Kité miréba,
Sahodo madé nashi,
Fuji no Yama!
Seen on close approach, the mountain of Fuji does not come up to
expectation.--_Japanese proverbial philosophy._
The most beautiful sight in Japan, and certainly one of the most
beautiful in the world, is the distant apparition of Fuji on cloudless
days,--more especially days of spring and autumn, when the greater
part of the peak is covered with late or with early snows. You can
seldom distinguish the snowless base, which remains the same color as
the sky: you perceive only the white cone seeming to hang in heaven;
and the Japanese comparison of its shape to an inverted half-open fan
is made wonderfully exact by the fine streaks that spread downward
from the notched top, like shadows of fan-ribs. Even lighter than a
fan the vision appears,--rather the ghost or dream of a fan;--yet the
material reality a hundred miles away is grandiose among the mountains
of the globe. Rising to a height of nearly 12,500 feet, Fuji is visible
from thirteen provinces of the Empire. Nevertheless it is one of the
easiest of lofty mountains to climb; and for a thousand years it has
been scaled every summer by multitudes of pilgrims. For it is not only
a sacred mountain, but the most sacred mountain of Japan,--the holiest
eminence of the land that is called Divine,--the Supreme Altar of
the Sun;--and to ascend it at least once in a life-time is the duty
of all who reverence the ancient gods. So from every district of the
Empire pilgrims annually wend their way to Fuji; and in nearly all the
provinces there are pilgrim-societies--_Fuji-Kō_,--organized for the
purpose of aiding those desiring to visit the sacred peak. If this act
of faith cannot be performed by everybody in person, it can at least
be performed by proxy. Any hamlet, however remote, can occasionally
send one representative to pray before the shrine of the divinity of
Fuji, and to salute the rising sun from that sublime eminence. Thus a
single company of Fuji-pilgrims may be composed of men from a hundred
different settlements.
By both of the national religions Fuji is held in reverence. The Shintō
deity of Fuji is the beautiful goddess Ko-no-hana-saku-ya-himé,--she
who brought forth her children in fire without pain, and whose name
signifies “Radiant-blooming-as-the-flowers-of-the-trees,” or, according
to some commentators, “Causing-the-flowers-to-blossom-brightly.” On the
summit is her temple; and in ancient books it is recorded that mortal
eyes have beheld her hovering, like a luminous cloud, above the verge
of the crater. Her viewless servants watch and wait by the precipices
to hurl down whomsoever presumes to approach her shrine with unpurified
heart.... Buddhism loves the grand peak because its form is like the
white bud of the Sacred Flower,--and because the eight cusps of its top,
like the eight petals of the Lotos, symbolize the Eight Intelligences of
Perception, Purpose, Speech, Conduct, Living, Effort, Mindfulness, and
Contemplation.
But the legends and traditions about Fuji, the stories of its rising
out of the earth in a single night,--of the shower of pierced-jewels
once flung down from it,--of the first temple built upon its summit
eleven hundred years ago,--of the Luminous Maiden that lured to the
crater an Emperor who was never seen afterward, but is still worshipped
at a little shrine erected on the place of his vanishing,--of the sand
that daily rolled down by pilgrim feet nightly reascends to its former
position,--have not all these things been written in books? There
is really very little left for me to tell about Fuji except my own
experience of climbing it.
I made the ascent by way of Gotemba,--the least picturesque, but
perhaps also the least difficult of the six or seven routes open to
choice. Gotemba is a little village chiefly consisting of pilgrim-inns.
You reach it from Tōkyō in about three hours by the Tōkaidō railway,
which rises for miles as it approaches the neighborhood of the mighty
volcano. Gotemba is considerably more than two thousand feet above the
sea, and therefore comparatively cool in the hottest season. The open
country about it slopes to Fuji; but the slope is so gradual that the
table-land seems almost level to the eye. From Gotemba in perfectly
clear weather the mountain looks uncomfortably near,--formidable by
proximity,--though actually miles away. During the rainy season it
may appear and disappear alternately many times in one day,--like an
enormous spectre. But on the grey August morning when I entered Gotemba
as a pilgrim, the landscape was muffled in vapors; and Fuji was totally
invisible. I arrived too late to attempt the ascent on the same day;
but I made my preparations at once for the day following, and engaged a
couple of _gōriki_ (“strong-pull men”), or experienced guides. I felt
quite secure on seeing their broad honest faces and sturdy bearing. They
supplied me with a pilgrim-staff, heavy blue _tabi_ (that is to say,
cleft-stockings, to be used with sandals), a straw hat shaped like Fuji,
and the rest of a pilgrim’s outfit;--telling me to be ready to start
with them at four o’clock in the morning.
What is hereafter set down consists of notes taken on the journey, but
afterwards amended and expanded,--for notes made while climbing are
necessarily hurried and imperfect.
I
August 24th, 1897.
From strings stretched above the balcony upon which my inn-room opens,
hundreds of towels are hung like flags,--blue towels and white, having
printed upon them in Chinese characters the names of pilgrim-companies
and of the divinity of Fuji. These are gifts to the house, and serve
as advertisements.... Raining from a uniformly grey sky. Fuji always
invisible.
August 25th.
3:30 _a. m._--No sleep;--tumult all night of parties returning late
from the mountain, or arriving for the pilgrimage;--constant clapping
of hands to summon servants;--banqueting and singing in the adjoining
chambers, with alarming bursts of laughter every few minutes....
Breakfast of soup, fish, and rice. Gōriki arrive in professional
costume, and find me ready. Nevertheless they insist that I shall
undress again and put on heavy underclothing;--warning me that even
when it is Doyō (the period of greatest summer heat) at the foot of the
mountain, it is Daikan (the period of greatest winter cold) at the top.
Then they start in advance, carrying provisions and bundles of heavy
clothing.... A kuruma waits for me, with three runners,--two to pull,
and one to push, as the work will be hard uphill. By kuruma I can go to
the height of five thousand feet.
* * * * *
Morning black and slightly chill, with fine rain; but I shall soon be
above the rain-clouds.... The lights of the town vanish behind us;--the
kuruma is rolling along a country-road. Outside of the swinging penumbra
made by the paper-lantern of the foremost runner, nothing is clearly
visible; but I can vaguely distinguish silhouettes of trees and, from
time to time, of houses,--peasants’ houses with steep roofs.
* * * * *
Grey wan light slowly suffuses the moist air;--day is dawning through
drizzle.... Gradually the landscape defines with its colors. The way
lies through thin woods. Occasionally we pass houses with high thatched
roofs that look like farmhouses; but cultivated land is nowhere
visible....
* * * * *
Open country with scattered clumps of trees,--larch and pine. Nothing in
the horizon but scraggy tree-tops above what seems to be the rim of a
vast down. No sign whatever of Fuji.... For the first time I notice that
the road is black,--black sand and cinders apparently, volcanic cinders:
the wheels of the kuruma and the feet of the runners sink into it with a
crunching sound.
* * * * *
The rain has stopped, and the sky becomes a clearer grey.... The trees
decrease in size and number as we advance.
* * * * *
What I have been taking for the horizon, in front of us, suddenly
breaks open, and begins to roll smokily away to left and right. In
the great rift part of a dark-blue mass appears,--a portion of Fuji.
Almost at the same moment the sun pierces the clouds behind us; but the
road now enters a copse covering the base of a low ridge, and the view
is cut off.... Halt at a little house among the trees,--a pilgrims’
resting-place,--and there find the gōriki, who have advanced much more
rapidly than my runners, waiting for us. Buy eggs, which a gōriki rolls
up in a narrow strip of straw matting;--tying the matting tightly with
straw cord between the eggs,--so that the string of eggs has somewhat
the appearance of a string of sausages.... Hire a horse.
* * * * *
Sky clears as we proceed;--white sunlight floods everything. Road
reascends; and we emerge again on the moorland. And, right in front,
Fuji appears,--naked to the summit,--stupendous,--startling as if
newly risen from the earth. Nothing could be more beautiful. A vast
blue cone,--warm-blue, almost violet through the vapors not yet lifted
by the sun,--with two white streaklets near the top which are great
gullies full of snow, though they look from here scarcely an inch
long. But the charm of the apparition is much less the charm of color
than of symmetry,--a symmetry of beautiful bending lines with a curve
like the curve of a cable stretched over a space too wide to allow of
pulling taut. (This comparison did not at once suggest itself: The
first impression given me by the grace of those lines was an impression
of femininity;--I found myself thinking of some exquisite sloping of
shoulders towards the neck.) I can imagine nothing more difficult to
draw at sight. But the Japanese artist, through his marvellous skill
with the writing-brush,--the skill inherited from generations of
calligraphists,--easily faces the riddle: he outlines the silhouette
with two flowing strokes made in the fraction of a second, and manages
to hit the exact truth of the curves,--much as a professional archer
might hit a mark, without consciously taking aim, through long exact
habit of hand and eye.