A Coolie falls ill—Peasant Costume—Varieties in Threshing—The Tochigi
_yadoya_—Farming Villages—A Beautiful Region—An _In Memoriam_ Avenue—A
Doll’s Street—Nikkô—The Journey’s End—Coolie Kindliness.
BY seven the next morning the rice was eaten, the room as bare as if it
had never been occupied, the bill of 80 _sen_ paid, the house-master and
servants with many _sayo naras_, or farewells, had prostrated themselves,
and we were away in the _kurumas_ at a rapid trot. At the first halt my
runner, a kindly, good-natured creature, but absolutely hideous, was
seized with pain and vomiting, owing, he said, to drinking the bad water
at Kasukabé, and was left behind. He pleased me much by the honest
independent way in which he provided a substitute, strictly adhering to
his bargain, and never asking for a gratuity on account of his illness.
He had been so kind and helpful that I felt quite sad at leaving him
there ill,—only a coolie, to be sure, only an atom among the 34,000,000
of the Empire, but not less precious to our Father in heaven than any
other. It was a brilliant day, with the mercury 86° in the shade, but
the heat was not oppressive. At noon we reached the Toné, and I rode on
a coolie’s tattooed shoulders through the shallow part, and then, with
the _kurumas_, some ill-disposed pack-horses, and a number of travellers,
crossed in a flat-bottomed boat. The boatmen, travellers, and
cultivators, were nearly or altogether without clothes, but the richer
farmers worked in the fields in curved bamboo hats as large as umbrellas,
_kimonos_ with large sleeves not girt up, and large fans attached to
their girdles. Many of the travellers whom we met were without hats, but
shielded the front of the head by holding a fan between it and the sun.
Probably the inconvenience of the national costume for working men partly
accounts for the general practice of getting rid of it. It is such a
hindrance, even in walking, that most pedestrians have “their loins
girded up” by taking the middle of the hem at the bottom of the _kimono_
and tucking it under the girdle. This, in the case of many, shows woven,
tight-fitting, elastic, white cotton pantaloons, reaching to the ankles.
After ferrying another river at a village from which a steamer plies to
Tôkiyô, the country became much more pleasing, the rice-fields fewer, the
trees, houses, and barns larger, and, in the distance, high hills loomed
faintly through the haze. Much of the wheat, of which they don’t make
bread, but vermicelli, is already being carried. You see wheat stacks,
ten feet high, moving slowly, and while you are wondering, you become
aware of four feet moving below them; for all the crop is carried on
horses’ if not on human backs. I went to see several
threshing-floors,—clean, open spaces outside barns,—where the grain is
laid on mats and threshed by two or four men with heavy revolving flails.
Another method is for women to beat out the grain on racks of split
bamboo laid lengthwise; and I saw yet a third practised both in the
fields and barn-yards, in which women pass handfuls of stalks backwards
through a sort of carding instrument with sharp iron teeth placed in a
slanting position, which cuts off the ears, leaving the stalk unbruised.
This is probably “the sharp threshing instrument having teeth” mentioned
by Isaiah. The ears are then rubbed between the hands. In this region
the wheat was winnowed altogether by hand, and after the wind had driven
the chaff away, the grain was laid out on mats to dry. Sickles are not
used, but the reaper takes a handful of stalks and cuts them off close to
the ground with a short, straight knife, fixed at a right angle with the
handle. The wheat is sown in rows with wide spaces between them, which
are utilised for beans and other crops, and no sooner is it removed than
_daikon_ (_Raphanus sativus_), cucumbers, or some other vegetable, takes
its place, as the land under careful tillage and copious manuring bears
two, and even three, crops, in the year. The soil is trenched for wheat
as for all crops except rice, not a weed is to be seen, and the whole
country looks like a well-kept garden. The barns in this district are
very handsome, and many of their grand roofs have that concave sweep with
which we are familiar in the pagoda. The eaves are often eight feet
deep, and the thatch three feet thick. Several of the farm-yards have
handsome gateways like the ancient “lychgates” of some of our English
churchyards much magnified. As animals are not used for milk, draught,
or food, and there are no pasture lands, both the country and the
farm-yards have a singular silence and an inanimate look; a mean-looking
dog and a few fowls being the only representatives of domestic animal
life. I long for the lowing of cattle and the bleating of sheep.
At six we reached Tochigi, a large town, formerly the castle town of a
_daimiyô_. Its special manufacture is rope of many kinds, a great deal
of hemp being grown in the neighbourhood. Many of the roofs are tiled,
and the town has a more solid and handsome appearance than those that we
had previously passed through. But from Kasukabé to Tochigi was from bad
to worse. I nearly abandoned Japanese travelling altogether, and, if
last night had not been a great improvement, I think I should have gone
ignominiously back to Tôkiyô. The _yadoya_ was a very large one, and, as
sixty guests had arrived before me, there was no choice of accommodation,
and I had to be contented with a room enclosed on all sides not by
_fusuma_ but _shôji_, and with barely room for my bed, bath, and chair,
under a fusty green mosquito net which was a perfect nest of fleas. One
side of the room was against a much-frequented passage, and another
opened on a small yard upon which three opposite rooms also opened,
crowded with some not very sober or decorous travellers. The _shôji_
were full of holes, and often at each hole I saw a human eye. Privacy
was a luxury not even to be recalled. Besides the constant application
of eyes to the _shôji_, the servants, who were very noisy and rough,
looked into my room constantly without any pretext; the host, a bright,
pleasant-looking man, did the same; jugglers, musicians, blind
shampooers, and singing girls, all pushed the screens aside; and I began
to think that Mr. Campbell was right, and that a lady should not travel
alone in Japan. Ito, who had the room next to mine, suggested that
robbery was quite likely, and asked to be allowed to take charge of my
money, but did not decamp with it during the night! I lay down on my
precarious stretcher before eight, but as the night advanced the din of
the house increased till it became truly diabolical, and never ceased
till after one. Drums, tom-toms, and cymbals were beaten; _kotos_ and
_samisens_ screeched and twanged; _geishas_ (professional women with the
accomplishments of dancing, singing, and playing) danced,—accompanied by
songs whose jerking discords were most laughable; story-tellers recited
tales in a high key, and the running about and splashing close to my room
never ceased. Late at night my precarious _shôji_ were accidentally
thrown down, revealing a scene of great hilarity, in which a number of
people were bathing and throwing water over each other.
The noise of departures began at daylight, and I was glad to leave at
seven. Before you go the _fusuma_ are slidden back, and what was your
room becomes part of a great, open, matted space—an arrangement which
effectually prevents fustiness. Though the road was up a slight incline,
and the men were too tired to trot, we made thirty miles in nine hours.
The kindliness and courtesy of the coolies to me and to each other was a
constant source of pleasure to me. It is most amusing to see the
elaborate politeness of the greetings of men clothed only in hats and
_maros_. The hat is invariably removed when they speak to each other,
and three profound bows are never omitted.
Soon after leaving the _yadoya_ we passed through a wide street with the
largest and handsomest houses I have yet seen on both sides. They were
all open in front; their highly-polished floors and passages looked like
still water; the _kakemonos_, or wall-pictures, on their side-walls were
extremely beautiful; and their mats were very fine and white. There were
large gardens at the back, with fountains and flowers, and streams,
crossed by light stone bridges, sometimes flowed through the houses.
From the signs I supposed them to be _yadoyas_, but on asking Ito why we
had not put up at one of them, he replied that they were all
_kashitsukeya_, or tea-houses of disreputable character—a very sad fact.
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As we journeyed the country became prettier and prettier, rolling up to
abrupt wooded hills with mountains in the clouds behind. The farming
villages are comfortable and embowered in wood, and the richer farmers
seclude their dwellings by closely-clipped hedges, or rather screens, two
feet wide, and often twenty feet high. Tea grew near every house, and
its leaves were being gathered and dried on mats. Signs of silk culture
began to appear in shrubberies of mulberry trees, and white and sulphur
yellow cocoons were lying in the sun along the road in flat trays.
Numbers of women sat in the fronts of the houses weaving cotton cloth
fifteen inches wide, and cotton yarn, mostly imported from England, was
being dyed in all the villages—the dye used being a native indigo, the
_Polygonum tinctorium_. Old women were spinning, and young and old
usually pursued their avocations with wise-looking babies tucked into the
backs of their dresses, and peering cunningly over their shoulders. Even
little girls of seven and eight were playing at children’s games with
babies on their backs, and those who were too small to carry real ones
had big dolls strapped on in similar fashion. Innumerable villages,
crowded houses, and babies in all, give one the impression of a very
populous country.
As the day wore on in its brightness and glory the pictures became more
varied and beautiful. Great snow-slashed mountains looked over the
foothills, on whose steep sides the dark blue green of pine and
cryptomeria was lighted up by the spring tints of deciduous trees. There
were groves of cryptomeria on small hills crowned by Shintô shrines,
approached by grand flights of stone stairs. The red gold of the harvest
fields contrasted with the fresh green and exquisite leafage of the hemp;
rose and white azaleas lighted up the copse-woods; and when the broad
road passed into the colossal avenue of cryptomeria which overshadows the
way to the sacred shrines of Nikkô, and tremulous sunbeams and shadows
flecked the grass, I felt that Japan was beautiful, and that the mud
flats of Yedo were only an ugly dream!
Two roads lead to Nikkô. I avoided the one usually taken by Utsunomiya,
and by doing so lost the most magnificent of the two avenues, which
extends for nearly fifty miles along the great highway called the
Oshiu-kaido. Along the Reiheishi-kaido, the road by which I came, it
extends for thirty miles, and the two, broken frequently by villages,
converge upon the village of Imaichi, eight miles from Nikkô, where they
unite, and only terminate at the entrance of the town. They are said to
have been planted as an offering to the buried Shôguns by a man who was
too poor to place a bronze lantern at their shrines. A grander monument
could not have been devised, and they are probably the grandest things of
their kind in the world. The avenue of the Reiheishi-kaido is a good
carriage road with sloping banks eight feet high, covered with grass and
ferns. At the top of these are the cryptomeria, then two grassy walks,
and between these and the cultivation a screen of saplings and brushwood.
A great many of the trees become two at four feet from the ground. Many
of the stems are twenty-seven feet in girth; they do not diminish or
branch till they have reached a height of from 50 to 60 feet, and the
appearance of altitude is aided by the longitudinal splitting of the
reddish coloured bark into strips about two inches wide. The trees are
pyramidal, and at a little distance resemble cedars. There is a deep
solemnity about this glorious avenue with its broad shade and dancing
lights, and the rare glimpses of high mountains. Instinct alone would
tell one that it leads to something which must be grand and beautiful
like itself. It is broken occasionally by small villages with big bells
suspended between double poles; by wayside shrines with offerings of rags
and flowers; by stone effigies of Buddha and his disciples, mostly
defaced or overthrown, all wearing the same expression of beatified rest
and indifference to mundane affairs; and by temples of lacquered wood
falling to decay, whose bells sent their surpassingly sweet tones far on
the evening air.
Imaichi, where the two stately aisles unite, is a long uphill street,
with a clear mountain stream enclosed in a stone channel, and crossed by
hewn stone slabs running down the middle. In a room built over the
stream, and commanding a view up and down the street, two policemen sat
writing. It looks a dull place without much traffic, as if oppressed by
the stateliness of the avenues below it and the shrines above it, but it
has a quiet _yadoya_, where I had a good night’s rest, although my canvas
bed was nearly on the ground. We left early this morning in drizzling
rain, and went straight up hill under the cryptomeria for eight miles.
The vegetation is as profuse as one would expect in so damp and hot a
summer climate, and from the prodigious rainfall of the mountains; every
stone is covered with moss, and the road-sides are green with the
_Protococcus viridis_ and several species of _Marchantia_. We were among
the foothills of the Nantaizan mountains at a height of 1000 feet, abrupt
in their forms, wooded to their summits, and noisy with the dash and
tumble of a thousand streams. The long street of Hachiishi, with its
steep-roofed, deep-eaved houses, its warm colouring, and its steep
roadway with steps at intervals, has a sort of Swiss picturesqueness as
you enter it, as you must, on foot, while your _kurumas_ are hauled and
lifted up the steps; nor is the resemblance given by steep roofs, pines,
and mountains patched with coniferæ, altogether lost as you ascend the
steep street, and see wood carvings and quaint baskets of wood and grass
offered everywhere for sale. It is a truly dull, quaint street, and the
people come out to stare at a foreigner as if foreigners had not become
common events since 1870, when Sir H. and Lady Parkes, the first
Europeans who were permitted to visit Nikkô, took up their abode in the
Imperial Hombô. It is a doll’s street with small low houses, so finely
matted, so exquisitely clean, so finically neat, so light and delicate,
that even when I entered them without my boots I felt like a “bull in a
china shop,” as if my mere weight must smash through and destroy. The
street is so painfully clean that I should no more think of walking over
it in muddy boots than over a drawing-room carpet. It has a silent
mountain look, and most of its shops sell specialties, lacquer work,
boxes of sweetmeats made of black beans and sugar, all sorts of boxes,
trays, cups, and stands, made of plain, polished wood, and more grotesque
articles made from the roots of trees.
It was not part of my plan to stay at the beautiful _yadoya_ which
receives foreigners in Hachiishi, and I sent Ito half a mile farther with
a note in Japanese to the owner of the house where I now am, while I sat
on a rocky eminence at the top of the street, unmolested by anybody,
looking over to the solemn groves upon the mountains, where the two
greatest of the Shôguns “sleep in glory.” Below, the rushing Daiyagawa,
swollen by the night’s rain, thundered through a narrow gorge. Beyond,
colossal flights of stone stairs stretch mysteriously away among
cryptomeria groves, above which tower the Nikkôsan mountains. Just where
the torrent finds its impetuosity checked by two stone walls, it is
spanned by a bridge, 84 feet long by 18 wide, of dull red lacquer,
resting on two stone piers on either side, connected by two transverse
stone beams. A welcome bit of colour it is amidst the masses of dark
greens and soft greys, though there is nothing imposing in its structure,
and its interest consists in being the Mihashi, or Sacred Bridge, built
in 1636, formerly open only to the Shôguns, the envoy of the Mikado, and
to pilgrims twice a year. Both its gates are locked. Grand and lonely
Nikkô looks, the home of rain and mist. _Kuruma_ roads end here, and if
you wish to go any farther, you must either walk, ride, or be carried.
Ito was long away, and the coolies kept addressing me in Japanese, which
made me feel helpless and solitary, and eventually they shouldered my
baggage, and, descending a flight of steps, we crossed the river by the
secular bridge, and shortly met my host, Kanaya, a very bright,
pleasant-looking man, who bowed nearly to the earth. Terraced roads in
every direction lead through cryptomerias to the shrines; and this one
passes many a stately enclosure, but leads away from the temples, and
though it is the highway to Chiuzenjii, a place of popular pilgrimage,
Yumoto, a place of popular resort, and several other villages, it is very
rugged, and, having flights of stone steps at intervals, is only
practicable for horses and pedestrians.
At the house, with the appearance of which I was at once delighted, I
regretfully parted with my coolies, who had served me kindly and
faithfully. They had paid me many little attentions, such as always
beating the dust out of my dress, inflating my air-pillow, and bringing
me flowers, and were always grateful when I walked up hills; and just
now, after going for a frolic to the mountains, they called to wish me
good-bye, bringing branches of azaleas.