Hope deferred—Effects of the Flood—Activity of the Police—A Ramble in
Disguise—The _Tanabata_ Festival—Mr. Satow’s Reputation.
KUROISHI, _August_ 5.
AFTER all the waters did not fall as was expected, and I had to spend a
fourth day at Ikarigaseki. We left early on Saturday, as we had to
travel fifteen miles without halting. The sun shone on all the beautiful
country, and on all the wreck and devastation, as it often shines on the
dimpling ocean the day after a storm. We took four men, crossed two
severe fords where bridges had been carried away, and where I and the
baggage got very wet; saw great devastations and much loss of crops and
felled timber; passed under a cliff, which for 200 feet was composed of
fine columnar basalt in six-sided prisms, and quite suddenly emerged on a
great plain, on which green billows of rice were rolling sunlit before a
fresh north wind. This plain is liberally sprinkled with wooded villages
and surrounded by hills; one low range forming a curtain across the base
of Iwakisan, a great snow-streaked dome, which rises to the west of the
plain to a supposed height of 5000 feet. The water had risen in most of
the villages to a height of four feet, and had washed the lower part of
the mud walls away. The people were busy drying their _tatami_,
_futons_, and clothing, reconstructing their dykes and small bridges, and
fishing for the logs which were still coming down in large quantities.
In one town two very shabby policemen rushed upon us, seized the bridle
of my horse, and kept me waiting for a long time in the middle of a
crowd, while they toilsomely _bored_ through the passport, turning it up
and down, and holding it up to the light, as though there were some
nefarious mystery about it. My horse stumbled so badly that I was
obliged to walk to save myself from another fall, and, just as my powers
were failing, we met a _kuruma_, which by good management, such as being
carried occasionally, brought me into Kuroishi, a neat town of 5500
people, famous for the making of clogs and combs, where I have obtained a
very neat, airy, upstairs room, with a good view over the surrounding
country and of the doings of my neighbours in their back rooms and
gardens. Instead of getting on to Aomori I am spending three days and
two nights here, and, as the weather has improved and my room is
remarkably cheerful, the rest has been very pleasant. As I have said
before, it is difficult to get any information about anything even a few
miles off, and even at the Post Office they cannot give any intelligence
as to the date of the sailings of the mail steamer between Aomori, twenty
miles off, and Hakodaté.
The police were not satisfied with seeing my passport, but must also see
me, and four of them paid me a polite but domiciliary visit the evening
of my arrival. That evening the sound of drumming was ceaseless, and
soon after I was in bed Ito announced that there was something really
worth seeing, so I went out in my _kimono_ and without my hat, and in
this disguise altogether escaped recognition as a foreigner. Kuroishi is
unlighted, and I was tumbling and stumbling along in overhaste when a
strong arm cleared the way, and the house-master appeared with a very
pretty lantern, hanging close to the ground from a cane held in the hand.
Thus came the phrase, “Thy word is a light unto my feet.”
We soon reached a point for seeing the festival procession advance
towards us, and it was so beautiful and picturesque that it kept me out
for an hour. It passes through all the streets between 7 and 10 p.m.
each night during the first week in August, with an ark, or coffer,
containing slips of paper, on which (as I understand) wishes are written,
and each morning at seven this is carried to the river and the slips are
cast upon the stream. The procession consisted of three monster drums
nearly the height of a man’s body, covered with horsehide, and strapped
to the drummers, end upwards, and thirty small drums, all beaten
rub-a-dub-dub without ceasing. Each drum has the _tomoyé_ painted on its
ends. Then there were hundreds of paper lanterns carried on long poles
of various lengths round a central lantern, 20 feet high, itself an
oblong 6 feet long, with a front and wings, and all kinds of mythical and
mystical creatures painted in bright colours upon it—a transparency
rather than a lantern, in fact. Surrounding it were hundreds of
beautiful lanterns and transparencies of all sorts of fanciful
shapes—fans, fishes, birds, kites, drums; the hundreds of people and
children who followed all carried circular lanterns, and rows of lanterns
with the _tomoyé_ on one side and two Chinese characters on the other
hung from the eaves all along the line of the procession. I never saw
anything more completely like a fairy scene, the undulating waves of
lanterns as they swayed along, the soft lights and soft tints moving
aloft in the darkness, the lantern-bearers being in deep shadow. This
festival is called the _tanabata_, or _seiseki_ festival, but I am unable
to get any information about it. Ito says that he knows what it means,
but is unable to explain, and adds the phrase he always uses when in
difficulties, “Mr. Satow would be able to tell you all about it.”