The Effect of a Chicken—Poor Fare—Slow Travelling—Objects of
Interest—_Kak’ké_—The Fatal Close—A Great Fire—Security of the
_Kuras_.
SHINGOJI, _July_ 21.
VERY early in the morning, after my long talk with the _Kôchô_ of
Kanayama, Ito wakened me by saying, “You’ll be able for a long day’s
journey to-day, as you had a chicken yesterday,” and under this chicken’s
marvellous influence we got away at 6.45, only to verify the proverb,
“The more haste the worse speed.” Unsolicited by me the _Kôchô_ sent
round the village to forbid the people from assembling, so I got away in
peace with a pack-horse and one runner. It was a terrible road, with two
severe mountain-passes to cross, and I not only had to walk nearly the
whole way, but to help the man with the _kuruma_ up some of the steepest
places. Halting at the exquisitely situated village of Nosoki, we got
one horse, and walked by a mountain road along the head-waters of the
Omono to Innai. I wish I could convey to you any idea of the beauty and
wildness of that mountain route, of the surprises on the way, of views,
of the violent deluges of rain which turned rivulets into torrents, and
of the hardships and difficulties of the day; the scanty fare of
sun-dried rice dough and sour yellow rasps, and the depth of the mire
through which we waded! We crossed the Shione and Sakatsu passes, and in
twelve hours accomplished fifteen miles! Everywhere we were told that we
should never get through the country by the way we are going.
The women still wear trousers, but with a long garment tucked into them
instead of a short one, and the men wear a cotton combination of
breastplate and apron, either without anything else, or over their
_kimonos_. The descent to Innai under an avenue of cryptomeria, and the
village itself, shut in with the rushing Omono, are very beautiful.
The _yadoya_ at Innai was a remarkably cheerful one, but my room was
entirely _fusuma_ and _shôji_, and people were peeping in the whole time.
It is not only a foreigner and his strange ways which attract attention
in these remote districts, but, in my case, my india-rubber bath,
air-pillow, and, above all, my white mosquito net. Their nets are all of
a heavy green canvas, and they admire mine so much, that I can give no
more acceptable present on leaving than a piece of it to twist in with
the hair. There were six engineers in the next room who are surveying
the passes which I had crossed, in order to see if they could be
tunnelled, in which case _kurumas_ might go all the way from Tôkiyô to
Kubota on the Sea of Japan, and, with a small additional outlay, carts
also.
In the two villages of Upper and Lower Innai there has been an outbreak
of a malady much dreaded by the Japanese, called _kak’ké_, which, in the
last seven months, has carried off 100 persons out of a population of
about 1500, and the local doctors have been aided by two sent from the
Medical School at Kubota. I don’t know a European name for it; the
Japanese name signifies an affection of the legs. Its first symptoms are
a loss of strength in the legs, “looseness in the knees,” cramps in the
calves, swelling, and numbness. This, Dr. Anderson, who has studied
_kak’ké_ in more than 1100 cases in Tôkiyô, calls the sub-acute form.
The chronic is a slow, numbing, and wasting malady, which, if unchecked,
results in death from paralysis and exhaustion in from six months to
three years. The third, or acute form, Dr. Anderson describes thus.
After remarking that the grave symptoms set in quite unexpectedly, and go
on rapidly increasing, he says:—“The patient now can lie down no longer;
he sits up in bed and tosses restlessly from one position to another,
and, with wrinkled brow, staring and anxious eyes, dusky skin, blue,
parted lips, dilated nostrils, throbbing neck, and labouring chest,
presents a picture of the most terrible distress that the worst of
diseases can inflict. There is no intermission even for a moment, and
the physician, here almost powerless, can do little more than note the
failing pulse and falling temperature, and wait for the moment when the
brain, paralysed by the carbonised blood, shall become insensible, and
allow the dying man to pass his last moments in merciful
unconsciousness.” {145}
The next morning, after riding nine miles through a quagmire, under grand
avenues of cryptomeria, and noticing with regret that the telegraph poles
ceased, we reached Yusowa, a town of 7000 people, in which, had it not
been for provoking delays, I should have slept instead of at Innai, and
found that a fire a few hours previously had destroyed seventy houses,
including the _yadoya_ at which I should have lodged. We had to wait two
hours for horses, as all were engaged in moving property and people. The
ground where the houses had stood was absolutely bare of everything but
fine black ash, among which the _kuras_ stood blackened, and, in some
instances, slightly cracked, but in all unharmed. Already skeletons of
new houses were rising. No life had been lost except that of a tipsy
man, but I should probably have lost everything but my money.