is, but I shall explain later on what a kago is, why I am in it, and why
it is not exactly the place to expect a letter from. To begin at the
beginning, we were yesterday afternoon at Kambara, on the gulf of Suruga
Bay. We had eaten there in an inn by the water, while I watched through
the screens the waving of a palm tree in the wind, which was now blowing
autumnally and had cleared the sky and enlivened us with a hope of
continuous view of Fuji. Along the beach, as we rode away, the breakers
ran far up the sand, and the water was green as emerald from the brown,
wet shore to the distant blue haze of the ocean in the south. At the end
of the great curve of the gulf stretched the lines of green and purple
mountains, which run far off into Idzu, and above them stood Fuji in the
sky, very pale and clear, with one enormous band of cloud half-way up
its long slope, and melting into infinite distance toward the ocean. Its
nearest point hung half across the mountain's base, more solid than the
mountain itself, and cast a long shadow upon it for miles of distance.
Above, the eye could but just detect a faint haze in the delicate blue
of the sky. Best of all weather, we thought; a breeder of bad weather,
according to our men, who, alas! knew more of it than we did. For a mile
now, perhaps, we ran along between the sea and the abrupt green wall of
hills, so steep that we could not see them, and, turning sharply around
a corner, beheld Fuji, now filling the entire field of sight, seeming to
rise even from below us into the upper sky, and framed at its base by
near green mountains; these opened as a gate, and showed the glittering
streak of the swollen Fujikawa, the swiftest river in Japan.
The lower eastern slope was cut off by clouds, but its western line,
ineffably delicate in clearness, stretched to the left out of our range
of vision. Below its violet edge the golden slope spread in the sun, of
the color of an autumn leaf. Along the center of this province of space
the shadow of the great cloud rested. The marks of the spurs of the
mountain were as faint as the streaks of the wind on a grain-field. Its
cone was of a deep violet color, and as free of snow as though this had
been the day of poetic tradition upon which the snow entirely disappears
to fall again the following night. No words can recall adequately the
simple splendor of the divine mountain. As A---- remarked, it was worth
coming to far Japan for this single day.
Right into this marvelous picture we rode, through green plantations and
rice-fields, which edged the bases of the nearest hills and lay between
us and the river. There we found no means of crossing. All bridges had
been carried away by the flood. The plain was inundated; travelers had
been detained for a week by a sea of waters, and were scattered there
and in neighboring villages, filling every resting-place; and, worst of
all, the police officials would not allow us to tempt the fishermen to
make the dangerous crossing.
[Illustration: PEASANT CARRYING FODDER, AND BULL CARRYING LOAD.]
The occasion was a solemn one. The police representative, upon seeing
us come in person to request help, slipped off the easy Japanese dress
which he was wearing in these days of forced idleness, and reappeared
from behind the screen clad in his official European costume. I have
no doubt that our interpreter explained to him what important persons
we were, and what important letters we bore to important people of
the land, for he kindly suggested that we might sail past the mouth
of the river, from near Kambara, whence we had just come, so as to
land far away from the spread of all this devastation; and he offered
to send a deputy with a requisition for a junk and sufficient sailors
from the nearest fishing-village on the bay--and so we returned. While
Hakodate and the messenger went on to make all arrangements, A----
and myself stopped at the place where we had had our view of Fuji, to
make a more careful sketch. You can have no idea of how much closer
the clearer mind worked out the true outline of the mountain, which
my excitement had heightened at least a couple of thousand feet; nor
should I forget how my two-legged horse of a runner held my paint-box
for me, and seemed to know exactly when and where I wished to dip my
brush. It seemed to me that only a few moments had passed when the
messenger returned to say that the boat was ready to launch, and that
we must hurry to be out at sea before sunset; this too in view of the
storm, which we might escape if we hurried. The implied threat made
no impression on me. The picture before us had not changed any more
than if painted by man. The great cloud hung fixed, apparently, in
the same place. All was still: perhaps in the uppermost sky one could
distinguish some outlines of white in the blue. Still we hurried off
and arrived upon a scene of confusion and wild excitement. A captain
and a crew had been found; their boat stood high up on the crest of
the surf, now beating on the shore, and carried the line with which to
pull out the small junk, still far up on the beach. The wheels of our
kurumas had been taken off and their bodies had been placed in the hold.
As we got on board at least a hundred naked men pushed and tugged to
start the junk upon the slope of sand. The sun was setting suddenly
behind the headland of Shizuoka, and the air was filled with the
moisture from the sea; a rosy bloom, pink as the clouds themselves,
filled the entire air, near and far, toward the light. On the other side
the distance was fading into gray and violet mist. The great mountain
was still a great clear mass, but colorless, like the northern sky
behind it, while, bathed in the color of fairyland, we rose and fell
over the breakers--the spray, the waves, the boat, the bodies of the
men, glistening and suffused with pink.
No painter ever saw a more ideal light. And suddenly it faded, leaving
us in a still brilliant twilight, through which we looked at the tossing
of the hazy sea. The mast was lifted and set, the great square sail was
hoisted, and the captain took hold of the ponderous tiller. We stretched
ourselves on the poop deck, prepared for a dance of seventeen miles;
then under my protecting blanket I fell asleep--to wake and see before
me a sheet of rain. The predicted storm had flooded us; we lay in the
water that covered the deck, our waterproofs insufficient, and glad to
be able to find some protection under the Japanese rain-coats of straw,
whose merits I had not yet understood.
From under my shelter I could see that our mast was lowered, and that
the captain and the sailors forward were working at the heavy sweeps.
Below, under hatches, I could hear the groaning of our seasick runners.
Between the gusts of rain came the voice of the captain, now in the
straining agony of seasickness, next keeping up a steady, chanted talk
with a mate forward. A lantern was lashed to the post of the tiller, and
the captain's bare feet rose and fell with his steps at the great oar,
showing sharply the action of tendons and muscles. I tried to sketch
under my cover, then dozed,--sleepy with the rocking and the cold and
the wet,--and with every waking hearing the whistling of the wind and
the continuous monotonous voice in a language not understood. So passed
the night.
We saw the morning break on a lonely, high, gray bank, streaked by the
sea lines of different tides, and crowned with a line of pines of all
sizes and shapes, stretching for miles dark green against the white
clouds which covered the base of the mountains behind. Out of these
white banks stood dull blue peaks, while the highest mountains were lost
in cloud, and all was gray and desolate with the rain. The surf broke on
the sand not more than a hundred yards from us. We lay there some time,
waiting for more light, for all wind had ceased; then four men swam
ashore with a rope, and towed us along the bank. The surf had abated,
but landing was too difficult, and we were to be dragged, while our
other men worked at the big sculls and pushed us along. We wore along
four miles to a little bar, over which we were pulled by the men now in
the water into a singular little harbor with an entrance not more than a
hundred feet wide. On this the surf broke gently--white on the gray sea.
To our left the backs of two sand-spits dotted the water, and on the
right, looking out to sea, rose the edge of a grove of pines, with four
or five houses, heavy roofed and thatched, against its green darkness.
On the curve of the beach before it stood a high pointed rock almost
touched by the water, edged around and covered with pines--all but the
perpendicular side facing the harbor. On its summit stood a little red
temple, whose back we saw. On the other side, landwards, as we left our
boat and followed our guides ashore around its base, a hundred steps ran
straight up to the front of the little shrine--so steep and sudden that
we could just look along their edge. From the high rock, recessed, ran
back the shore, on which stood in a row three large junks with their
sterns to the sea--behind them trees and houses. On the opposite side of
the little harbor four of our men, up to their middle or up to their
armpits in water, slowly dragged our junk nearer to the shore. All was
quiet and gray--the men reflected in the moving water, the boat creaking
along slowly. As I went up the beach, following our guide and the
boatmen, I thought how like this was to the Homeric haven--the grove
looking out to sea and frequented by "fowls maritimal"; the sacred rock;
the meadows and the little stream; the long galleys drawn up on the
beach. The little houses of the fishing-village were surrounded by
gardens, and their walls largely made of plaited bamboo. There was no
inn, but we found a house half shop, and were welcomed to some tea and
to a room which the family hastened to abandon for us. There were only
two rooms besides the entrance, which was a large passage floored with
earth, and along one side of it a raised surface, from which began the
level of our flooring.
Sliding partitions, hurriedly run up, made us a room, but the outside
screens were full of holes, through which, in a few minutes, peered all
the women and children of the village, who occasionally even pushed
aside the screens to see more completely. The little passage in front of
our open room was filled with girls and children intent upon our ways of
smoking, of taking tea, and of eating--for we had biscuits with us, and
fifteen hours at least without food had made us fairly hungry. Meanwhile
the men landed their wagons and the trunks, and took their meal of rice,
hastily made up, on the ledge of the platform on which we sat. This they
did in a row, the whole twenty eating quietly but rapidly,--I was going
to say firmly,--shoving into their mouths the rice from the bowls, and
tearing with their fingers the fish just cooked. Meanwhile, among all
the ugliness around us in women, shone out, with beautiful
complexions,--lost in the others by exposure to wind and sun, by hard
work, and probably by child-bearing,--three girls, who stood before us a
long time, with sweet faces and bright eyes and teeth. They stared hard
at us until stared at in return, when they dispersed, to watch us again
like children from the doors and from the kitchen.
Our hostess, small, fat, good-natured, and polite, showing
black-lacquered teeth between rosy lips, like ripe seeds in a
watermelon, bustled about hurrying everything, and at the end of our
meal our host appeared--from the kitchen apparently--and knelt before
us. Poor and ragged as the house was, with ceilings black with age and
smoke, and screens torn and worn by rubbing, the little _tokonoma_ held
a fairly good picture, and a pretty vase with flowers below it. But it
was evidently one of the poorest of places, and had never seen a
foreigner in it. This may have been the cause of the appearance of the
ubiquitous Japanese policeman within five minutes of our arrival. He
alone betrayed no curiosity, and disappeared with dignity on getting our
credentials.
The rain still held off. We entered our kurumas, now ready, and hastened
to the main road which we were to find at Numadsu, if that be the name
of the place. But, alas! the rain came down, and my views were confined
within the outline of an umbrella. My only adventure was stopping at
some hovel on the road to buy some more of that heavy yellow oiled paper
which replaces the leather apron that we usually find attached to our
European carriages. By and by I consented to have the hood of my wagon
put up, through which I could see little more than the thatched backs of
my runners, their bowls of hats, off which the rain spattered upon their
straw cloaks and aprons, and their wet brown legs, lifted with the
regularity of automatons. It was getting cold, too, and women under
their umbrellas wore the graceful short overcoat they call _haori_, and
tottered over the wet ground on high wooden pattens.
This I noticed as we came into Mishima, from which place we were to
begin our ascent up the Hakone Pass. On our way, were it to clear, we
might see Fuji again--at any rate, if it cleared in the least we would
enjoy the mountains. Meanwhile we shivered at lunch, trying to get into
corners where the wind would not leak through the cracks of the shojis,
and beginning to experience the discomforts of Japanese inns. And now my
bashfulness having gradually abandoned me, I could take my hot bath,
separated from the household by a screen not over high, over which the
fat servant-girls kindly handed me my towels. Excuse these trivial
details, but I cannot otherwise give you the "local color," and my
journal is one of small things. Had I come here in the old days when I
first fell in love with Japan, I might have met with some thrilling
experience in an inn.
I might have had such an experience as our poor friend Fauvel met with
not far from here. I might have met some young sworded men, anxious to
maintain their dignity and ripe for a quarrel with the foreigner. Do you
remember that he jostled the sword of some youngster--"the sword, the
soul of the Samurai"--which its owner had left upon the floor. The
insult would have been impossible to explain away had not some sensible
Japanese official decided that a man who was so careless with his sword
as to leave it on the mat, instead of on the reputable sword-rack, had
no right to complain of another's inadvertence.
I sometimes wonder which of the courteous persons I meet, when age
allows the supposition, obeyed these rules when they were younger; which
ones now dressed in black broadcloth wore the great helmet with
branching horns, or strapped the two great swords at their waist. And
I am lost in respect and bewilderment to think that all this wondrous
change--as great as any that the world can have seen--was effected with
such success and accepted in such a lofty spirit.
[Illustration: A RUNNER IN THE RAIN.]
We were now to give up the kuruma and to travel by the kago, which, you
will remember, I promised to describe. The kago is a curious
institution, partly superseded by the kuruma, but lingering in many
places, and necessary where the pack-horse would be unsafe, and where
one would otherwise have to walk. It consists of a small litter hung by
stiff bamboos from a great pole, over which is steadied a little matted
roof, from which various protections from rain or sun can be dropped.
The kago has its discomforts: one lies down in it all doubled up, with
legs crossed as far as they can be made to, because the basket, which is
the body of the litter, is only about three feet long; and with head to
one side, because, if one lifted it, it might strike the ridge-pole. The
proper way is to lie not quite in the axis. This is all the more
natural, as the men at either end do not carry it in a straight line,
but at an angle, so that from one side you can see a little in front of
you.
Into the kagos we were folded, and in a torrent of rain we departed. I
resisted my being shut up in my litter by the oiled-paper sides that are
used in the rain, and I depended upon mackintosh and blanket to protect
me. The rain came down in sheets. We trotted uphill, the men going on
for a few minutes, then changing shoulders, and then again another pair
taking their turn--four to each litter. Meanwhile they sang, as they
trotted, something which sounded like "Hey, hey, hey, het tue hey." The
road was almost all paved, and in the steeper ascents was very bad.
And now I began to experience some novel sensations not easy to
describe. My feet were turned in upon the calves of the legs like an
Indian Buddha's, and I soon began to ache along sciatic lines; then
elsewhere, then everywhere. Then I determined to break with this
arrangement, as anger seized me; fortunately a sort of paralysis set in,
and I became torpid and gradually resigned; and gradually also I fell
asleep with the curious motion and the chant of the men, and woke
accustomed, and so I am writing.
I can just remember large trees and roads protected by them; some places
where we seemed alone in the world, where we left trees and stood in
some narrow path, just able to see above its sides--all else shut out of
existence by the rain; and I have all along enjoyed the novel sensation
of moving on the level of the plants and shrubs.
We are now going downhill again, and can look down an avenue of great
trees and many steps which we descend. We are coming to Hakone; I can
see the lake beyond a Torii, and at the first corner of the road under
the trees begins the village.
MIYANOSHITA, September 28.
Again the kago, and the rain as soon as we departed. I turned as well as
I could, to find the lovely lines, now lost in general shapes and
values, blurred into masses. Once the light opened on the top of some
high hill, and I could see, with wild roses right against me, some flat
milestone marked with an image against the edges of distant mountains,
and a sky of faint twilight pink; or again we pattered along in wet
grass, past a great rock with a great bas-relief image--a Jizo (patron
of travelers) sitting in the loneliness with a few flowers before him.
Then in the rain, and mingling with the mist, thicker cloudings marked
the steam from hot springs, which make these parts of the mountains a
resort for invalids and bathers.
Soon the darkness: then pine knots were lighted and we descended among
the trees, in a path like a torrent, the water running along between the
stones, which the feet of the bearers seemed to find instinctively. The
arms of the torch-bearers were modeled in wild lights and shadows; the
hats of the men made a dusky halo around their heads; the rain-coats of
straw glistened with wet; occasionally some branch came out, distinct in
every leaf, between the smoke and the big sparks and embers. The noise
of torrents near by rose above the rain and the patter and the song of
the men. The steepness of the path seemed only to increase the rapidity
of our runners, who bounded along from stone to stone. After a time
anxiety was lost in the excitement of the thing and in our success, but
quite late in our course I heard behind me a commotion--one of A----'s
runners had slipped and the kago had come down; no one hurt--the kago
keeps its occupant packed too tightly. Then the path left the wild
descent; we trotted through regular, muddy roads, stopped once on
disbanding our torch-bearers, and reached the Europeanized hotel at
Miyanoshita, where I intend to sleep to-night on a European bed, with a
bureau and a looking-glass in my room. One little touch not quite like
ours, as a gentle lady of uncertain age offers me her services for the
relief of fatigue by massage, before I descend to drink Bass's ale in
the dining-room, alongside of Britons from the neighboring Yokohama,
only one day's journey farther.
[13] You may pronounce kang'go.
POSTSCRIPT
[This much of my letters, or all but a few pages, has been published at
intervals in "The Century Magazine." I had hoped for time to add some
further notes on Japanese art, and some fragments of my journal, but
neither time nor health allows me more. I should have preferred also to
replace some of the drawings and photographs here engraved by some pages
from note-books nearer to the feeling of the text--something more
serious and less finished than suits a magazine.
With some regret I let these matters stand; with less regret because my
notes are merely impressions of a given date. Since then Loti has
written, and Mr. Lafcadio Hearn has written and writes with his usual
charm. Mr. Lowell has opened singular pages, Mr. Chamberlain's authority
has been given to popular information; Mrs. Coates has written in
laughter; Miss Scidmore has adorned the guide-book, Mr. Parsons, Mr.
East ... the list is too long.
I must thank Mr. H. Shugio for the "grass characters" of his elegant
translation of my preface; and Mr. M. Tsuchiya for much information.]
APPENDIX
I give as an appendix the "Suruga Gobunsho," the letter of Iyéyasŭ to
his daughter-in-law, in which he defines the position of Iyémitsŭ's
brother. I have it at two removes from the original, so that, as a
Japanese acquaintance remarks, "Recollecting the shadow of the original
hanging in a corner of my memory, I hardly recognize the energetic style
of the 'old badger'--Furu Danuki--as Iyéyasŭ was called by his
antagonists." Notwithstanding, I give it with all these defects, there
being nothing fixed in history but documents; and this document gives us
the real mind of a great man, his make-believe appearance, his intimate
resemblance to other great managers, and a statement of the correct
ideas of his time, to which he gave a fixed form.
LETTER OF IYÉYASŬ
It is getting warmer daily, and life is again quite pleasant. How is it
with you and your children? When last I had the pleasure of visiting you
I was charmed by the friendly reception which was given to me, and I beg
that you will present my thanks therefor to your lord. It pleases me
much to hear that both my grandchildren--Take[14] and Kuni[15]--have
grown. When I was with you I advised you to select a tutor for Take.
Have you already done this? Kuni is really very clever; which is a
thing to rejoice in, and you ought to hold him especially dear. I have
had some experience, and therefore proceed to communicate to you my
views as to how you can bring him up to be a good man.
If a child, however clever and gifted, be allowed to grow up entirely
free and without discipline, it will become in riper age wilful and
positive. Children are usually disobedient to their parents. If they are
made to obey their parents they will yet still less accommodate
themselves to their surrounding. But will they be able as men to rule
over States? Not in the least, since they have not been able even to
rule themselves. Considering how naïve is youth, a severe education does
not seem at first sight to be fitting, but herein man resembles a plant.
Of a tree, for instance, only a little sprig first shows; with careful
attendance little by little the branches and leaves are developed; then
a prop is given to the same that it may grow straight, and the poor
growths are cut off. If each year one goes on carefully with this
treatment one may obtain straight, beautiful trees. With man it is just
the same. As the child comes to be four or five years a prop is given
him in the person of a good tutor who shall remove the bad growths,
shall subdue wilfulness, and make a fine man out of him. Often this
foresight of care is neglected, allowing the child to grow up in freedom
without protecting him against his own self-will. Only when the child
can already think for itself do the elders begin their admonitions, but
then it is quite too late: the branches of wilfulness are already too
far grown, and the stem can no longer bring forth new branches. A good
tree is no longer to be aimed at.