Lunch in Public—A Grotesque Accident—Police Inquiries—Man or Woman?—A
Melancholy Stare—A Vicious Horse—An Ill-favoured Town—A Disappointment—A
_Torii_.
YUSOWA is a specially objectionable-looking place. I took my lunch—a
wretched meal of a tasteless white curd made from beans, with some
condensed milk added to it—in a yard, and the people crowded in hundreds
to the gate, and those behind, being unable to see me, got ladders and
climbed on the adjacent roofs, where they remained till one of the roofs
gave way with a loud crash, and precipitated about fifty men, women, and
children into the room below, which fortunately was vacant. Nobody
screamed—a noteworthy fact—and the casualties were only a few bruises.
Four policemen then appeared and demanded my passport, as if I were
responsible for the accident, and failing, like all others, to read a
particular word upon it, they asked me what I was travelling for, and on
being told “to learn about the country,” they asked if I was making a
map! Having satisfied their curiosity they disappeared, and the crowd
surged up again in fuller force. The Transport Agent begged them to go
away, but they said they might never see such a sight again! One old
peasant said he would go away if he were told whether “the sight” were a
man or a woman, and, on the agent asking if that were any business of
his, he said he should like to tell at home what he had seen, which awoke
my sympathy at once, and I told Ito to tell them that a Japanese horse
galloping night and day without ceasing would take 5½ weeks to reach my
county—a statement which he is using lavishly as I go along. These are
such queer crowds, so silent and gaping, and they remain motionless for
hours, the wide-awake babies on the mothers’ backs and in the fathers’
arms never crying. I should be glad to hear a hearty aggregate laugh,
even if I were its object. The great melancholy stare is depressing.
The road for ten miles was thronged with country people going in to see
the fire. It was a good road and very pleasant country, with numerous
road-side shrines and figures of the goddess of mercy. I had a wicked
horse, thoroughly vicious. His head was doubly chained to the
saddle-girth, but he never met man, woman, or child, without laying back
his ears and running at them to bite them. I was so tired and in so much
spinal pain that I got off and walked several times, and it was most
difficult to get on again, for as soon as I put my hand on the saddle he
swung his hind legs round to kick me, and it required some agility to
avoid being hurt. Nor was this all. The evil beast made dashes with his
tethered head at flies, threatening to twist or demolish my foot at each,
flung his hind legs upwards, attempted to dislodge flies on his nose with
his hind hoof, executed capers which involved a total disappearance of
everything in front of the saddle, squealed, stumbled, kicked his old
shoes off, and resented the feeble attempts which the _mago_ made to
replace them, and finally walked in to Yokote and down its long and
dismal street mainly on his hind legs, shaking the rope out of his timid
leader’s hand, and shaking me into a sort of aching jelly! I used to
think that horses were made vicious either by being teased or by violence
in breaking; but this does not account for the malignity of the Japanese
horses, for the people are so much afraid of them that they treat them
with great respect: they are not beaten or kicked, are spoken to in
soothing tones, and, on the whole, live better than their masters.
Perhaps this is the secret of their villainy—“Jeshurun waxed fat and
kicked.”
Yokote, a town of 10,000 people, in which the best _yadoyas_ are all
non-respectable, is an ill-favoured, ill-smelling, forlorn, dirty, damp,
miserable place, with a large trade in cottons. As I rode through on my
temporary biped the people rushed out from the baths to see me, men and
women alike without a particle of clothing. The house-master was very
polite, but I had a dark and dirty room, up a bamboo ladder, and it
swarmed with fleas and mosquitoes to an exasperating extent. On the way
I heard that a bullock was killed every Thursday in Yokote, and had
decided on having a broiled steak for supper and taking another with me,
but when I arrived it was all sold, there were no eggs, and I made a
miserable meal of rice and bean curd, feeling somewhat starved, as the
condensed milk I bought at Yamagata had to be thrown away. I was
somewhat wretched from fatigue and inflamed ant bites, but in the early
morning, hot and misty as all the mornings have been, I went to see a
Shintô temple, or _miya_, and, though I went alone, escaped a throng.
The entrance into the temple court was, as usual, by a _torii_, which
consisted of two large posts 20 feet high, surmounted with cross beams,
the upper one of which projects beyond the posts and frequently curves
upwards at both ends. The whole, as is often the case, was painted a
dull red. This _torii_, or “birds’ rest,” is said to be so called
because the fowls, which were formerly offered but not sacrificed, were
accustomed to perch upon it. A straw rope, with straw tassels and strips
of paper hanging from it, the special emblem of Shintô, hung across the
gateway. In the paved court there were several handsome granite lanterns
on fine granite pedestals, such as are the nearly universal
accompaniments of both Shintô and Buddhist temples.
After leaving Yakote we passed through very pretty country with mountain
views and occasional glimpses of the snowy dome of Chokaizan, crossed the
Omono (which has burst its banks and destroyed its bridges) by two
troublesome ferries, and arrived at Rokugo, a town of 5000 people, with
fine temples, exceptionally mean houses, and the most aggressive crowd by
which I have yet been asphyxiated.
There, through the good offices of the police, I was enabled to attend a
Buddhist funeral of a merchant of some wealth. It interested me very
much from its solemnity and decorum, and Ito’s explanations of what went
before were remarkably distinctly given. I went in a Japanese woman’s
dress, borrowed at the tea-house, with a blue hood over my head, and thus
escaped all notice, but I found the restraint of the scanty “tied
forward” _kimono_ very tiresome. Ito gave me many injunctions as to what
I was to do and avoid, which I carried out faithfully, being nervously
anxious to avoid jarring on the sensibilities of those who had kindly
permitted a foreigner to be present.
[Picture: Torii]
The illness was a short one, and there had been no time either for
prayers or pilgrimages on the sick man’s behalf. When death occurs the
body is laid with its head to the north (a position that the living
Japanese scrupulously avoid), near a folding screen, between which and it
a new _zen_ is placed, on which are a saucer of oil with a lighted rush,
cakes of uncooked rice dough, and a saucer of incense sticks. The
priests directly after death choose the _kaimiyô_, or posthumous name,
write it on a tablet of white wood, and seat themselves by the corpse;
his _zen_, bowls, cups, etc., are filled with vegetable food and are
placed by his side, the chopsticks being put on the wrong, _i.e._ the
left, side of the _zen_. At the end of forty-eight hours the corpse is
arranged for the coffin by being washed with warm water, and the priest,
while saying certain prayers, shaves the head. In all cases, rich or
poor, the dress is of the usual make, but of pure white linen or cotton.
At Omagori, a town near Rokugo, large earthenware jars are manufactured,
which are much used for interment by the wealthy; but in this case there
were two square boxes, the outer one being of finely planed wood of the
_Retinospora obtusa_. The poor use what is called the “quick-tub,” a
covered tub of pine hooped with bamboo. Women are dressed for burial in
the silk robe worn on the marriage day, _tabi_ are placed beside them or
on their feet, and their hair usually flows loosely behind them. The
wealthiest people fill the coffin with vermilion and the poorest use
chaff; but in this case I heard that only the mouth, nose, and ears were
filled with vermilion, and that the coffin was filled up with coarse
incense. The body is placed within the tub or box in the usual squatting
position. It is impossible to understand how a human body, many hours
after death, can be pressed into the limited space afforded by even the
outermost of the boxes. It has been said that the rigidity of a corpse
is overcome by the use of a powder called _dosia_, which is sold by the
priests; but this idea has been exploded, and the process remains
incomprehensible.
Bannerets of small size and ornamental staves were outside the house
door. Two men in blue dresses, with pale blue over-garments resembling
wings received each person, two more presented a lacquered bowl of water
and a white silk _crêpe_ towel, and then we passed into a large room,
round which were arranged a number of very handsome folding screens, on
which lotuses, storks, and peonies were realistically painted on a dead
gold ground. Near the end of the room the coffin, under a canopy of
white silk, upon which there was a very beautiful arrangement of
artificial white lotuses, rested upon trestles, the face of the corpse
being turned towards the north. Six priests, very magnificently dressed,
sat on each side of the coffin, and two more knelt in front of a small
temporary altar.
The widow, an extremely pretty woman, squatted near the deceased, below
the father and mother; and after her came the children, relatives, and
friends, who sat in rows, dressed in winged garments of blue and white.
The widow was painted white; her lips were reddened with vermilion; her
hair was elaborately dressed and ornamented with carved shell pins; she
wore a beautiful dress of sky-blue silk, with a _haori_ of fine white
_crêpe_ and a scarlet _crêpe_ girdle embroidered in gold, and looked like
a bride on her marriage day rather than a widow. Indeed, owing to the
beauty of the dresses and the amount of blue and white silk, the room had
a festal rather than a funereal look. When all the guests had arrived,
tea and sweetmeats were passed round; incense was burned profusely;
litanies were mumbled, and the bustle of moving to the grave began,
during which I secured a place near the gate of the temple grounds.
The procession did not contain the father or mother of the deceased, but
I understood that the mourners who composed it were all relatives. The
oblong tablet with the “dead name” of the deceased was carried first by a
priest, then the lotus blossom by another priest, then ten priests
followed, two and two, chanting litanies from books, then came the coffin
on a platform borne by four men and covered with white drapery, then the
widow, and then the other relatives. The coffin was carried into the
temple and laid upon trestles, while incense was burned and prayers were
said, and was then carried to a shallow grave lined with cement, and
prayers were said by the priests until the earth was raised to the proper
level, when all dispersed, and the widow, in her gay attire, walked home
unattended. There were no hired mourners or any signs of grief, but
nothing could be more solemn, reverent, and decorous than the whole
service. [I have since seen many funerals, chiefly of the poor, and,
though shorn of much of the ceremony, and with only one officiating
priest, the decorum was always most remarkable.] The fees to the priests
are from 2 up to 40 or 50 _yen_. The graveyard, which surrounds the
temple, was extremely beautiful, and the cryptomeria specially fine. It
was very full of stone gravestones, and, like all Japanese cemeteries,
exquisitely kept. As soon as the grave was filled in, a life-size pink
lotus plant was placed upon it, and a lacquer tray, on which were lacquer
bowls containing tea or _saké_, beans, and sweetmeats.
The temple at Rokugo was very beautiful, and, except that its ornaments
were superior in solidity and good taste, differed little from a Romish
church. The low altar, on which were lilies and lighted candles, was
draped in blue and silver, and on the high altar, draped in crimson and
cloth of gold, there was nothing but a closed shrine, an incense-burner,
and a vase of lotuses.