of the Myako-odori? Her photograph had better claim perhaps to the
title of _miyage_ than the crystal and jade _kakemono_ weights,
which we bought from a specious hawker on the cliffs. He who would
conform to Japanese etiquette, with its charming code of trifling
generosities, is sorely perturbed by this problem of _miyage_.
The dictionary defines it clearly enough: “_A present made by
one returning home from a journey, or by one coming from another
place--generally of some rare or curious production of another
place._” Now, I was perpetually “coming from another place,” and
the search before I left it for “some rare or curious production,”
which would serve as a present for Ashikaga or Tōkyō friends,
baffled at times even my insatiable curiosity. The hawker’s
streaked pebbles were pretty enough as pledges of transitory
kindness, but the souvenirs most vividly stamped on the tablets of
remembrance by the glaring sunlight of Naoetsu in August show a
vision of brown sea-goddesses against a turquoise sea.
III
The last lotus had shed its stately coronal of broad petals before
our short stay at Akakura came to an end: business detained us in
the capital throughout the September rains; when we determined
to take the waters of Dōgō October was well advanced, and the
hills were already flushed with reddening maple-leaves. As we
sat on “the bridge that is joined to heaven” and gazed into the
maple-lined ravine, which is crossed and crowned by the monastery
of Tōfukuji, we seemed to be watching the slow sepulture of that
lingering summer beneath a pall of fiery foliage. Yet we knew that,
though there on the hills around Kyōto autumn was mistress of the
woods, there still reigned on the sheltered shores of the Inland
Sea a summer of St. Martin, the diaphanous ghost of summer, mild
and tender in heat and hue. There and then our trip was planned.
We would skirt its northern coast from Kōbe to Hiroshima, spend
a day in the holy island of Miyajima, and thence take boat to
Mitsugahama, the nearest port to the Dōgō baths, whence a second
boat would take us back to Kōbe. Thus the circuit of the eastern
waters of the sea between Shikoku and the Main Island might be
accomplished in a leisurely ten days. For the moment, however, we
might as well fall in with the spirit of soft melancholy which
all persons of sensibility were bound to assume in the presence of
maple-leaves, unless centuries of minor poetry should be coarsely
disregarded. What season could be fitter for making pilgrimage
to Sen-yūji, the burial-place of the Emperors? It is true that a
sinister sentence in the guide-book said, “As neither the tombs
nor the various treasures of the temple are shown, there is little
object in visiting it.” But for all we knew, the warning might be
piously designed to save a sacred privacy from the more vulgar
type of tourist, whose eyes are blind to immaterial things. At any
rate, that was the time, if ever, to test the meaning of Murray’s
discreet dissuasion.
It certainly required no slight effort of imaginative sympathy to
appraise at its historic worth a most paltry wooden bridge, devoid
of grace or ornament, which seemed a rustic plank in comparison
with the Shōgun’s red-lacquer _Mi Hashi_ at Nikkō, so finely poised
and firmly flung across the foaming Daiyagawa. But that was worthy
of the military usurpers, who took the substance of sovereignty
and left its shadow to their nominal sovereigns, while this is
only _Yume no Uki-hashi_, the Floating Bridge of Dreams, aptly
symbolic of the recluse _rois fainéants_, absorbed in sentiment and
moonshine. Here, we are told, as the midnight mourners bore along
their dead emperor to sleep with his fathers, they would throw down
a little fruit, some libatory cakes, into the whispering rivulet.
Then steep and dark before them rose the narrow road, which
terminates in a large hollow hewn out of the hillside to be the
cradle of the sceptred heirs of the sun-goddess. Like the palaces
in which they lived, their houses of death are clean and august.
The shrines are of plain white wood, of the sort else used only
in Shintō temples; the paths, scrupulously kept, are strewn with
small white pebbles and wind spirally up mound after mound into the
shadow of thick pines. Six centuries of royalty are buried in that
white city with no other token of their rank than strict seclusion
and austere simplicity. Each group of tombs is enclosed by a high
wall, and on every gate is the sixteen-petalled chrysanthemum.
There is no glitter of marble or gold, as in so many burial-grounds
of monarchy, no fulsome eulogy on staring tablet, but, shrouded in
the same mysterious obscurity as had enveloped for the nation their
half-monastic lives, the Tenshi, sons of heaven, seem fittingly
interred in that precise maze of ordered tranquillity half-way
between the sky and their dearly-loved Kyōto.
I could not bring myself to pass Ōsaka on the way to Kōbe without
visiting the temple of Tennōji, where Mr. Lafcadio Hearn gathered
some of his happiest “Gleanings in Buddhist Fields.” Though the
children’s chapel has been so touchingly described by him that
any other writer may well shrink from following in his footsteps,
a rapid impression of a fugitive glimpse will be pardoned and
more than justified if it should induce the reader to re-read his
more elaborate account. An enormous temple, Tennōji lies on the
very outskirts of the town, and, after traversing innumerable
canals, one is still a little puzzled to locate the _indo-no-kane_
among wide courts grouped about the central colonnade. After some
searching we discerned a man and woman kneeling on the threshold
of a shrine, in which a wrinkled priest in shabby brown vestments
was reciting a prayer. Drawing nearer, we noticed that the man
was weeping and the woman held in her hands a baby’s _kimono_
of brightly coloured material, which soon after she handed to
the priest with a few copper coins. He took the garment, folded
it carefully, and placed it on a shelf. Then, raising our eyes
from the personages in this pathetic scene, we observed for the
first time the chapel itself. The altar bore no image of Buddha
flanked by gilt lotus or vases of natural flowers, but from cloth
to ceiling it was covered with a bewildering pyramid of dead
toys. Almond-eyed mannikins and stiff-jointed maidens, dolls of
all classes, richly or penuriously dressed, seemed to stretch
imploring arms and to fix hallucinating eyes on the beholder;
drums and trumpets, paper ships and indiarubber balls, masks and
picture-books and rattles--all the motley companions of vanished
children were huddled together like contorted imps in a chaotic
pantomime. Massed and motionless in the twilight of their recess,
they had the air of dead things--the shells and figments of
faithful toys, whose spirits had followed the babies’ souls to
paradise, that the little hands which had clasped them night
and day in “this miserable, fleeting world” might not be quite
comfortless in their strange new nursery. The lesson would not be
lost on heartbroken mothers who parted here from their own most
cherished hopes more fragile than these brittle playthings. The
roof was hung, the side shelves were piled, with tiny dresses,
pendent or folded; and, most curious of all, the bell-rope, that
summoned Shotoku Taishi, the saintly prince, to conduct the dead
infants to God was strung with overlapping woollen bibs--yellow
and red and green--the clumsy counterparts, these, of aureoles.
But while we had been enthralled by this canonisation of dolldom
the priest had been writing, and now handed to the mother a slip
of paper attached to a thin wand of bamboo. Bowing low, she took
the paper, pressed it to her forehead, and crossed the enclosure to
the stone chamber known as the Tortoise Tower, for there those who
look down over the circular balustrade into a central cavity will
perceive clear water running from the mouth of a stone tortoise.
Into that sacred stream which flows from earth to heaven the paper
drops, being inscribed with the new name which is bestowed on
every believer after death; and the poor woman goes away not a
little comforted, for now at least her child is sure of an orthodox
introduction to paradise. Thus neither babe nor emperor is exempt
from etiquette, whether life or death be the master of ceremonies.
Inequalities persist in the very funeral rites, though in their
hearts the celebrants must feel that the geisha’s flower-song is of
universal application:
“Peonies, roses,
Faded, are equal;
Only while life blooms
Differ the flowers.”
The beauties of the Inland Sea have been so often and so
graphically described, that detailed praise is superfluous. Every
one has heard of the thousands of islets, on which are perched
villages, villas, and pines innumerable; of the hillsides,
geometrically subdivided into rice-fields; of the junks with
pleated and divided sails, which dart like white birds through the
exquisite blue plain; of the strange mirage, which throws upon
the sky at certain hours, when the heaven above and the waters
beneath melt into a vast silver-grey mirror, the shapes of phantom
archipelagoes suspended in mid-air. To those who have seen it and
are familiar with the fans, the _netsukes_, and the tea-cups,
which reproduce favourite designs of pictorial art, only one
adjective, vague yet precise, will occur: this pocket-Mediterranean
is essentially Japanese. It is an ornamental piece of prettiness,
designed by the Celestial Painter in one of his most Japanese
moods, for in it you will find the cardinal characteristic of the
national taste, its subordination of the sublime to the dainty,
of big effect to graceful detail, its inevitable preference for
miniature and vignette. One critic has said that such art “is small
in great things, great in small things”; another, that the Japanese
“admire scenes, but not scenery.” Both these dicta could be applied
to the Inland Sea, were it not that Europeans admire it more than
the natives, but the charm which it exerts is undeniably akin to
the spell of those workers in silk or clay or ivory who achieve a
maximum of beauty in a minimum of space. The Norwegian fiords, the
Italian lakes, the Ægean and Adriatic Seas, all present at some
point or other some grandiose aspect, but the channels which lie
between Shikoku, Kyūshu, and the Main Island never threaten or
impose; they are simply a soft fluid setting for precious stones of
varying size and colour.
Most famous of these insular jewels is Miyajima. As no boats were
running thither from Kōbe, we travelled by the San-yo railway as
far as Onomichi, skirting the coast so closely that we hardly once
lost sight of the sea. Though sorely tempted to break the journey
for the purpose of visiting the great feudal castles of Himeji
and Okayama, we pressed on until the bay of Fukuyama, glittering
like molten fire in a superb sunset, was hailed with rapture
and relief, for the train journey had been hot and long, and we
welcomed the prospect of repose. One of those delicious, indolent
evenings, when the traveller reclines on piled cushions, drinking
tea or _saké_, until he be roused from waking dreams by the low
laughter of attendant _musumé_, demanding permission to strew the
beds and light the lanterns, would have formed an excellent climax
to that fatiguing day. But I never dared anticipate repose in the
company of Mr. Bates, who was apt to burst into sudden flame on
the slightest provocation. And during that week provocation lurked
in two hotels out of three. The guide-book describes Onomichi as
“a bustling, prosperous place”: it may be “prosperous”; it is
undeniably “bustling.” We were barely out of the train and had
just set foot in the straggling main street, when two hotel touts
seized us by the arm, jovially aired some broken English, and
deposited us with our bags on the steps of a large hotel. “Ask the
price!” shouted Mr. Bates, “ask the price! I have never yet entered
an hotel without knowing what I have to pay. Ask the price!” I
complied, but the landlord with soft, evasive phrases, wafted us
to an upper floor, while my companion smouldered. Suddenly a chair
and table appeared. “Take them away!” he shouted, “take them away!
I know the trick. They will make us pay double, and I refuse to
be swindled.” This time we insisted on knowing the charges, and
the proprietor, as we expected, demanded three times as much as we
had now become accustomed to pay. We protested. He assured us that
“honourable guests from Yokohama and Kōbe” never paid less, but we
replied that Kōbe and Yokohama were nothing to us, who always paid
Japanese prices for Japanese accommodation. Finding him impervious
to reason, we shouldered our bags and marched out of the house.
Then he consented to receive his due, and reinstalled us on our own
terms. But the hotel girls were cross and discourteous, the native
visitors noisy, the food bad and badly served. As a last attempt to
get the better of us, the landlord affirmed that now there was no
chance of a boat being despatched to Miyajima before the following
afternoon, and that the information we had gathered from a casual
shopkeeper the night before, that one would sail at eight o’clock
in the morning, was erroneous. But Mr. Bates had been compelled
twice before to spend an extra day in one of these seaside hotels,
on the plea that the boat had gone, or would only go, apparently,
at the landlord’s bidding. Smiling, therefore, but without
hesitation, we made our own way to the wharf at seven o’clock and
took our own tickets, that there might be no collusion between
the hotel-boy and the official who booked passengers. At eight
o’clock we steamed away from Onomichi. Through clustered islands
our tiny steamer threaded in and out, until Kure appeared, an
important arsenal at the foot of the Aki Hills. Here we discharged
some hundreds of copper slabs, and while that slow operation was
in progress were amused by the animation which prevailed on the
men-of-war and on the numerous sampans plying between them and the
shore. About four miles away on the island of Etajima stands the
Imperial Naval College. When this and other points of interest had
been indicated to us by polite fellow-passengers, our attention
was riveted on the labourers, who jerked the slabs from hand to
hand and piled them on the floor of a barge in symmetrical heaps.
The “chantey” which they sang to lighten the labour was simple
and monotonous, consisting of two words, which sounded absurdly
like “Hong Kong” and “Shanghai” repeated _ad infinitum_. At last
we continued our voyage, but were again subjected to a long delay
at Hiroshima, where we landed and beguiled the tedium of waiting
by chaffering with bum-boat women for sweets and chestnuts. The
town stands far back from the water, and a causeway three miles in
length runs out into the spacious harbour, formed by the delta of
the Otagawa. As this is the most busy commercial centre west of
Kōbe, there was plenty of movement: rows of boats were loading and
unloading, rickshaws driving up perpetually from the town, while
shrill-voiced youngsters did a brisk trade in fruit and vegetables.
At the risk of being left behind, my indefatigable companion made
a dash for the distant shops, and returned triumphant, hugging in
one arm two loaves of bread and in the other a dilapidated Buddha,
whose grimy gilt was irresistible to the collector. His disgust
when I guessed the exact price he had paid (about five _yen_, or
ten shillings), and refused to believe that it could be worth a
penny more to any one, was too deep for words.
Darkness had fallen when Miyajima was reached, and as we were rowed
ashore the outlines of temple and grove were shrouded in gloom.
Only the _colossal torii_ loomed black against the shimmering
water, while all that lay behind was covered by the shadow of
climbing forests. We took supper at an hotel near the entrance
to the temple-grounds, and were then conducted by two of the
landlord’s daughters on a tour of inspection through the main
street. We discovered a curio-shop, of which the proprietress set
such extravagant value on her wares that Mr. Bates at once was
lured into hot discussion. Night interposed, and at an early hour,
before I was well awake, I heard the resumption of battle below
my balcony. The proprietress with gentle laughter and firm accent
extolled her treasures; the would-be purchaser, in nervous tones
which tingled with cupidity and despair, attempted in vain to
cheapen them. His patience was rapidly giving way, and very soon
he cried out for his interpreter to descend and assault the enemy.
But this time I deliberately closed ears and eyes, feigning sleep.
I had not come to that holy island to fight for curios, and though
I had attained the knack of giving the lie courteous to crafty
dealers, I shrank from translating rough language to a woman.
Fidelity was routed by chivalry. They finished the struggle without
my intervention, and victory remained with the lady.
When I descended, the defeated combatant was seeking consolation
in photography. And seldom had his camera been confronted with
more beautiful pictures. The winding valleys and soaring rocks
converge at an elevation of more than a thousand feet on a little
shrine, in which has been burning a sacred fire for more than a
thousand years. From the opposite shore, as one traces the salient
features of this evergreen island, all the details--streamlet and
temple-roof, cliff and maple and pine--merge in a majestic harmony
of serried line and luxuriant colour. But on the island itself one
is drawn, as by a magnet, to the great temple of Itsukushima Hime,
which, being partly built over the water on piles, seems at high
tide, like the Breton vision of Is, to rise from the depths of
the sea. At all times the _torii_, or wooden archway, which stands
before this Shintō temple is partially submerged, and Hiroshigi in
his fifty-four _meisho_, or views of Japan, gives such prominence
to it, that the long galleries and avenue of stone lanterns,
as well as the central hall, from which the colonnades diverge
like wooden arms, bent to embrace the incoming tide, are barely
suggested. Daimyō, Shōgun, and Emperor have vied with one another
in decorating this temple, and the successive chapels are hung
with paintings by famous artists from the sixteenth century to the
present time. Many quaint customs, formerly regarded as conducive
to the purity of a holy place, are still observed. Neither death
nor birth is allowed to sully its eternal immunity from change.
When either is anticipated, the patient is ferried across to
the mainland. Dogs are forbidden, but deer roam the streets and
feed fearlessly from the hands of tourist or pilgrim. All day
the temple-courts are thronged with worshippers, and sometimes
at night, when a pious noble or rich American affords himself
the sight, the lit lanterns of stone or bronze, which line the
approaches to the temple, define the interlacing courts and bridges
in traceries of fire. But this illumination we had not the good
fortune to see.
Another temple on a neighbouring hill, though less beautiful,
is equally unique. It consists of a vast platform, from which
spring twenty-four massive columns to support the roof, whose only
ornamentation on the interior, if ornamentation it can be called,
is a frieze of wooden spoons, some small, others enormous: they are
nailed there, or on the columns, as the donor’s caprice dictates,
and confer comparative immortality at trifling cost, for each is
inscribed with an autograph. Thus the ingenious Japanese have
found a way of diverting and profiting by that first infirmity of
ignoble minds, which robs St. Paul’s of dignity and desecrates
Westminster Abbey with such legends as “Peter Jones from Hampstead”
and “Eliza Smith of Bethnal Green.” Much impressed by this strange
custom, each of us bought a spoon and, veiling our vulgarity in
Latin, suspended this device from the right-hand pillar of the
porch:
Venit, Vidit, Oravit,
O. E. R. B.
For two months I had been haunted by visions of the
bridge-Kintaikyō, as it seems to have haunted the
landscape-painters of Japan. I remembered it as one of the most
remarkable in Hokusai’s series of “A Hundred Bridges”; I had
another marvellous drawing of the five arches overwhelmed by a
snow-storm and apparently detached from both land and water, for
Hiroshigi understands the isolation of his subject from irrelevant
detail as few others, slaves of perspective, would dare imagine.
If uneducated eyes took the picture to represent a peal of blue
bells, sprinkled with cotton-wool and straddling through space, so
much the worse for uneducated eyes. But at any rate, being so near,
I resolved to dispel vision by looking on reality, and spent half
a day in visiting Iwakuni. We were obliged to leave our rickshaws
at the foot of Katō Kiyomasa’s towering temple that overlooks the
almost waterless bed of the Nishikigawa, for none but a pedestrian
could climb the huge arcs, thirty feet long, which spring in
five bounds from shore to shore, like the curves of a switchback
railway. Then the faithful camera was brought into play, and a bevy
of perplexed ducks were hustled into the foreground, with the
inevitable result of attracting several loiterers to share with
them the glory of being photographed. These had to be politely
expelled, and in the end several excellent views were taken. But
not one of them conveys the fantastic liberty of that flying bridge
so realistically as the snowscape of Hiroshigi.
[Illustration: Kintaikyō Bridge.]
Lulled by the honest countenance of our courteous landlady into
misplaced confidence, we were astonished by her presenting on our
departure a bill more exorbitant than that of the hotel-keeper of
Onomichi. We expostulated, and repeated the terms named by her
clerk the night before. At once the amount was cut down to half and
the lesser sum accepted with no gratitude or resentment. Mr. Bates
is furious, and delivers a lecture on probity; but I cannot bring
myself to regard these bland banditti, who extort without violence
and restore the booty without a murmur, as on a par with the
cheating innkeepers of other lands. Their motive is probably either
religious or patriotic, perhaps both. Some one must have told them
that foreigners are only permitted by autochthonous gods to visit
Japan on condition of enriching its inhabitants. By overcharging
the tourist, then, they are pleasing their gods and serving their
country. Their compatriots are protected by legal prices, publicly
posted in every inn, but they know that the barbarian cannot read
official notices, and quixotic indeed would it be to enlighten him.
To me such _naïf_ graceful swindling (when exposed and thwarted) is
more delightful than churlish, prosaic probity.
Returning to Hiroshima, we thence took steamer to Mitsugahama,
one of the chief ports in the island of Shikoku, whose mineral
baths were the goal of our voyage. Had time allowed, we would
gladly have visited all the four provinces of this magnificent
island--provinces which in earlier times were known as “Lovely
Princess,” “Prince Good Boiled Rice,” “The Princess of Great Food,”
and “The Brave Good Youth.” But we had only leisure to do homage
to Iyo-Ehime, the Lovely Princess, who amply justified her title
by the loveliness of her domain. Between her territory and that
of Tosa or Take-yori-wake, the Brave Good Youth, whose sons are
to-day the staunchest advocates of progress, runs a mountain ridge,
varying in height from three to four thousand feet, so richly
covered with forests that not only are the pines, maples, and
alders as plentiful as elsewhere, but with these is intermingled
an endless host of beeches, oaks, and horse-chestnuts. Except in
the neighbourhood of Akakura, we had not seen a finer stretch of
mountain-scenery.
But we never came close to these wooded heights, for Dōgō is only
a short distance from the seashore, and is reached in half-an-hour
by what I can only describe as a toy train. We crept into a
first-class carriage, and just managed to avoid bumping our heads
against the low-pitched roof. The fare was on the same scale as
the compartments, for the cost of the ticket was three _sen_
(farthings). The rickshaw-men were polite and reasonable, the
landlord of the Iwai-ya both affable and honest; in a word, we had
left the track of long-suffering and all-corrupting tourists, and
had reached one of those districts, so pleasant to discover, where
manners are as yet unspoiled by money. Delighted with our lot, we
settled down to three days of paradise regained.