proper trimmings of musical entertainment and dancing, and were probably
the most amused of all the people there. The amusement consisted, in
great measure, of our not knowing just what we were going to have, for
otherwise the details were simple to monotony. We had one of the upper
floors of a fashionable inn. It was very hot, and we were glad to find
that we should be at supper in our loosest bath robes. There was nothing
unusual--though everything is novel to us--but the extreme smallness of
the many _gei-shas_, who sat between us at the end of the dinner, passed
the _sakè_, said witty things, of which we understood not one word, gave
us much music on the _samisen_ (the three-stringed guitar) and on the
flute, and sang, and gave us dances. But they were absolutely incredible
in the way of littleness. It did not seem possible that there were real
bones inside their narrow little wrists and dolls' fingers. What there
was in most of their little heads I don't know, but I could have
imagined sawdust. For the doll illusion, for the painted face and neck
and lips, all done upon the same pattern from pure conventionality (not
at all like our suggestive painting), and the sudden stopping sharply at
a line on the little slender neck, gave me the feeling of their having
artificial heads. The gentle little bodies disappeared entirely inside
of the folds of the dress and the enormous bows of the sash. And when
the tall youngsters, Americans, whom we had invited, began to romp with
the playthings, late in the evening, I felt anxious about possible
breakage, such as I remember, in nursery days, when we boys laid hold of
our sisters' dolls.
[Illustration: A PILGRIM.]
But this artificial impression disappears as with all novelty in people,
and when one of the youngest of these child-women, at some moment in the
evening, removed the mask of the jolly fat woman (that you know by the
prints), behind which she had been singing, the little sad face told its
contradictory story as touchingly as with any of her Aryan sisters. And
late in the evening, when the fun, I suppose, was uproarious, we went to
the extreme of writing and painting on fans, and one of our merchant
guests wasted India-ink in mock tattooing of his bared arm and shoulder.
September 21.
We leave to-morrow morning.
This has been Sunday, our last day in Kioto. I have been trundled all
day in a fearful rain, to see last sights, to look up shops for the last
time. My runners have taken me to this or that place, near the great
temples, where I hope finally to decide upon some little Buddha or
Amida, which have tempted me among other sculptures, and I have dallied
in the other shops that supply the small things that adhere to worship,
and finally I have made a long visit to the good lady who has sold me
pottery, and who once shocked my Western prudery by dilating upon the
merits of unmentionable designs and indescribable bric-à-brac.
At length I return in the gray noon, giving a last look at each shop
that I know; at the long facade of the "Inn of Great Wealth," at the
signs and the flags of the theater; at the little _gei-shas_ trotting
about in couples, whom I recognize (for how can I tell them from those
whom I know?); at the quaint, amusing little children, always a fresh
delight; at the little pavilion near us, where the archers shoot; at the
places where horses stand under the trees to be ridden by amateurs; at
the small tea garden's pretty gates; at the latticed windows which open
in the dusk; and then, with their coats sticking to their backs, and
wet, stained legs, my runners leave me at the gate of the hotel; final
settlement of purchases in boxes, packing, and receiving visits of
departure.
In the late afternoon we go to the temples on the edge of the hill near
us (the temples of Kiyomidzu) with two of our good friends and their
children. Our runners insist upon dragging and bumping us up many steps,
and finally escort us, almost to the temple itself, in a procession of
double file, which, like a long tail, halts when we stop, and again
waggles after us in uncertainty when we set off anew. We walk along the
ascending street and stop to bargain at the innumerable little shops,
full of little odds and ends, half playthings and half religious emblems
or images, which are sold certainly to the pleasure of the many children
who throng the place. And I, too, feel pleased at having children with
us, and at having occasionally the timid little fingers of Miss Kimi in
mine. In her other small hand she holds a fan that I painted yesterday
for her father, and I wonder occasionally whether she wishes me to
notice her possession. I surmise that the foreign gentleman gives her
sometimes a little doubtful fear, as I catch her eyes looking up
cautiously from below her "bangs." We talk, exactly of what it would be
hard to say, for there is not with us enough of any one language "to go
round," and our interpreter has been left out; but we feel distinctly
that we understand each other, and our older companions explain quite a
number of things in this partnership of a few words.
We ascend the high steps on one side of the tower and pass with the
Sunday crowd through the great hall, like a corridor, along which are
seated on altar steps golden images of gods, in a shadow dusted by the
long beams of the afternoon sun, that pour across it from one open side.
Through this veil of dancing motes we see the statues and the great
gilded lotuses and candelabra, and the forms of attendant priests, and
the crowd that passes, and that stops for a moment in prayer. The words
that they repeat come into cadence with the shuffling of their feet, and
the creaking of the planks of the flooring, and the sounds of the
dropping of offerings.
The crowd is quiet, orderly, but amused at being out. The women smile
out of their slanting eyes and walk leaning forwards, and their black
hair shines like lacquer, and the artificial flowers in the great folds
of the coiffure dance in the sunlight. They are quietly dressed, all but
the young girls, who wear bright colors and blue satin sashes. The men
slide about, also in quiet silk or cotton. A large part of them are
dressed in every shade of blue; occasionally the bare leg comes out, but
all wear holiday dress, except our runners or their fellows, who keep
their workday looks. And the children--they are all everywhere, and all
at home; they are all dressed up, with full, many-colored skirts, and
showy sashes, and every little head with some new and unexplainable spot
of tonsure.
Many of the crowd turn around the building, or its veranda, touching the
columns with their hands and following tracks, worn deep like ruts, in
the planking of enormous thickness. Oye-San points this out to me, and
indicates its religious intention. Both he and our other companion clap
their hands and pray for a moment. A wave of seriousness and abstraction
passes over their faces; then again all is as before, and we step out
upon the wide balcony, which, built upon gigantic piles, hangs over a
deep hollow filled with trees and buildings, all in the shadow now. From
below rise, with the coolness of the green trees and grass, the sounds
of dropping waters. In time we descend the path and the steps, and drink
from one of the streams which fall from gigantic gargoyles, out of a
great mass of wall.
* * * * *
But it is late: we look again upon Kioto from the temple above, all
swimming in light and haze, and walk back to our _kurumas_, a final
good-by to the children, but we shall see their parents again; and then
we return, and look from our veranda for the last time at the city
stretched out in the evening, lost almost entirely in the twilight of a
great lake of violet fog. A few shapes are just felt in the misty space,
but no more than as waves in water, or as greater densities in the
undulations of the colored vapor. So uncertain is everything that the
nearest temple building loses its place, and floats all below its roof;
but its wet tiles glitter, reflecting the rose-colored drift in the
highest pale turquoise sky.
Below us, the trees make a delicate pattern of dark, wet lace.
Then the rose-color deepens and dulls, the upper sky becomes colorless;
all floats in unreal space, and Kioto disappears from before my eyes:
forever, I suppose--as the charm of this scene, which will never come
again; as the little maiden whom I met to-day, only for an eternal
good-by.
A JAPANESE DAY.--FROM KIOTO TO GIFU
NAGOYA, September.
Notwithstanding the long parting, which kept us up very late, the same
courteous Japanese friends were at the hotel in the morning to bid us a
still more final good-by. Oye-San alone remained faithful to his
self-intrusted care of us, and determined to see us as far as the land
would allow,--that is to say, to the shores of Biwa Lake.
The caravan was smaller now, diminished by our parting with Awoki, the
interpreter, and the men necessary to trundle him about. Still we were a
goodly company,--nineteen men in all, of whom two were masters, one the
servant, and the rest the runners who were to get us and our baggage to
Otzu on Biwa Lake long before noon. There was to be no novelty on our
road, it being merely the highway from the capital to the lake. It was a
lovely morning, the sun long risen, and all the places and buildings now
a part of our memories glistening in the shadow and the dew. We turned
our backs for the last time on Kiyomidzu, and ran through the great gate
of the temple near us; then, bumping down the steep steps under it,
skirted the great wall of Dai Butzu and the interminable side of the
Sanjiu sangendo (the hall of the thirty-three spaces),[10] along which
in old times the archers used to shoot. Then we gradually got out of the
city, into the road filled with traffic going both ways. There seemed to
be no break between town and country. Here and there the mountain side,
covered with trees, descended to the road. But the effect was that of a
long street, deep among hills, and continuously spotted with buildings.
Long trains of beautiful black bulls, drawing lumber or merchandise, or
carrying straw-covered bales, streamed peacefully along. We passed
peasant women,--hardy, tall, sometimes handsome, with scarlet undergowns
held up; occasionally one riding on a pack-horse, or in her place a
child perched on the hump of the wooden saddle. Or, again, peasants
bearing loads on their backs, or carriers with weighty merchandise swung
between them on poles; priests, young and old, stepping gravely in their
white, or yellow, or black dresses--some with umbrellas open, others,
whose quicker step meant that they had not far to go (perhaps only to
some wayside temple), protecting their shaven heads with outspread fan.
Or a kuruma, usually with one runner, taking into town, economically,
two women together, one old, one young, and followed by another kuruma
carrying some old gentleman, very thin or very fat, the head of a
family. Kurumas carrying Japanese tourists or travelers, with hideous
billycock hats, or Anglo-Indian helmets, or wide straw hats _à la mode
de_ Third Avenue, these abominable head-pieces contrasting with their
graceful gowns, as did their luggage, wrapped up in silk handkerchiefs
with their European traveling rugs. Or, again, other kurumas carrying
unprotected females in pairs, with the usual indifferent or forlorn
look; or couples of young girls more gaily dressed, with flowery
hairpins, the one evidently a chaperon to the other; then a Government
official, _all_ European, with hurrying runners; sometimes, but rarely,
the Japanese litter, or _kago_, or several if for a party, their
occupants lying at their ease as to their backs, but twisted into knots
as to their feet, and swaying with the movement of the trotting
carriers. Bent to one side by the heavy ridgepole, which passes too low
to allow the head to lie in the axis of the body, sweet-eyed women's
faces, tea-rose or peach-colored, looked up from the bamboo basket of
the litter. With proper indifference their lords and masters looked at
us obliquely. On the roofs was spread a miscellaneous quantity of
luggage.
From time to time troopers or officers, of course in European costume,
mounted on Japanese chargers, cantered past. Two hours of this; then the
sides of the road, which had risen and fallen with hill and valley,
melted away, and the harbor of Otzu and Lake Biwa and blue mountains
over the water, and others sketched in the air, were spread before us in
the blaze of sunlight seen through the cool shadow of the mountains.
We rode down the hill to a little jetty, marvelously like a North River
dock, with big sheds where passengers were waiting, and a little steamer
fastened to the wharf. We bade good-by for the last time to Oye-San, who
said many things that we appreciated but did not understand the words
of, and who pointed to the square Japanese sails glittering in the
far-off light, saying, "Fune, Fune!" ("The boats, the boats!") We
dismissed kurumas and kurumaya and sailed off with Hakodate (the
courier) alone. We stretched ourselves on the upper deck, half in sun,
half in shadow, and blinked lazily at the distant blue mountains and the
great sea-like lake.
Two hours later we had landed at a long jetty, in a heavy sea, with
tossing dark blue water, different from the quiet azure of our sail. The
brisk wind, blowing the white clouds over the blue sky, was clear and
cold. We got out of its reach, as I felt neuralgic, and tried to sleep
in a little tea-house, waking to the screams of the tea-house girl,
"Mairimasho!" and I had but time to get into the train. Whether it
started from there or had arrived there, I never knew. I had been glad
to forget everything in dreamland.
I remember little of my railroad ride, what with neuralgia and heat, and
the effects of the dance of the little steamer on Lake Biwa. There were
mountains and ravines, and vast engineering protections for our path,
and everywhere the evidence of a struggle with the many running waters
we crossed or skirted. The blue and silver of the lake that we had
crossed, and the sweetness of its air, were shut out in the dust and the
heat of mountain sides. We had not seen the Eight Beauties of Biwa
Lake.[11] The "Autumn Moon from Ishiyama" had set long before we passed,
and the idea of other temples to be seen brought out A----'s antagonism
to more climbing, only to be rewarded by promenades through lanterns and
shrines and confused struggling with dates and divinities. "The Evening
Snow on Hira-yama" was not to fall until we should be across the
Pacific; nor could we ask of that blue September morning "The Blaze of
Evening at Seta" nor "The Evening Bell of Mii-dera"--though we heard the
bell early, and wondered whether it were still uninjured, from the time
when big Benkei carried it off and exchanged it for too much soup,
exactly seven hundred years ago; nor "Rain by Night at Karasaki," the
place of the famous pine-tree, which was growing, they say, twenty-four
hundred years ago, when Jimmu was emperor. There I might have met,
perhaps, the "Old Man and the Old Woman" you have seen over and over
again in the pictures and on the fans. (They are the spirits of the
other old pine-trees of Takasago and Sumiyoshi, and they are fond of
visiting each other.) Nor did we see "The Wild Geese alighting at
Katada," but I felt as if I had seen "The Boats sailing back from
Yabase" and "The Bright Sky with a Breeze at Awadzu." If I had not, I
still had seen boats sailing over and under as lovely a blue as can be
spread by early September days. I suppose that our friend Oye-San was
trying to recall these last classical quotations to me when he bade me
good-by at the landing in Otzu. An ocean rolls between his Parnassus and
ours, but he lives much nearer to the mood that once made beautiful the
names of Tempe and Helicon and the winding Meander.
[Illustration: FUSI-YAMA FROM KAMBARA BEACH.]
With all this dreaming I fell asleep, and woke free from pain, but
stupid and unimpressionable, as our train stopped at the little station
from which we were to ride to Gifu. This was a little, new way-station
(of course I don't remember its name), so like, and so unlike, one of
ours, with the same look of the railroad being laid down--"imposed"--on
an earth which did not understand what it all meant--grass struggling to
get back to the sides of filled-up ditches; timbers lying about; new,
astonished buildings, in one of which we washed, and waited, and dined.
Meanwhile Hakodate went after the runners who were to drag us on our
afternoon ride, and then, if "we suited," to run with us the whole week,
thirty-five miles a day, along the Tokaido, back toward Yokohama.
When all was ready it was late afternoon, and our procession ran along
what seemed to be a vast plain of tableland, with high mountains for an
edge. All seemed as clear and neat as the air we rode in. Somewhere
there we must have passed the hill of "The Turning Back of the Chariot":
this means that, long ago,--that is to say, about 1470,--the regent
Yoshimoto, while traveling here, found that the inhabitants, to do him
honor, had put in order, neat and trim, the thatch of every building.
What the prince was looking for is what we call the picturesque. To miss
all the charms that ruin brings was too much for his esthetic soul, and
he ordered the wheels of his chariot to be turned for home. So did not
we. Neater and neater grew the inclosures, farms, and villages; the
fences had pretty gates,--curious patterns of bamboo pickets,--a
far-away, out-of-the-world flavor of Holland or Flanders. Even the
ordinary setting out of wayside trees, in this province of forestry,
insisted on the analogy, confused perhaps with a dream of Lombard plains
and mountains in a cool blue distance, for the mind insists on clinging
to reminiscences, as if afraid to trust itself to the full sea of new
impressions.
As I rode along, so neat and clean was each picture, framed in sunlight
if we were in shadow, or in clear shade when we were in sunlight, that
I thought I could remember enough small facts for sketches and notes
when I should get to Gifu. We reached Gifu in the early twilight, and
had no special one impression; we were framed in by the streets, and
confused by turning corners, and disturbed by anxiety to get in. But
we had one great triumph. Our guide was new to the place--as we were;
and we chose our inn at our own sweet will, with a feeling of authority
and personal responsibility delicious to experience after such ignominy
of guidance. Up we went to our rooms, and opening the _shojis_[12]
looked out upon the river, which seemed broad as a great lake. Our
house was right upon it, and the open casement framed nothing but water
and pointed mountains, stealing away in the obscure clearness of a
colorless twilight. The running of the river, sloping down from the
hills on a bed of pebbles, cut off the noises of the town, if there
were any, and the silence was like that of far-away country heights.
In this semi-painful tension the day's pictures disappeared from my
mind. I was all prepared to have something happen, for which I should
have been listening, when suddenly our host appeared, to say that the
boats were coming down the river. The chilly evening air gave us new
freshness, and off we started, deaf to the remonstrances of Hakodate,
who had prepared and set out his very best for supper. We rushed past
the artist in cookery, whose feelings I could yet appreciate, and
plunged after our host into the dark streets. In a few minutes we were
by the riverside, and could see far off what we took for our boat,
with its roof and lanterns. The proffered backs of our lantern-bearing
attendants gave the solution of how we were to get to it. Straddling
our human nags, we were carried far out into the shallow, pebbly river,
landed into the boat, and poled out into deeper water, nothing to be
seen but the night and the conical hills, one of which I fancied to be
Inaba, where was once Nobunaga's castle. Some faint mists were white
in the distance, as if lighted by a rising moon. At no great distance
from us, perhaps at a quarter of a mile, a light flickered over the
water. On our approach we could distinguish a man connected with it,
who apparently walked on the dark surface. He was evidently a fisherman
or a shrimper, and his movements had all the strangeness of some
long-legged aquatic bird. He knew his path, and, far out, followed some
track or ford, adding to the loneliness as does a crane in a marshy
landscape. Then I saw him no more, for he headed up the river toward
an opening between the hills. Suddenly a haze of light rounded the
corner of the nearest mountain, then grew into a line of fire coming
toward us. Above the rustle of the river's course, and our own against
it, came the beating of a cry in unison. The line of flame broke into
many fires, and we could see the boats rushing down upon us. As quickly
as I can write it, they came in an even line, wide apart--perhaps
fifty feet or so--enough for us to pass between, whereupon we reversed
our movement and drifted along with them. In the front of each boat,
hung upon a bent pole, blazed a large cresset filled with pine knots,
making above a cloud of smoke, starred with sparks and long needles
of red cinders. Below, in the circle of each light, and on its outer
rim, swam many birds, glossy black and white cormorants, straining
so at the cords that held them that they appeared to be dragging the
boats. As they spread like a fan before the dark shadow of the bows,
the cords which fastened them glistened or were black in the night.
Each string ran through the fingers of the master-fisher at the bows,
and was fastened to his waist and lost in the glittering straw of his
rain-skirt. Like a four-in-hand driver, he seemed to feel his birds'
movements. His fingers loosened or tightened, or, as suddenly, with a
clutch pulled back. Then came a rebellious fluttering, and the white
glitter of fish in the beaks disappeared--unavailingly; each bird was
forcibly drawn up to the gunwale, and seized by the neck encircled
by its string-bearing collar. Then a squeeze--a white fish glittered
out again and was thrown back into the boat. The bird scuttled away,
dropped back into the water, and, shaking itself, was at work again.
They swam with necks erect, their eyes apparently looking over
everything, and so indifferent to small matters as to allow the big
cinders to lie unnoticed on their oily, flat heads. But, every few
seconds, one would stoop down, then throw back its head wildly with
a fish crosswise in its mouth. When that fish was a small one it was
allowed by the master of the bird to remain in the capacious gullet.
Each pack guided by a master varied in numbers, but I counted thirteen
fastened to the waist of the fisherman nearest to us. Behind him
stood another poling: then farther back an apprentice, with a single
bird, was learning to manage his feathered tools. In the stern stood
the steersman, using a long pole. Every man shouted, as huntsmen
encouraging a pack, "Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!"--making the cry whose rhythm we
had heard when the flotilla bore down upon us.
[Illustration: FISHING WITH CORMORANTS.]
Ten minutes, a quarter of an hour, more passed as we kept alongside with
motionless celerity. I tried to sketch in the insufficient light--making
sometimes one sketch right upon another, so little could I see my lines
in the treacherous light. Then the boats swerved off and were driven to
the shore together, or as far as we could get to it, in the shallow
water. Above us rose the steep green hillside, the trees and rocks lit
up in an arabesque of light and dark by the now diminished flames.
The birds rested, standing in the water, preening their oily backs and
white bellies, and flapping their ragged wings, which seemed to have
been clipped. The apprentice caressed his bird, the fishermen and the
steerers laughed and exchanged jokes and chatted generally, with all the
good nature and making light of hard work which is so essentially
Japanese.
Then the birds began to fight, and to show that peace was not their
pleasure. Fresh pine knots were thrown into the cressets; each man took
his place; the polers pushed off; the birds strained at the strings; and
all _da capo_. A little longer we watched, and then we let the boats
glide past us; the fires faded again into a haze of light as they went
down the river toward the bridges of the town, now dotted with people.
Then we were carried to the shore as we had left it, and were piloted
home through the streets, now filled with lanterns and movement. We
found our outraged artist in cookery still indignant over our neglect of
food, but he was gradually appeased, and made up for his hungry masters
a fairly sufficient meal. Cigars, a scrutiny of my despairing sketches,
and a long look at the lovely melancholy of the river and mountains
before we closed the _shojis_ for the night.
[10] Three hundred and eighty-nine feet long.
[11] Omi-no-hakkei.
[12] Sliding screens, which take the place of our windows.
FROM KAMBARA TO MIYANOSHITA--A LETTER FROM A KAGO
September 28.