The Fatigues of Travelling—Torrents and Mud—Ito’s Surliness—The Blind
Shampooers—A Supposed Monkey Theatre—A Suspended Ferry—A Difficult
Transit—Perils on the Yonetsurugawa—A Boatman Drowned—Nocturnal
Disturbances—A Noisy Yadoya—Storm-bound Travellers—_Hai_! _Hai_!—More
Nocturnal Disturbances.
ODATÉ, _July_ 29.
I HAVE been suffering so much from my spine that I have been unable to
travel more than seven or eight miles daily for several days, and even
that with great difficulty. I try my own saddle, then a pack-saddle,
then walk through the mud; but I only get on because getting on is a
necessity, and as soon as I reach the night’s halting-place I am obliged
to lie down at once. Only strong people should travel in northern Japan.
The inevitable fatigue is much increased by the state of the weather, and
doubtless my impressions of the country are affected by it also, as a
hamlet in a quagmire in a gray mist or a soaking rain is a far less
delectable object than the same hamlet under bright sunshine. There has
not been such a season for thirty years. The rains have been tremendous.
I have lived in soaked clothes, in spite of my rain-cloak, and have slept
on a soaked stretcher in spite of all waterproof wrappings for several
days, and still the weather shows no signs of improvement, and the rivers
are so high on the northern road that I am storm-bound as well as
pain-bound here. Ito shows his sympathy for me by intense surliness,
though he did say very sensibly, “I’m very sorry for you, but it’s no use
saying so over and over again; as I can do nothing for you, you’d better
send for the blind man!”
In Japanese towns and villages you hear every evening a man (or men)
making a low peculiar whistle as he walks along, and in large towns the
noise is quite a nuisance. It is made by blind men; but a blind beggar
is never seen throughout Japan, and the blind are an independent,
respected, and well-to-do class, carrying on the occupations of
shampooing, money-lending, and music.
[Picture: Myself in a Straw Rain-Cloak]
We have had a very severe journey from Toyôka. That day the rain was
ceaseless, and in the driving mists one could see little but low hills
looming on the horizon, pine barrens, scrub, and flooded rice-fields;
varied by villages standing along roads which were quagmires a foot deep,
and where the clothing was specially ragged and dirty. Hinokiyama, a
village of _samurai_, on a beautiful slope, was an exception, with its
fine detached houses, pretty gardens, deep-roofed gateways, grass and
stone-faced terraces, and look of refined, quiet comfort. Everywhere
there was a quantity of indigo, as is necessary, for nearly all the
clothing of the lower classes is blue. Near a large village we were
riding on a causeway through the rice-fields, Ito on the pack-horse in
front, when we met a number of children returning from school, who, on
getting near us, turned, ran away, and even jumped into the ditches,
screaming as they ran. The _mago_ ran after them, caught the hindmost
boy, and dragged him back—the boy scared and struggling, the man
laughing. The boy said that they thought that Ito was a monkey-player,
_i.e._ the keeper of a monkey theatre, I a big ape, and the poles of my
bed the scaffolding of the stage!
Splashing through mire and water we found that the people of Tubiné
wished to detain us, saying that all the ferries were stopped in
consequence of the rise in the rivers; but I had been so often misled by
false reports that I took fresh horses and went on by a track along a
very pretty hillside, overlooking the Yonetsurugawa, a large and swollen
river, which nearer the sea had spread itself over the whole country.
Torrents of rain were still falling, and all out-of-doors industries were
suspended. Straw rain-cloaks hanging to dry dripped under all the eaves,
our paper cloaks were sodden, our dripping horses steamed, and thus we
slid down a steep descent into the hamlet of Kiriishi, thirty-one houses
clustered under persimmon trees under a wooded hillside, all standing in
a quagmire, and so abject and filthy that one could not ask for five
minutes’ shelter in any one of them. Sure enough, on the bank of the
river, which was fully 400 yards wide, and swirling like a mill-stream
with a suppressed roar, there was an official order prohibiting the
crossing of man or beast, and before I had time to think the _mago_ had
deposited the baggage on an islet in the mire and was over the crest of
the hill. I wished that the Government was a little less paternal.
Just in the nick of time we discerned a punt drifting down the river on
the opposite side, where it brought up, and landed a man, and Ito and two
others yelled, howled, and waved so lustily as to attract its notice, and
to my joy an answering yell came across the roar and rush of the river.
The torrent was so strong that the boatmen had to pole up on that side
for half a mile, and in about three-quarters of an hour they reached our
side. They were returning to Kotsunagi—the very place I wished to
reach—but, though only 2½ miles off, the distance took nearly four hours
of the hardest work I ever saw done by men. Every moment I expected to
see them rupture blood-vessels or tendons. All their muscles quivered.
It is a mighty river, and was from eight to twelve feet deep, and
whirling down in muddy eddies; and often with their utmost efforts in
poling, when it seemed as if poles or backs must break, the boat hung
trembling and stationary for three or four minutes at a time. After the
slow and eventless tramp of the last few days this was an exciting
transit. Higher up there was a flooded wood, and, getting into this, the
men aided themselves considerably by hauling by the trees; but when we
got out of this, another river joined the Yonetsurugawa, which with added
strength rushed and roared more wildly.
I had long been watching a large house-boat far above us on the other
side, which was being poled by desperate efforts by ten men. At that
point she must have been half a mile off, when the stream overpowered the
crew and in no time she swung round and came drifting wildly down and
across the river, broadside on to us. We could not stir against the
current, and had large trees on our immediate left, and for a moment it
was a question whether she would not smash us to atoms. Ito was livid
with fear; his white, appalled face struck me as ludicrous, for I had no
other thought than the imminent peril of the large boat with her freight
of helpless families, when, just as she was within two feet of us, she
struck a stem and glanced off. Then her crew grappled a headless trunk
and got their hawser round it, and eight of them, one behind the other,
hung on to it, when it suddenly snapped, seven fell backwards, and the
forward one went overboard to be no more seen. Some house that night was
desolate. Reeling downwards, the big mast and spar of the ungainly craft
caught in a tree, giving her such a check that they were able to make her
fast. It was a saddening incident. I asked Ito what he felt when we
seemed in peril, and he replied, “I thought I’d been good to my mother,
and honest, and I hoped I should go to a good place.”
The fashion of boats varies much on different rivers. On this one there
are two sizes. Ours was a small one, flat-bottomed, 25 feet long by 2½
broad, drawing 6 inches, very low in the water, and with sides slightly
curved inwards. The prow forms a gradual long curve from the body of the
boat, and is very high.
The mists rolled away as dusk came on, and revealed a lovely country with
much picturesqueness of form, and near Kotsunagi the river disappears
into a narrow gorge with steep, sentinel hills, dark with pine and
cryptomeria. To cross the river we had to go fully a mile above the
point aimed at, and then a few minutes of express speed brought us to a
landing in a deep, tough quagmire in a dark wood, through which we groped
our lamentable way to the _yadoya_. A heavy mist came on, and the rain
returned in torrents; the _doma_ was ankle deep in black slush. The
_daidokoro_ was open to the roof, roof and rafters were black with smoke,
and a great fire of damp wood was smoking lustily. Round some live
embers in the _irori_ fifteen men, women, and children were lying, doing
nothing, by the dim light of an _andon_. It was picturesque decidedly,
and I was well disposed to be content when the production of some
handsome _fusuma_ created _daimiyô’s_ rooms out of the farthest part of
the dim and wandering space, opening upon a damp garden, into which the
rain splashed all night.
The solitary spoil of the day’s journey was a glorious lily, which I
presented to the house-master, and in the morning it was blooming on the
_kami-dana_ in a small vase of priceless old Satsuma china. I was awoke
out of a sound sleep by Ito coming in with a rumour, brought by some
travellers, that the Prime Minister had been assassinated, and fifty
policemen killed! [This was probably a distorted version of the partial
mutiny of the Imperial Guard, which I learned on landing in Yezo.] Very
wild political rumours are in the air in these outlandish regions, and it
is not very wonderful that the peasantry lack confidence in the existing
order of things after the changes of the last ten years, and the recent
assassination of the Home Minister. I did not believe the rumour, for
fanaticism, even in its wildest moods, usually owes some allegiance to
common sense; but it was disturbing, as I have naturally come to feel a
deep interest in Japanese affairs. A few hours later Ito again presented
himself with a bleeding cut on his temple. In lighting his pipe—an
odious nocturnal practice of the Japanese—he had fallen over the edge of
the fire-pot. I always sleep in a Japanese _kimona_ to be ready for
emergencies, and soon bound up his head, and slept again, to be awoke
early by another deluge.
We made an early start, but got over very little ground, owing to bad
roads and long delays. All day the rain came down in even torrents, the
tracks were nearly impassable, my horse fell five times, I suffered
severely from pain and exhaustion, and almost fell into despair about
ever reaching the sea. In these wild regions there are no _kago_ or
_norimons_ to be had, and a pack-horse is the only conveyance, and
yesterday, having abandoned my own saddle, I had the bad luck to get a
pack-saddle with specially angular and uncompromising peaks, with a
soaked and extremely unwashed _futon_ on the top, spars, tackle, ridges,
and furrows of the most exasperating description, and two nooses of rope
to hold on by as the animal slid down hill on his haunches, or let me
almost slide over his tail as he scrambled and plunged up hill.
It was pretty country, even in the downpour, when white mists parted and
fir-crowned heights looked out for a moment, or we slid down into a deep
glen with mossy boulders, lichen-covered stumps, ferny carpet, and damp,
balsamy smell of pyramidal cryptomeria, and a tawny torrent dashing
through it in gusts of passion. Then there were low hills, much scrub,
immense rice-fields, and violent inundations. But it is not pleasant,
even in the prettiest country, to cling on to a pack-saddle with a
saturated quilt below you and the water slowly soaking down through your
wet clothes into your boots, knowing all the time that when you halt you
must sleep on a wet bed, and change into damp clothes, and put on the wet
ones again the next morning. The villages were poor, and most of the
houses were of boards rudely nailed together for ends, and for sides
straw rudely tied on; they had no windows, and smoke came out of every
crack. They were as unlike the houses which travellers see in southern
Japan as a “black hut” in Uist is like a cottage in a trim village in
Kent. These peasant proprietors have much to learn of the art of living.
At Tsuguriko, the next stage, where the Transport Office was so dirty
that I was obliged to sit in the street in the rain, they told us that we
could only get on a _ri_ farther, because the bridges were all carried
away and the fords were impassable; but I engaged horses, and, by dint of
British doggedness and the willingness of the _mago_, I got the horses
singly and without their loads in small punts across the swollen waters
of the Hayakuchi, the Yuwasé, and the Mochida, and finally forded three
branches of my old friend the Yonetsurugawa, with the foam of its
hurrying waters whitening the men’s shoulders and the horses’ packs, and
with a hundred Japanese looking on at the “folly” of the foreigner.
I like to tell you of kind people everywhere, and the two _mago_ were
specially so, for, when they found that I was pushing on to Yezo for fear
of being laid up in the interior wilds, they did all they could to help
me; lifted me gently from the horse, made steps of their backs for me to
mount, and gathered for me handfuls of red berries, which I ate out of
politeness, though they tasted of some nauseous drug. They suggested
that I should stay at the picturesquely-situated old village of
Kawaguchi, but everything about it was mildewed and green with damp, and
the stench from the green and black ditches with which it abounded was so
overpowering, even in passing through, that I was obliged to ride on to
Odaté, a crowded, forlorn, half-tumbling-to-pieces town of 8000 people,
with bark roofs held down by stones.
The _yadoyas_ are crowded with storm-staid travellers, and I had a weary
tramp from one to another, almost sinking from pain, pressed upon by an
immense crowd, and frequently bothered by a policeman, who followed me
from one place to the other, making wholly unrighteous demands for my
passport at that most inopportune time. After a long search I could get
nothing better than this room, with _fusuma_ of tissue paper, in the
centre of the din of the house, close to the _doma_ and _daidokoro_.
Fifty travellers, nearly all men, are here, mostly speaking at the top of
their voices, and in a provincial jargon which exasperates Ito. Cooking,
bathing, eating, and, worst of all, perpetual drawing water from a well
with a creaking hoisting apparatus, are going on from 4.30 in the morning
till 11.30 at night, and on both evenings noisy mirth, of alcoholic
inspiration, and dissonant performances by _geishas_ have added to the
din.
In all places lately _Hai_, “yes,” has been pronounced _Hé_, _Chi_, _Na_,
_Né_, to Ito’s great contempt. It sounds like an expletive or
interjection rather than a response, and seems used often as a sign of
respect or attention only. Often it is loud and shrill, then guttural,
at times little more than a sigh. In these _yadoyas_ every sound is
audible, and I hear low rumbling of mingled voices, and above all the
sharp _Hai_, _Hai_ of the tea-house girls in full chorus from every
quarter of the house. The habit of saying it is so strong that a man
roused out of sleep jumps up with _Hai_, _Hai_, and often, when I speak
to Ito in English, a stupid Hebe sitting by answers _Hai_.
I don’t want to convey a false impression of the noise here. It would be
at least three times as great were I in equally close proximity to a
large hotel kitchen in England, with fifty Britons only separated from me
by paper partitions. I had not been long in bed on Saturday night when I
was awoke by Ito bringing in an old hen which he said he could stew till
it was tender, and I fell asleep again with its dying squeak in my ears,
to be awoke a second time by two policemen wanting for some occult reason
to see my passport, and a third time by two men with lanterns scrambling
and fumbling about the room for the strings of a mosquito net, which they
wanted for another traveller. These are among the ludicrous incidents of
Japanese travelling. About five Ito woke me by saying he was quite sure
that the _moxa_ would be the thing to cure my spine, and, as we were
going to stay all day, he would go and fetch an operator; but I rejected
this as emphatically as the services of the blind man! Yesterday a man
came and pasted slips of paper over all the “peep holes” in the _shôji_,
and I have been very little annoyed, even though the _yadoya_ is so
crowded.
The rain continues to come down in torrents, and rumours are hourly
arriving of disasters to roads and bridges on the northern route.