confers a supreme favour upon any servant fortunate enough to be
designated. All this pleasant service has not the embarrassment that
one must confine a request to any particular maid so as to escape
the necessity of widespread tipping at departure. It is all in the
tea-money.
III “I HAVE EATEN OF THE FURNACE OF HADES”
Vol. I, Sect. IX. The “Ko-Ji-Ki”
A very famous book in Japan is named the “Ko-Ji-Ki,” and the word
means “A Record of Ancient Matters.” We thought on our second morning
as we walked through the hills that if there should happen to be a
modern chronologist recording a present-time Ko-Ji-Ki those hours of
the sun’s approaching meridian would be entered without dispute as
The-Forever-Famous-Never-To-Be-Equalled-Day-Of-Fire. In the valleys
there was no breeze; on the summits there was no shade; and everywhere
it seemed probable that on the next instant the road would blister into
molten heat bubbles under our feet. However--to anticipate--if such
a postulated chronicler had so styled that second day of our walking
as one without chance of peer among historical days of heat, on the
very next following day he would have had to turn back to cross out
his lines. In the burning glare of the rice fields, anything that had
gone before was so easily surpassed that we forever lost belief in
maximums, unless indeed kinetic energy might continue on such a wild
rampage of vibration that it would shake itself completely out of
existence.
Our first rest of the second day, as I said, was devoted to the
arithmetic of finance. At that early hour the dew was not yet off the
grass, but when we began planning for another rest the world had grown
parched. Looking about for some possible spot we saw through the trees
the roof of a small temple. We halted at the entrance and tried to push
open the gate. It would not move. It was nailed to the ribs of the
fence, but the gate was low enough to be vaulted. Our feet fell on the
ghost of a path that had once led to the shrine. Harsh brambles and
weeds had fought for the possession of the path until they had almost
conquered the flaggings. If we thought at all we thought that that
particular walk must have been abandoned for some other entrance and as
the scratches were not very serious we pushed our way through until at
last we stepped forth into the temple yard. Not a sign of caretaking
devotion was anywhere in evidence nor was there a nodding priest
sitting in the temple door.
Sometimes the Chinese desert their temples but, when incense is no
longer burned before an altar, celestial practical sense leaves little
that is movable behind. We slowly walked up the steps to the door,
expecting to find the temple rifled. The door was sealed by spiders’
webs. We then walked around the balcony and peered through the wide
cracks in the _shogi_. No fingers of man had rummaged there since the
priests had said the last mass, but the fingers of decay had been
busily working. The rotted fabrics hung down from the altars of the
shrines and the ashes of the incense in the bronze bowls was hidden
by the blacker dust which the wind had carried through the shutters.
Surely we were the first intruders to step upon the balcony since the
gate had been swung to and nailed.
We walked around the corners until we had seen everything that there
was to see and then we jumped down to a grassy slope on the shady side
of the temple and stretched ourselves out in relaxation. It was very
quiet. As I knew O-Owre-san could sleep for ten minutes and then wake
up to the instant, I closed one eye and then the other. They both came
open together. I had felt a soft dragging across my ankles and I raised
my head to see a very thin, long, green and grey snake raising its
head up between my feet to stare into my face. After a beady inspection
it wriggled away with slow undulations into the grass. And then, from
the spot where that snake had taken passage over my ankles, came the
head of another. I jerked my feet up under me.
The instant before there had been an oppressive quietness. The silence
had been so supreme that we ourselves had scarcely spoken. Now there
was a vast hurrying of little noises. Lizards ran along the rafters
under the roof and dropped down the wall, as lizards do, to flatten
themselves away into corners. Huge buzzing flies rose from the surface
of the pond and bumped against us aimlessly. Mosquitoes came from the
shadows. I had thrown my helmet on the grass. I picked it up to find
it beset with ants. I tried to beat them out of the lining by pounding
the hat against the side of the temple. The effort broke loose a roach
infested board.
We grinned at each other a little shamefacedly when we were safely out
into the sunshine of the highroad. We had not stayed to argue in the
temple yard. As we stood thus vanquished and ejected, two peasants came
passing by. They looked at us, then glanced hurriedly at the temple
roof above the low trees, and then eyed us again. They mumbled a word
or two. Perhaps they were trying to tell us that an accursed goblin
had stolen over their shrine to be the abode of insects and crawling
things. I was not so sure that I had not seen the glowing eyes of a
goblin staring malevolently at us from the cracks of the _shogi_ when I
turned to look back over my shoulder as we fled.
For a long way my blood welcomed the sun. The road led down into a
broad valley to become later little more than an interminable bridge
across the terraced paddy fields. The rice had sprouted but had not
grown rank enough to block the mirror surface of the water from
throwing back the heat rays. Ahead were low-lying hills with higher
slopes beyond and from the map we thought that over that barrier would
be the broad plain across which we would find the road leading straight
to Nagoya.
There was one ambition to luxury which we always possessed--when
we chose a rest spot we wished one of comfort and, if it could be
included, also that it should have a view. Curiously, owners of land
do not seem to endeavour to provide such rest places for sensitive
travellers, at least to be obtrusive at any exact second when desired.
We had taken seven or eight miles across the valley at an unusually
accelerated pace since our last attempt at a rest. Messages from the
cords of our legs were telling us to concede some compromise to our
particularity. However, we continued walking and searching without
paying attention to the messages. The grass patches always disclosed
little ant hills upon close inspection and the occasional heaps of
stones to be found were never under the shade. That obstinacy of ours
was of the stuff ambition should be, and finally its persistency met
due reward. We found a wide, shady platform built against a long
building, half house, half granary. The building flanked the road at
a bend and as we made the turn we could see the family of the house
lying on the floor. An old man was telling an elaborate story and his
listeners were so intent upon the tale that none of them happened to
look up to see us. The platform was out of their vision and we thought
that we might rest there with the comfortable feeling that trespassing
does not exist unless discovered.
The tale that was being told was undoubtedly humorous. The daughters
of the family were hard struggling with laughter. The men were
emphasizing their approval by pounding on the rim of the charcoal
brazier with their iron pipes. All were repeating a continuous _hei_,
_hei_. But there was a baby, and the baby was not so much interested
in the story as he was in a butterfly. He suddenly betook himself to
his dimpled legs and circled into the road in pursuit. The whims of the
gyrations of the mighty hunter carried him to a spot where the next
turn left him facing two foreigners on the platform. He stood with
feet apart and carefully lifted the corner of his diminutive shirt to
his mouth for more careful cogitation, as any Japanese child should
and does do when confronted by a kink in the well-ordered running of
affairs.
The mother called out an admonition but there was no response from the
_akambo_. She left the story to find out what might be the enchantment.
She, too, began staring without responding to admonitions. Another
head bobbed around the corner post and then another and another until
finally the teller of the tale himself forsook the realm of fancy
for fact and followed after his audience. We said “_O-hayo!_”--which
is good-morning--and they said “_O-hayo!_” After that their rigid
attention included everything from our hats to our boots. Then in a
body they walked back into the house and were quiet except for the
most hushed of whispers.
“Two trespassing strangers are about to receive some mark of respect,”
said O-Owre-san.
“Respect of being told to move on, most likely,” was my more worldly
judgment.
“How about betting a foreign dinner to be paid in Yokohama before the
boat sails?” asked O-Owre-san.
I took the wager, and lost.
The old man who had been the teller of the story now reappeared. He
was somewhat embarrassed but at each step of his approach he had a
still broader smile. He was short and he was thin, with lean, knotted
muscles. His limbs had grown clumsy from heavy toil. His face was squat
as if in his malleable infancy some evil hand had pressed his forehead
down against his chin. One piece of cloth saved him from nudity. He
was a coolie of generations of coolies, but despite his embarrassment
and despite his clumsy limbs, the very spirit of graciousness created
a certain grace as he placed a tray before us. He backed away with low
bow succeeding low bow. The tray held a pot of tea and two cups and
some thin rice cakes.
Good man, he fortunately never knew what an argument his gift
precipitated! My opponent began it all by suggesting that we leave a
twenty _sen_ silver piece on the tray. I disputed.
“A cup of tea is of such slight cost to the giver,” was my eloquent and
disputatious argument, “that by being of no price it becomes priceless
and thus is a perfect symbol of a complete gift in an imperfect world.
Japan has this tradition which we have lost in our own civilization.
This simplicity allows the poorest and humblest to give a gift to the
richest and mightiest in the purity of hospitality. If we leave money
on the tray we are robbing the peasant of his privilege.”
O-Owre-san would have none of my transcendentalism. “By leaving money,”
said he, “a sum which means no more to us than does the cup of tea to
the peasant, we are making an exchange of gifts. We know that he is
very poor. Twenty _sen_ is probably more than the return for two days
of his labour. It will buy him a pair of wooden _geta_ or a new pipe,
or a bamboo umbrella for his wife, or such a toy for the baby as it has
never dreamed of. After giving our gift we shall disappear down the
road, leaving the memory of two ugly but generous foreign devils.”
There was no dispute between us about wishing to leave some gift.
The final compromise was somewhat on my side as we gave a package of
chocolate to the child. We carried the chocolate for emergency’s sake
and it had cost several times twenty _sen_. I do not believe that
Japanese children like chocolate and there was more than a possibility
that this highly condensed brand would make the baby ill. Surely the
deposed gods of the ancient Tokaido must have made merry if the news of
our analytics was carried to their Valhalla. Nevertheless our present,
wrapped in a square of white paper according to the etiquette of gifts,
was received by the family with as many protestations of appreciation
as if we had handed them a deed to perpetual prosperity.
The rays of the forenoon’s sun when we were crossing the valley of the
rice fields had sent up heat waves from the dust of the road until
the road itself seemed to me to have a quaking pitch and roll. We
were now in the full glory of the noontide. I was becoming somewhat
disturbed over certain phenomena. Trees and rocks and houses fell into
the dance of the heat waves with an undignified stagger. Sometimes the
bushy trees reeled away in twos and threes where but a moment before
I had seen but one. The most disconcerting part of the development
was my peculiar impersonal interest and study of my own distress. I
knew that my eyes were aching and I knew that the trees were really
standing still. I had the perfect duality of being fascinated by the
day and thus not wishing to be any place else in the world and yet, as
I said, of being extremely disturbed by the preliminary overtures of
a sunstroke. We had had about two hours of climbing since we left the
house of the rice farmer and we were on the summit of the last high
hills. Immediately ahead the rocky path dropped sharply down into the
plain. A rest-house marked the point where the climbing changed to the
descent. I suggested a halt.
The rest-house was more than a peasant’s hut. It was easy to believe
that in more aristocratic days it had been an inn of some pretension.
Now it was a spot for weary coolies to throw down their heavy packs for
a few minutes’ rest in its shade by day or by night to curl up on the
worn mats. We walked into the deepest recess of the entrance before we
sat down. I could look beyond a half-folded screen into the kitchen.
The polished copper pots and the iron and bronze bowls were not of this
generation; probably to-morrow’s will find them on a museum shelf or
cherished in some antique shop. However, I had no desire to discover
curios nor did I have any preference whether the inn was old or new,
nor whether it had been its fortune to entertain _daimyos_ or pariahs.
We first asked for something to drink. The hostess dragged up a bucket
from the well and brought us bottles of _ramune_ which had been cooling
in the depths. I drank the carbonated stuff and then pushed my rucksack
back along the mat for a pillow and closed my eyes for a half-hour’s
blissful forgetfulness. When I awoke the throbbing under my eyelids had
passed away and for the first time I really looked at our hostess. She
was kneeling beside us and was slowly fanning our faces.
Her teeth were painted black, as was once the fashion for married
women. She had known both toil and poverty, but it was not a peasant’s
face into which I looked. Her thin fingers and wasted forearms found
repose in the lines which the ancient artists were wont to copy from
the grace of Old Japan. Her calm face was beautiful.
It was time that we should make our way down the rocky path. She
brought us tea before we went. The bill for everything, as I remember,
was about seven cents. We left a silver coin beside the teapot. She
began to tell us that we had made a mistake. We told her no. Shielded
by an unworldly, intangible delicacy, I doubt whether any rudeness
of her guests ever became sufficiently real to her to disturb her
passivity or her emotions, but such a guardianship presents a thin
callous against sympathy. As we said good-bye a sudden sense of human
mutuality smote the three of us, an experience of sheer bridging-over
intuition which sometimes comes for a second.
The absolute relaxation had so marvellously driven out the devils from
my eyes that I did not even tell O-Owre-san of my hallucinations. To
make up for our lingering we pushed on through the villages without
stopping to wander into temple grounds or to explore by-ways. Between
a misreckoning of miles on our part and some misinformation which I
gathered from a peasant, we reached the rather large town of Siki
an hour earlier than we had hoped. As we strolled through the main
street, we saw several inns which might well have given us comfortable
shelter, but I sensed that the traveller at my side was waiting for
some bubbling of inspiration. I kept silent, an expiation for having
carried a disproportionate number of points that day. We continued
walking. I could see the fringe of the first rice field ahead. My faith
was beginning to waver but before I erred by showing it O-Owre-san
stopped abruptly and inquired the Japanese word for inn. He then asked
for one or two other words and adjectives. Thus armed he stepped into
a shop, the appearance of which had perhaps been the stimulus to his
inspiration.
The shop had glass windows and a glass door. It was the most
metropolitan example of commercial progressiveness which we had seen
since we left Kyoto. In fact, compared to the other shops of Siki it
had as haughty an exclusiveness as any portal along New Bond Street
seeks to maintain over possible rivals. Looking through the glass of
the door we discovered that the floor was not covered with matting.
Such a last touch of foreignism meant that one could walk in without
taking off one’s dusty boots. I do not remember that we ever again
found this detail of Western culture outside the port cities. In the
heart of the most isolated mountain range the most lonesome charcoal
burner knows three things about the foreigner: that he is hairy like
the red fox; that he has a curious and barbarous custom known as
kissing; that his boots are part of his feet.
Into this shop, then, O-Owre-san walked without having to undo his
bootlaces. There was also an aristocratic glass counter and under the
glass, in show trays, were gold watches. Behind this counter sat a
young man in a _kimono_ of black silk. His face was pale, ascetic, and
contemplative. He smiled and bowed in formal hospitality. The grace
of such a bow comes from centuries of saying _yes_ instead of _no_.
A cultured Japanese, almost any Japanese, never flatly contradicts
unless to deny another’s self-derogatory statement. The _iiye_ (used
as “no”) is rarely heard and the carrying over of the omnibus _hei_,
_hei_, or the more polite _sayo_, into the English _yes_ often brings
consternation to the Westerner seeking accurate information.
O-Owre-san said, “Please, good inn” (directly translated). As if the
pale and ascetic seller of gold watches was accustomed daily to having
perspiring foreigners with packs on their backs inquire for this
information, he bowed again and smiled and said, “_Hei_, _hei!_” This
time the _hei_, _hei_ did mean yes. He drew his _kimono_ tighter about
his hips and adjusted his silken _obi_, and walked out of the shop
with us. Apologizing for the necessity of going before, he piloted us
through turns of the street to the gateway of an inn. Calling for the
mistress he made a dignified oration of introduction, and backed away
from our sight with innumerable appreciations for the honour of being
asked to be of service.
IV THE MILES OF THE RICE PLAINS
The experiences of the second of our Japanese Nights’ Entertainments
were as impersonal, as far as the inn’s paying special attention to
us was concerned, as the first evening’s had not been. The police
record was brought to us with an English translation of the questions
and we wrote the answers without complication. The incidents which
may develop in one inn quite naturally have a wide variation from the
happenings which may arise in another, but the general machinery of
hospitality differs but little. There is, in fact, far less contrast in
the essentials of comfort between the ordinary provincial inn and the
native hotels of the first order in Tokyo or Kyoto than there is to be
found in a like comparison of hotels in our civilization; even it might
be said that the simple and fundamental artistry of the shelter which
houses the peasant in Japan has in its possession the root forms of the
taste which charms in the homes of the cultured.
Immediately after we had applied ourselves to the police record and
had had our steaming hot bath, a _ne-san_ brought the small dinner
tables. If ever this particular maid had enjoyed the frivolity of
laughter for laughter’s sake, she had long since banished any such
promotion of irresponsible dimples from the corners of her mouth,
although it should be stated that she was far from having arrived
at an age to provoke a solemn and serious outlook upon life. Her
eyes wandered up to the ceiling and around the edges. She was bored.
Furthermore she appeared distressed at having to witness the table
errors of ignorant foreigners. We insulted the honourable rice by
heaping sugar upon it and we drank cold water when we should have
sipped tea. We asked for a few extras to the menu. She repeated over
our words, caught in amazement that we could change the barking
sounds through which we found communication with each other into the
music of _Nihon_ speech. We asked if she were not afraid of barbarous
foreigners, but she rather contemptuously rejoined that she could
see no reason for being afraid in the shelter of her own inn. I then
concocted from the dictionary an elaborate sentence which asked whether
her expectation of how fearsome a foreigner might be was excelled
by the examples in flesh and blood before her. The truth of her
obvious conviction and the sense of required politeness of hospitality
struggled each for utterance with such disconcerting effect that she
used her turned-in toes to patter away down the flight of stairs and we
saw our disapprover not again until she came to spread the beds.
We had planned to explore the shops of Siki by lantern light after
dinner but the two beds so aggressively allured us that we never
stepped over them. The coverings were the usual heavy quilts buttoned
into sheets. Such a combination coverlet is generally long enough
for the foreign sleeper as the Japanese habit on cold nights is to
disappear completely under the layer, but at the inn in Siki for some
reason the length was decidedly curtailed and the mattresses were
correspondingly short. However, at the end of such a day of fire as we
had had I was contemptuous of such limitations. I expected to sleep on
the quilt and not under it.
For an hour, covered only by my cotton _kimono_, I knew the comfort
of airy rest. Then I awoke to a sensation I had almost forgotten. I
was chilled through. I entered upon a campaign of trying to get back
to sleep by wrapping the abbreviated quilt about my shoulders. The
far from satisfactory result was that my legs were left dangling in
the chill drafts while the protected upper surfaces melted. Next I
essayed a system of sliding the quilt up and down, executing retreats
from too copious perspiration. This procedure met with some success
but the required watchfulness was hardly a soporific. I called myself
a tenderfoot. Some slight appreciation of how ridiculous it all was
destroyed any high tragedy of self-sympathy but it could not keep me
from loathing O-Owre-san for breathing so tranquilly. Finally I got
up, determined to force my ingenuity to find some balance between such
excesses. Then I saw that O-Owre-san’s eyes were wide open.
I know not what the temperature of that room was in actual Fahrenheit
degrees, but too many truth-tellers have secretly confided to me
that they have found just such uncanny nights in Japan to disbelieve
that the midnight “Hour of the Rat” has not at times a malignancy
independent of mere thermometer readings. That night was neither cold
nor hot; it was both and it was both at the same instant. My skin had
been flushed to a mild fever from its long bath in the sun’s rays, but
the flesh beneath now grew iced when not swaddled beneath the furnace
of the quilt. My inspiration, after sitting for a time and studying
all the possible materials in the room, was to build a tent. I was so
successful that I hurled a defiance at the “Hour of the Rat,” and for
another half-hour--perhaps it was--I again knew the positiveness of
sleep.