landlady, it seemed that great things were preparing for us--quite
what remained a mystery. At last the plain daughter, bubbling with the
pleasure of our surprise, came to call us.
“As for the morning meal,” she said, “all is prepared,” and even the
ceremony of her bows suffered from her eagerness.
We went through the half-wall of _shōji_ panels, across a room, into
another, where the family, all assembled, almost (had it not been
entirely un-Japanese) clapped its hands in pride.
There on the matting, and each leg protected by a supporting slab of
wood, stood a foreign table; four foreign chairs, their legs too nailed
into long slats of wood, stood round. Across a corner of the table lay
a thin strip of cotton cloth, and on this, in all the majesty of its
solid ugliness, reposed the white meat-dish of our god-like drink. This
morning it was full of something smoking, dimly resembling Irish stew.
The comely landlady beamed as we approached.
“Sea-food forthcomes,” she said proudly.
And to our “foreign” breakfast we sat slowly down. How bad it was! But
the family, even to the old, old grandmother, were so delighted, so
proud of their unexpected triumph, that we ate that abominable stew
till not a fragment of its tough meat or a spoonful of its gluey gravy
remained.
Many times since have I wondered how that Napoleonic landlady organised
the feast? How did she get the meat? Who cooked it? and where did they
learn? Did she invent the recipe out of her own head? Perhaps she
raided the garrison? She was capable of it. There was bread too. Matsué
was quite in the front of the fashion; not like poor Kizuki, which was
sadly out of date; they hadn’t even _bīru_ (beer) there.
All this she told us as she helped us, always with the iron ladle,
to that terrific stew. With the foreign food too, we had “foreign”
china, horrible railway-restaurant plates and cups, clumsy and thick,
sprawled all over with a large design in bilious blue; knives and forks
that never matched, and, of course, the inevitable cruet. This hideous
article is always the first vestige of “foreign” fashion in a Japanese
hotel, where it accompanies every meal. Once it may have been of German
silver; it is all drab now. Long centuries of use have left it bent and
dinted. Its bottles leak, their stoppers never fit, and whatever they
once held, all now drip oil and taste soy. We thought of our dainty
lacquered trays, our delicate white china with drawings in faint blue,
the refinement and the art of that meal, and we sighed. The fish they
could not spoil, and their tea is always good, so we breakfasted. And
the plain daughter, whose ambitions (or her mother’s) soared to Tokyo
heights of fashion, asked if everything was really “_yoroshī_” upon the
table, and, if not, “would we show her how?” The knives and forks had
puzzled her woefully; how ought they to be laid? So we laid the table,
and we set the forks, and we placed the bread, and we handed plates and
glasses, and the ancient grandmother shook with astonishment. Was ever
like seen under the sun? And even the capable landlady exclaimed. So
the conscientious plain daughter worked through her knives and forks,
her bread on this side and her glasses on that, with the zeal of an
earnest student; and afterwards we caught her displaying her great
accomplishment to a circle of admiring friends.
* * * * *
We were to see the sights of Matsué. Our friend from the Prefecture and
the black squirrel of a landlord had talked it over exhaustively the
night before. We were catered for like Royal visitors. We did not need
to plan, or ask, or seek. “Honourably trouble not. It happens.” And it
did.
That morning the landlord, in a long polite speech, made us over to
his son, a quiet clever lad who might have been the twin of his plain
sister; and we set off. We wished to stop for many things, temples and
toy shops, the peeps of life on street and wharf, but our guide, though
never contradicting, was so preoccupied, so intent on something that we
gave in and meekly followed down the long streets over the many canals,
whose bridges showed an arch like the young crescent of the moon, along
the hot white road, until we reached an ugly wooden building in the
style called “foreign,” all decorated with flags and policemen. Here we
entered. The policemen drew up in line as we passed, and the scurrying
feet of a dozen officials all clothed in long frock-coats came down the
vestibule.
It was an Exhibition of the Arts, Industries, and Manufactures of the
Province of Izumo, and quite inadvertently we had arrived to open the
proceedings. The distinguished strangers from England, received by
the phalanx of frock-coats, were conducted majestically through the
whole building. We were not allowed to miss a single room. If, after
peeping into one, and finding it contained nothing but sacks of rice,
or samples of raw silk, we retreated, instantly a frock-coat or a
policeman appeared to lead us round. We did not miss the least little
exhibit of the least little room. We saw them all: bags of rice,
cocoons of silk, hollow candles with growing designs in faint pale
colours, Izumo crystals famed throughout Japan, lengths of piece-silk,
twists of sewing-silk, embroideries, china, the famous yellow china
of Matsué, all the roots and grains and wood of the province, fishing
nets and field tools, and a whole large section of the beautiful Izumo
matting. In our admiration we wished to buy, and instantly all the
frock-coats ran after one another, each official going to consult his
chief. They arrived in groups and talked; they went away and came back
again. We had unknowingly placed the whole officialdom of Matsué on the
horns of a dilemma. We were the distinguished visitors from England;
we wished to buy Matsué’s most especial production; the honour was
great--but the regulations said no exhibit might be taken away before
the close of the exhibition; and the Japanese respect the law as they
respect the Emperor. So we waited. At last a most wonderful frock-coat
appeared resplendent with decorations; solemnly he made a speech
explaining the difficulty, excusing the delay, expressing great honour
at our request, and at a sign his attendant handed over the matting to
our attendant, and with many bows we parted.
* * * * *
That afternoon, as we lay upon our matting in our wall-less room,
fanned by the plain daughter, our landlady brought in the local
newspaper, and sitting down on her heels she read to us a long account
of the arrival in Matsué of the “distinguished strangers from England,”
and a kind of “Stop Press telegram” announcing their gracious purchase
of matting at the exhibition that morning, besides an editorial
advertisement of a description of their visit to the exhibition for
the next issue. Our rooms at the inn were described at length, our
appearance “with faces white as milk”--the foreign simile showing great
learning on the part of the reporter--our ages politely overstated, for
the young here, women as well as men, desire to be old so that to be
thought older than one’s age is the greatest of compliments; the paper
therefore called us most politely “upwards of forty,” causing our dear
landlady to beam with delight, and the plain daughter to utter a long
series of those curious strangled “h’s” by which the Japanese express
intense admiration, as she fanned us more vigorously. Then, _à propos_
of our “milk-white faces,” the landlady, with much hesitation, asked
a favour “so great that to speak unable am.” Might she have our soap?
Japanese soap they had, but somehow, possibly, that “foreign” soap of
ours might account for some of our strange whiteness. So she and the
plain daughter retired with the soap; and for the rest of the afternoon
they scrubbed diligently in the bathroom.
* * * * *
And we sat quiet upon our matting in the heat, while the green hills
and the rice-fields, the pebbled pathway of our garden bridge, and all
the wide still spaces of the lake hung as frescoes round our room. The
hot blue sky burned fiercely, the blue of a heated brick-kiln, and our
living frescoes hung motionless as the work of man. There was neither
change nor shadow. Hills and lake and rice-fields lay still against the
sky--flat as it were upon a flattened background, and in that light
which did not shine but suffused itself through all things, there were
no shadows, a deepened blueness here and there, but neither shadow nor
perspective. The sense of distance, as the sense of shade, was quite
annihilated. Those old Japanese artists saw truly, despite our western
dictums, light does not lie here as we see it, still less as it lies
in the actual tropics; it has effects of light and distance which are
all its own, and the Japanese, seeing them, reproduced them, not
because there are no others, but because these are so truly Japanese.
And we, knowing neither the country nor the climate, but strong in our
arrogance of “laws,” called it “false, a childlike art ignorant of
science.”
In the Land of the Gods we sat and learnt wisdom, and Japan and its
people, its life and its pictures took a new meaning in our eyes, and
the false became true.
* * * * *
When our landlady and her daughter came back from the bathroom they
brought a small thin oblong of soap, and their hands were all wrinkled
with washing.
“_Mada kurō gozaimas kara omachi nassatta hō ga yō gozaimas_,” they
said in a melancholy, half-laughing voice. “Still brown because,
leaving off had best be done,” and they held out their four hands for
inspection.
The _Ijin San’s_ whiteness was not in the soap. But when we went
we left as a present a whole new cake of “foreign” soap; and their
supplementary scrubbings must have been many.
* * * * *
That evening we were entertained by a small boy with the snubbiest of
noses, who peeped slyly at us from out of the darkness of the garden.
When he was induced to come in he brought all his lesson books, which
he turned over for our amusement, and between each page he chuckled,
but he never told us why. Whether it was the recollections of his lost
lessons or a subtle sense of absurdity that we could not read the
Chinese hieroglyphics of his primers we never knew, but his chuckles
were deep with joy. Then in the pauses he would count solemnly up to
ten, all the English he knew, and chuckle again.
Two wide-eyed little maidens were brought in next morning to see the
_Ijin San_. In a very awestruck whisper they inquired “if we were real.”
These little babies were very solemn and very good, but not one scrap
shy or frightened. In all their little lives they had never met a
grown-up being who was harsh to them. Though obedience is the first
requisite of Japanese children young or old, they give it as the plants
their flowers, not from a sense of hard-learned duty, but as a natural
product of an eternal law.
The babies made the funniest little bows as they touched their little
foreheads to the ground. And then they sat and looked at us with wide,
wide-opened eyes. To them we belonged to the world of the mythical
_Kirin_, and the terrible _Kitsuné_ who takes bad babies away and feeds
them on frogs and snails; we belonged to the realm of the sea-goddess
who married Urashima, to the land of the fairies. So they asked if we
were real.
They could not be induced to talk to us, though they were wonderfully
polite, and quite knocked their little foreheads on the floor when
they said “Good-bye.” Did we figure as goblins or as fairies in their
dreams, I wonder?
* * * * *
That afternoon a stall-owner from the exhibition came to show us Izumo
crystals.
For two hours he knelt upon the matting opening the beautifully made
boxes of white unpainted wood. And we looked at large divining-crystals
without fleck or flaw, at the pale clouded crystals shading from
mist-white to palest crimson, at the agates and amethysts; and all the
time our comely landlady and her plain daughter sat on their heels and
admired with taste and great discrimination.
There was not in all this shopful of precious stones anything to wear.
A few crystal hairpins, a few “foreign” studs, but no jewellery as we
understand it. The Japanese never wear jewellery; neither rings, nor
bracelets, nor chains, nor pins, nor brooches, nor tiaras--nothing.
One wonders how much crime and heart-burning has the nation missed.
Precious stones they have, but they buy and keep them for their shape
or for their colour, as a picture or a bronze, not to adorn themselves.
All the rest of the world, in all times, barbarous and civilised, have
fought and stolen, slain and ruined themselves just to heap upon their
fingers or their heads strings of gleaming stones. In this island-empire
alone men and women have looked at precious stones, have handled and
admired, but never worn them. One wonders was it purely the artistic
instinct of the race which kept them from it, or the stern morality of
the _samurai_, preaching denial and self-control.
And again one wonders if too much jewellery be barbaric, where in the
scale of civilisation does a nation come that wears none at all? Surely
art can produce worthier things than jewellery, and are not morals
better without it?
* * * * *
Our inn was full of guests, quite full, and all the rooms have paper
panels. There are no keys, no locks, no bolts, the whole inn, were it
so minded, could go in and out of every room; and yet we all sleep in
peace and quite secure. It is true that an innkeeper here must bear an
unblemished character or his house is shut, and that the guests often
come with a letter from their last innkeeper, but not always, and yet
we all sleep with half an inch of rice-paper between us, and walls of
sliding panels. Could a hotelful of civilised Europeans be so trusted?
If not to steal, then not to pry as well? But here nobody looks.
Although we have become great personages indeed, nobody looks. And
in the big towns as in the country villages, in railway hotels as in
this remote corner of the Land of the Gods, we have slept in absolute
security in rooms that are always open. Only once in all our wanderings
did someone push the _shōji_. It was an _Ijin San_ who thought it was
“a lark.”
* * * * *
And so we lived in the Land of the Gods and learnt wisdom, wisdom from
the lake, and the hills, and the rice-fields, from the night and the
daylight, and the inner beauty of the land lay before our eyes, still
dim, for western eyes are blind to eastern meaning through want of
power to focus, but in part we saw, and the joy of that seeing has
never passed away. The town, the inn, the comely landlady, and the wee,
wide-eyed children all taught us wisdom and the meaning and the beauty
of the land. Slowly we saw, dimly too, for western eyes are very blind
to eastern meaning, and race, religion, training and the whole up-make
of our ideas and beliefs stand so often in the way. Still in part we
saw, and the lessons of that seeing have never passed away. We had come
in all humility, so the Gods were kind. They opened our eyes that we
might see.
* * * * *
When we announced that we were going the household was upset. And
on the last morning of our stay they all, landlord, landlady, plain
daughter, goggle-eyed waiting-girls, came in a procession bearing
gifts. We had fans to keep us cool upon the journey, white towels with
pictures of the inn in blue, and above all, gifts of the beautiful
Matsué china which we had so much admired. Everything was tied up in
the neatest parcels wrapped in pieces of brocade, and presented on
lacquered trays. On the top of the Matsué china lay a tiny white paper
cone lined with red in which was stuck a splinter of bamboo cane, the
modern symbol of the old-time fish which was always presented with each
gift. And the meaning of the whole is peace, plenty, and prosperity. We
had nothing so beautiful to give in exchange, only a cake of foreign
soap and a visiting-card. The cake of soap was considered by the rest
of the household, including the old grandmother, who had come in, as a
palpable hit, and the visiting-cards were much prized.
Then with every one carrying our luggage we were escorted to the gravel
recess of the entrance, where our _kurumaya_ stood waiting, and all the
household went down on its knees on the polished wooden platform and
said sweet _sayonara_.
And there in the walled-in recess with the wooden _gheta_ lying on the
big grey block of stone the kneeling figures stayed. Clad in their dark
blue _kimono_ with the bright-coloured _obi_ at the waist, they knelt
on the polished wood, their heads on their hands, their hands on the
floor; and as they knelt the rolls and whorls of their coiffures seemed
to grow like flowers from bending stalks of blue.
“_Sayonara_,” they said, and all the blue stalks swayed.
“_Sayonara_,” we called back. “Farewell.” Oh, dear Land of the Gods
that has taught us wisdom, not you, but we have need to fare well.
VI
THE TWO SPIRITS
Out of the town and above it, the _daimyō_ of Matsué once built him a
castle, and he filled it with the stern warriors whose soul was their
sword. _Daimyō_ after _daimyō_ lived and died, and still a _daimyō_
ruled over Izumo; and warrior after warrior fought and was slain, and
still the _samurai_ learned the laws of the _bushi_, the way of the
warrior, and the strong fortress of Matsué, with its moat and its
walls, was guarded and kept by men whose lives were one long servitude
to honour and duty. The grim ideals of a code which feared no death and
no torture, which exacted the sternest courage and self-control, were
taught and practised in the castle of Matsué, until the Son of Heaven
ruled in Tokyo and _daimyō_ and _samurai_ were feudal lord and loyal
vassal no longer.
The grim walls are standing now, the castle with its moat still rises
above Matsué to possess it, but the spirit of its fierce dominance is
gone; instead, that twin-soul of the Japanese race has entered into the
stronghold, the Love of Beauty has cast out the Love of Battle, the
sword is changed to flowers, for in the moat of the castle the lotus is
blooming.
Stern and very strong the grey walls rise high into the air, they have
not lost their grimness though their feet are bathed in flowers. It is
true the gateway is broken, and where the drawbridge once fell there is
now a broad path of stamped earth, but the long lines of solid wall are
firm still and uninjured. They still rise frowning from out the deep
waters of the moat; but to-day the moat itself has disappeared, in its
place the broad thick leaves of the lotus stretch like a silvery green
river around the walls. So broad, so strong, so helpless, the great
leaves hang like unsteady giants on their stalks, and the pin-points of
water gather and gather on the hairy surface, till the leaf curls to a
cup and a big waterdrop, molten as quicksilver, runs gleaming over the
green.
The lotus leaves lie all lazy at angles of rest, but the flowers seem
to rise on their stalks as birds taking wing. All pure white or palest
pink, each single flower is a giant’s handful of blossom, and yet the
petals are delicate, almost transparent; thin, too, in their texture,
but of a satiny softness, they curl with the grace of a rose above the
pure gold of their hearts.
The lotus leaves dream inert, each on its stalk hangs drooping,
often awry: they encircle the walls like a green river of water that
stagnantly sleeps; but the flowers are awake and they rise from their
leaves as the Spirit of Beauty once rose from the waters. All pure
white on this side of the gateway, all pale pink on that, the great
cups of blossom stand stately. Very fragile in their texture, and yet
so ample in their form the lotus flower seems the meeting-point of
luxuriance and grace; the point where more of either were really less
of both.
With its roots deep down in the mud, with its leaves often frankly
ridiculous in the large uncouthness of their attitudes, with its beauty
in no way ethereal, the lotus is yet the symbol of Death, not of
Nirvana, but of Death, of the completing of one brief period in this
long cycle which we call Life. So in Matsué they planted the moat of
the castle with the flower of the lotus for the life of Old Japan, of
castle and _daimyō_ and _samurai_, is ended. It is Death but a new
Beginning.
* * * * *
Beyond the gateway, a grass-grown flight of granite steps leads to the
castle, and we climb.
All the castles in all Japan are the same, bigger or smaller, with
details of decoration or style that differentiate them, they are yet in
the broad outlines of their architecture one and the same. A Japanese
house is Japanese, but the castle comes from China, at least originally,
and its pagoda character is very evident. The castle at Matsué had its
ground floor of stone, rough-hewn blocks of granite which fitted closely
to each other without mortar. The stone storey, as all the succeeding
ones of wood above it, tapered gradually inwards so that the topmost
wooden storey would have fitted into the one below it, and that into the
next, and all into the square stone box of the ground floor, as neatly
as the nest of baskets sold in the streets of the town below.
Inside, the rough-hewn stone walls were left as bare as the outside,
and a long steep ladder of a staircase, which began abruptly in the
middle of one floor to end with equal abruptness in the middle of the
floor above, led from storey to storey. The stone storey was divided
into two, the rest were of wood, and all now were absolutely bare and
unadorned; the mere outer shell of a building which had once lived
and sheltered lives. Only in the top floor, where on all four sides
sliding panels of glass had replaced the rice-paper _shōji_, was there
any sign of life. This room had been turned into a sort of Military
Museum with relics of the China war, swords and guns, and a whole long
series of wonderful coloured prints, with the Chinese always fleeing,
their long, long pigtails floating in the breeze, the Japanese always
pursuing with impossible profiles and highly polished boots; and
gravely studying the pictures was a group of schoolboys. Their comments
were mostly bloodthirsty; the best way of sticking the pink Chinaman
on the left, or of beheading the yellow one on the right; but they did
not seem moved with any animosity or any sense of triumph, they merely
discussed the sword-cuts scientifically, seriously, as though it were a
grave business of life and they wished to arrive at a right conclusion.
* * * * *
Matsué’s castle is beyond and above the town, and the _daimyō_ who
built it and the warriors who guarded it looked down on this side over
the grey roofs of the houses to the wide blue waters of the still
lagoon, on that side over the grey roofs of the houses and the sweep
of the quiet rice-fields where the river, like a broad path of steel
wanders through the bright green fields; and further round they looked
to where the tall trees climb the steep hillsides, and further still
to the great blue lines of the hills themselves shutting in the sky.
And the old warriors in their watch-tower looked out over this wide
fair world which lay so still around them. They guarded the castle and
they kept it, and the light that was set in that tower was the light
of courage and of duty. Over the world beneath their feet it shone out
clear and bright, but the world was wider than their horizon. After
many years they learned that lesson, and then they came down from
their watch-tower, and the light which once burned there in the castle
is gone to-day through all the land.
Then the Spirit of Beauty, the soul of that world which lay so still
beneath the tower, went up to the castle, where with courage and duty
the love of battle and of death had ruled so long, to possess it. And
in the waters of the moat the lotus is blooming.
* * * * *
With its roots in the mud, say the Japanese Buddhists, the lotus flower
is an emblem of man, of a good man in this wicked world. From among the
sins and the passions of life Buddha himself rose perfect, pure as the
lotus, and perfect. So for a sign and a comfort to all men, Lord Buddha
himself sits throned on the lotus, showing how Goodness Eternal came,
not from good, but from the midst of things evil.
In the moat of the castle the people of Matsué have planted whole
fields of the lotus, that the flower which is perfect might grow from
the sins of the past, grow with each cycle of Life ever more perfect.
THE HEART OF THE PEOPLE