hangs a much-worn ticket, stating in printed Roman capitals that “This
Exhibit has won a Prize at the World’s Fair of Chicago.” And the figure
stands there, in the long low treasure-house of Izumo’s Great Temple,
while the white sunlight, filtering through the yellow matting, falls
on the white-robed priests who serve a temple worshipped through two
thousand years, falls on the old High Priest with the mystic sacred
face, whose fathers stretch back into the mists of Time, and falling,
trembles on the faded ticket on the arm of the Sun-Goddess:
WORLD’S FAIR, CHICAGO.
This is to certify----
“If the august sage will honourably please to descend.”
And we descended.
In the hot still court the High Priest takes his leave, with long
polite phrases of strictest ceremony. The authoritative young priest
who escorts us back through the _ita-gaki_ into the outer court is
equally ceremonious, and our polite Japanese is heavily taxed to keep
up with him. At the outer court he bids us _sayonara_, and our landlord
and our _kurumaya_, who have been respectfully waiting, form into
procession again. We have become great personages in their eyes, very
great personages indeed; and the pilgrims, kneeling before the shrine
in the outer court, look at us with reverence. We have entered the Holy
of Holies, we have visited the god Onamuji in his shrine.
It is with the lowest of bows that our landlord leads us out of the
side of the temple court, westward, to where the tall dark trees of
the mountain have grown down into the plain. Here, set in the silence
of the cryptomerias at the foot of the everlasting hills, is the home
of the High Priest. So still, so ordered, so spotless, the house and
garden lie like a snowdrop in a forest. And the sound of the sea drifts
in as we stand.
* * * * *
Then for the last time we cross the courtyard where the pilgrims are
praying in the sunshine, and the temple dancing girls, dim figures
in the distance, glide round and round in the long slow circles of
the sacred _kagura_. Court and temple are burning in the sunlight.
Beyond the “hedge” and the “jewelled hedge” the great beam-ends of the
roof-tree rise out through the temple’s thatch. Within the shrine hangs
the mirror of the great Sun-Goddess. For the heart of man, says the
Shintō faith, is good and pure. And even as this mirror, when undimmed,
reflects the sun, so in the tranquil soul God’s self is imaged.
Over temple and courtyard there is peace; the peace of long centuries
dead; the peace of enduring belief. Down from the mists of the past
the teaching comes: “Know thyself; in the stillness of peace, know but
thyself, and thou shalt see God.”
IV
KIZUKI’S BAY
The Sea of Japan, as it wandered down the western coast, took a sudden
and unexpected bite out of the land of Izumo; and that bite is the bay
of Kizuki. It is the tiniest of bays, with but half a mile of sandy
shore between the two steep lines of hills that run straight out to
sea: green hills that stretch so far, the green has time to grow a
misty blue before they curve toward the water in a deep blurred line.
Landwards a length of sandy dune shuts out the village street; and the
little bay, set between the hills, and cut off from the sea, lies like
an ebbing lake.
On the sandy shore it is still and cool; and from the dozens of
Japanese families comes only the high pitched laughter of the playing
children. Kizuki is the Margate of the West, and the pilgrims who
journey to its shrine stay to breathe its sea air, and combine a
religious pilgrimage with a summer holiday in a manner so usual in
Japan.
The big hotel under the great north wall of green, with its ground
floor, and, wonder of wonders, two, yes--two storeys, is full. So full
that the landlord was forced to tuck away his distinguished guests in a
back room of the old inn up the village street. The square two-storied
house, with all its _shōji_ pushed back and the contents and occupants
of every room exposed to public view, looks for all the world like a
big doll’s house with the door gone. And its inhabitants eat, drink,
play, laugh, sing with the natural unconcern which we could only reach
secure behind brick walls, curtained windows, and venetian blinds. The
unconcern is so simple, so unaffected, that the Yokohama foreigner,
feeling dimly that his own behaviour could never be so natural under
such conditions, suspects “play acting,” and will sometimes speak of a
“nation of mountebanks” with the scorn of a man among monkeys.
The hotel is built just where the blue beyond of the Western Sea,
glowing between the headlands, draws eye and mind away, adding the
unbroken curve of Infinity to the quiet lake’s rounded life.
The sun has set; perhaps behind that great green wall he still drops
swiftly to the horizon, but in Kizuki there is twilight, a luminous
grey twilight that has no shadows, which, spreading, blots all colour
from the world. Between wall and wall of hill the sky stretches clear
and green. The bay is flooded with a golden light. And there, a black
line from gold to green, its base in the yellow water, its crest on the
sunset sky, stands Kizuki’s second wonder, the third beauty of Izumo--a
tall pointed rock. For the Japanese, who seek much more for line than
colour in their beauty, glory in its curves; and the little bay of
Kizuki owes its visitors not to the purity of its air, its fishing,
boating, bathing, or casino, but to the beauty of its solitary rock and
the nearness of its sacred temple.
From shore to sky the luminous grey twilight climbs. The flood of
golden light is dead. The great green walls that make the bay are dark.
Only in the sky the faintest stain of colour lingers; and there the
rock’s lone crest blots a black line upon the dying green.
My _kurumaya_, in his long parson’s coat and waistcoat, blanched the
purest white, asks if I have ever seen a bay more beautiful. And all
the dozens of Japanese families stand looking out to sea, for the cult
of the stone is in their hearts.
Slowly the luminous twilight draws the world in Chinese ink. It climbs
the sky, and the colour dies; only the sombre lines of rock are left.
The little bay is grown a mystic _kakemono_.
V
IN MATSUÉ
We had journeyed in trains and in steamers, in big boats and in little
boats, in _kuruma_ and _sampan_, and had reached the Land of the
Gods--and the inn at Matsué.
Not the least of our difficulties had been to find that inn, for our
landlord at Kyoto, on hearing we were bound for Matsué, had offered to
make all arrangements for us through a “friend in the Prefecture.” And
the arrangements had been made, but when we asked for explanations, the
address of the friend or the name of our inn, he only smiled, a polite
unexplanatory smile, spread out his hands with ceremony, and bowed. All
was “_yoroshī_.”
With this much information we had started, with this much and no more
we had arrived. The baby steamer ran alongside the wharf at Matsué, her
first-class passengers wriggled out of her cabin, her deck passengers
crawled from under the awning; and we sat still, our luggage piled
around us, wondering if, like the Peri at the Gates of Paradise, the
Land of the Gods would admit us or not.
Just then, when the pause had become really embarrassing, a
white-uniformed policeman boarded the steamer; with much ceremony he
announced--under the circumstances he could hardly have inquired--that
we were the _Ijin San_ from Kyoto. We assented, and he promptly led
us outside, where a tall, loose-jointed Japanese, with a Red Indian
face hatcheted out of iron wood and wearing “foreign” clothes, stood
waiting. The white-uniformed policeman politely performed the ceremony
of introduction, and stood aside. This was the friend from the
Prefecture; and once we had thoroughly and properly and ceremoniously
replied to this fact, which took time, our friend from the Prefecture,
who had the smile and the teeth, and the difficulty in concealing
them, of the famous Mr. Carker (only he was amiable), introduced our
landlord, a little, bright, black squirrel of a man grasping an immense
umbrella. More ceremony of course, while the crowd gathered round and
the policeman patrolled the group. We were personages. One gesture
from the amiable Carker of Matsué Prefecture and five _kurumaya_ burst
through the crowd, while twice as many assistants rushed off to bring
out our luggage under the eagle eye of the policeman; and with his
personal assurances as to our safety and comfort in Matsué, we and our
luggage were packed into three _kuruma_, the amiable Carker and the
black squirrel of a landlord climbed into two more, and the procession
started. The policeman saluted; the crowd, at the most respectful
distance, silently stared; Matsué received her visitors as the most
distinguished of strangers.
The _kurumaya_, uplifted with pride, tore along at the top of their
speed in the exact centre of the road, and the traffic scattered before
us. We did not run, we flew, over the stone bridge built just where the
canal ends and the lagoon begins, up the long, long street parallel
to the lagoon, then a dive to the left over a canal bridge, a dash
through a green turning, another dive, another bridge over another
canal, and with the most imposing clatter we tore into a gravel court
in front of the inn, and pulled up short in the recess of the entrance.
In an instant the _shōji_ slipped aside and three women in dark blue
_kimono_ were bowing, knees and forehead, on the polished wood. We had
reached the inn at Matsué.
The three figures got up, as we left our shoes on the long thick block
of rough-hewn granite which forms the front door-step between the
gravel and the house, and led us in a long procession to an open matted
space in the garden. This was our room. It had but half a wall, where
the _tokonoma_ stood; the other half was open _shōji_, leading to the
house, and two square pillars at the corners supported the roof. Here
we all subsided upon the kneeling-cushions in the strictest order of
precedence, based on nearness to the _tokonoma_. Our black squirrel
of a landlord and the amiable Carker of the Prefecture, who had also
arrived, sat on their heels with great ceremony, though the “foreign”
clothes of our friend from the Prefecture got sadly in his way, and
then the interchange of polite phrases began. It was exhaustive, for
they were, oh! so ceremonious, and although two little girls with
goggle eyes fanned us vigorously, and the blue waters of the lagoon
filled what should have been wall in front of us, we grew hotter and
hotter.
Then the plain daughter of our comely landlady brought in an immense
white meat-dish of railway-buffet thickness, and set it down with
conscious pride before her mother. It contained piles of chipped ice,
which the comely landlady shovelled into miniature tumblers, the size
of dolls’ tooth-glasses, with an imposing iron ladle. She sifted over
it white sugar from a pie-dish, and the plain daughter presented it to
the company. The drink of the Gods themselves was never more divine!
Though like Sam Weller’s orthography, which “varied according to the
taste and fancy of the speller,” you can eat this drink or you can
drink it. Either way is inelegant, but both are delicious.
It was only by relays of this amphibious refreshment, which went on
as long as there was anything besides a large pool of water in the
meat-dish, that the polite phrases flowed, on our part at least. At
last etiquette, even Japanese etiquette, was satisfied, and our amiable
friend from the Prefecture bowed himself away.
The plain daughter removed the meat-dish, not resisting to tell us it
was “foreign” as she did so, and retired. And we lay out to cool upon
the matting.
The lagoon, the garden and a green courtyard filled the three sides of
the room where walls might have been. Even the _shōji_ here had been
removed, for there were no houses visible; a high green hedge of thick
bamboo bounded court and garden, beyond were the pale blue hills.
It was not a room, it was a nest, we lived as freely in the open air
as the birds or the flowers; a brown roof hung like a sheltering leaf
above our heads, a cool clean matting covered the ground beneath our
feet, but the rustle of leaves and of rice-fields, the restless hum of
insect life, the rippling rhythm of the wide lagoon, the whole stir of
a growing world was ours. We did not peep at it through a window, we
lay in it, we _were_ it; and it rippled and hummed and grew part of us,
for Pan is not dead, in the Land of the Gods he is living still.
* * * * *
Then the comely landlady called us to our bath; “the honourable hot
water was ready,” and the plain daughter assisted us out of our clothes
into our _kimono_ with an attention which, to our sophisticated code,
was embarrassing, and led us down a passage whose wooden wall opened
into the bathroom. Here our landlady received us. She was just sliding
down the wooden plank, which shut off the pipe filled with glowing
charcoal from the rest of the bath-tub, and looking up she said the
bath was “_yoroshī_.”
The water was positively bubbling, at that delicious temperature of 110
degrees which the Japanese love; but we were not yet used to literal
boiling, so we demanded cold water. And the two little girls with
goggle eyes ran away to fetch it in high wooden pails with stiff wooden
handles. They ran out by the wooden _shōji_ on the opposite side, which
opened straight on to the gravel courtyard of the entrance, and their
dark-blue _kimono_ were tucked up into their _obi_, showing the bright
red _kimono_ underneath. And they were laughing.
When we demanded still more cold water they laughed again. The _Ijin
San_ had strange ideas of baths evidently. At last, in deference to
their feelings, we desisted. The water was no longer bubbling, so we
pronounced it “_yoroshī_,” and they all retired.
The bathroom had a grey stone floor and walls of wooden _shōji_; at one
end stood the high barrel-bath, and wooden buckets, pails and dippers
lay all around. A three-foot-high platform ran all down one side and
adjoined the passage-way by which we had entered; from it one stepped
into the bath, on it one washed and dried oneself. A bath in Japan,
which is used by all the family or hotel in succession, is not intended
for washing--that is done outside. The two _shōji_ walls, just sliding
panels of wood, opened, one on to the passage-way, the other into the
front court, and had no fastenings. The Japanese have attained to that
sense of modesty which we still feel immodest. They say to bathe is
necessary; you cannot take a bath with your clothes on; a necessary
action is never immodest, neither has it any prurient attractions for
healthy minds. But a Japanese cannot see the low-necked dresses of
western women or the pictures of Modern France without a blush. To him
a bathing woman is neither modest nor immodest, but simply indifferent;
while exposure, merely to attract, is indecency itself. Obscenity
exists in grosser minds as in every country in the world; but the
people of Japan have a moral simplicity of thought and action that is
at one with the conclusions of abstract ethical philosophy.
Like lobsters going to be cooked, we bathed, and got out swiftly but
not silently. A yard of cotton towel, where a bank of purple iris grew
out of a pale blue stream, was all the towel we had. It would have
adequately dried our finger-nails, but the design was comforting if
the towel was not. At last, in grey crêpe _kimono_ and straw sandals,
clothes as naturally a growth of the climate and the country as its
trees or people, we went back to our wall-less room and sat in peace.
The heat of the day was passing, and the colours of the sky and trees
deepened before they died. For light in this land of sunshine can
hide as well as darkness; it covers the land as a pall, all white and
glittering, which blinds as surely as the night. But in that half-hour
which comes before the swift descending twilight of the East, all the
colours deepen and intensify; they take a strange opaque lustre which
makes the thinnest leaf look solid. Mere colour seems thick, almost as
though distinct from what it colours and the colours deepen, deepen,
till, emerging from a glittering pall of white, they sink beneath the
grey-black pall of night. It is the intensest hour of all the day. The
world is not working as at the dawn, nor sleeping as in the heat, but
strong with the beating pulse of Life that fills even the stillness.
So we sat and watched the deepening glowing earth glow and deepen, and
heard the throb of life grow ever louder, till from the streets came up
the sound of children’s laughter, and from the town the stir of men.
Rich in richest colours lay the world, with greens and blues of
polished jewellery. And then the hurrying twilight settled like the
swooping pinions of a bird. The colours lost themselves in grey, the
forms they coloured in a broad, still sweep of darkness. On the white
bridge, set between canal and lake, the lanterns were already glowing,
and the indistinct brown lines of roof melted from the light into the
darkness.
For a little while the curved earth-bridge of our miniature garden,
the pebbled pathway that in a fragment of a circle led across the
winding pond, traced a clear black line against the open sky. Then the
children’s laughter in the street grew silent, the stir of men and
women stilled.
Slowly, among their shadows, the houses each hung out a light and
disappeared. The purple darkness grew with each moment deeper and more
black.
Then in a flash the shadows and the lights themselves went out, for our
inn had lit her lamps.
* * * * *
Then they brought us dinner on black lacquered trays: pink soup and
many kinds of fish, and rice with pickled cucumbers, white and brown
and purple. And we did eat. And all the time our landlady and her plain
daughter, kneeling on the matting, filled up our rice-bowls from the
wooden rice-box, or our tea-bowls from the china teapot, and the bronze
kettle which filled that teapot itself needed filling many times, for
we were thirsty. And the landlady and her daughter sat placidly on
their heels, watching our many social crimes, for there is an etiquette
of chopsticks, as strict or stricter than ours of knives and forks, and
in equivalent terms we probably were eating with our knives, putting
our dirty spoons upon the tablecloth and exhibiting the general manners
of the stable.
As a sign that you have finished in Japan you eat your last bowl of
rice flavoured with a bowlful of tea. Hardly had we reached this stage
when the bright black squirrel of a landlord arrived to announce a
visitor, and “Might he come in?”
Considerably surprised we said “Yes,” and who should enter but our
amiable Japanese Carker, this time in his own clothes. From an
insignificant and somewhat common individual he had, by the mere
change from a misfitting yellow suit into a grey silk _kimono_ with
striped silk _hakama_, changed from an underbred clerk into a courtly
gentlemen. His manners, always the same, were now at ease with himself,
and no longer incongruous or even somewhat ridiculous, they became the
perfection of grace and breeding. It is a change that one may often see
in Japan.
* * * * *
Again we all sat on our heels on the kneeling-cushions in the strictest
order of precedence, and exchanged the politest phrases of ceremony
in the courtliest of Japanese. We heard all about the great Temple of
Kizuki, the pride of Izumo, and we told of our journeys in the Far
East, to Korea and Siberia; and the landlord’s son, who had come in
behind the visitor, “half expected he might go there some day with the
army,” a wish which may well since have been fulfilled.
In true Japanese fashion our guest had brought us presents, photographs
of Matsué and of Izumo’s Great temple. We could only present him
in exchange with our cards, a map of the world with the British
possessions marked very red, and an old copy of a railway novel. The
gifts pleased him, and the whole family examined the map with great
interest. They wanted to hear all about England, and the fact that
cows and sheep (which they have never seen) walked over our fields,
and that it was sometimes light at nine in the evening struck on their
imagination. They asked many questions about the sheep, and “what the
light looked like?” which was difficult of explanation.
In spite of more amphibious drinks from the white meat-dish, which
seemed served here (probably as a concession to our foreign tastes)
instead of the inevitable tea to visitors, the struggle after faultless
_politesse_, the intricacies of a ceremonious Japanese made us grow all
limp with heat again. And when we had bowed our last bow, uttered our
last “_Mata o-me ni kakarimashō_” (“Another time may my eyes honourably
behold you”), we were reduced to a really pitiable state of exhaustion.
Our comely landlady, who had a large brain and a seeing eye, did not
wait to question. She cleared the room, sent the two giggling girls
with the goggle eyes to hang the green mosquito net, like an imposing
martial tent, from the four corners of the room, while the plain
daughter brought _futon_ like thin eiderdown quilts to sleep upon,
undressed us carefully and retired, bidding us “honourably resting
deign” as she did so.
As the lamp went out the ample folds of the square tent stood out like
a royal pavilion. We crept beneath and lay down upon the matted sheets
which covered the _futon_. In deference to our foreign bones we had
several _futon_ underneath us, and one rolled up beneath our heads; but
for all that the hardness of the matted floor, stuffed though it was,
rose up and hit us before the night was out.
* * * * *
We slept beneath our transparent tent, in our wall-less room, as the
flowers sleep, part of the living night. All the little sounds of leaf
and lake stirred round us undisturbed; the rice-ears rustled in the
silent night; the great trees stretched their branches as they slept.
Dreaming, the waters of the salt lagoon moved towards the sea, and all
the wealth of insect life, turning in its sleep, called faintly. The
still small voice of the sky whispered softly in the breezes, and the
great green Earth reached up to listen through her dreams. Bound in the
chains of man, it is at night-time that she stirs so restless, when
all the humming, conscious life is laid to sleep, when men and insects
slumber. Then the green Earth wakes; but she has endured so long that
even in her waking she is half asleep. Bound down with streets and
houses, she never wakes at all. And so all night we listened to the
voices of the world. At the dawning, when all Nature stands hushed
before the coming of the sun, we slept. But the dawning in this
southern land is short and swift. With no clouds to dim his strength,
the sun soon sat flaming on his wide blue throne; and all the insects
of the tropics, warmed into life, rose up to buzz and hum. And we awoke.
* * * * *
In the Land of the Gods there are no clocks, and although one in the
main street of Matsué proclaimed its “foreign” time, the inhabitants
beneath go their own way, and the baby steamers arrive and depart in
open disregard of the hours upon the dial. So some time between the
dawning and the noon we woke. The house was getting up. All the little
sounds of rising men and women, of a day’s beginning, were about us, so
we got up too. Crawling from under our vast green tent, we went down
the polished passage-way to the inner courtyard, where in a cool green
cloister all the rooms of the inn looked out. A long stone font filled
with water, a hanging wooden dipper, a row of shallow brass pans on
a wooden shelf stood waiting. Here the whole inn washes. With water
from the font, cool and fresh from its night’s sleep in the grey stone
basin, you fill the bamboo dipper and pour out into the shallow pans;
and then, standing in the passage-way, with all the rooms around you,
you wash. And unless a _nēsan_, attracted by the whiteness of your
skin, should stop a moment to look and wonder, no one is interested.
The usual lengths of cotton towelling hung beside the dipper, like
banners on their poles; and a crevice of sunshine piercing into the
green courtyard quivered on the round brass pans.
Tent and _futon_ had vanished when we returned, and the two little
goggle-eyed girls, still with their blue _kimono_ tucked up to show the
red ones underneath, were sweeping the matting with bamboo brooms. We
dressed in corners unattended, and sat down to wait.