have it their duty to be whirled in ’rickshas to a tea-house to meet
strange patrons, but to pay an informal visit at our rooms, especially
at that hour, was quite another affair, and most unconventional. They
were shocked at their own impulsiveness in having run up the stairs
and they were very much afraid that someone in the inn would discover
their presence. The little shrine, it appeared, was in especial favour
with the members of the _geisha_ house where they lived, and they often
came, particularly if the moon were shining in the early evening, to
worship before their duties called. We opened our rucksacks and found
some odds and ends which we made do for presents. They chatted for a
moment and then ran off into the night.
Later Hori told me that as they were going they had asked us to be
their guests at the theatre--there was a performance of one of the
classic dramas by a travelling troupe from Tokyo--and afterwards to
have supper at the tea-house.
Hori’s explanation of his refusal was rather intricate and elaborate,
but stripped of _bushido_ I think the inner simplicity was that he had
suffered enough for one day from the conspicuous exhibition of our long
legs and he had no desire for being responsible for taking them into a
crowded Japanese theatre.
XIII A LOG OF INCIDENTS
It was dark and threatening the next morning but we decided to be on
our way. We bought a couple of paper umbrellas. We soon found that
when we needed them at all that day we needed a roof much more. Hori
was off on his bicycle and we arranged to overtake him at the village
of Fujimi. We were hardly out of Kama-Suwa before we had to make
our first dash for shelter to escape drowning in the open road. The
thatched house which we besieged for shelter would probably have been
most picturesque on a sunny day but it was exceedingly primitive for
a storm. Our hostess was a very old woman, diminutive and smiling.
The rain pounded against her hut and discovered every possible chance
to force its way in. She tried to start a fire from damp sticks and
charcoal and succeeded after a long effort. The fire was to heat the
water for our tea. It was useless to protest. No guests might leave her
house unhonoured by a cup of tea.
[Illustration: WE BOUGHT PAPER UMBRELLAS]
Japan never seems so remote from the West as when seen through the
rain. Fishermen, in straw raincoats, were wading in the creeks with
hand nets. The children in the villages were wading in the gutters.
The towns seemed self-sufficient and prosperous. They had captured the
mountain streams and had led them away from their channels to run in
deep, wide canals through the streets. Innumerable waterwheels drew
upon this energy for the miniature factories. We were walking through
one of these towns--the sun was shining brightly at the moment--when
there was a sprinkling of giant drops. We knew that that meant another
cloudburst and we turned in at the first door. It was a barber’s shop.
We asked permission for standing room, but the men who had been sitting
around a large brazier lifted it away and insisted upon giving us their
places on the matting.
The chairs, the mirrors, the shampoo bowls, the razors, and all the
rest of the elaborate paraphernalia looked so immaculate and usable
that I expected O-Owre-san to decide that it would be discourteous
for him to waste such an opportunity of having his beard trimmed. He
surprised me by suggesting that we toss up to see which one should
make the experiment of the complete surrender to all the inventions.
Perhaps he was tactfully suggesting that my unkemptness showed the
greater necessity, but the turn of the coin made him the adventurer.
The rain was now falling so that it swept the streets in a flood. The
thunder was shaking the hills. A thunderstorm, for me, is the most
soporific inducer in the world and my eyes began to waver and soon
I was many times asleep. When I awoke, under O-Owre-san’s urge, the
sun was out again. My joints were stiff, I was sleepy, and I was old,
but the world seemed very new after its scrubbing, and nothing less
than jauntiness could express the state of transformation, brought
about by clippers, shears, hot towels, and everything that went with
the treatment, in the appearance of my companion. The barber and his
two assistants, with their huge palm fans, were bowing and smiling
with an air of complete satisfaction. I was out of sympathy both with
refurnished nature and the revamped man. I remarked irritably that his
pursuit of beauty would be the ruination of our joint purse.
“Yes,” he said, “and the fees equalled the bill. I had to pay some rent
for your taking up the entire floor for your siesta.”
The bill had been five _sen_ and the fees had been five _sen_, so that
altogether we had squandered five cents of our money.
Fujimi is little more than a hamlet. It is tucked away in a fold of the
hills off the main paths of the trail. Its days are probably as ancient
as the worship of Fuji. The view of the sacred mountain from Fujimi is
a paradox of the beautiful. The sudden sight of the blue outline of
the mountain against the sky comes crushingly into one’s consciousness
as an extraordinary awakening and quickening, and yet the emotion is
deep, reverent, and silent. Maybe it was our undue imagination but the
peasants of the valley seemed marked by quietude. While Fuji-yama was
cloud hidden that first day, on the long walk of the next we found the
lonely labourers of the isolated farm terraces often staying their work
for a moment, their consciousness lost in passionate gaze toward the
sacred slope.
It was only by much questioning of the peasants whom we met on the
road that we were able to find the hamlet. Once when we were unable
to understand the answer, with a quick smile to disarm our protests,
the questioned one turned back his steps until he could point out the
path. We had been swinging along at our best pace in the hours between
torrents and it was not long after mid-day when we found Hori’s bicycle
outside an inn. O-Owre-san declared that our sixteen or so miles had
not aroused him from the sluggishness brought on by a full day’s rest
at Kama-Suwa and he was for going on, but as the rain was now falling
again, this time in a settled drizzle, he had to be a martyr to
enduring a roof over his head or else to seek his own drenching.
The inn was the most meagre in ordinary equipment of any that we
had found. It was not much more than a rest-house, although it had
evidently at one time been of more pretence. The fear expressed by our
host that his house was unworthy had the ardour of conviction. In order
to know better what to borrow from his neighbours for the entertainment
of the _seiyo-jins_ he suggested a scale of three prices. We chose the
middle quotation of one _yen_, twenty _sen_ (sixty cents). The fire was
then started in the kitchen.
Japanese architecture is said to be in direct line of descent from the
nomadic tent of Central Asia. Just as the roof and the four corner
posts are the essentials of the tent, in the building of a Japanese
house, the corner posts are first set up and the roof is built next.
Our inn might have served this theory of descent as an admirable
example. The roof was the chief reason for its existence. There were
no wings. The stairway was on the outside, coming up through the
balconies which ran completely around the two upper floors. In winter
days when wooden shutters enclose and darken the rooms the bare
simplicity may grow dreary. The wind is then the father of shivering
draughts which creep over the floor, but for the days of summer, when
the green valley of Fujimi lies in the shelter of the great granite
ranges, the memory of the stifling cave-like rooms of our Western
architecture seemed barbarous and of dull imagination in comparison.
The philosophy of Japan’s housebuilding appears to be that it is better
fully to live with nature in nature’s season of wakefulness than to
invent a compromise shelter equally reserved against nature through the
revolution of the year.
O-Owre-san had gone exploring to find the bath. A few minutes later our
host excitedly came up the stairs to warn us that the bearded foreigner
was tempting destruction. Rumour that foreigners have experimented with
cold baths and have discovered reactions within themselves to endure
such rigour had not reached Fujimi. When the impatient foreigner had
learned that the hot bath was not ready, he filled the tub with
the icy water that came spouting through a bamboo pipe. In the midst
of our efforts to calm our host, O-Owre-san, himself, appeared, red
and beaming. Nevertheless, neither his rosiness nor his exhilaration
could allure Hori and me into following his recommendation to go and
do likewise. We decided, instead, to take the host’s advice. He sent
us to the public baths. Armed with towels, and in borrowed _kimonos_
and borrowed wooden _geta_, we set forth. My _kimono_ came to my knees,
no lower, and it was restricted in other dimensions. For the women and
children sitting in the doorways our progress through the street may
have brought some interest into a rainy and perhaps otherwise dull
afternoon.
The baths, housed in a low, small, ramshackle building, were famous
for leagues about. The keeper of the baths was a “herbist.” He went
out into the mountains--on stealthy and secret excursions which the
cleverest tracker had never followed--and brought back sweet-scented
hay which his wife sewed into bags and threw into the hot water.
Everything about the discovery, she said, was their own secret.
Whatever was the secret of the herbs, the natural, delicate perfume was
pleasing. The two tubs for the men were fairly large tanks. They had
been freshly filled with heated spring water just before we entered.
It was not yet the men’s hour, but a half-dozen women were in their
half of the building, either busily pouring water over themselves on
the scrubbing platform or sitting placidly up to their chins in the
hot water. The mistress was most energetic. She had a pair of large
scrubbing brushes which she was applying to their backs. Back scrubbing
in Japan is an ancient institution and the practice may have some real
physiological merit. At least the vigorous scrubbing up and down the
vertebrae produces a soothing and restful reaction.
A phrase that I had come across in my dictionary had stuck in my
memory. Translated, it was: “Will you kindly honour me by scrubbing my
back?” I asked Hori whether my remembrance and pronunciation of the
Japanese words were correct.
“Pretty good,” said he, and then I saw a slumbering twinkle in his
black eyes. “But why do you practise on me? Why don’t you say it to the
mistress to see whether she will understand?”
“Stop!” I spluttered. But it was too late. He had called out to the
busy mistress to ask the foreigner to ask to have his back scrubbed.
Until that moment we had been inconspicuous in our dark end of the
room, but now everybody looked up and edged along for the entertainment
of hearing a foreigner speak Japanese. I was responding, but my phrases
were directed at Hori and had nothing to do with back scrubbing.
There are exigencies of fate which come down upon one like an
avalanche. The revenue to the busy mistress from the use of her
scrubbing brush was three _sen_ from each person, which was a full
_sen_ more than for the bath itself, and thus business was business and
a serious matter with her. She descended upon me with her three-legged
stool and scrubbing brushes and proceeded to earn the extra _sen_. I
was completely cowed by her determination.
We sat parboiling ourselves in the tub for some time. All the customers
had now either been scrubbed or had not asked to be scrubbed, and the
mistress could sit down for a moment to rest and to talk. Particularly
did she talk. She talked on and on, exploiting the merits of the local
advantages of Fujimi. Ah, where could one go to find Fujimi’s equal?
Such views! And we must promise to visit the tea-house. It was unfair
to refuse that to Fujimi. The maids, it was true, were not _geishas_,
but they were every whit as talented as any _geisha_ of Tokyo, and
sang and played and danced far better than provincial _geishas_.
Back in our inn the extra twenty _sen_ apiece above the minimum rate
had wrought marvels in the kitchen. We were hungry. We were always
hungry. And we had learned always to expect the inn dinners to satisfy
our demands. That night we truly had marvellous dishes. The bamboo
shoots were as tender as bamboo shoots can be. Whether supreme genius
or chance was responsible for the sauce for the chicken, the result
was perfection. Dinner was very early. After the meal I found a
longer _kimono_ and, as the rain had stopped for an interval, Hori
and I walked to a hill to see the sunset. On our way back we passed
the tea-house which had been so enthusiastically recommended by the
mistress of the baths. We went in. Green peaches were brought to us to
nibble at, and tea and warm beer to sip.
The house was indeed gorgeous with its gold screens and polished wood.
The decorations almost kept within traditional taste, and simplicity
had not been too grievously erred against; but the atmosphere of
proportion and rhythm had been missed by that narrow margin which
perversely is more irritating inversely to the width of the escape. We
may possibly have had the added impulse to this critical judgment by
the insidious predilection of the mosquitoes for us rather than for the
two maids who were paring the peaches. One of them explained that the
mosquitoes of Fujimi are famous for preferring outsiders.
Two of the rooms were crowded with supper parties, of wine, women, and
song, but compared to the revelries of bucolic bloods in other lands,
something might be said in praise of such restraint as prevailed in the
Fujimi tea-house. It may be no honour nor compliment to the spirit of
refinement to wish vice as well as virtue clothed in some modicum of
grace and retirement, but it does make the world easier to live in.
The soft rain stopped dripping from the eaves some time in the night
and the sky was clear when the sun leaped above the mountain ridge, as
if impatient to find the radiance of the glorious, virginal day. The
green of the valley was a glowing emerald and the mountains were sharp
and grey with no shielding haze.
Our host sent his daughter to lead us through a short cut in the hills
to the main road. Hori, with his bicycle, had to take the conventional
path. The little _musume_ trotted along at our side with a full sense
of responsibility, her feet twinkling down the rocky pitches, her
_kimono_ sleeves fluttering out like wings. Suddenly she pointed the
way and then, before we could thank her, ran back. Skipping and dancing
she ran, reaching out her hands to the leaves on the bushes or waving
them to the flying insects.
The rain clouds had hidden Fuji-san the day before. On this morning as
we came through the sharp cut in the rocks which led to the main road,
outlined against the sky we saw the long purple slope. We climbed to a
terrace on the side of a granite block and sat with our feet dangling
and our chins in our hands. There was one white cloud, no bigger than
a man’s hand. It floated slowly toward the crater and then hesitated
above the snow ribs on the sides. Then came another cloud across the
sky, then another and another, until the summit was hidden by the
glowing veils. We slid down from our rock and walked on toward the
mountain.
From the day that we left the plains and turned into the hills our
tramping had been long climbs but now the road again dropped away
toward the lowlands. We had easily forgotten the hours of dancing heat
waves, but, with a start, I began to remember Nagoya, of the rice
plains, of those stifling nights and brazen days. The memory had also
grown dim of my once rhapsodical joy in finding shaved ice to slake
my dusty thirst. If I had never known anything but the quiet, velvet
smoothness of water from wells and springs and the knowledge of the
grind of ice particles against my tongue had been denied me, then I
might well have mistaken affection for passion. There was no spring nor
stream to be found. The lower path of the widening valley was growing
into a road but we were following a trail higher up on the ridge. Down
under the leaves of the trees we thought we saw a thatched roof. If
there was a house there, there would be water. We found a path downward
by making it, and we were rewarded by seeing a house under the trees.
An old woman was reeling silk from the cocoons which she had floating
in a bowl of hot water. She glanced up casually when she heard our
step, but when she saw what she saw her mouth and eyes opened and
the cocoons dropped from her fingers. It was the purity of absolute
surprise without admixed fear or any other diluting emotion. I began
to doubt that she would ever have another emotion but at last the need
for breath racked her, and the resulting gasp freed her from the spell
of silence which, indeed, was a most unusual state. She assailed us
with a deluge of questions. With every possible variation of the query
she demanded to know if we were really foreigners. I was repeating,
“_Hei, hei, seiyo-jin_” as best I could when I heard coming through the
valley the welcome rattle of the demon bicycle.
I turned over my task to Hori and he took up the assurance to the
old woman that she was actually in the presence of flesh and blood
foreigners. With his every reiteration the wider became the smile of
her satisfaction. She stood on one foot and then the other and clapped
her hands and finally ran across the road to another house. She called
into the door and a young woman came out. The girl was the wife of her
grandson and the explanations had to be made over again for her. Then
we sat down on the floor and she brought tea and cold water and red
peaches. The questions still came. Our wrinkled hostess was a delighted
child. She stared at one of us and then turned to stare at the other.
At last she settled a continuing gaze upon me. She was enduring some
restraint but it could be humanly endured no longer. She walked over to
me and naïvely unbuttoned the top buttons of my flannel shirt.
“It is so,” she said to her granddaughter-in-law, “they are white all
over.”
When we got up to go I asked permission to take her picture. We all
stepped into the road together. When the camera clicked and was again
in my rucksack, she dramatically raised her eyes to the mountain tops
and gave us her _vale_.
“I am eighty years old. I have never seen a foreigner. I have wanted
all my life to see a foreigner. Now that I have seen foreigners I can
die happy.”
We gave her one of our paper umbrellas as a remembrance so that if she
should wake up the next morning with a doubt that it had all really
happened there would be that visible evidence standing in the corner.
The testimony of our visitation in the shape of a fifteen-cent umbrella
was evidently appreciated. She took it cherishingly in her arms as if
it were newborn and of flickering life.
It is fourteen miles by railroad from Fujimi to Hinoharu. The railroad
would be the shortest distance for a crow, but even that bird might
find himself the blacker if he should essay the long, sooted tunnels.
We found many extra miles by exploring the up-and-down paths for the
changing views of Fuji, but nevertheless it was early in the afternoon
when we reached Hinoharu. I then discovered two shaved ice shops,
one after the other, and the intoxication pitched my mood to full
ebulliency. For one day O-Owre-san could have as much walking as he
could digest as far as I was concerned. We shouldered our rucksacks and
Hori coasted off down the hill with the promise of a welcome of shaved
ice and a hot bath at the best inn in Nirasaki.
Some distance out of Hinoharu and well into the country we discovered
two brothers of the road. They were trying to manufacture a cup out of
a piece of bamboo to reach into the recesses of the rocks to get at the
water of a trickling spring. We offered them the aid of our aluminum
cup. Japan may affirm, as she does, the non-existence of any variety of
native hobo, but I am sure that either of our new friends would have
answered to the call of “Hello, Jack!” After salutations and thanks
were passed, O-Owre-san and I climbed up the bank to the plot of grass
in front of a wayside temple and sat down for a contemplative rest in
the shade. We always tempted calamity, it seemed, when we tried to
rest under the shadow of a temple. The two Jacks came tumbling after
and shared our cigarettes with Oriental appreciation. They were rather
picturesque individuals. Their cotton clothes were not only in tatters
but were imaginatively patched. In a land where there is nudity and not
nakedness patches do seem an affectation of the imagination.
I was sleepy from the sun and I dropped back in a natural couch between
the roots of a tree and pulled my cork helmet down over my face to
keep off the flies, leaving to O-Owre-san the study of the habits and
customs of the Nipponese tramp. As I lay there in drowsy half-sleep one
of those companions, so I judged from the sounds which crept under my
hat into my ears, was suffering from a mood of restlessness. Also he
was afflicted with a strange, gasping wheeze. I had just reached the
point of being interested enough to look out from under my hat when
a panting breath was expulsed over my neck, and my hat arose from no
effort of mine. I was left lying between the roots to look into a pair
of pitiless, yellow eyes.
It took me a frigid moment to discover that my vis-à-vis was a horse.
The animal stood over me, holding my hat in his teeth just beyond any
sudden swing of my hand. After he had had sufficiency of staring he
tossed his head, still holding fast to the hat, and ambled off towards
the road. I jumped to my feet and followed. As soon as the bony,
ill-kempt creature stepped out of the temple grounds his malevolence
vanished. He dropped the hat into the gutter and jogged away to find
a more conventional pasture. We could now add animals to the list of
uncanny powers that from time to time had driven us from resting in
temple grounds. I had no temper left for facing the laughter of the two
Japanese tramps. I called back to O-Owre-san that I was on my way and
he kindly brought my rucksack.
Instead of the usual sharp differentiation between city and country,
Nirasaki has an indefinite beginning of straggling houses. The town
lies along the shore of the Kamanashigawa river, which has cut its
way through the granite rocks of the valley, a strong current flowing
a thick, whitish grey colour. As we were entering the outskirts we
heard the shrill whistle of the reed pipe of a pedlar and a moment
later we saw him coming out of a gate carrying his swinging boxes of
trays hung from a yoke across his shoulders. He was so abnormally tall
for a Japanese that we quickened our step to have a look at him. He
dropped the reed from his lips to sing-song his wares--odds and ends
of shining trumpery. The words were Japanese but the intoning called
us back to China, and when we saw his face we were sure that he was
a Manchu. He knew the last ingratiating artifice that has ever been
accredited either to pedlar or Celestial. We delayed to appreciate his
technic, to see him approach the women of the open-sided houses, and to
fascinate them by the intensity of his will to please, and also by his
ingratiating gallantry.
“Take care!” we felt like saying oracularly to all Japan. “Take care
that you never attempt the conquest of China. China may be conquered
but never the Chinese. They will rise up and slay you not by arms but
by serving you better than you can serve yourselves.”