Transcriber’s Notes:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
There is a glossary of Japanese words at the end of the text.
Additional Transcriber’s Notes are at the end.
* * * * *
SAMURAI TRAILS
* * * * *
[Illustration: FOREIGNERS]
SAMURAI TRAILS
_A Chronicle of Wanderings on the Japanese High Road_
BY LUCIAN SWIFT KIRTLAND
ILLUSTRATED
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
* * * * *
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY HARPER & BROTHER
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
* * * * *
TO H. W. J.
FOREWORD FROM THE ALHAMBRA TO KYOTO
It was spring and it was Spain. Sunset brought the white-haired
custodian of the Court of the Lions to the balcony overhanging my
fountain. His blue coat bespoke officialdom but his Andalusian lisp
veiled this suggestion of compulsion. His wishes for my evening’s
happiness, nevertheless, were to be interpreted as a request for my
going. The Alhambra had to be locked up for the night.
I was lying outstretched on the stones of Lindaroxa’s Court with my
head against a pillar. The last light of the April sun had scaled the
walls and was losing itself among the top-most bobbing oranges of
Lindaroxa’s tree. To dream there must be to have one’s dreams come
true, some inheritance from Moorish alchemy.
Despite the setting, I was dreaming nothing of the Alhambra, not even
of Lindaroxa. I was thinking of a friend of irresponsible imagination
but of otherwise responsibility. I was wondering where he could be. On
the previous summer we had walked the highroads of England and I had
found him a most satisfying disputatious companion of enquiring mind.
We had talked somewhat of a similar wandering in Japan, a vagabondage
free from cicerones and away from the show places, but although we had
treated this variety of imagining with due respect, we had never an
idea of transmuting it into action.
The Alhambra had to be locked up for the night. The custodian bowed
low, and I bowed low, in unhurried obligation to dignity, and I walked
away to my inn. There I found a cablegram from America. It read:
“Can meet you Kyoto June two months’ walking.”
It was signed by the other dreamer of the Two-Sworded Trails.
I cabled back, “yes.” The message gone, I awoke to the reality of time
and space. All Europe, Siberia, Manchuria, and Korea spread out their
distances on the map and were lying between me and the keeping of my
promise.
* * * * *
It was in the darkness of midnight and it was raining when I stepped
off the express to the Kyoto platform. For a month the world had been
revolving giddily under railway carriage succeeding railway carriage
until it seemed that the changing peoples outside the car windows could
be taking on their ceaseless variety only through some illusion within
my own eyes.
I stood for a while in the shelter of the overhanging, dripping roof
of the Kyoto station awaiting some providential development, but
probably the local god of wayfarers did not judge my plight worry of
special interposition. Finally I found a drenched youth in a stupor of
sleep between the shafts of his ’ricksha. His dreams were evidently
depressing, for he awoke with appreciation for the escape. We bent
over his paper lantern and at last coaxed a spurt of flame from a box
of unspeakable matches. (The government decrees that matches must be
given away and not sold by the tobacconists. Japan’s spirit of the art
of giving should not be judged by this item. The generosity is in the
acceptance of the matches.) I climbed into the ’ricksha and stowed
myself away under the hood, naming the inn which had been appointed
by cablegram for the meeting place. The boy pattered along in his
straw sandals at full speed through the mist, shouting hoarsely at the
corners. At last he dug his heels into the pebbles and stopped, and
pounded at the inn door until someone came and slid back the bolts.
Yes, the clerk answered my question, a guest with the name of Owre had
arrived that day at noon and had sat up for me until midnight. He had
left word that I should be taken to his room. Thus I was led through
dark halls until we came to the door. We pushed it open and called into
the darkness. Back came a welcome--somewhat sleepy. The clerk struck a
match and I discovered my vagabond companion crawling out from under
the mosquito netting of his four-poster. Between us we had covered
twenty thousand miles for that handshake.
“It’s the moment to be highly dramatic,” he said with an eloquent
flourish of his pajam’d arm, and he sent the clerk for a bottle of
native beer. It came, warm and of infinite foam, but we managed to find
a few drops of liquid at the bottom with which to drink a toast. The
toast was to “The Road.”
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Quest for O-Hori-San 19
II. The Ancient Tokaido 26
III. “I Have Eaten of the Furnace of Hades” 56
IV. The Miles of the Rice Plains 72
V. The Ancient Nakescendo 104
VI. The Adventure of the Bottle Inn 127
VII. The Ideals of a Samurai 157
VIII. Many Queries 173
XI. The Inn at Kama-Suwa 188
X. The Guest of the Other Tower Room 200
XI. Antiques, Temples, and Teaching Charm 212
XII. Tsuro-Matsu and Hisu-Matsu 223
XIII. A Log of Incidents 243
XIV. Concerning Inn Maids and Also the Elixir
of Life 263
XV. The End of the Trail 271
XVI. Beach Combers 287
ILLUSTRATIONS
“Foreigners” _Frontispiece_
PAGE
Kyoto Back Streets 28
The First Rest Spot of the Second Day 48
The Kori (Ice) Flag of the “Adventure” 84
We Came Upon a Wistful Eyed, Timid Fairy of
the Mountains 128
“In the Fourteenth Year of My Youth I Took
the Vow that My Life Should Be Lived in
Honouring the Holy Images of Buddha” 142
We Decided to Take the Most Attractive Turn,
Right or Wrong 168
Is it Idolatrous to Worship Fuji? 184
The Boys Must Be Taught Loyalty; the Daughters
of the Empire Must Be Taught Grace 226
We Bought Paper Umbrellas 248
O-Shio-San in the Bosen-ka Inn Garden 278
Slowly the Harbour of Yokohama Was Curtained
and Disappeared Behind a Brightly Glistening
Mist 290
* * * * *
SAMURAI TRAILS
* * * * *
SAMURAI TRAILS
I THE QUEST FOR O-HORI-SAN
After our melodramatic toast of the night before it would have
been only orthodox to have said good-bye to our Occidental inn at
sunrise and to have sought the road. But we had a call to make. The
fulfilling of the obligation proved to be momentous. There is one
never-to-be-broken rule for the foreigner in the Orient: He must
consider himself always to be of extreme magnitude in the perspective,
and that any action which concerns himself is momentous. If Asia had
possessed this supreme self-concern, she might to-day be playing
political chess with colonies in Europe. The details of our call are
thus set down in faithful sequence.
“If ever you come to Japan, be sure to look me up.” This had been the
farewell of Kenjiro Hori when he said good-bye to his university days
in America. Hori’s affection for America had had the vigour which
marks the vitality of Japanese loyalty. He had always singled out our
better qualities with gratifying disregard for opposites.
We were, however, without an address except that we thought he might
be in Kobe; but it seemed unreasonable that after travelling all the
way to the Antipodes we should then be baulked by a mere detail. In the
faith of this logic we took an early train to Kobe, and the first sign
that we saw read: “Information Bureau for Foreigners.”
The man in uniform peering out of the box window was so smiling and
so evidently desirous of being helpful that whether we had needed
information or not, it would have been exceedingly discourteous not
to have asked some question. We inquired the address of Dr. Kenjiro
Hori. The information dispenser thumbed all his heap of directories.
He appeared to be unravelling his thread by a most intricate system of
cross reference. Then he looked at us with another smile.
“Did you find it?” we asked.
“I find no address,” said he, “but I tell ’ricksha boys take you. Ah,
so!”
Such a challenge was impossible to refuse. We got into the ’rickshas
and the men bent their necks and jerked the wheels into motion with
strange disregard for any bee-line direction to any particular place.
It appeared to be a most casual choice whether we took one corner or
another. This rambling went on for some time. Suddenly they held back
on the shafts and said: “Here!” We were at the door of a wholesale
importing house. No one within had ever heard of O-Hori-san. When we
came back to the street with this information the coolies seemed not at
all surprised. They shrugged their shoulders at our mild expostulation
as if implying, “Of course, if he isn’t here he must be some other
place.”
After another panting dash they stopped and said: “Here!” It was
obvious without inquiring that Hori could not be in that shallow,
open-fronted shop. “Very well,” the shoulders answered us and on we
went. We stopped for another time with the now familiar “Here!” We had
traversed half Kobe. Our futile questions seemed to have nothing to do
with any next step. Strangely, instead of having lost our faith it had
been growing that by some system the coolies were following the quest.
At this stop, when we looked inside the entrance, there was the name
of Dr. Kenjiro Hori on a brass plate. We walked up the stairs and rang
a bell and inquired for Dr. Hori of the boy who came.
We asked him to tell O-Hori-san that O-Owre-san and O-Kirt-land-san
would like to see him. Of all arrangements of consonants (w’s, r’s,
k’s, and l’s) to harass the Japanese tongue, our two names stand in
the first group of the first list of impossibles. We could overhear
the distressed boy’s struggle with “O-Owre-san.” I was impressed that
from that instant Alfred Owre became “O-Owre-san.” It was a secular
confirmation too positive to be gainsaid.
Small wonder then that Hori had not the slightest idea who was waiting
at the door; but his surprise, when he appeared, was so smoothed out
and repressed in his formal _samurai_ welcome that we were tempted into
moody thinking that through some psychosis the frightful slaughter of
our names had destroyed his remembrance of our rightful personalities.
Friends appeared and were introduced with ceremonial formalism. We sat
in a circle and sipped iced mineral water. Hori inquired politely of
our plans and then sat back in silence behind his thick spectacles. The
icy temperature of the mineral water was the temperature of the verve
of the conversation. The day itself was rather hot; a damp, depressing
heat. I tried to fan off the flies which stuck tenaciously with sharp,
sudden buzzings.
Of all varieties of uncreative activity, the analyzing of moods brings
the least compensation--but that does not mean avoidance. During that
hour a disturbing remoteness to everyday reality rasped as if something
untoward had been conjured up. O-Owre-san and I talked, trying to
explain our plans. We repeated that we hadn’t any desire to visit the
great places, but our saying so sounded childish and impertinent,--very
tiresome. A dignified ancient kept forcing us into a position of
defence. To put us out of ease was his most remote wish, of course,
but he did insist with patriotic eloquence (suggesting a Californian
defending his climate) that the show places deserved to be paid
respect. We insisted that our tourist consciences had been appeased
long before, and that we now intended to run away from foreign hotels,
from the Honourable Society of Guides, from the Imperial Welcome
Society, from all cicerones, and from all centres where the customs and
conveniences of our Western variety of civilization are so cherishingly
catered to.
“But,” interrupted Hori, “you do not understand. You will find no one
prepared for foreigners. You will find not one word of English. You
must not do such a thing.” With Japan so earnestly providing the proper
accommodations at the proper places, it was not playing the game, so to
speak, to refuse.
When an argument of policy is between an amateur and an expert
(particularly so when between a foreigner and a native) the tyro can
afford to compromise on not one atom of his ignorance. If he concedes
at all he will be overwhelmed completely. We refused Hori’s warnings,
remaining impervious to any advice which did not further our plan of
action exactly as outlined.
“Very well, then,” said Hori, “I shall have to go with you.”
* * * * *
Under the excitement of talking plans Hori slipped out of his
formalism, and became exactly his old-time self. Until the following
week, however, he would not be able to turn his solicitude into action.
He did not lose his cataclysm of positive doubt over entrusting the
Empire in our hands, but as there was no escape from leaving us to our
own devices for those days (and we made known a certain vanity in our
own resources) he at length agreed to meet us in Nagoya, and we planned
a route which would bring us there with our rendezvous at the European
hotel.
II THE ANCIENT TOKAIDO
It was the morning of our last sleep in _seiyo-jin_ beds. I dreamed
that I was still dreaming in Lindaroxa’s Court. O-Owre-san shook my
four-poster and begged me to consider the matter-of-factness of rolling
out from my mosquito netting and taking a bite of cold breakfast.
The sensuous breeze of the East, which comes for a brief hour with
the first light of the sun, was blowing the curtains back from the
window. I was willing to consider the getting up and the eating of the
breakfast and I was willing to call both endeavours matter-of-fact,
but the imagination that it was to be the first day on the highroad
belonged to no such mere negativity of living.
I began packing and was inspired to improvise a wonderful ballad. It
was concerned with the beginning of trails. O-Owre-san was busy and
was uninterested in my stanzas. He might very well have served genius
by taking them down. The all-inclusiveness embraced, I remember, a
master picture of cold dawn in the Rockies, with pack ponies snorting,
biting, and bucking; and I sang blithely of every other sort of first
morning start, embroidering the memories of their roaring language and
their unpackable dunnage. But in Japan one does not roar--or one roars
alone--and I had known just what was going into my rucksack for weeks.
Our route was to be the famed Tokaido, that ancient road running
between the great capitals of the West and the East, from Kyoto to
Tokyo. We were to find its first stretch at the turn to the left
when we should cross the bridge over the Kamo-Gawa. This river cuts
Kyoto between two long rows of houses built on piles and overhanging
its waters. In summer the stream is most domesticated and gives,
charitably, a large area of its dry bed as a pleasure ground for
_fêtes_, but when the snows are melting back in the hills in the days
of spring and blossoms, it becomes temperamental and the peasants say
that it has drunk unwisely of _saké_. It is then that the water winks
rakishly and splashes the tips of its waves at pretty _geishas_, who
come to scatter cherry petals on the current. But we saw only the
summer domesticity on our June morning. A school of children were
wading in the shallow current, fishing with nets. Their _kimonos_ were
tied high above their sturdy fat legs. We leaned over the rail and
they squinted back into the sun at us and called out good-morning. Then
we stepped off the bridge and our boots were on the long road that
leads to Tokyo.
[Illustration: KYOTO BACK STREETS]
Hokusai has pictured the Tokaido in his prints--the villages and the
mountains, the plains and the sea, the peasants and the pilgrims,
the _ronins_ and the priests. He did add his immortal overlay to the
tradition of the highway’s immortality, but even the great Hokusai
could only be an incident in the spread of its renown. The Tokaido’s
personality was no less haughty and arrogant long centuries before the
artist. It was built by the gods, as everyone knows, and not by man.
This may be the reason why it has fallen upon hard days in these modern
times, now that the race of man has assumed the task of relieving
the weary gods of so many of their duties. Axes have cut down the
cryptomerias for miles because the trees interfered with telegraph
wires; and furthermore, a new highway has now been built between the
capitals, a road of steel. For most of the way this new road follows
alongside the old, although sometimes departing in a straighter line.
The vaulting arrogance of all was when man took the name “The Tokaido”
for a railway. The trains pass by the ancient shrines of the wayside
with no tarrying for moments of contemplation. To-day a _samurai_, with
a newspaper under one arm and a lunch box under the other--his two
swords have been thus displaced--goes from Kyoto to Tokyo in as few
hours as were the days of his father’s journeying.
When the feudal emperors made this pilgrimage they were carried in
silk-hung, lacquered palanquins, and fierce-eyed, two-sworded retainers
cleared the streets and sealed the houses so that no prying eyes might
violate sancrosanctity. As for our pilgrimage we appreciated that
we were not sacred emperors and that we were coming along without
announcement. The inhabitants kept the sides of their houses open and
stared out upon us. We felt free, discreetly, to return their glances
from under the brims of our pith helmets, but occasionally this freedom
felt a panicky restraint within itself to keep eyes on the road.
In the legend of her famous ride, Lady Godiva, I believe, had the
houses sealed before her approach as did those deified Nipponese
emperors. We doubted, that early morning, whether the dwellers along
the Tokaido, if they had been told Lady Godiva’s tale, would have had
appreciation for her chastely wishing not to be seen, except as a
mystifying and whimsical eccentricity. To preserve a deity from mortal
eyes--yes, that might have been conceded as a conventional necessity;
but our surety grew after a short advance that if the fulfilling of
a similar vow by a Nipponese Lady Godiva should have its penance
depending merely upon the absence of attire, she could ride her palfrey
in the environs of Kyoto inconspicuously and without exciting comment.
At least such costuming would be in local fashion the first one or two
hours after sunrise.
A mile is a mile the first day, and we had had three or four miles in
the silence which comes from the feeling that one is really off.
“It’s a good morning for boiling out,” remarked O-Owre-san, by way of
breaking the spell.
We were in a narrow valley walking head on into the sun. It was an
excellent morning for boiling out.
I suggested that it was a good time to take the first rest. We found a
spot in a temple garden up a flight of exceedingly steep stone steps.
Usually to throw off one’s pack is to achieve the supreme emotional
satisfaction of laziness, but on this first essay we failed to relax.
It was perhaps partly that we had not yet boiled out our Western
restlessness among other poisons, but also there was to be counted in
as opposed to the quietude of the garden a most unrestful suggestion
contributed by a conspicuous sign written in English and nailed to a
post. It read:
“Foreigners Visiting Must Dismount Horses and Not Ride Into Temple.”
There are visitors in the East whose idea of sightseeing the heathen
gods might not preclude their riding their horses up onto the lap of
the bronze Buddha of Kamakura; but how the priest imagined that horses
were to be urged up those stone steps was a mystery veiled from our
understanding. It even created a pride in our alien blood that we were
a race thought to be capable of such magic.
The Tokaido winds through the city of Otsu. It enters proudly as the
chief street but escapes between rows of mean houses, becoming as
nearly a characterless lane as the Tokaido can anywhere be. The town is
the chief port of Lake Biwa of the famed eight views, and it is just
beyond this town that the upstart railway takes itself off, together
with its cindery smoke, on a straighter line than the Tokaido. The
highway bends to the south in a swinging circle and wanders along
for many a quiet mile before the two meet again. At the angle of the
parting of the old and the new we stopped at a rest house for a bottle
of _ramune_. This beverage is a carbonated, chemically compounded
lemonade. Its wide distribution does possess one merit. The bottles
may often be used as a sort of guide book. Almost every little shop
along the road has a few bottles cooling in a wooden bucket of water.
Thus, if a stranger is walking from one town to another and if, as is
inevitable, he has been unable to learn anything about distances along
the way, he may at least judge that he is approximately half through
his journey when the labels on the bottles change the address of their
origin to that of the town which he is seeking.
The _ramune_ which we had at Otsu was warm and the shop was stifling
and the flies were sticky. My clinging flannel shirt was unbuttoned, my
sleeves were rolled up, and I had tied a handkerchief about my head. We
carried our bottles out to a low bench to escape the baked odours of
the shop, and while we were sitting and sipping two Japanese gentlemen
came down the road, looking very cool under their sun umbrellas and
in their immaculate _kimonos_. Orthodox ambition in the temperate
zone aims for respectability, power, and property, but in the tropics
any temporary struggle, whether in war or trade, has as its lure the
reward of a long, aristocratic, cooling calm. Our Japanese gentlemen,
superiorly aloof to the perspiring world, appeared to be amusedly
observing the habits and customs of the foreigner as exhibited by
us. Their staring rankled. Until then I had been happy in the exact
condition of my perspiration. Their observance now chilled the beads
on my back. Any number of coolies could have come and stared, and
called us brother--for all of that--but we were being made to realize
suddenly that in the Orient the lower the blood temperature the higher
the caste mark. The parent germ of all convention in the world is “not
to lose face.” It has been most highly developed by the Chinese and the
Anglo-Saxon. For the Chinese it is personal, but it makes the renegade
Anglo-Saxon, despite himself, keep on trying to hold up his chin in a
blind call of blood loyalty to his own mob when facing the Asiatic.
We picked up our packs and started off. It was either to retire or
nihilistically to hurl the packs at their immaculateness. Just as we
began to move one of them said: “Do you speak English?”
The truth must be told that we recanted much of our wrath after the
friendliness of a half-hour’s roadside palaver. The meeting, however,
had a uniqueness of experience far beyond anything merely casual. It
allowed us the extraordinary record that we once did acquire local
information from a Japanese whose conception of daily time and highroad
space had some coincidence with our Western science of absolute fact.
Mr. Yoshida, he who had called after us, knew that corner of Japan and
he told us about it.
O-Owre-san says: “Certain Japanese inexplicabilities are extremely
ubiquitous.” He thus confines himself to six words. I cannot. I
require a paragraph. Despite the ubiquitous mystery, there is always
one certainty: Whatever may be the thought processes of the Japanese
concerning hours, distances, and direction, the inquirer may be sure of
this: the answer will not be concerned with answering the question. The
courteous answerer earnestly uses his judgment to determine what reply
is likely to be most pleasing. If you appear weary, or in a hurry, then
the distance to go is never very long. If you appear to be enjoying
your walk, then the distance is a long way. The village which has been
declared just around the bend of the road may be two _ri_ off. This is
the desire to please, inculcated by the _Bushido_ creed of honourable
conduct. It may be thought that such paradoxical solicitude becomes
extremely irritating, but rarely does it. The wish to help is real,
at least, and is not merely the carelessness of superficiality. The
peasant may tell you that you have but a step to go, but if you are
lost he will turn aside from his own path and show you the way, though
it be for miles.
We noted down Mr. Yoshida’s details concerning the inns and villages
which we should find along the way to distant Nagoya. Experience soon
told us to hold fast to his information, no matter the contradictions
that were agreeably offered in its stead.
We shouldered our packs and again were off. After a time O-Owre-san
said: “I met Mr. Yoshida once at a dinner in America.”
“Why didn’t you tell him so?” I gasped.
O-Owre-san seemed surprised at my amazement. As nearly as I could
determine he must have completely disassociated the metabolic Owre
sitting on the bench in front of the rest house, drinking warm
_ramune_, and the Owre of practical America. Perhaps the Japanese
believe in the “unfathomable mystery of the American mind.”
We had six hours through the hills ahead of us if we were to keep on
that night to Minakuchi. Our mentor had told us that one of the most
luxurious of all the country inns in Japan was sequestered there. To
hurry to any particular place was against our code, but this time it
seemed reasonable to make an honourable exception.
The sun went down behind the paddy fields. The muddy waters of the
terraces caught the gleaming yellows and reds, but our backs were
against this suffusion of colour. Into the darkness ahead the narrow
road led on and on. Says the essayist: “The artist should know hunger
and want.” But surely not the art patron. He cannot perform his
function of appreciation unless comfortably removed from immediate
pangs. If I were to be an enthusiast over that wonderful sunset--as
O-Owre-san persisted in suggesting--I needed food. It had been fifteen
hours since our cold breakfast and I thought of the inn with an ardency
of vision.
When we did see the town it sprang up abruptly out of the fields. All
along the streets the lights were shining through the paper walls.
We made inquiry for the _yado-ya_ and in a moment were surrounded by
volunteer guides. They are always diverting, the Japanese children,
running along on their wooden clogs and looking up into your face.
Maids without number came running to the entrance of that aristocratic
inn, and dropped to their knees. They bowed until their glossy black
hair touched the ground. The auguries all appeared auspicious. Then
came the mistress. There were many polite words, but no one took our
rucksacks and no one invited us in. Every second’s waiting for the bath
and dinner was very, very long.
My Japanese of twelve years before had been but a few words. Days on
the Trans-Siberian of grammar and dictionary study had not even brought
back that little, but now suddenly I began to understand what the
mistress of that inn was saying. I had no vanity in my understanding.
The understanding was that we were not wanted. I had been tired
and I had been hungry when we reached the door, but now I knew the
unutterable weariness of smelling a dinner which may not be eaten.
The crowd was amused, but it showed its amusement considerately and
with restraint. Nevertheless two _seiyo-jins_ had lost face. Apparently
the mistress did not wish such suspicious-looking foreigners, grimy,
dustless, and coatless, to remain even in the same town. She called two
’rickshas. She named the next village. She had this much magnanimity
that she purposed giving us the chance of orderly retreat.
I tried to continue smiling with dignity and affability. It is somewhat
of a strain on diplomatic smiles when the subject of discussion is
vitally concerned with one’s own starvation. Nevertheless I did smile.
I explained that whatever we did we were not going on to the next town.
I knew the word for “another,” and the word for “inn,” and how to
say, “Is it?” And thus I asked: “Another inn here, is it?” There was
little incitement to believe that she understood except that her mouth
pouted ever so slightly as if in surprise that I should imply that the
mistress of such a superior inn could have any knowledge concerning
mere bourgeois caravansaries.
O-Owre-san, during this parleying, had put on his coat and in other
subtle ways had transformed himself into a conventional foreigner.
After that he had settled into repose and silence. I looked at him.
I searched for a flaw. I declared by the great Tokaido itself that
with such a fright-producing handicap as his ultra-Occidental beard we
should never find resting spots outside the local jails.
“Humph!” said he. “Stop talking for a minute and put on your coat.”
I succumbed. “All right, then,” I said. “Here’s for the magic of that
vestment of respectability.”
I sat down on the ground and untied the bag. The prophecy of magic was
too feeble by far for the prestidigitation which followed. I shook out
the folds of the garment which is called a coat, a mere two sleeves, a
back and a front and a few buttons. The circle came closer. But it was
not the coat after all which caused our audience so graciously to begin
giving back our lost faces to us--it was the supermagic of one leg of a
pair of silk pajamas. A black-eyed jackdaw, a trifle more daring in her
curiosity than the others, discovered the hem of that garment tipping
out from a corner of my pack. She gave it a jerk, and then another.
Next she looked up with coaxing persuasion, suggesting encouragement to
tug again.
O-Owre-san had insisted that I have those pajamas made in Kyoto. He has
theories about the necessity of silk pajamas. I never, even remotely,
followed the dialectics of his reasons, but I must add to the credit
side of such theorizings that pajamas are a most intriguing garment to
pass around for the benefit of an inn courtyard crowd. The maid gave
the next tug and out they came. Everybody reached forward a finger and
a thumb to feel.
Between the time of the discovery of the silk pajamas and their
repacking--I cold-heartedly refused to exhibit a putting of them
on--we rose from nobodies to persons of importance in Minakuchi.
Even the mistress hinted that she had mentally recounted her space
for guests and had thought of a luxurious corner of amply sufficient
dimensions to spread two beds. There was, of course, no sane reason why
we should not, then and there, have taken advantage of this altered
atmosphere, but for me the inn had lost its savour. Anyone who has
ever had some similar twist of psychology will appreciate the inside
of my irrationalism. Others will not or cannot. I moved over to the
’rickshas. O-Owre-san remained lingering. He, too, had noted the change
in the mistress’s attitude.
“How about making one more overture?” he suggested.
“Perhaps so,” I answered, “but don’t you feel that any experience
which this inn might now hold for us would be an anti-climax after our
present dramatic triumph?”
O-Owre-san regretfully sniffed the fragrant steam drifting from the
kitchen braziers.
“No, I decidedly don’t feel so,” said he, “but of course, if I have to
save your dilettante soul from anti-climaxes, I suppose I can sleep in
a rice field--but whatever you do, do it!”
I threw our bags into the ’rickshas and we climbed in after them, and
were off to the other inn.
We made our impact against this objective much more catapultic. There
was nothing tentative in our kicking off our shoes and getting well
under the lintel before any mistress of authority could appear. Our
onslaught paralysed the advance line of receiving maidens, and we
settled down on the interior mats and assumed a contemplative calm.
We continued to sit thus oblivious to the excitement heaped upon
excitement. We were islands of fact in the midst of an ocean of
conversation. After the ocean had dried up because none had words left,
we were still obviously remaining, and there was nothing left to do but
to make the best of us. A maid picked up our bags and bowed very low.
She retreated toward the inner darkness and we followed, first along a
corridor and then up a flight of railless stairs to a room open on two
sides against a courtyard garden.
To have been in harmony at all with the ancient traditions of the
Tokaido, coolies should have been carrying our luggage in huge red
and gold lacquered chests. The room to which we were taken would have
been a room of dignity even for a _daimyo_. The maid placed our two
dusty Occidental rucksacks on the shelf under the _kakemona_. Their
very presence piped a chanty that our possessing that room was ironic
comedy. We began to laugh. A _ne-san_ is as ever ready to laugh as
water is to flow, and with no other grand cause than just the doing.
Our maid began laughing with us, and up the stairs came all the other
maids in curiosity. Ensconced, their interest seemed permanent. Our
vocabulary was very far from being sufficient to protect our Western
prudery. As a last resort we took them by their shoulders and turned
them around and urged them in this unsubtle manner from the door.
I began undressing at one end of the room, leaving my garments in my
wake as I rolled over the soft matting. When I reached the _kakemona_
shelf, I slipped into my silk pajamas. When we went below to find the
honourable bath we at least left the room looking not so bare as our
meagre luggage had predicted.
We returned from the bath and banked our cushions on the narrow balcony
overhanging the garden. A slight breeze stirred the branches of the
trees and started swinging the paper lanterns which hung over a stone
fountain. Other guests of the inn had finished their dinners and it was
their toothbrush hour. Dressed in their cotton _kimonos_ they stood
bending over shining brass basins filled from the well fountain. It
would probably be useless to ask any Occidental to imagine that the
function of teeth cleansing with long, flexible handled brushes may
be a social and picturesque addendum to garden life; we have too long
looked upon ablutions as being merely necessitous.
Dinner came. Whether strict philosophical truth lies in the belief
that every sensation is unique, or whether in the contrary that no
experience can be other than a repetition of some situation which has
been staged over and over again in the turning of the cosmic wheel, I
shall continue to maintain that a wanderer who has gone from half after
four in the morning, fortified only by a mouthful of cold breakfast,
until nine at night, and has walked something more than twenty-five
miles under a hot sun, and has had one dinner snatched away from him,
and then finds himself risen from a bath and sitting in the slow, warm,
evening air in a room of simple harmony, and then a small lacquer
table is placed before him with the alluring odours of five steaming
dishes ascending to his nose--yes, I shall continue to maintain that
such a wanderer has a human right to protest that such a situation is
an event.
They replenished the tables with second supplies of the first dishes
and with first and second dishes of new courses. We had two kinds of
soup and three varieties of fish; we had chicken and we had vegetables
and boiled seaweed; and we finished with innumerable bowls of rice. At
the end they brought iced water and tea and renewed the charcoal in the
braziers for our smoking. The tobacco clouds drifted from our lips.
Only one possible thought was worth putting into words and that was the
request to have the beds laid. However, the evening was destined not
for such sensuous oblivion.
Breaking in upon this godly languor came a visitation by the entire
family of the inn. The family particularly embraced in its intimacy
also the maid-servants and the men-servants. Even the baby had been
wakened to come. In the beginning O-Owre-san offered cigarettes in
lieu of conversation and I thumbed the dictionary for compliments for
the baby. The blue-bound book of phrases proved to be rich in fitting
adjectives, and my efforts were rewarded with sufficient approval to
encourage us to go on with a search for compliments for mother and
father and all the others. The baby crawled forward inch by inch until
one of the strange foreign giants courageously picked it up. Our guests
had first sat in a very formal half-circle, but under the expansiveness
of growing goodwill the line was breaking.
It was a night, however, of many visitations. Hardly had we, as hosts,
with the aid of the baby, carried the attack with some success against
rigid self-consciousness when there came the sound of a step on the
stair. Immediately the mood of laughter changed to one of marked
quietness and expectancy. The circle readjusted itself. The mother
snatched back the baby and by some technic ended its expressions of
curiosity and reduced it, as only a Japanese baby can be reduced, to a
pair of staring eyes. We sat waiting the coming of the intruder. The
_ne-sans_ bowed their heads to the floor.
The awaited one was a tall young man, with round, pinkish, glistening
limbs, and a round face. He dropped heavily to his knees and bent over
until his forehead touched the mat, continuing this salutation for some
time. Then he sat up smiling and satisfied. He had brought with him
three or four foreign books and he was, without need of introduction,
the village scholar, Minakuchi’s representative of modernity, a
precious and honoured cabinet of wisdom newly come home from the
University. After his smiling expansion he next composed his features
to solemnity. He adjusted his _kimono_ taut over his knees. Then he
waited until the last quiver in his audience succumbed into the extreme
quietude of painful tension. Even the breeze lulled. He spoke:
“I--am--in--this--room!”
The heads of the circle nodded and renodded to each other. What had the
foreigners to answer to that?
We tried to express a proper appreciation.
“It--is--cold--to-day--but--it--was--raining--yesterday.”
An opinion about temperature is more or less a personal judgment, but
the falling of raindrops is a material fact. On the yesterday it had
not rained.
This time the circle could not restrain itself but sighed with positive
and audible contentment. Minakuchi had been vindicated. If the audience
showed content with its spokesman, it was as nothing compared to his
own contentment. The artist in tongues now opened his books with a
business-like air and put on his spectacles. His visit was not, then,
purely social. The sentences which followed were, as nearly as we could
determine, questions to us. They came, a word at a time, out of his
dictionary. The conventions of speech which the Japanese employ in
polite inquiry have been moulded by symbolism, mysticism, and analogy
into phrases most remote from the original rudiment. A word by word
translation into English carries no meaning whatsoever. We answered by:
“Oh, yes, yes,--of course.”
The baby was growing restless. The scholar took in this sign from the
corner of his eye. His dramatic sense was keen. He had no intention
that his audience should become bored and he snapped shut the books
with the pronounced meaning that everything had been settled as far
as he was concerned. Then he clapped his hands loudly. Instantly from
below came more footsteps and a clank-clanking of metal on wood, and
in a moment into the room walked an officer of the police. His heavy
dress uniform was white, with gold braid twisting round and about the
sleeves and shoulders. His sword, the secret of the rhythmic clanking,
was almost as tall as himself. He faced us rigidly and without a smile,
then slowly sank to his knees and dropped his head to the mat. I have
faith that that man, without an extra heart-beat, would have joined a
sure death charge across a battlefield, but his present duty brought
the red blush of painful embarrassment to his olive skin from the edge
of his tight collar to the fringe of his black hair. He was silently
and perspiringly suffering in the cause of duty--but what was his duty?
I do not know just how we gained the idea, if it were not through
telepathy, but we decided that he was discounting the abilities of
the interpreter down to an extreme minimum, although he listened
attentively enough to some long statement. After the explanation, which
seemingly concerned us, the youth arose and with much dignity withdrew
from the room followed by many expressions of appreciation from the
inn family. Every one of us who had been left behind, except the baby
who had gone to sleep, now waited for some continuance of the drama,
but nothing proceeded to materialize. I grew so sleepy that if the
policeman had suddenly said that we were to be executed at sunrise the
most interesting part of the information would have been the finding
out whether we could sleep until that hour. As I did not know how
polite it might be to say that _we_ were tired, I found a phrase,
“_You_ must be very tired,” to which I linked, “therefore _we_ shall go
to bed.”
This veiled ultimatum was as graciously accepted as if they had been
waiting those exact words to free them to go their way. The _ne-sans_
ran for mattresses and prepared the beds. Then they hung the great
mosquito netting. After that we all said our good-nights, all except
the police official who, image like, remained sitting against the wall.
By earnest beseeching we had persuaded the maids not to close the
wooden _shogi_ around the balcony. Thus, when we turned out the lamp
and stretched out on our beds, the starlight came in. It shone on the
white uniform. I had never happened to have the experience of going to
sleep under the eye of a policeman but realism proved that practice was
unnecessary. Sinking to oblivion was as positive as a plunge. The vast
embracing fluid of rest closed in over my head.
I was dreamless until I awoke under a sudden, crushing nightmare. I
thought that an army of white and gold uniforms had mobilized and
was tramping over my chest, taking care that every heel should fall
pitilessly. The one policeman who existed in reality had been trying
to wake me up and he had evidently had a task, but as soon as he
was sure that my eyes were open to stay he forwent further assault.
He had lighted the lamp and I could see back of him a naked coolie,
convulsively gasping for breath. The man was carrying an envelope.
The officer took the envelope and then sent him off. He reeled to the
stairs holding his panting sides. The officer then took out a sheet of
paper and handed it to me. The page was written in modified English but
was quite intelligible. While the sentences were nothing more than a
series of questions, at the same time they gave a clue to the mystery
of the evening.
Our inn-keeper had had the inspiration to call upon the
scholar-interpreter to ask us the questions which all travellers
must answer for the police record in every town where a stop is made
for the night. We had been correct about there being one doubter in
Minakuchi of the ability of the interpreter. In a plot for his own
amusement the police officer had sent a runner to a neighbouring town
to have the conventional list of questions translated into English,
and thus to compare our written answers with the answers given him
by the youth. There they were, the questions: who were we--how
old--profession--antecedents whence and whither. If one is tempted into
wayward rebellion against such minuteness of interrogation, it is wise
to remember that the claim of a sense of humour may be considered very
poor testimony in a Japanese court perchance misunderstandings at any
time arise and the answers in the police records have to be looked up.
I wrote out the answers. With no one in the room as a witness except
ourselves, the officer allowed a twinkle to come into his eye. He even
winked and pointed to where the youth had sat. Then he shut up the
paper in his register and blew out the light and clanked off down the
stairs. Again we slept.
The etiquette of an inn is that all crude appearance of hurry should
be avoided by waiting in one’s room in the morning for one’s bill. The
Japanese do not travel hurriedly; if they wish an early start they get
up proportionately in time. We had asked for an early breakfast and
it had been served at the hour which we had named. We had happened to
have good intentions about not rushing. Nevertheless, of course, we
fell into an inevitable hurry. After breakfast I had been so interested
in sitting on our balcony watching the waking up of the day that I
forgot to pack my rucksack. O-Owre-san said that he would pay the bill
downstairs and wait at the door.
When I arrived under the lintel where we had left our shoes I felt as
if I were intruding. The bearded foreigner was surrounded by the inn
family and each member was handing him a present. There were blue and
white Japanese towels folded into decorated envelopes, and there were
fans and postcards. The cost of the gift fans may have been little but
the maker had taken his designs from models of the best tradition, and
the fans to be found for sale are not comparable.
The daughters of the house walked with us until we came to the Tokaido
and then they pointed out our direction and stood waving farewells
until we could see them no longer. I waited until then before making
inquiry about the amount of the bill. This detail was a matter of
distinct importance. When we met in Kyoto we pooled our purses and
the common fund was entrusted to O-Owre-san’s care. Neither of us had
made much effort to acquire theoretical information about what daily
expenses might be. We had just so much paint with which to cover the
surface of the definite number of days before our steamer would carry
us away, and this meant that we would have to mix thick or thin
accordingly. Experience only could teach us what items we could afford
and what bargains we should have to make. I thus awaited the answer
about the bill with flattering attention.
“The bill, including extras for iced water and cigarettes and getting
our special dinner after every one else had finished,” said the
treasurer with appropriate solemnity, “was three _yen_.” (A _yen_ is
about fifty cents.) “And,” he concluded, “I gave a full _yen_ for the
tea-money tip.”
We waited until we sat down for the first rest before we attempted a
practical financial forecast. We divided the number of remaining days
into the sum of the paper notes carried in a linen envelope. The answer
quieted our fears and exceeded our hopes. Putting aside a reserve for
extra occasions, beyond our inn bills we would be able to afford the
luxury of spending along the road twenty-five cents a day for tea,
tobacco, and chemical lemonade.
[Illustration: THE FIRST REST SPOT OF THE SECOND DAY]
There is something unnatural in such simplicity of finance, as anyone
must agree who believes at all in the jealousy of the gods. I should
have been forewarned by an old Chinese tale that I had been told only
a fortnight before. It was while sitting in a Peking restaurant. The
teller was a most revolutionary son of a most conservative mandarin.
A peasant once entertained a god unawares. In the morning the god told
the peasant that any wish which he might name would be granted, be it
for riches, or power, or even the most beautiful maid in all the dragon
kingdom to be his wife. But the peasant asked that he might only be
assured that until the end of his days he need never doubt when hungry
that he would have food, and at the fall of night that he would find a
pillow on which to lay his head. The god looked at him sorrowfully and
said: “Alas! You have asked the impossible. Such favours are reserved
for the gods alone.”
We got up from our figuring blithely, indulging ourselves in the idea
that we could achieve such evenness of expenditure. Think what an
upsetting of ponderous economics and competitive jungle law there would
be if the world could and should abruptly take any such consideration
of its wealth!
The payer of the bill had also added that he had given a full _yen_ for
the tea-money tip. In those large areas of Japan where the barbarous
foreigner has not yet intruded with his indiscriminate giving, there is
to be found the ancient system of tea-money. The tea-money custom is
founded on the belief that the wayfarer is the personal guest of the
host. When the guest departs he is not paying a bill, he is making a
present, and to this sum he adds from a quarter to a third part extra.
This extra payment is the tea-money and is to be divided by the host
among the servants. The departing guest is then given a present. All in
all, leave taking is a function.