of nearly every class came and bathed and went their way refreshed
in spirit, if not cured in body, by the restful babbling water. One
day an ex-daimyō, who had held high office in a recent Cabinet,
arrived with a small retinue of relations and dependants. Quiet
and dignified, he was only to be distinguished by a greater
sobriety of manner from less aristocratic neighbours. Occasionally
odd instances of polygamous experiment attracted general remark.
A Tōkyō merchant came accompanied by an elderly wife, a blind
baby, and two mistresses who had formerly been geisha. The three
women were on excellent terms, and disputed only the privilege
of spoiling the thrice-mothered child. Every evening for them
was a “musical evening,” as the man had a good voice and the
geisha were expert _samisen_ players. Nitobe San described the
_ménage_ as “a little barbarous.” But, whether his opinion was
shared by many or few, it made no difference in the reception of
the new-comers, who were treated with the same frank courtesy as
less numerously married folk. Indeed, frankness and propriety
were marked characteristics of this hydropathic paradise. If the
bathers imitated Adam and Eve in simplicity of _tenue_, their
behaviour, too, like that of our first parents before the Fall, was
faultless. Conversation was entirely unembarrassed and perfectly
decorous. The very publicity of this hotel life was a guarantee
of morality. And, in fact, one could see that beneath extreme
freedom of intercourse careful etiquette was observed. Neither
young girl nor married woman ever went out alone: the tea-party
never became a _tête-à-tête_. The _shōji_ of the apartments were
generally half open; the amusements were such as to assemble and
introduce the visitors to one another. Dancing and flirting, as
practised in English watering-place or French casino, were unknown.
If the men desired other female society than that of their own
class, they could seek the _geisha-ya_ or _jōro-ya_. If many of the
diversions were childish, those of Brighton or Trouville cannot
rank as intellectual exercises. It was a lazy, healthy, happy sort
of paradise, and I did not live in it long enough to discover the
serpent.
II
On the seventh day of the seventh moon I bade farewell to Ikao,
and, loaded with little presents, descended slowly to Takasaki.
Regret at leaving that delightful haven was soon lost in
conjecturing the solution of an astronomic mystery. Village after
village flaunted a galaxy of paper stars, which flecked the green
background of interminable trees with dancing flakes of red,
white, and blue. At every door stood a bamboo-stem crowned with
a cluster of five-rayed stars, each ray being made of paper of a
different colour. From this astral chaplet long streamers floated
in the breeze, like the _gohei_, or cut paper inscribed with
prayers, before a Shintō shrine. At Takasaki station I met Nitobe
San’s sister-in-law, O Sen San, who was returning to her husband’s
house at Tōkyō, while the student himself had gone to the more
efficacious hot springs of Kusatsu. Being fellow-travellers as far
as Akabane Junction, I begged her to reveal _en route_ the meaning
of those starry signals which continued to flutter gaily in every
district we passed, as though our train were freighted with royal
passengers. Then I learned that all pious folk were celebrating
that day the festival of Tanabata. The white streamers corresponded
in number with the children in each household, and on every one
was written a poem desiring happiness, especially good fortune in
love, for the child whose name was appended. More than this she did
not know, but a handsome young priest, who had remarked my zeal for
knowledge, kindly volunteered the following legend:
THE HERDSMAN AND THE WEAVER.
“Long ago, as Chinese sages tell us, there dwelt in Heaven a
herdsman and a weaver on opposite sides of the celestial river. All
day the herdsman tended his cattle, and was far too busily occupied
to think of taking a wife. All day the weaver sat at her loom,
making clothes for the Emperor, and this labour took up so much
of her thoughts that she even neglected to adorn her person. Then
the Emperor, remarking her diligence and pitying her loneliness,
sent for the herdsman and said: ‘Inasmuch as ye are both so devoted
to my service, I will that ye shall henceforth be devoted to one
another. I give thee this woman in marriage.’ So the girl crossed
the river, and no married couple ever lived more happily together.
But after a time the Emperor perceived that the marriage, though
it might be a good thing for them, was an evil thing for him,
since the weaver began to neglect her work, and his clothes, which
had formerly won the admiration of his courtiers, showed signs of
hasty and careless weaving. At this the Emperor grew very angry,
and sent for the weaver and said: ‘Inasmuch as this marriage has
been a joyful thing for thee and for thy husband, but a woeful
thing for the Emperor of Heaven, I bid thee recross the river and
return to thine old home. Once a year, on the seventh day of the
seventh month, the herdsman may pay thee a visit, but on every
other day in the year let him see to his herding and thou to thy
weaving.’ So the girl returned to her old home, and the river
flowed once more between herdsman and weaver; but every year, when
the feast of Tanabata comes round, husband and wife are happy
together. Therefore, all who desire their children to be fortunate
in their love ask fortunate stars to shine upon them. Now, the
Emperor of heaven is God; the celestial river is the Milky Way; the
herdsman is a star in Aquila, and the weaver is no other than Vega,
brightest and luckiest of stars.”
I thanked the priest for his pretty legend, and cautiously
approached the subject of religion, asking if he had studied
Christianity, and to what cause he attributed its slow progress
among his compatriots. He answered that two facts, in his
opinion, contributed greatly to its want of success. The first
was its extraordinary similarity to Buddhism. The ideas of a
saviour of mankind resigning kingly power to become a wandering
beggar; of virginal motherhood; of trinitarian godhead; of the
beauty of holiness and charity, love to men and kindness to
animals; of heaven and hell, as the populace conceived them,
though in reality but intermediary stages to the ultimate
Nirvana;--these, and the miracles attributed to the _rakan_,
or disciples of Buddha, which bore such remarkable resemblance
to the wonders attributed to Christian saints, prayers for the
dead, and monastic institutions;--indeed, almost every salient
doctrine of Christianity, as taught by priests of the Roman
See, could be found with more or less modification in one or
other of the numerous Buddhist sects. Why should a believer,
then, apostatise from the faith of his forefathers to adopt a
foreign creed so similar to, and yet so remote from, his own? I
found that his conceptions of Christianity were derived from a
Romish priest, whom he had known in the island of Yezo. There
was also a patriotic reason which struck me as rather unusual.
The loyal Japanese believed that their Emperor was descended
from the gods, and in the “Kojiki,” which is regarded with the
same reverence by them as the Bible by Europeans, many actions
implying divine power are said to have been performed by such
beings as the Heavenly-August-Sky-Luxuriant-Dragonfly-Youth, by the
Great-Refulgent-Mountain-Dwelling Grandee, and by other _kami_, or
superior ones (“them that are above us,” Mrs. Dolly Winthrop would
have said), to whom it was impossible to refuse the rank of deity.
But the missionary said, “Thou shalt have none other gods but Me,”
which commandment imposed on the convert the necessity of becoming
disloyal as well as an apostate. Yet, so tolerant were Buddhist
and Shintō believers, that they did not subject a pervert to any
sort of persecution. They practised and allowed entire freedom of
belief. I replied that, granting his premisses, his conclusions
were irresistible, and we parted excellent friends.
At Akabane Junction I took leave of O Sen San, and met by
appointment Mr. Richard Bates, whose acquaintance I had made
about three months before in a curio dealer’s Shop at Kyōto. As
we had agreed to take the waters of Akakura and Dōgō together, I
must apologise to him and to the reader for interpolating a brief
description of this invaluable companion. His accomplishments
were so numerous that I shrink from detailing them, but they were
all of such a nature as to enhance the pleasure of travelling.
He was a good cook, a good nurse, a good photographer; he had
the infallible _flair_ of a curio hunter, and while less wily
collectors were hesitating and beating about the bush, he would
mark his prey--perhaps an old lacquer bowl, perhaps a bronze
incense-burner--pounce on it, appreciate it, depreciate it, and
by sheer force of will-power whisk it away to his lair before
the dealer had made up his mind on the subject of price. He had
two deficiencies, which were also virtues on occasion: he easily
lost command of Japanese idiom and British phlegm. As he chose
to consider me a fair linguist, it fell to my lot to translate
arguments and accusations which were violently impossible to
reproduce. However, I did my best, and was rewarded by many scenes
of rare comedy. I often thought he would have done better to
rely on himself, since discussion gave the seller time to invent
incredible merits for his wares: at such times one glance or
gesture of contemptuous disbelief inspired more respect for the
buyer than languid protest, and that fiery fashion of raiding
a china shop, of assessing the stock with the rapidity of a
freebooter, and helping himself to anything that took his fancy,
was so appalling to the deliberate, ceremonious vendor, that I
believe goods were frequently yielded up in terror and a vague hope
of appeasement. Not that Mr. Bates invariably got the better of the
bargain. It is my belief that many geese sully with unsuspected
falsity the whiteness of his swans. But for him every purchase was
a swan, and, if you hinted otherwise, the crime of a Frenchman who
should express an unpatriotic belief in Captain Dreyfus’ innocence
were light in comparison. I seldom committed that imprudence,
but indulged a secret hope that one robbery balanced another, and
that in the end the spoils of war were equally divided. Commercial
habit does breed an instinct of distrust, which many tourists would
find discomforting; but this instinct was so agreeably modified in
my fellow-countryman by generosity and justice, that on the whole
we made as many friends as enemies. If a landlord tried to cheat
us, we told him so with reprehensible directness; if he treated
us well, we gave him a handsome present, and were as pleased as
Diogenes would have been had he pursued his famous quest by the
light of a Japanese lantern.
Men, honest or dishonest, interested us but little that day, so
absorbingly magnificent was the scenery. At Akakura we should be in
sight of the Sea of Japan, while Tōkyō faces the Pacific, so that
our route ran north-west at an angle of about forty-five degrees,
very nearly from coast to coast of the main island. The train would
have to climb to a height of 3080 feet, crossing by means of the
Usui Pass the volcanic backbone of mountains which culminates in
Asama-yama (8280 feet), the largest active volcano in the country.
As we steamed slowly up the steep gradient to the grassy levels of
New and Old Karuizawa, a series of twenty-six tunnels, bored at
such short distances from each other as to resemble the disjointed
sockets of a gigantic telescope, provided intermittent glimpses of
jagged cliffs and terrific gorges. Far below lay green valleys and
plains, threaded by silver rivulets and dotted with infinitesimal
châlets; beside us, densely-wooded slopes; to left and right, on
the horizon, Myyōgi San and the Kōtsuke peaks rose frowning to
the sky. Many passengers descended at Karuizawa, for it stands
on a lofty moor, where cows and wild flowers flourish to the joy
of European children. Here the wise missionary builds his villa
and transports his family in the hot months. Donkeys and bicycles,
bestridden by sturdy, blue-eyed youngsters, excite wonder in the
meek pedestrian native, while papa, untrammelled by clerical
attire, manfully mounts his five thousand feet and gazes into the
red sulphureous crater. Has not a local parodist thus celebrated
the annual exodus?
“When summer strikes Tsukiji
With rays, which frame in gold
That glory of Meiji,
Our evangelic fold,
To colder heights and calmer
Each missionary flies;
He loves Asama-yama,
For nearer Heaven it lies.”
Alas! the pagan mountain-god, who when he speaks will fulminate in
fire and ashes, has been dumb for more than a hundred years. He
allows the preachers of an alien creed to fill their lungs with his
life-giving air; he knows that their ingratitude will take the form
of denying his divinity. “And yet God has not said a word.”
From Karuizawa, without breaking the journey at Ueda or Nagano,
we advanced more quickly to lower ground, until the rapid
torrent of Sekigawa, which divides the provinces of Shinshu and
Echigo, arrested our attention and signified the nearness of
our destination. Leaving the railway at the little station of
Taguchi, we ascended in rickshaws the zigzag path which conducts
the pious to the sacred summit of Myōkō-zan. This mountain, on
which snowy patches still defied the August sun, is only one
hundred feet lower than Asama-yama, if the alleged height, 8180
feet, may be considered accurate. On the north-eastern slope of
this easily-climbed volcano lies the hamlet of Akakura, from which
rich plains stretch smoothly to the sea. On clear days the island
of Sado is dimly visible. Hither come the farmers and traders
of the western villages and towns, bringing sometimes their own
provisions and demanding only sleeping accommodation. The chief
hotel, one-sixth of the size of Kindayu’s, possessed a bath of
its own, in which a dozen persons could bathe, but in all the
others the guests paid a small fee to use the public baths, which
dignified the single street with all the glory of carven cornice
and stained glass. No other Europeans invaded this unfashionable
spa, whose boiling springs, pellucid and blue, are credited by the
peasantry with marvellous curative virtue. Foreign food is not to
be procured, but we supplemented the rice and millet with tinned
meat and stewed fruit. Thus fortified, we found no great difficulty
in renouncing the more highly civilised distractions of Ikao.
[Illustration: Dancers at Feast of Lanterns.]
Geisha, dramatic reciters, jugglers, and itinerant musicians never
reach such solitary heights. But, happily for us, the _Bon-Odori_,
those antique dances, which should have been danced on All Souls’
Day by the modernised Ikao folk, began in this neighbourhood two
nights after our arrival. The landlord requested a contribution
of forty _sen_ (about fourpence), which we readily doubled, for
the benefit of the performers. Then ensued a long wait, for, if
Japanese city-people are dilatory, no adjective exists which could
do justice to the country-people’s contempt for celerity. Always
accurate, Murray very properly translates _tadaima_ (immediately)
by “anytime between now and Christmas.” First one lantern entered
the courtyard; after half-an-hour, another; one by one the young
men and maidens assembled; forty minutes more elapsed before the
musicians could be induced to appear: at last a flute-player and a
drummer squatted on a mat in the centre, while the dancers circled
slowly about them. Youths and girls wore a blue kerchief tied round
the temples: they revolved, as in a game of “Follow my leader,”
without ever touching hands; two steps forward, a half-turn, two
steps back, and at irregular intervals a clapping of hands. Such
was the simple measure. But the waving of arms and the graceful
free gestures of these rustic _coryphées_ were only less effective
than the strange chanting, which rose or sank in volume as the
number of participants increased or fell away. And what do you
suppose they sang? Something in the following vein, one might
imagine:
“While we loudly dance and sing,
Spirits of our dead return,
Guided, where the lanterns burn;
In the houses they will find
Rice and water left behind;
Then sail in boats of straw away,
Until next _Bon-Odori_ day.
Peasants, come and join the ring!”
Lines like these might emanate from an Arcadian singer of Fleet
Street, but the daughters of Akakura must have lost all sense of
the solemn festival they were affecting to celebrate. What they
sang was this:
“My lad is handsome,
My lad is comely;
He has no money;
Sad is my heart.”
And again:
“Only to meet thee
Troubled my heart is;
When the dance ends, I
Ask to be thine.”
For custom in those parts has gradually established the right
of Love to oust Death from his old prerogative. Dancing enables
the lovers to find each other more easily than at other times.
Courtship is the recognised sequel of the August revels so eagerly
anticipated, so long remembered. The love-sick maiden is the
first to avow her passion, as little girls choose their partners
at a London party. Perhaps the gentle neglected ghosts bear no
resentment, but are consoled by the hope that one day it will be
their turn to live again as happily as these their descendants.
Acquaintances were not as easily made in Akakura as in Ikao. The
Kogakurō, as our hotel was called, contained but few other guests,
and we occupied the two bedrooms which formed a sort of annexe,
apart from the rest of the building. In the public baths at certain
hours one was sure of meeting from twenty to thirty bathers of all
ages and either sex, but they were extremely timid, kept silence
when we entered, and did not respond to friendly overtures, so that
we ceased to intrude upon their privacy. One old man, however, was
very fond of calling and cross-examining the strangers. He had been
a _samurai_, and at the age of seventy-six retained full vigour of
mind and body. I should have given him ten years less. The landlord
expressed his opinion that this visitor was a Government spy, and
cautioned us against talking too freely. But, as it happened, the
caution was superfluous, for the dignified old fellow spoke in such
queer dialect that I could understand very few of his remarks, and
conversation soon lapsed into an interchange of bows and smiles.
Only one other circumstance occurred in the Kogakurō during the
fortnight we spent there, to excite interest. One morning we found
the cheery little landlord very depressed because a fraudulent
guest had decamped during the night without paying his bill. Of
course, he had only to shoot aside the wooden shutters, and the
further feat of “shooting the moon” presented no difficulty.
In this dearth of human subjects to study we acquired a habit of
making daily expeditions to neighbouring localities, and were often
repaid by beautiful sights. Within two hours’ walking distance lies
the lake of Nogiri, which is larger than Lake Haruna, but not so
prettily environed. On a densely wooded islet stands a temple of
Benten, “the goddess of luck, eloquence, and fertility,” to which
we were ferried across by an obliging schoolboy. Before it stand
two immense cedars, of which one boasts a girth of twenty-seven
feet. A long flight of steps leads from the shore of the island to
the shrine, and, viewed from the summit of the steps, the belt of
mountains which rim the horizon amply rewards the climber. Except
for this view, however, Nogiri is in itself an ordinary unromantic
piece of water.
Far more exceptional is the important town of Takata, several
hundred feet below the level of Taguchi, from which the railway
descends a steep valley between mountain walls precipitously
grand. Thousands of feet above snow is surmised, waterfalls are
conjectured, but between them and the crawling train push masses
of impenetrable forest. Passing Arai, with its petroleum springs,
we reach flatter ground and enter Takata, once the castle town of
the Sakakibara family, which shared with three others the privilege
of providing a regent during the minority of a Tokugawa Shōgun.
Traces of its old magnificence and of the Tokugawa patronage exist
in a whole suburb of Buddhist temples, adorned in many cases with
the Shōgun’s crest. They are large, richly ornamented with good
carving, and approached by avenues of cryptomeria. Since the
Restoration and the Shintōist reaction the fame of the Takata
temples has decreased, but their splendour is only to be eclipsed
in that part of the country by the celebrated Zenkōji at Nagano. At
the back of one row of these temples runs a stream, spanned by as
many little bridges. I never expected to see the college “backs” of
Cambridge so admirably parodied.
The railway line is here the dividing-line between sacred and
profane. To the left of it the Buddhist monks traffic in holy
wares; to the right cotton and cotton-cloth and a species of
muslin peculiar to the place compose the stock-in-trade of half
the shopkeepers. The latter reside in homogeneous batches, as in
feudal times: all the mercers in one part, all the curio-dealers
in another, and so on. But the most curious feature in the town
is the wooden projecting roof conterminous with the street on
either side, which enables the pedestrian to perambulate the main
thoroughfare under shelter of an arcade. These are not found in the
eastern or central provinces, and have been adopted on account of
heavy snow-drifts, which in winter render the roads impassable. We
had cause to be grateful for this Echigo custom, as it enabled us
to explore the town without being drenched by a heavy, inopportune
shower.
Our longest excursion was to Naoetsu, a rising sea-port at the
mouth of the Sekigawa and the present terminus of the Tōkyō and
Karuizawa line. Though it has long been a port of call for steamers
which ply on the western coast, it presented the appearance of
a new, unfinished town. Two months before a disastrous fire had
consumed three-fourths of the houses, which were rising phœnix-like
from the charred relics of their own _débris_. But fires are so
common in these flimsy, inflammable habitations that one ends by
regarding them as inevitable, as instruments of the universal law
of reincarnation, which applies equally to men and to the works
of men’s hands. Every twenty years the two great temples of Ise
are demolished and reconstructed as antique ordinance requires.
Humbler buildings cannot expect to escape the fiat of periodic
resurrection. There is, however, little of interest at Naoetsu,
unless it be the hardy fisher-folk and field-labourers. We drove
to a fine temple of Kwannon and some tea-houses surrounded by
tasteful gardens overlooking the sea. But we had seen their
analogues before: never had we seen in Japan, except in the case
of the wrestlers, such sturdy human frames as these men and women
of Echigo display. Husband and wife, naked to the waist, strain
beneath a common yoke and draw ponderous carts to market. Their
bronzed busts and blue cotton _hakama_ make grateful patches of
colour between the hot sky and dusty road. My photographic friend
could not resist the chance of “taking” an Amazonian mother
disdainfully recumbent on bent elbow and suckling her child. As
she lay supine and heavy-featured, she resembled a Beaudelairian
giantess in
“The deep division of prodigious breasts
The solemn slope of mighty limbs asleep.”