The Plain of Wakamatsu—Light Costume—The Takata Crowd—A Congress of
Schoolmasters—Timidity of a Crowd—Bad Roads—Vicious Horses—Mountain
Scenery—A Picturesque Inn—Swallowing a Fish-bone—Poverty and Suicide—An
Inn-kitchen—England Unknown!—My Breakfast Disappears.
KURUMATOGE, _June_ 30.
A SHORT ride took us from Ichikawa to a plain about eleven miles broad by
eighteen long. The large town of Wakamatsu stands near its southern end,
and it is sprinkled with towns and villages. The great lake of
Iniwashiro is not far off. The plain is rich and fertile. In the
distance the steep roofs of its villages, with their groves, look very
picturesque. As usual not a fence or gate is to be seen, or any other
hedge than the tall one used as a screen for the dwellings of the richer
farmers.
Bad roads and bad horses detracted from my enjoyment. One hour of a good
horse would have carried me across the plain; as it was, seven weary
hours were expended upon it. The day degenerated, and closed in still,
hot rain; the air was stifling and electric, the saddle slipped
constantly from being too big, the shoes were more than usually
troublesome, the horseflies tormented, and the men and horses crawled.
The rice-fields were undergoing a second process of puddling, and many of
the men engaged in it wore only a hat, and a fan attached to the girdle.
An avenue of cryptomeria and two handsome and somewhat gilded Buddhist
temples denoted the approach to a place of some importance, and such
Takata is, as being a large town with a considerable trade in silk, rope,
and _minjin_, and the residence of one of the higher officials of the
_ken_ or prefecture. The street is a mile long, and every house is a
shop. The general aspect is mean and forlorn. In these little-travelled
districts, as soon as one reaches the margin of a town, the first man one
meets turns and flies down the street, calling out the Japanese
equivalent of “Here’s a foreigner!” and soon blind and seeing, old and
young, clothed and naked, gather together. At the _yadoya_ the crowd
assembled in such force that the house-master removed me to some pretty
rooms in a garden; but then the adults climbed on the house-roofs which
overlooked it, and the children on a palisade at the end, which broke
down under their weight, and admitted the whole inundation; so that I had
to close the _shôji_, with the fatiguing consciousness during the whole
time of nominal rest of a multitude surging outside. Then five policemen
in black alpaca frock-coats and white trousers invaded my precarious
privacy, desiring to see my passport—a demand never made before except
where I halted for the night. In their European clothes they cannot bow
with Japanese punctiliousness, but they were very polite, and expressed
great annoyance at the crowd, and dispersed it; but they had hardly
disappeared when it gathered again. When I went out I found fully 1000
people helping me to realise how the crowded cities of Judea sent forth
people clothed much as these are when the Miracle-Worker from Galilee
arrived, but not what the fatigue of the crowding and buzzing must have
been to One who had been preaching and working during the long day.
These Japanese crowds, however, are quiet and gentle, and never press
rudely upon one. I could not find it in my heart to complain of them
except to you. Four of the policemen returned, and escorted me to the
outskirts of the town. The noise made by 1000 people shuffling along in
clogs is like the clatter of a hail-storm.
After this there was a dismal tramp of five hours through rice-fields.
The moist climate and the fatigue of this manner of travelling are
deteriorating my health, and the pain in my spine, which has been daily
increasing, was so severe that I could neither ride nor walk for more
than twenty minutes at a time; and the pace was so slow that it was six
when we reached Bangé, a commercial town of 5000 people, literally in the
rice swamp, mean, filthy, damp, and decaying, and full of an overpowering
stench from black, slimy ditches. The mercury was 84°, and hot rain fell
fast through the motionless air. We dismounted in a shed full of bales
of dried fish, which gave off an overpowering odour, and wet and dirty
people crowded in to stare at the foreigner till the air seemed
unbreathable.
But there were signs of progress. A three days’ congress of
schoolmasters was being held; candidates for vacant situations were being
examined; there were lengthy educational discussions going on, specially
on the subject of the value of the Chinese classics as a part of
education; and every inn was crowded.
Bangé was malarious: there was so much malarious fever that the
Government had sent additional medical assistance; the hills were only a
_ri_ off, and it seemed essential to go on. But not a horse could be got
till 10 p.m.; the road was worse than the one I had travelled; the pain
became more acute, and I more exhausted, and I was obliged to remain.
Then followed a weary hour, in which the Express Agent’s five emissaries
were searching for a room, and considerably after dark I found myself in
a rambling old over-crowded _yadoya_, where my room was mainly built on
piles above stagnant water, and the mosquitoes were in such swarms as to
make the air dense, and after a feverish and miserable night I was glad
to get up early and depart.
Fully 2000 people had assembled. After I was mounted I was on the point
of removing my Dollond from the case, which hung on the saddle horn, when
a regular stampede occurred, old and young running as fast as they
possibly could, children being knocked down in the haste of their elders.
Ito said that they thought I was taking out a pistol to frighten them,
and I made him explain what the object really was, for they are a gentle,
harmless people, whom one would not annoy without sincere regret. In
many European countries, and certainly in some parts of our own, a
solitary lady-traveller in a foreign dress would be exposed to rudeness,
insult, and extortion, if not to actual danger; but I have not met with a
single instance of incivility or real overcharge, and there is no
rudeness even about the crowding. The _mago_ are anxious that I should
not get wet or be frightened, and very scrupulous in seeing that all
straps and loose things are safe at the end of the journey, and, instead
of hanging about asking for gratuities, or stopping to drink and gossip,
they quickly unload the horses, get a paper from the Transport Agent, and
go home. Only yesterday a strap was missing, and, though it was after
dark, the man went back a _ri_ for it, and refused to take some _sen_
which I wished to give him, saying he was responsible for delivering
everything right at the journey’s end. They are so kind and courteous to
each other, which is very pleasing. Ito is not pleasing or polite in his
manner to me, but when he speaks to his own people he cannot free himself
from the shackles of etiquette, and bows as profoundly and uses as many
polite phrases as anybody else.
In an hour the malarious plain was crossed, and we have been among piles
of mountains ever since. The infamous road was so slippery that my horse
fell several times, and the baggage horse, with Ito upon him, rolled head
over heels, sending his miscellaneous pack in all directions. Good roads
are really the most pressing need of Japan. It would be far better if
the Government were to enrich the country by such a remunerative outlay
as making passable roads for the transport of goods through the interior,
than to impoverish it by buying ironclads in England, and indulging in
expensive western vanities.
That so horrible a road should have so good a bridge as that by which we
crossed the broad river Agano is surprising. It consists of twelve large
scows, each one secured to a strong cable of plaited wistari, which
crosses the river at a great height, so as to allow of the scows and the
plank bridge which they carry rising and falling with the twelve feet
variation of the water.
Ito’s disaster kept him back for an hour, and I sat meanwhile on a rice
sack in the hamlet of Katakado, a collection of steep-roofed houses
huddled together in a height above the Agano. It was one mob of
pack-horses, over 200 of them, biting, squealing, and kicking. Before I
could dismount, one vicious creature struck at me violently, but only hit
the great wooden stirrup. I could hardly find any place out of the range
of hoofs or teeth. My baggage horse showed great fury after he was
unloaded. He attacked people right and left with his teeth, struck out
savagely with his fore feet, lashed out with his hind ones, and tried to
pin his master up against a wall.
Leaving this fractious scene we struck again through the mountains.
Their ranges were interminable, and every view from every fresh ridge
grander than the last, for we were now near the lofty range of the Aidzu
Mountains, and the double-peaked Bandaisan, the abrupt precipices of
Itoyasan, and the grand mass of Miyojintaké in the south-west, with their
vast snow-fields and snow-filled ravines, were all visible at once.
These summits of naked rock or dazzling snow, rising above the smothering
greenery of the lower ranges into a heaven of delicious blue, gave
exactly that individuality and emphasis which, to my thinking, Japanese
scenery usually lacks. Riding on first, I arrived alone at the little
town of Nozawa, to encounter the curiosity of a crowd; and, after a rest,
we had a very pleasant walk of three miles along the side of a ridge
above a rapid river with fine grey cliffs on its farther side, with a
grand view of the Aidzu giants, violet coloured in a golden sunset.
At dusk we came upon the picturesque village of Nojiri, on the margin of
a rice valley, but I shrank from spending Sunday in a hole, and, having
spied a solitary house on the very brow of a hill 1500 feet higher, I
dragged out the information that it was a tea-house, and came up to it.
It took three-quarters of an hour to climb the series of precipitous
zigzags by which this remarkable pass is surmounted; darkness came on,
accompanied by thunder and lightning, and just as we arrived a tremendous
zigzag of blue flame lit up the house and its interior, showing a large
group sitting round a wood fire, and then all was thick darkness again.
It had a most startling effect. This house is magnificently situated,
almost hanging over the edge of the knife-like ridge of the pass of
Kuruma, on which it is situated. It is the only _yadoya_ I have been at
from which there has been any view. The villages are nearly always in
the valleys, and the best rooms are at the back, and have their prospects
limited by the paling of the conventional garden. If it were not for the
fleas, which are here in legions, I should stay longer, for the view of
the Aidzu snow is delicious, and, as there are only two other houses, one
can ramble without being mobbed.
In one a child two and a half years old swallowed a fish-bone last night,
and has been suffering and crying all day, and the grief of the mother so
won Ito’s sympathy that he took me to see her. She had walked up and
down with it for eighteen hours, but never thought of looking into its
throat, and was very unwilling that I should do so. The bone was
visible, and easily removed with a crochet needle. An hour later the
mother sent a tray with a quantity of cakes and coarse confectionery upon
it as a present, with the piece of dried seaweed which always accompanies
a gift. Before night seven people with sore legs applied for “advice.”
The sores were all superficial and all alike, and their owners said that
they had been produced by the incessant rubbing of the bites of ants.
On this summer day the country looks as prosperous as it is beautiful,
and one would not think that acute poverty could exist in the
steep-roofed village of Nojiri, which nestles at the foot of the hill;
but two hempen ropes dangling from a cryptomeria just below tell the sad
tale of an elderly man who hanged himself two days ago, because he was
too poor to provide for a large family; and the house-mistress and Ito
tell me that when a man who has a young family gets too old or feeble for
work he often destroys himself.
My hostess is a widow with a family, a good-natured, bustling woman, with
a great love of talk. All day her house is open all round, having
literally no walls. The roof and solitary upper room are supported on
posts, and my ladder almost touches the kitchen fire. During the
day-time the large matted area under the roof has no divisions, and
groups of travellers and _magos_ lie about, for every one who has toiled
up either side of Kurumatogé takes a cup of “tea with eating,” and the
house-mistress is busy the whole day. A big well is near the fire. Of
course there is no furniture; but a shelf runs under the roof, on which
there is a Buddhist god-house, with two black idols in it, one of them
being that much-worshipped divinity, Daikoku, the god of wealth. Besides
a rack for kitchen utensils, there is only a stand on which are six large
brown dishes with food for sale—salt shell-fish, in a black liquid, dried
trout impaled on sticks, sea slugs in soy, a paste made of pounded roots,
and green cakes made of the slimy river _confervæ_, pressed and dried—all
ill-favoured and unsavoury viands. This afternoon a man without clothes
was treading flour paste on a mat, a traveller in a blue silk robe was
lying on the floor smoking, and five women in loose attire, with
elaborate chignons and blackened teeth, were squatting round the fire.
At the house-mistress’s request I wrote a eulogistic description of the
view from her house, and read it in English, Ito translating it, to the
very great satisfaction of the assemblage. Then I was asked to write on
four fans. The woman has never heard of England. It is not “a name to
conjure with” in these wilds. Neither has she heard of America. She
knows of Russia as a great power, and, of course, of China, but there her
knowledge ends, though she has been at Tôkiyô and Kiyotô.
July 1.—I was just falling asleep last night, in spite of mosquitoes and
fleas, when I was roused by much talking and loud outcries of poultry;
and Ito, carrying a screaming, refractory hen, and a man and woman whom
he had with difficulty bribed to part with it, appeared by my bed. I
feebly said I would have it boiled for breakfast, but when Ito called me
this morning he told me with a most rueful face that just as he was going
to kill it it had escaped to the woods! In order to understand my
feelings you must have experienced what it is not to have tasted fish,
flesh, or fowl, for ten days! The alternative was eggs and some of the
paste which the man was treading yesterday on the mat cut into strips and
boiled! It was coarse flour and buckwheat, so, you see, I have learned
not to be particular!