YESTERDAY was beautiful, and, dispensing for the first time with Ito’s
attendance, I took a _kuruma_ for the day, and had a very pleasant
excursion into a _cul de sac_ in the mountains. The one drawback was the
infamous road, which compelled me either to walk or be mercilessly
jolted. The runner was a nice, kind, merry creature, quite delighted,
Ito said, to have a chance of carrying so great a sight as a foreigner
into a district in which no foreigner has even been seen. In the
absolute security of Japanese travelling, which I have fully realised for
a long time, I look back upon my fears at Kasukabé with a feeling of
self-contempt.
The scenery, which was extremely pretty, gained everything from sunlight
and colour—wonderful shades of cobalt and indigo, green blues and blue
greens, and flashes of white foam in unsuspected rifts. It looked a
simple, home-like region, a very pleasant land.
We passed through several villages of farmers who live in very primitive
habitations, built of mud, looking as if the mud had been dabbed upon the
framework with the hands. The walls sloped slightly inwards, the thatch
was rude, the eaves were deep and covered all manner of lumber; there was
a smoke-hole in a few, but the majority smoked all over like brick-kilns;
they had no windows, and the walls and rafters were black and shiny.
Fowls and horses live on one side of the dark interior, and the people on
the other. The houses were alive with unclothed children, and as I
repassed in the evening unclothed men and women, nude to their waists,
were sitting outside their dwellings with the small fry, clothed only in
amulets, about them, several big yellow dogs forming part of each family
group, and the faces of dogs, children, and people were all placidly
contented! These farmers owned many good horses, and their crops were
splendid. Probably on _matsuri_ days all appear in fine clothes taken
from ample hoards. They cannot be so poor, as far as the necessaries of
life are concerned; they are only very “far back.” They know nothing
better, and are contented; but their houses are as bad as any that I have
ever seen, and the simplicity of Eden is combined with an amount of dirt
which makes me sceptical as to the performance of even weekly ablutions.
[Picture: Akita Farm-House]
Upper Nakano is very beautiful, and in the autumn, when its myriads of
star-leaved maples are scarlet and crimson, against a dark background of
cryptomeria, among which a great white waterfall gleams like a snow-drift
before it leaps into the black pool below, it must be well worth a long
journey. I have not seen anything which has pleased me more. There is a
fine flight of moss-grown stone steps down to the water, a pretty bridge,
two superb stone _torii_, some handsome stone lanterns, and then a grand
flight of steep stone steps up a hillside dark with cryptomeria leads to
a small Shintô shrine. Not far off there is a sacred tree, with the
token of love and revenge upon it. The whole place is entrancing.
Lower Nakano, which I could only reach on foot, is only interesting as
possessing some very hot springs, which are valuable in cases of
rheumatism and sore eyes. It consists mainly of tea-houses and
_yadoyas_, and seemed rather gay. It is built round the edge of an
oblong depression, at the bottom of which the bath-houses stand, of which
there are four, only nominally separated, and with but two entrances,
which open directly upon the bathers. In the two end houses women and
children were bathing in large tanks, and in the centre ones women and
men were bathing together, but at opposite sides, with wooden ledges to
sit upon all round. I followed the _kuruma_-runner blindly to the baths,
and when once in I had to go out at the other side, being pressed upon by
people from behind; but the bathers were too polite to take any notice of
my most unwilling intrusion, and the _kuruma_-runner took me in without
the slightest sense of impropriety in so doing. I noticed that formal
politeness prevailed in the bath-house as elsewhere, and that dippers and
towels were handed from one to another with profound bows. The public
bath-house is said to be the place in which public opinion is formed, as
it is with us in clubs and public-houses, and that the presence of women
prevents any dangerous or seditious consequences; but the Government is
doing its best to prevent promiscuous bathing; and, though the reform may
travel slowly into these remote regions, it will doubtless arrive sooner
or later. The public bath-house is one of the features of Japan.