AFTER a tremendous bluster for two days the weather has become
beautifully fine, and I find the climate here more invigorating than that
of the main island. It is Japan, but yet there is a difference somehow.
When the mists lift they reveal not mountains smothered in greenery, but
naked peaks, volcanoes only recently burnt out, with the red ash flaming
under the noonday sun, and passing through shades of pink into violet at
sundown. Strips of sand border the bay, ranges of hills, with here and
there a patch of pine or scrub, fade into the far-off blue, and the great
cloud shadows lie upon their scored sides in indigo and purple. Blue as
the Adriatic are the waters of the land-locked bay, and the snowy sails
of pale junks look whiter than snow against its intense azure. The
abruptness of the double peaks behind the town is softened by a belt of
cryptomeria, the sandy strip which connects the headland with the
mainland heightens the general resemblance of the contour of the ground
to Gibraltar; but while one dreams of the western world a _kuruma_ passes
one at a trot, temple drums are beaten in a manner which does not recall
“the roll of the British drum,” a Buddhist funeral passes down the
street, or a man-cart pulled and pushed by four yellow-skinned,
little-clothed mannikins, creaks by, with the monotonous grunt of _Ha
huida_.
A single look at Hakodaté itself makes one feel that it is Japan all
over. The streets are very wide and clean, but the houses are mean and
low. The city looks as if it had just recovered from a conflagration.
The houses are nothing but tinder. The grand tile roofs of some other
cities are not to be seen. There is not an element of permanence in the
wide, and windy streets. It is an increasing and busy place; it lies for
two miles along the shore, and has climbed the hill till it can go no
higher; but still houses and people look poor. It has a skeleton aspect
too, which is partially due to the number of permanent “clothes-horses”
on the roofs. Stones, however, are its prominent feature. Looking down
upon it from above you see miles of grey boulders, and realise that every
roof in the windy capital is “hodden doun” by a weight of paving stones.
Nor is this all. Some of the flatter roofs are pebbled all over like a
courtyard, and others, such as the roof of this house, for instance, are
covered with sod and crops of grass, the two latter arrangements being
precautions against risks from sparks during fires. These paving stones
are certainly the cheapest possible mode of keeping the roofs on the
houses in such a windy region, but they look odd.
None of the streets, except one high up the hill, with a row of fine
temples and temple grounds, call for any notice. Nearly every house is a
shop; most of the shops supply only the ordinary articles consumed by a
large and poor population; either real or imitated foreign goods abound
in Main Street, and the only novelties are the furs, skins, and horns,
which abound in shops devoted to their sale. I covet the great bear furs
and the deep cream-coloured furs of Aino dogs, which are cheap as well as
handsome. There are many second-hand, or, as they are called, “curio”
shops, and the cheap lacquer from Aomori is also tempting to a stranger.