of God in the heart of man, a still, small voice.
Over the temple there is peace, the peace of two thousand years,
unbroken, sacred. And the dreamy ripple grows a sound in the silence.
Faint, faint, faint, is it the song of the limitless sea, the voice of
the peace and the stillness, or a broken murmur of the beyond that the
listening pilgrim hears? Half a memory, half a dream, it dies at the
gate of the shrine, where the stir of the world grows loud; yet the
soul has heard, has believed.
* * * * *
Out in the sunlit court beyond the “jewelled hedge” the little group of
priests still wait. And as we come slowly over the hot round stones,
our shoes once more upon our feet, they greet us with an added respect.
Even the “honourable interior,” whose sacredness is but indirect,
transmitted through a space of court and two open _shōji_, has become a
personage.
The old, old priest, with the face of a Chinese sage, goes on in front.
We cross the second court obliquely over the stone-grey pebbles, each
rounded with the rubbing of running water, and enter another building,
the treasure-house of the temple. Here in a shaded upper chamber, where
the white sunlight filters through the yellow matting, a long low shelf
runs round, and on it lie the temple’s treasures--relics of dead heroes
and of living legend. One by one the High Priest points them out, and
in the thin frail voice of age tells their story: A _biwa_, a sword,
some pieces of tattered brocade, the old, old relics of Old Japan.
The tales are long, as the old man tells them with the slow-moving
utterance of one who has had eighty years in which to speak. But there
is a personal vibration in his voice that brings back the long two
thousand years of service that he and his have given to the temple,
recalls the eighty-two High Priests, his fathers, who join the living
man before us to the god Susa-no-wo, from whom the Great Master,
Onamuji himself, descended.
All this time, the authoritative young priest has been respectfully
but quite obviously waiting to show us something. At last he draws
us across the room to where a life-sized plaster statue stands, the
Sun-Goddess herself in the flowing robes of Old Japan, a figure full of
majesty and power, with round her neck a string of those prehistoric
jewels of which the _Kojiki_ is full, comma-shaped polished jewels
of jade and crystal, threaded on a scarlet string. And in the loose
sleeves of the plaster figure and about the folds at the neck are
touches of brightest red. A modern plaster statue of a figure old to
unbelief.
And the young man tells the story. He is so eager, so proud to relate
what has indeed become the great central fact of the story, that who or
what the statue is, or how or why it came there we never hear; but--it
had gained a prize at the Chicago Exhibition!
And all the rest of the clergy intone a little chorus of triumph and
delight. Even the High Priest himself seems pleased, and a faint smile
passes over his face as he bids us examine the ticket.