A TRIP TO KAMAKURA
It was a hot morning in midsummer. The veranda shutters had been open
all night and the shoji had been only half closed so that tiny breezes
might creep through to cool the pink cheek of Umé San, as she lay on the
floor under a thin silk coverlet.
All night the kirigirisu had sung in his cage near Umé's bed; and all
night the mosquitoes had buzzed and sung outside of Umé's own cage of
green mosquito netting.
At four o'clock, just as the sun peeped into the room, Umé opened her
eyes. "Oh, little kirigirisu," she whispered, "I like your singing much
better than that of the mosquitoes. Gladly would I put them all in a
cage in the godown."
Then she thought of her morning-glories and pattered out into the garden
to look at them.
"How lovely they are," she said, as she touched them gently with her
fingers. "This white one makes me think of Fujiyama when it is covered
with snow; and this pink one is like the mountain at sunrise."
As she spoke, the little girl looked across the city roofs to where her
beloved mountain, Fujiyama, lifted its head like an inverted flower,
tinged with the pink of the rising sun.
Just then her father came out to look at the morning-glories, too, and
after the morning greetings, Umé told him her fancy about Fujiyama.
"Your thought is a poem, little daughter," said her father. "This very
day you shall see the mountain in all its glory. Here we can see only
its snow-capped crown, but on the way to Kamakura there are wonderful
views of our sacred Fuji."
After breakfast there were great preparations for the journey to
Kamakura. First, each one in the family, one after the other, had to
take a hot bath. Then the best kimonos were put on, and the best paper
parasols were taken out of a long box in the godown.
One servant ran to order the jinrikishas to take them to the station.
Another packed rice, pickled radishes, and tiny strips of raw fish into
the lunch boxes.
Umé's mother was in every part of the house at once, and even the
grandmother seemed excited at the thought of going to the seashore.
Umé ran across the garden to tell Tei about the trip and bid her cousin
sayonara, and Tara found a box of his best fishhooks and tucked them
into his sleeve pocket.
"I may catch an eel," he said, "and then we can have it fried for our
dinner."
At last the whole family were in the jinrikishas and were whirled so
fast to the station that they had to wait a long time for the train.
The children were glad to stand on the platform, watching the throngs of
people and seeing the interesting sights. Newsboys were running
everywhere calling their papers; strangely-dressed foreigners were
hiring jinrikisha-runners to take them over the city; a police sergeant
was walking up and down; and electric cars were bringing passengers to
the station with much ringing of bells and clanging of gongs.
"I fear Yuki-ko will not like her first ride in a train," said Umé, as
the child hid her face in her mother's kimono at the sight of a big
engine.
"I well remember my first sight of an engine," said the grandmother.
"When I was a little girl there was not a railroad track in all Japan.
When the first trains ran through the country, the peasant women thought
the engines were horrible demons, and ran screaming away from the
puffing and hissing."
"I, too, remember the first engines," said the father. "Many were the
honorably strange sights that went with them. One morning a man took off
his clogs at this admirable station and set them with worthy care upon
the platform before he entered the train. It was his peaceful
expectation to find them waiting for him when he left the train in
Yokohama."
At that moment an engine came puffing down the track, and soon they were
all seated in one of the open cars and gliding swiftly out of the city.
The children pointed out to each other the lotus blossoms in the moats,
the little boats in the canal and the freight boats on the Sumida river.
The father and mother talked about the tea-farms and the fields of rice
and millet through which they were passing. Many crows flew cawing over
the heads of men and women who were working in the deep mud of the rice
fields.
"Pretty birds!" called Baby San.
"She means the white herons," said Tara. Dozens of the long-legged
herons were stalking about in the muddy fields near the track; and
farther away, many pieces of white paper fluttered from strings which
were stretched across the fields of rice.
Yuki San saw no difference between the birds and the fluttering bits of
white paper.
"Those small white ones scare the unworthy crows away, little flower
Sister," explained Tara; but the baby sister shook her head and said,
"No, pretty birds!"
Umé turned the baby's head gently away from the fluttering scarecrows.
"Look at the pretty flowers," she said.
Beautiful lotus blossoms were growing in the muddy ditches beside the
track. The baby bobbed her head to them and begged them to stand still,
but they all hurried past the hands she held out to them.
"The lotus is Buddha's flower," said O Ba San. "It grows out of the dirt
and slime to give us blossoms of rare beauty. Such may be the growth of
our hearts if we choke not their good impulses."
"It is a long way from Buddha's flower to his mountain," said Umé, as
she looked off to where Fuji rose in the distance.
"Is it true," asked Tara, "that on the days when we cannot see the
mountain through the mist, it is because it has gone on a visit to the
gardens of the gods?"
"That is what I always thought when I was a child," his grandmother
answered.
"And do many pilgrims every year climb the long way up its steep sides
to the top?"
"Yes, my child."
"And must I also climb to the top some day, if I wish to please the
gods?"
"Yes, unless the gods should honorably please to take away your power to
climb."
"Oh," gasped Umé, "I hope the gods will never do that!"
She looked anxiously at her feet and said, "I hope they will never need
my feet for anything. So unworthily short a time have I used them, that
they cannot be fit for the gods."
"Let your use of them be always in the service of the gods, and the more
honorably old they grow, the more favor will they find in the sight of
the gods," answered her grandmother.
But Tara did not like such serious talk. "How does the earth get back on
the mountain--the earth that the pilgrims bring down every day on their
sandals?" he asked.
"It is said that it goes back of itself by night," his grandmother
replied, and added, "but I would rather speak of the path of straw
sandals which the pilgrims leave behind them as they toil up the rough
sides of Fujiyama."
"Then what do they do?" asked Umé.
"They take many pairs with them, so that when one pair is worn out they
may have others."
"But I thought the pilgrims were honorably poor," said Umé.
"Not always," said her grandmother. "And sandals cost but an
insignificant sum. A pair may be bought for a few rin."
"Then I will go myself, some time," said Umé, as if the only reason she
had never been to the mountain-top was because she had never known the
price of sandals.
But before they could say anything more they were in Yokohama, where
they were to leave the train and ride in jinrikishas to Kamakura.
After they had left this city, with its busy streets, its harbor dotted
with boats and big foreign ships riding at anchor, the road led along a
bluff from which there was a beautiful view of the bay.
It was intensely hot and the noonday sun beat fiercely down upon them.
Umé held a big paper parasol carefully over her grandmother, and Tara
and his father waved their fans slowly back and forth to catch the
little breezes from the sea.
In the distance were green fields of rice, little vegetable farms, tiny
houses, low blue hills, and beyond all, Fujiyama, rising majestically to
the clear blue sky.
[Illustration: Fujiyama, the Sacred Mountain. _Page 69._]
As they were whirled past a little village they heard a deep booming
sound, and caught sight of an immense drum under an open shed, which was
being beaten by two men.
"What is that?" asked Tara.
"Everywhere there has been no rain and the rice is drying in the
fields," replied his father, "so drums are beaten and prayers are made
to the gods that it may rain."
"Water is truly desirable," said Tara. "My unworthy throat is this
moment as dry as the rice fields."
"Not far before us is a rocky pool shaded by ancient pines," said his
father. "There pure august water will be given."
The rocky pool was a delightful resting-place. The stone basin was
filled with water by a spring that leaped out of the heart of the cliff.
The water overflowed the basin and formed a stream which ran along
beside the road. Many travelers were sitting on low benches under the
pines, the men smoking and the women and children chatting merrily.
Two women were washing clothes in the brook, and Tara and his sisters
slipped off their sandals and white tabi, tucked up their kimonos and
splashed about in the water.
The mother took the food from the lunch boxes, spread it on dainty paper
napkins and called the children to come and eat.
"Truly thanks for this honorable food," said Umé, when she finished her
luncheon. Then, as she looked up at the spring, she added, "The water
which comes from the cliff sings a happy little song."
"It is like the spring of youth," said the grandmother.
"Deign honorably to tell the story of the spring of youth," said the
father, taking a pipe from his sleeve pocket and filling its tiny bowl.
"Long ago a poor wood-cutter lived in a hut in the forest with his old
wife," said the grandmother. "Every day the old man went out to cut wood
and the woman stayed at home weaving.
"One very hot day the old man wandered farther than usual, looking for
wood, and he suddenly came to a little spring which he had never seen
before. The water was clear and cool and he was very thirsty, so he
knelt down and took a long drink. It was so good that he was about to
take another--when he caught sight of his own face in the water.
"It was not his own old face. It was the face of a young man with black
hair, smooth skin and bright eyes. He jumped up, and discovered that he
no longer felt old. His arms were strong, his feet were nimble and he
could run like a boy. He had found the Fountain of Youth and had been
made young again.
"First he leaped up and shouted for joy; then he ran home faster than he
had ever run before in his life. His wife did not know him and was
frightened to see a stranger come running into the house. When he told
her the wonder she could not at first believe him, but after a long time
he convinced her that the young man she now saw standing before her was
really her old husband.
"Of course she wished to go at once to the spring of youth and become as
young as her husband, so he told her where to find it in the forest and
she set out, leaving him at home to wait for her return.
"She found the spring and knelt down to drink. The water was so cool and
sweet that she drank and drank, and then drank again.
"The husband waited a long time at home for his wife to come back,
changed into a pretty, slender girl. But she did not come back at all,
and at last he became so anxious that he went into the forest to find
her.
"He went as far as the spring, but she was nowhere to be seen. Just as
he was about to go back home again he heard a little cry in the grass
near the spring. Looking down he saw his wife's kimono and a baby,--a
very small baby, not more than six months old.
"The old woman had drunk so much of the water that she had been carried
back beyond the time of youth to that of infancy. The wood-cutter picked
the baby up in his arms, and it looked up at him with a tiny smile. He
carried it home, murmuring to it and thinking sad thoughts."
The story was finished and the jinrikishas were ready to take them on to
Kamakura.
"I have heard so much about the wonderful Buddha that I do not wish to
see anything else in Kamakura," said Umé, as they walked through the
grounds of the long-vanished temple.
There was no need to tell the children to walk quietly and speak
reverently before Buddha.
Umé looked up into the solemnly beautiful face, into the half-closed
eyes that seemed to watch her through their eyelids of bronze, and knelt
quietly in prayer.
"Nothing can harm the Great Buddha," said the father, after the prayers
had been said and the offering given to the priest. "Six hundred and
fifty years has he sat upon his throne. Once he was sheltered by a
temple, but centuries ago a tidal wave, following an earthquake, swept
away the walls and roof and left the mighty god still seated on his
lotus-blossom throne."
[Illustration: "Nothing can harm the Great Buddha." _Page 73._]
As they turned to walk toward the village Umé said to her mother, "When
I have heard the thunder I have always thought it was this Great Buddha,
very angry about something. Now that I have seen his peaceful face I
know it is not so."
"No," answered her mother. "Many thousands of girls and boys have seen
Great Buddha's face as you saw it to-day. They have grown to be men and
women, and their children have looked upon his face, but it is always
calm and peaceful."