[Illustration: THE GREAT STATUE OF BUDDHA AT KAMAKURA]
AN ARTIST'S LETTERS FROM JAPAN
BY
JOHN LA FARGE
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1897
Copyright, 1890, 1891, 1893, 1897,
By THE CENTURY CO.
THE DE VINNE PRESS.
TO HENRY ADAMS, ESQ.
_My Dear Adams:_ Without you I should not have seen the place, without
you I should not have seen the things of which these notes are
impressions. If anything worth repeating has been said by me in these
letters, it has probably come from you, or has been suggested by being
with you--perhaps even in the way of contradiction. And you may be
amused by the lighter talk of the artist that merely describes
appearances, or covers them with a tissue of dreams. And you alone will
know how much has been withheld that might have been indiscreetly said.
If only we had found Nirvana--but he was right who warned us that we
were late in this season of the world.
J. L. F.
[Illustration: WHICH IN ENGLISH MEANS:]
AND YOU TOO, OKAKURA SAN: I wish to put your name before these notes,
written at the time when I first met you, because the memories of your
talks are connected with my liking of your country and of its story, and
because for a time you were Japan to me. I hope, too, that some thoughts
of yours will be detected in what I write, as a stream runs through
grass--hidden, perhaps, but always there. We are separated by many
things besides distance, but you know that the blossoms scattered by the
waters of the torrent shall meet at its end.
CONTENTS
PAGE
AN ARTIST'S LETTERS FROM JAPAN 1
FROM TOKIO TO NIKKO 29
THE SHRINES OF IYÉYASŬ AND IYÉMITSŬ
IN THE HOLY MOUNTAIN OF NIKKO 52
IYÉMITSŬ 85
TAO: THE WAY 99
JAPANESE ARCHITECTURE 119
BRIC-À-BRAC 128
SKETCHING 159
NIRVANA 175
SKETCHING.--THE FLUTES OF IYÉYASŬ 185
SKETCHING.--THE PAGODA IN RAIN 193
FROM NIKKO TO KAMAKURA 195
NIKKO TO YOKOHAMA 202
YOKOHAMA--KAMAKURA 216
KIOTO 230
A JAPANESE DAY.--FROM KIOTO TO GIFU 253
FROM KAMBARA TO MIYANOSHITA--A LETTER FROM
A KAGO 265
POSTSCRIPT 280
APPENDIX 281
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
THE GREAT STATUE OF BUDDHA AT KAMAKURA. FRONTISPIECE.
THE KURUMA 5
CASTLE, AND MOAT WITH LOTUS 9
AT THE WELL 11
ANCIENT 15
NŌ DANCER WITH MASK, REPRESENTING THE SAKÉ IMP 19
MODERN 23
THE LAKE IN UYÈNO PARK 28
A TORII 32
OUR RUNNER 36
IN THE GREAT AVENUE OF CRYPTOMERIA 39
NIKKO-SAN 43
THE WATERFALL IN OUR GARDEN 47
PORTRAIT-STATUE OF IYÉYASŬ IN CEREMONIAL DRESS 53
AVENUE TO TEMPLE OF IYÉYASŬ 55
SKETCH OF STATUE OF IYÉYASŬ TOKUGAWA 57
STABLE OF SACRED HORSES 61
SACRED FONT 65
YOUNG PRIEST 68
DETAILS OF BASES OF CLOISTER WALLS, INNER COURT 71
DETAIL OF CLOISTER WALLS, INNER COURT 75
LINTEL, BRACKET CAPITAL 77
INSIDE THE "CAT GATE"--GATE TO THE TOMB 79
TOMB OF IYÉYASŬ, TOKUGAWA 83
LOOKING DOWN ON THE WATER-TANK, OR
SACRED FONT, FROM THE SECOND GATE 87
A PRIEST AT IYÉMITSŬ 88
IN THE THIRD GATE OF THE TEMPLE OF IYÉMITSŬ,
LOOKING TOWARD THE FOURTH 91
A PRIEST AT IYÉMITSŬ 93
KUWANON, BY OKIO 94
ENTRANCE TO THE TOMB OF IYÉMITSŬ 96
PAINTING BY CHIN-NAN-PIN 135
SIGNATURE OF HOKUSAI 149
INSCRIPTION ON OLD LACQUER 152
INSCRIPTION FROM HO-RIU-JI 155
BED OF THE DAYAGAWA, NIKKO 161
MOUNTAINS IN FOG BEFORE OUR HOUSE 165
PORTRAIT OF A PRIEST 169
OLD PAGODA NEAR THE PRIESTS' HOUSES 171
STATUE OF OYA JIZO 177
PEASANT GIRLS AND MOUNTAIN HORSES OF NIKKO 181
OUR LANDLORD THE BUDDHIST PRIEST 187
KIOTO IN FOG--MORNING 231
PEASANT WOMAN--THRESHER 239
A PILGRIM 247
FUSI-YAMA FROM KAMBARA BEACH 257
FISHING WITH CORMORANTS 261
PEASANT CARRYING FODDER, AND BULL CARRYING LOAD 267
A RUNNER IN THE RAIN 275
AN ARTIST'S LETTERS
FROM JAPAN
YOKOHAMA, July 3, 1886.
Arrived yesterday. On the cover of the letter which I mailed from our
steamer I had but time to write: "We are coming in; it is like the
picture books. Anything that I can add will only be a filling in of
detail."
We were in the great bay when I came up on deck in the early morning.
The sea was smooth like the brilliant blank paper of the prints; a vast
surface of water reflecting the light of the sky as if it were thicker
air. Far-off streaks of blue light, like finest washes of the brush,
determined distances. Beyond, in a white haze, the square white sails
spotted the white horizon and floated above it.
The slackened beat of the engine made a great noise in the quiet
waters. Distant high hills of foggy green marked the new land; nearer
us, junks of the shapes you know, in violet transparency of shadow, and
five or six war-ships and steamers, red and black, or white, looking
barbarous and out of place, but still as if they were part of us; and
spread all around us a fleet of small boats, manned by rowers standing
in robes flapping about them, or tucked in above their waists. There
were so many that the crowd looked blue and white--the color of their
dresses repeating the sky in prose. Still, the larger part were mostly
naked, and their legs and arms and backs made a great novelty to our
eyes, accustomed to nothing but our ship, and the enormous space, empty
of life, which had surrounded us for days. The muscles of the boatmen
stood out sharply on their small frames. They had almost all--at least
those who were young--fine wrists and delicate hands, and a handsome
setting of the neck. The foot looked broad, with toes very square. They
were excitedly waiting to help in the coaling and unloading, and soon we
saw them begin to work, carrying great loads with much good-humored
chattering. Around us played the smallest boats with rowers standing up
and sculling. Then the market-boat came rushing to us, its standing
rowers bending and rising, their thighs rounding and insteps sharpening,
what small garments they had fluttering like scarfs, so that our fair
missionaries turned their backs to the sight.
[Illustration]
Two boys struggling at the great sculls in one of the small boats were
called by us out of the crowd, and carried us off to look at the
outgoing steamer, which takes our mail, and which added its own
confusion and its attendant crowd of boats to all the animation on the
water. Delicious and curious moment, this first sense of being free from
the big prison of the ship; of the pleasure of directing one's own
course; of not understanding a word of what one hears, and yet of
getting at a meaning through every sense; of being close to the top of
the waves on which we dance, instead of looking down upon them from the
tall ship's sides; of seeing the small limbs of the boys burning yellow
in the sun, and noticing how they recall the dolls of their own country
in the expression of their eyes; how every little detail of the boat is
different, and yet so curiously the same; and return to the first
sensation of feeling while lying flat on the bottom of the boat, at the
level of our faces the tossing sky-blue water dotted with innumerable
orange copies of the sun. Then subtle influences of odor, the sense of
something very foreign, of the presence of another race, came up with
the smell of the boat.
[Illustration]
We climbed up the side of the big steamer and found the Doctor
there, who told us that he had been expecting us for a whole month; so
that he soon took possession of us, and we found ourselves in the hotel
launch, and at the wharf, and passing the custom house and its officers,
who let everything go through quickly except my suspicious water-color
blocks. Outside of the gate, in the street, we found the long-expected
_jinrikisha_, an arrangement that you know probably as well as I do--a
two-wheeled perambulator or gig, very small, with a hood that is usually
lowered, and with a man in the shafts. Our fellows were in blue-black
clothes, a big inscription on their backs; and they wore apron-like
vests, close-fitting trousers, and broad straw hats poised on their
heads. But you know all about these; and I have only to add that we were
trundled off to our hotel, along the pretty quay which edges that part
of the town, past European houses, unlike ours, and having a certain
character which will probably appear very commonplace later, because it
is not beautiful, but which is novel yet to us. Our hotel is also on the
quay, just at a corner where a canal breaks in, and where we can see big
walls and trees on the other side. Our rooms open on the water--that
same blue water spangled with sunshine and fading into sky. There
men-of-war and steamers far out; picturesque junks sailing past rapidly,
flattened out into mere edges of shadow and light against the sea and
the sky, their great hollow sterns with the rudder far inboard, and
sails which are open at the seams. Not far from us was a little
sharp-pointed boat with a man fishing, his big round hat as important as
any part of the boat. It was already late in the day. European children
were out with their Japanese nurses; from time to time a phaeton or a
curricle passed with European occupants, and even in this tremendous
heat ladies rode out on horseback. But the human beings are not the
novelty, not even the Japanese; what is absorbingly new is the light,
its whiteness, its silvery milkiness. We have come into it as through an
open door after fourteen gray days of the Pacific which ended only at
sunrise this very morning. And we looked again at all the light outside,
from the dining-room, where we lunched, where the waiters slipped about
in black clothes like those of the runners, and where we were joined at
table by a foreign gentleman with high cheek-bones, yellow face, and
slanting eyes, and dressed in the latest European fashion with high
collar, four-in-hand scarf, and pointed shoes. He was very courteous,
and managed what little English he used as skilfully as he dresses. And
he gave me a touch of the far East in the story of his being here; for
he is under a cloud, an amiable exile whose return to his native land
might involve his being boiled in oil, or other ingenious form of death.
For well as he figured at luncheon with us, I hear that he has been
obliged to leave because of his having poisoned too many of his guests
one day at table,--former enemies of his,--and because of his having
despatched with the sword those whose digestion had resisted his efforts
at conciliation. However this may be, his extradition is demanded; to
which he objects, invoking Western ideas of civilization, and protesting
that his excesses have been merely political. Then, late in the
afternoon, we sauntered out into the Japanese quarter--walking, so that
we might mingle with the gray, black, and blue crowd, and respectfully
followed by our jinrikisha men, who slowly dragged our carriages behind
them, like grooms following their masters. We stopped at little curio
shops and bargained over miserable odds and ends, calling up, I feel
sure, the unexpressed contempt of the Doctor, the great collector of
precious lacquers; but it is so amusing to see things as they are, and
not as they should be. We went into a show which had an enormous draped
sign outside, and where, in uncertain darkness, an old, miserable,
distorted dwarf played the part of a spider in a web, to the
accompaniment of fiendish music and the declamation of the showman. Then
we lingered outside of a booth in which a wrestling match was going on,
but did not enter, and we saw the big wrestlers go in or come out, their
shoulders far above the heads of a smaller race of men, and we turned at
every moment to look at the children, many of whom are so pretty, and
who seem to have an easy time of it. Men carry them in their arms as
women do with us, and many a little elder sister walks about with the
infant of the family slung behind her maternal shoulders. And then there
are curious combinations of Western and Eastern dress--rarely
successful. Our hats and shoes and umbrellas--all made here, are used,
and our ugly shirts stiffen out the folds of the soft Japanese robes;
but the multitude wear their usual dress and make no abuse of hats.
[Illustration: THE KURUMA.]
Wearied by the novelty, every detail of which, however, was known to us
before, we walked back in the white, milky sunset, which was like a
brilliant twilight.
JULY 5.
We made our first visit to town yesterday; that is to say, we went to
Tokio, which is about twenty miles off. Of course we took our
_jinrikishas_ at the door of the hotel, and passing through the wide
Yokohama streets, saw the semi-European houses, some with high garden
walls in which are small doors: there are sidewalks, too, and European
shops, and Colonial buildings, post-office, and telegraph office; and
the Japanese _kura_, or storehouses--heavy tile-roofed buildings with
black and white earthen surfaces, the black polished to a glaze, as was
done with Greek and Etruscan vases. They have deep windows or doors,
recessed like our safes, with a great air of solidity, which contrasts
with that temporary wooden structure, the usual Japanese house. I came
near saying that the little railway station is like ours; but it is
better than most of ours, with neat arrangements. We entered the little
cars; I noticed, in the third class, Japanese curled up on the seats.
The grade is as level as a table, the landscape is lovely, and we saw
the shapes we know so well in the prints--the curious shapes of the
Japanese pines; little temples on the hillside; and rice-fields with
their network of causeways, occasionally a horse or a peasant threading
them. The land is cultivated like a garden, the lotus leaves fill the
ditches, and one or two pink flowers are just out. From time to time we
saw stretches of blue sea. And once, for an instant, as I looked up into
the hazy, clouded sky, far beyond the hills, that were lost in the mist
into which the rice-field stretched, I saw a pale, clear blue opening in
which was an outline more distinct, something very pure, the edge of a
mountain, looking as if it belonged to another world than the dewy moist
one in which we are--the cone of Fusi-yama.
[Illustration: CASTLE, AND MOAT WITH LOTUS.]
* * * * *
On passing through the station, very much like the other with its
various arrangements for comfort and order,--first-, second-, and
third-class rooms and so forth,--we met a crowd of _jinrikishas_ with
their runners, or, as my friends tell me to call them, _kuruma_ and
_kurumaya_, every man clamoring for patronage in the usual way of the
hackman.
We selected as a leader Chojiro, who speaks English--a little; is a
traveled man, having gone as far as Constantinople; wears the
old-fashioned queue, flattened forward over the top of his shaven head;
and whose naked feet were to run through the day over newly-macadamized
roads, for which a horse would need to be well shod. A little way from
us, on the square, stood the car of the tramway, which runs as far as
Asakusa, to the great popular temples of protecting divinities, Kuwanon
and Jizo,--and Benten, from whose shrine flowed one day copper coins as
if from a fountain,--where Buddhist sermons are preached daily; which
are full of innumerable images, pictures, and ex-votos; and where
prayer-wheels, duly turned, helped the worshiper to be free from
annoying sins, or to obtain his desires.
How shall I describe our ride through the enormous city? We were going
far across it to call on Professor F----, the great authority on
Japanese art, and to be delighted and instructed by him through some
fragments of his collection.
[Illustration: AT THE WELL.]
In the first street where the tramway runs there are semi-European
façades to houses, and in their pilasters the Ionic capital has at
length made the circle of the world. Then we took more Oriental and
narrower streets, through the quarter of the _gei-sha_, the dancers and
singers who go out perpetually to put a finishing touch on
entertainments. At such early hours they are of course unseen. Where
houses seemed more closed than usual servants were attending to
household duties, and we heard the occasional strum of a guitar. Then
great streets again, with innumerable low houses, the usual shops, like
open sheds, with swinging signs carved, painted, and gilded, or with
draperies of black cloth marked with white characters. Merchants sat on
their mats among the crowded goods, girls at corners drew water from the
wells; in a narrower street the black streak of a file of bulls
peacefully dragging merchandise; where the crowd was thickest a
black-lacquered palanquin, all closed, in which was shut some obstinate
adherent to ancient fashions. Then bridges and canals, and great empty
spaces, long white walls with black copings, and buildings that
continued the walls, with gratings like those of barracks. These were
the _yashikis_--inclosed residences of princes who were formerly obliged
to spend part of the year at the seat of government with small armies of
retainers. Then the walls of the castle, great sloping ramparts of
irregular blocks of masonry, about which stand strangely twisted
pine-trees, while the great moats of clouded water are almost filled
with the big leaves of the lotus. Now and then great gates of gray wood
and enormous doors. On some of the wide avenues we met cavalry officers
in European costume, correct in style, most of the younger with
straggling mustaches, long and thin, whence their nickname of
"horn-pouts," naturally connected with that of the "cats," devourers of
fish, as the _gei-sha_ are called. Near official buildings we saw a
great deal of black frock-coats, and trousers, and spectacles.
Everything was seen at a full run, our runners dragging us at horse's
pace. Still it was long before we reached our destination. Streets
succeeded streets, empty or full, in desolate Oriental wearisomeness. At
length we stopped at a little gate in a plank fence, and entered a vast
high space, formerly a prince's park, at one end of which we saw trees
and hills, and we came to the Professor's house, a little European
structure. My mind is yet too confused with many impressions to tell you
of what we saw that afternoon and evening, and what was said; all the
more that the few beautiful paintings we looked at out of the great
collection lifted me away from to-day into an indefinite great past. I
dislike to use analogies, but before these ancient religious paintings
of Buddhist divinities, symbolical of the elements or of protective
powers, whose worn surfaces contained marvels of passionate delicacy and
care framed in noble lines, I could not help the recall of what I had
once felt at the first sight of old Italian art.
* * * * *
We passed from this sense of exalted peace to plunge again into the
crowded streets at night. It was late; we had many miles to go to catch
the last train; two additional runners had been engaged for each
_kuruma_--one to push, one to be harnessed in front.
Then began a furious ride. Mine was the last carriage. We were whirled
along with warning cries of "Hai-hai!" now into the dark, then into some
opening lighted by starlight, in which I could see the flitting shapes
of the other runners and of my companions. I remember the creaking of
their carriages, the jerking of them with each pull of the men; then our
crossing suddenly other parties lighted by lanterns like ourselves, the
lights flaring upon yellow faces and dark dresses and black hair; then
our turning some narrow corner and plunging at full speed into lighted
streets crowded with people, through whom we seemed to cut our way. Much
shouting of our men, and dodging of wayfarers with lanterns and of
bystanders who merely turn enough to let us glide by. Then one of my
runners at full gallop struck a post and was left behind; another was
gathered in somehow without a stop, and we tore through the city, still
more crowded as we came nearer to our end--the railway station. We were
in time, and we slept in the now familiar train. We reached the deserted
station and were jogged peacefully to our hotel; our men, in Japanese
fashion, sleepily turning out of the way of the ownerless dogs that lay
in the middle of the streets. And when I awoke in the morning I found
that the day's impressions had faded in sleep to what I tell you.
[Illustration: ANCIENT.]
JULY 6.
I have been asking myself whether it would be possible to have
sensations as novel, to feel as perfectly fresh, things I knew almost
all about beforehand, had we come in any other way, or arrived from any
other quarter. As it is, all this Japan is sudden. We have last been
living at home, are shut up in a ship, as if boxed in with our own
civilization, and then suddenly, with no transition, we are landed in
another. And under what splendor of light, in what contrasting
atmosphere! It is as if the sky, in its variations, were the great
subject of the drama we are looking at, or at least its great chorus.
The beauty of the light and of the air is what I should like to
describe, but it is almost like trying to account for one's own
mood--like describing the key in which one plays. And yet I have not
begun to paint, and I dread the moment of beginning to work again.
Rather have I felt like yielding entirely to the spirit in which I came,
the intention of a rest, of a bath for the brain in some water
absolutely alien. A---- and I had undertaken that we should bring no
books, read no books, but come as innocently as we could; the only
compromise my keeping a scientific Japanese grammar, which, being
ancient and unpractical, might be allowed, for it would leave me as
unready as on the day I left.
* * * * *
The Doctor took us on Sunday afternoon to his club--whose name I think
means the perfume of the maple--to see and to listen to some Japanese
plays which are given in the club theater built for the purpose.
We went there in the afternoon, passing by the Shiba temples,
and our _kurumas_ were drawn up at one end of the buildings. There
everything was Japanese, though I hear stories of the other club and
its ultra-European ways--brandies-and-sodas, single eyeglasses, etc.
However that may be, on this side we were in Japan without mistake.
We sat on the steps and had our shoes taken off, according to the
Japanese fashion, so as not to injure mats, and we could hear during
the operation long wailings, high notes, and the piercing sound of
flutes and stringed instruments; the curiously sad rhythm mingled with
a background of high, distinct declamation. We walked in with careful
attention to make no noise, forgetting that in our stocking-feet we
could have made none had we wished, and we found the Doctor's place
reserved for him and us, and marked with his name, written large. Other
low boxes, with sides no higher than our elbows as we sat on the mats,
divided the sloping floor down to the stage. The stage was a pretty
little building projecting into the great hall from its long side. It
had its own roof, and connected with a long gallery or bridge, along
which the actors moved, as they came on or disappeared, in a manner new
to us, but which gave a certain natural sequence and made a beginning
and an end,--a dramatic introduction and conclusion,--and added greatly
to the picture when the magnificent dresses of stiff brocade dragged
slowly along to the cadence of the music. The boxes were mostly
occupied, and by a distinguished-looking audience; the _Nō_, as this
operatic acting is called, being a refined, classical drama, and looked
upon differently from the more or less disreputable theater. Hence
the large proportion of ladies, to whom the theater is forbidden.
Hence, also, owing to its antiquity and the character of its style, a
difficulty of comprehension for the general public that explained the
repeated rustle of the books of the opera which most of the women
held, whose leaves turned over at the same moment, just as ours used to
do at home when we were favored by French tragedy.
[Illustration: NŌ DANCER WITH MASK, REPRESENTING THE SAKÉ IMP.]
A quiet, sleepy appreciation hovered over the scene; even the devotees
near us, many of them older people and belonging to the old régime,
showing their approval or disapproval with restrained criticism. I could
see without turning my head the expression of the face of my neighbor, a
former _daimio_, a man of position; his face a Japanese translation of
the universal well-known aristocratic type--immovable, fatigued, with
the drooping under lip. Behind him sat former retainers, I
suppose--deferential, insinuating remarks and judgments, to which he
assented with inimitable brevity. Still, I thought that I could
distinguish, when he showed that the youthful amateurs--for most of the
actors were non-professional--did not come up to a proper standard, that
his memory went back to a long experience of good acting. And so
catching are the impressions of a crowd that I myself after a time
believed that I recognized, more or less distinctly, the tyro and the
master, even though I only vaguely understood what it was all about. For
I need not tell you that the libretto would have been still more
difficult for me than the pantomime before me; and very often it was but
pantomime, the actor making gestures to the accompaniment of music, or
of the declaration of the choragus, who told the poetic story.
Occasionally these movements amounted to a dance, that is to say, to
rhythmic movements--hence called the _Nō_ dance--to which emphasis was
given by rising and falling on either foot, and bringing down the sole
with a sudden blow.
There were many short plays, mostly based on legendary subjects,
distinguished by gorgeous dresses, and occasionally some comic scenes of
domestic life. The monotony of impression was too novel to me to become
wearisome, and I sat for several hours through this succession of
separate stories, patient, except for the new difficulty of sitting
cross-legged on the mats. Moreover, we had tobacco to cheer us. On our
arrival the noiseless servants had brought to us the inevitable little
tray containing the fire-box with hot charcoal and the little cylinder
for ashes, and tea and little sugary balls; and then, besides,
notwithstanding the high-toned repose of the audience, there was enough
to watch. There were the envoys from Loo Choo, seated far off in the dim
light of the room, dressed in ancient costumes, their hair skewered up
on the top of the head with a double pin--grave and dignified
personages; and a European prince, a Napoleonic pretender, seated
alongside, with his suite, and ourselves, the only foreigners. The types
of the older people were full of interest, as one felt them formed under
other ideas than those of to-day. And though there were no beauties,
there were much refinement and sweetness in the faces of the women, set
off by the simplicity of their dresses, of blacks, and browns, and
grays, and dull violets, in exquisite fabrics, for we were in an
atmosphere of good breeding. And I watched one of the young ladies in
front of me, the elder of two sisters, as she attended to every little
want of her father, and even to his inconveniences. And now it was time
to leave, though the performance was still going on, for we wished to
return in the early evening. Our shoes were put on again at the steps,
our umbrellas handed to us--for sun and rain we must always have
one--and we passed the Shiba temples and took the train back for
Yokohama.
[Illustration: MODERN.]
JULY 12.
We are doing nothing in particular, hesitating very much as to what our
course shall be. One thing is certain--the breaking out of the cholera
will affect all our plans. Even the consequent closing of the theaters
shows us how many things will be cut off from us. We spend much time in
such idleness as bric-à-brac, letting ourselves go, and taking things as
they come.
The Doctor's kindness is with us all the time. One feels the citizen of
the world that he is when he touches little details of manners here, now
as familiar to him as those of Europe.
I enjoy, myself, this drifting, though A---- is not so well pleased, and
I try to feel as if the heat and the novelty of impressions justified me
in idleness. Once only I was tempted to duty, however, when we went to
the temples of Shiba and Uyèno, where are the tombs of the shoguns,
rulers of Japan of the Tokugawa line. They are all there but the two
greatest, Iyéyasŭ and Iyémitsŭ, who lie at Nikko, the sacred place, a
hundred miles away. Here in Tokio are the tombs of the others, and the
temples about them splendid with lacquer and carving and gold and
bronze, and set among trees and gardens on these hills of the Shiba and
Uyèno.
My dreams of making an analysis and memoranda of these architectural
treasures of Japan were started, as many resolutions of work are, by the
talk of my companion, his analysis of the theme of their architecture,
and my feeling a sort of desire to rival him on a ground for fair
competition. But I do not think that I could grasp a subject in such a
clear and dispassionate and masterly way, with such natural reference to
the past and its implied comparisons, for A----'s historic sense amounts
to poetry, and his deductions and remarks always set my mind sailing
into new channels.
But I must put this off--certainly for to-day--while we discuss
whether we shall make our visit to ancient Kamakura and the great bronze
statue and the island of Énoshima, or whether to put it off until our
return from Nikko, and our seeing the other shrines of the shoguns
there. The Doctor, who has just left Nikko, tells us of its beauty in
the early summer, a few weeks ago, and I feel all the hotter as he talks
of the cold mountain streams which run by his house and of banks of
azaleas covering the high rocks. And then the Japanese proverb says,
"Who has not seen Nikko cannot say beautiful."
[Illustration: THE LAKE IN UYÈNO PARK.]
FROM TOKIO TO NIKKO
July 20, 1886.
The cholera was upon us, and we decided to go to Nikko and spend a
month there, near the F----s'. The Docs coolness and its other charms,
was to pilot us and instruct us by the way, and much of the
miscellaneous information that I shall give you has come more or less
from him. Late in the morning we rode to Tokio, and lunched in Uyèno
Park, looking down on the great pond and the little temple which stands
in it, and which you know, having seen them on the fans and colored
prints. They were veiled in the haze of the sunlight, as if in a spring
or winter mist, and through this fog of light shone the multitudinous
little sparkles of the ribs and swellings of the lotus-pads lapping one
over another, and reaching to far streaks of clearer water. A denser
lightness here and there marked the places of the flowers, and a faint
odor came up in lazy whiffs. The roof of the temple seemed to be
supported by the moisture below. Above there was no cloud. All things
lay alike in the blaze, enveloped in a white glimmer of heat and wet,
and between the branches of the trees around us the sky was veiled in
blue. The locusts hissed with a crackling sound like that of heated
wood. The ugly bronze Buddha at the corner of the tea-house shone as if
melting in the sun. Then came the moment of leaving for the station,
where, owing to delays of trains, we waited still longer in the heat. In
the cleanly waiting-room we looked at the illustrations in the Japanese
newspapers, and at the last report of the weather bureau, printed in
English and fastened to the wall; or we read a little in that morning's
edition of the excellent Yokohama English paper; all these comforts of
civilization being supplied by the Road. At length the noise of hundreds
of wooden clogs, worn by men, women, and children, clattered upon the
stones outside and announced an end to waiting. The tightly-closed train
had been baking in the sun all day, and we leaned out of the doors on
the sides and gasped for breath.
Our train skirted the great hill of Uyèno, and its dark shadow, which
did not quite reach us. Monuments and gravestones, gray or mossy,
blurred here and there the green wall of trees. The Doctor told us of
the cooler spring-time, when the cherry-trees of Uyèno cover the ground
with a snow of blossoms, and the whole world turns out to enjoy them, as
we do the first snows of winter.
But this is a lame comparison. The Japanese sensitiveness to the
beauties of the outside world is something much more delicate and
complex and contemplative, and at the same time more natural, than ours
has ever been. Outside of Arcadia, I know of no other land whose people
hang verses on the trees in honor of their beauty; where families travel
far before the dawn to see the first light touch the new buds. Where
else do the newspapers announce the spring openings of the blossoms?
Where else would be possible the charming absurdity of the story that
W---- was telling me of having seen in cherry-blossom time some old
gentleman, with capacious sakè gourd in hand and big roll of paper in
his girdle, seat himself below the blossom-showers, and look, and drink,
and write verses, all by himself, with no gallery to help him? If there
is convention in a tradition half obligatory; and if we, Western lovers
of the tree, do not quite like the Japanese refinement of growing the
cherry merely for its flowers, yet how deliciously upside-down from us,
and how charming is the love of nature at the foundation of the custom!
From the rustling of leaves and reëchoing of trees we passed into the
open country, and into free air and heat. In the blur of hot air,
trembling beneath the sun, lay plantations and rice-fields; the latter,
vast sheets of water dotted with innumerable spikes of green. Little
paths raised above them made a network of irregular geometry.
Occasionally a crane spread a shining wing and sank again. In the
outside ditches stood up the pink heads of the lotus above the crowded
pads. At long intervals small groups of peasants, men and women, dressed
in blue and white, knee-deep in the water, bent their backs at the task
of weeding. The skirts of their dresses were caught up in their girdles,
and their arms were freed from their looped-back sleeves.
The Doctor spoke to us of the supposed unhealthiness of rice-planting,
which makes life in the rice-fields short, in a country where life is
not long.
We are told that the manuring of the rice-fields taints all the waters
for great distances, and we are warned not to drink, without inquiring,
even from the clearest streams. Not even high up in the mountains shall
we be safe; for there may be flat spaces and table-lands of culture
which drain into the picturesque wildness below. We learn that with all
these hardships the rice-growers themselves cannot always afford this
staple food of the country, for cheaper than rice are millet, and
buckwheat, and the plants and fungi that grow without culture.
Contrasting with the tillage we were passing, islands of close foliage
stood up in the dry plain, or were reflected, with the clouds above, in
the mirror of the wet rice-fields. Occasionally a shrine was visible
within, and the obligatory Torii stood at the edge of the grove, or
within its first limits.
[Illustration: A TORII.]
Looking through a Torii one is sure to be in the direction of something
sacred, whether it be temple or shrine or holy mountain. Neither
closeness nor distance interferes with this ideal intention, and the
sacred Fusi-yama is often seen a hundred miles away in the sky, framed
by these lines, built for the purpose. This assemblage of four lines of
stone or wood or bronze is to me one of the creations of art, like the
obelisk or the pyramid. Most impressive, most original of symbolic
entrances, whether derived from sacred India or from the ancestral
innocence of Polynesia, there is something of the beginning of man,
something invented while he lived with the birds, in this elementary
porch, whose upper line, repeating the slope of hill and wave, first
embodied the curve that curls all upper edges in the buildings of the
farther East.
And if indeed, the Torii[1] be nothing but the first bird-perch, then I
can imagine the father of all peacocks spreading his gigantic fan across
its bars; or I may prefer to suppose it the rest for the disk of the
sun-god, whose lower curve is repeated by the Torii's upper beam.
* * * * *
Sometimes there were traces of inclosure about these woods; sometimes
they had no edgings but their own beautifully-modeled contours. Long
ages, respectful care, sometimes fortunate neglect, have made of these
reserved spaces types of an ideal wildness, for these are sacred
groves, and they are protected by the divine contained within them.
This preservation of a recall of primeval nature, this exemption of the
soil from labor, within anxious and careful tillage, is a note of Japan
constantly recurring, and a source of perpetual charm.
Notwithstanding the men and women working in the fields, there was a
certain desolateness in the landscape, and A---- made out its reason
more easily than I, and recalled that for miles and miles we had
traveled without seeing any of the four-footed beasts which the Western
mind always associates with pastoral life and labor.
As the evening came on we crossed a large river and looked down from the
height of the new bridges upon the discarded ferry-boats, and upon the
shape of a more fantastic one that was never meant to sail--a pine-tree,
shaped and trimmed, which spread its green mast and sails in a garden by
the water. Far away were lines of mountains and the peaks of extinct
volcanoes.
At every station now the country people gathered to stare at the novelty
of the train; we saw the lighting up of the farm-houses as we passed; in
the dooryards, behind high hedges reminding me of Normandy, bonfires
were being made to keep off mosquitoes: then temples and shrines with
lights before them, and at eight o'clock on a festal night we came into
Utsunomiya.
The streets were full of people carrying lanterns; children ran about
together, with little toy shrines, and the whole town was drowned in
noise. We got into a _basha_, a sort of omnibus, attached to two wild
horses, and were hurled through the crowded streets, much as if carrying
the mails, with apparent disregard of the lives and limbs of the
inhabitants.
The hotel, where we were expected and where the Doctor had represented
us as distinguished visitors, opened its whole front, in a Japanese way,
to receive us, for there was no outside wall to the lower floor. We were
driven quite into the house, and beheld an entire household drawn up in
line on the platform, which occupied a full half of this lower space.
The Doctor did all that was right, while we remained in amused
embarrassment before our prostrated host and the kneeling attendants. As
we sat helpless on the steps of the platform our shoes were taken off,
and in stockinged feet we were ushered through the crowd and the lower
part of the house, through the preparations for passing travelers, the
smell and heat of washing and cookery, and an inexpressibly outrageous
odor, even for this land of frightful smells, evidently of the same
nature as that of the rice-fields.
Notwithstanding this horror, we found, on clambering up the steep little
staircase of dark, slippery wood, better fitted to stockings than to
boots, a most charming, cleanly apartment ready for us: ready, I say,
but its three big rooms, which took all one side of the court, contained
nothing but a drawing hanging in each room and a vase filled with
flowers; in justice, I ought to add a European table of the simplest
make, and three European chairs. Under them was spread a piece of that
red cloth which seems to have a fascination for the Japanese--perhaps as
being European.
Everything was of the cleanest--wall, floor, stairs, tables; everything
was dusted, wiped, rubbed, polished.
It was too hot and we were too tired to go out and see the town, noisy
with the excitement of a festival. The Doctor directed the preparation
of a meal on a Japanese basis of rice, mingled and enlivened with the
contents of various cans; and meanwhile I went down another little
staircase of cleanly white wood, at the farther end of our apartment, to
our little private bath-room below.
This was about six feet square, and its furniture consisted of a deep
lacquer tray to lay clothes in. The bathtub was sunk in the floor, but
so that its edge rose high above the level of the room. I had declined
the "honorable hot water," which is the Japanese necessity, and obtained
cold, against protest. I had yet to learn the luxury and real advantage
of the Japanese hot bath. I closed my door, but my window was open, and
through its wooden bars I could see our opposite neighbors across the
garden of the courtyard--a whole family, father, mother, children, and
young daughter--file down to the big bath-room at the corner, whose
windows were open to mine. I heard them romp and splash, and saw heads
and naked arms shining through the steam. Meditating upon the
differences which make propriety in various places, I joined my friends
at dinner and listened to what the Doctor had to say upon the Japanese
indifference to nudity; how Japanese morals are not affected by the
simplicity of their costumes, and that, of course, to the artist it
seems a great pity that the new ideas should be changing these habits in
a race so naturally law-abiding; for even the government is interfering,
and enforcing dress within city limits. Then came the question whether
this be a reminiscence of Polynesian ancestry and simplicity, or born of
climate and cleanliness. And, indeed, all Japan spends most of its time
washing, so that the very runners bathe more times a day than our fine
ladies. Meanwhile the servant-girls were spreading for us the blue-green
mosquito nettings, put together with bands of orange silk. They were
slung by cords from the corners of the beams, which serve for a cornice,
and they made a good-sized square tent in the middle of the room.
Inside, our beds were made up on the floor, of well-wadded coverlets
folded one upon another. One of these I took for a pillow. I have not
yet dared to try the block of wood, hollowed out for the nape of the
neck, which serves for a pillow in Japan, notwithstanding that it has a
pad to relieve its severity--a pad of paper fastened on, and which you
remove sheet by sheet as you want a clean pillow-slip. I can understand,
however, how precious it must be in a country where the women keep, day
and night, undisturbed, those coiffures of marvelous black hair,
glistening with camellia oil, the name of which I like better than its
perfume. From inside my netting I could see, as I was lying,--for the
screens, which made our windows, remained wide open,--through the
topmost branches of the trees of the garden, the Japanese family
opposite, now ending their evening meal.
[Illustration: OUR RUNNER.]
Laughter and chatter, clattering of cups, rap of pipes against boxes, a
young man came in and bent over one of the women seated upon the floor;
the girl repeated some prayer, with clapping hands outstretched; the
lights were put out, all but the square "ando," or floor night-lantern,
and they drew their screens. I fell asleep, to be waked with a start by
the watchman, who, every hour, paced through the garden, striking a
wooden clapper, and impertinently assured us of the hour.
* * * * *
This weary noise marked the intervals of a night of illness, made worse
by nightmares of the cholera, from which we were flying. The earliest
dawn was made hideous by the unbarring and rolling of the heavy
_amados_,[2] the drawing back of the inside screens (_shojis_), and the
clattering of clogs over pavement, through other parts of the house. Our
Japanese family across the way I could hear at their ablutions, and,
later, tumultuously departing for early trains; and at last I slept in
broad daylight.
* * * * *
Late in the morning we entered our friend the _basha_. In the daylight
I noticed that the horses wore something like a Dutch collar, and were
harnessed with ropes. Two men, one the driver, the other the running
groom, sat on the low front seat. Our trunks and bags and Japanese
baskets encumbered the omnibus seats, on which we stretched our
sick and wearied bodies, for the Doctor himself was ill, and smiled
mechanically when I tortured him with questions. We left town at a full
gallop, and at risk of life for every one in the streets; one of our
drivers meanwhile blowing wildly through a horn, to the inspiriting of
the horses and the frightening of the Japanese small-boy. Soon one of
our men plunged off his seat and began running by the horses in the old
Japanese way--hereditary with him, for they follow the calling from
generation to generation. Running without pause and without sweating,
he threw his body back as if restraining his pace to that of the
horses. At the limits of the town, in full run, he stripped his upper
garments and showed himself tattooed at every visible point. Above the
double strip of his breech-clout, a waterfall, a dragon, and a noble
hero made a fine network of blue and pink on the moving muscles.
Now the road became heavy, wet, and full of deep ruts, and our
miserable ponies came to a standstill--and balked. The Japanese mildness
of our driver disappeared. He took to beating their poor backs with a
heavy bamboo cane, while we remonstrated feebly, regretting that we had
not sufficient strength to beat him too. Then he explained,
deferentially, that confusion seized him at being unable to keep his
promise of delivering us to Imaichi for the appointed hour, and I felt
as if we had been put in the wrong. Imagine the difference had he
been--any one but a Japanese. We turned aside from the main way into a
little dry side-path, which led us into the hills and moors. As we got
among them we left the annoying odors of the rice-fields and smelled for
the first time the fragrance of wild roses, looking like ours, but a
little paler. This was the first thing which reminded me of home--the
roses that the Japanese do not seem to care for, do not seem to
understand. With them the rose has no records, no associations, as with
us; for, once on this farther side of the garden of Iran, the peony and
the chrysanthemum, the lotus and the iris, the peach, the cherry, and
the plum, make up the flower-poetry of the extreme East.
[Illustration: IN THE GREAT AVENUE OF CRYPTOMERIA.]
* * * * *
Then, leaving the dry and sunny uplands, we entered a famous avenue,
shaded for twenty miles by gigantic cryptomeria trees 60 to 120 feet
high. They were planted, as an act of homage, some two centuries ago, by
some mighty noble, when it was decided to place at Nikko the tomb of the
great shogun Iyéyasŭ. They rise on each side of the sunken road, from
banks and mounds, over which steps lead, from time to time, to
plantations and rice-fields beyond, and to shrines peeping out among the
trees. In side-roads above, on either hand, passed occasionally peasants
and pack-horses laden with forage, or the bright shine of a peasant
woman's red skirt. Where an occasional habitation, or two or three, are
niched in some opening, the tall columns of the great trees are
interrupted by spaces filled with crossed branches of the wilder pine;
and behind these, outside, sometimes the light-green feathery mass of a
bamboo grove. Against the bank stood low, thatched buildings; near them
the great trees were often down, or sometimes dying; an occasional
haystack, sliced off below by use, was fastened, in thick projection,
around some smaller tree. Once, at a turn of the road, near a building
with wide roof, pushed against the corner bank out of a basin fringed
with iris, sprang into the air a little jet of water. Near by, a
solitary ditcher had placed in a bamboo fence some bright red blossom,
with its stem and leaves, apparently to cheer him at his work.
The heavy road was being ditched on each side to carry off the soaking
waters, and our weary, miserable horses broke down again. A---- and I
rested by going in advance, and I experienced the new sensation of
walking among the bamboo stems, like an insect among the knotted stalks
of a gigantic grass. The still heat of the sun burned in great smoky
streaks across our way, spotted by the flight of many yellow
butterflies. There was no sound of birds in the high spaces above; the
few peasants that we met slipped past on their straw sandals, their
noiseless horses also shod with straw; occasionally a shiver of the
great spruces overhead, and far behind us the cries of our grooms to
their horses.