easiest way to find us was to let us find him, trusting that as long
as I had a _sen_ I would never pass a _kori_ flag. The very pretty
maid had her _kimono_ sleeves tied back from her graceful arms. I do
not know what story Kenjiro Hori had concocted to tell her but after
she had handed me my cupful of snow she watched me steadily with the
air that she expected black magic at any moment. I caught a glimpse of
Hori’s twinkle. I was filled with suspicion. Finally the maid turned
upon Hori in exasperation and said many things. Some strange tale told
about foreigners must have been one of Hori’s best creations, but in
some way we had failed to live up to our heralding. She was exceedingly
pretty and a pretty girl in a pretty tempest is just as interesting and
bewitching in Nirasaki as in any other spot in the world. However, any
translation of his tale to her Hori refused absolutely.
XIV CONCERNING INN MAIDS AND ALSO THE ELIXIR OF LIFE
The native inn is such an interweaving of privacy with no privacy
at all that if the traveller has a sympathetic liking for the
hospitality it should be put down to his temperament rather than
to his reasonableness or unreasonableness. Calling upon all his
reasonableness, the foreigner may still be miserable amid Japanese
customs if he were born to a different crystallization. Hori considered
the inn at Nirasaki to be rather superior to the average, meaning, I
judged, not the luxury of the furnishings so much as the excellence of
the service. The house was crowded. At most of the country inns which
we had so far found we were the only guests, and the entire family of
the host had usually requisitioned itself into service. Willingness and
interest had made up for the few lacks but this home-made machinery
might well have broken down if there had been a sudden descent of
other guests. At Nirasaki, despite the crowding, we had not to wait
an instant for the carrying out of any request. At all times two
maids were listening for our handclapping and, for some of the time,
three. They added to the customary willingness the knowing how of
training. They were, in fact, trained inn _ne-sans_, a class whose
manners and morals have been commented upon with some frequency by
casual travellers, and it is possible that the outside world’s popular
judgment of Japanese women has sprung largely from such observations.
In any argument about Japanese morals the likelihood is that the
simplest discussion will soon march headlong into a controversy.
There arises in a critical comparison of their standards with ours
the temptation to assume as a basis our ideal standard against their
everyday practice.
The Japanese maid, the daughter of the common people, has been again
and again condemned for the easy lightness of her regard for her
virtue. I have not found that foreigners who have lived in Japan and
who have known the people intimately join their assent to this sweeping
judgment. This charge has grown out of a confusion of possibility with
fact. Although we consider that our Western individualism allows far
more freedom of choice than does the Eastern family social regulation,
particularly in the rigid customs and traditions for women,
nevertheless in the morality of sex the guardianship of her chastity by
an unmarried Japanese woman of the lower classes is a matter much more
of her private concern and nobody else’s business than social opinion
deems an advisable licence with us. But because the Japanese woman has
this freedom it is as absurd to conclude that she makes but one choice
as it would be to believe that all order in our society is maintained
solely through the police and iron-clad restrictions. When conduct
shall be entirely determined by rules, then it will be time to relegate
character to the museum.
The duties of the maids of an inn have never included that she must
be self-effaced and a silent machine. In the historic friendly
relationship between maids and guests there exists a certain standard
of manners and good taste, a subtle necessity to the continuance of
such existence. One cannot compare the customs of a Japanese inn
with the traditions existing in an Occidental hotel. The _ne-san_ is
unique. When simplicity and naïve amusement are spontaneously natural,
vulgarity is starved.
After dinner the three maids brought a fresh brewing of tea and
teapots filled with iced water. They also brought the message that
a travelling theatrical troupe from Tokyo was giving both new and
classical plays at the Nirasaki theatre. The actors and actresses were
guests under our roof and the mistress of the inn sent the suggestion
that the strollers would probably be pleased to entertain us in our
room with an act from one of their plays and with dancing and music
when they returned at midnight. After our thirty miles in the hot sun
the hour of midnight sounded grotesquely post-futuristic. However,
it might well have been possible, fortified by tea, iced water, and
tobacco, to have awaited the hour if it had not been for another limit
to our independence. Temperamentally we might take little heed of the
morrow but we had also New England consciences about paying our bills.
We could not invite the players to our room without inviting them to a
midnight supper, and we knew that the joint treasury could not pay for
such a supper.
Thus we made the excuse to the _ne-sans_ that their laughter was more
pleasing to us than the sound of the _samisen_. (This statement was
not without truth in itself.) The responsibility of amusing us did not
seem to weigh heavily upon them; in fact it was we who appeared to be
amusing to them. Stupid creatures, we, who could not even play the
game of “Stone, Scissors, and Paper!” Our Occidental wits were always
a fraction of a second behind. Hori laughed at the bearded O-Owre-san
until the toxic of the paroxysm made him delirious. At last we
acknowledged the sheerness of our defeats at every venture by sending
the victors for ice cream and cakes, and the evening ended with the
solemn ceremonial of trying to move the small tin spoons back and forth
between plate and lips quickly enough to make a transfer of the frozen
mounds before the heat of the tropical night levelled them into liquid.
To escape the mid-day sun in the short walk to Kofu, we were off a
little after sunrise. Kofu is more than two thousand feet lower than
Fujimi and lies in the heart of a flat valley. It is an ancient city
and has not lost its ancient pride, being the wealthy capital of
the Kai province. We had so much time for the walk that we delayed
continually, bargaining in little second-hand shops where the entire
stock could hardly have been worth more than a _yen_, and stopping
at the coolie tea places where labourers rested to smoke and to mop
their faces with pale blue towels. When we were entering Kofu we were
again tempted to halt upon seeing a _kori_ flag floating in the air,
proclaiming that an ice supply had arrived. We had not expected to see
Hori before we should meet at the inn, but by chance he came wheeling
along our street. We called out and he came into our shade. Listeners
gathered around our bench, apparently not so much interested in seeing
foreigners as in hearing a Japanese speak English.
In the crowd was a very old man, so old that his age seemed
pathological rather than human. He made progress by a slow pushing of
his feet through the dust. His red-rimmed, staring eyes leered into
ours as if we exerted a direct line of magnetism. If we shifted our
gaze he immediately shifted around until he again came into vision.
Under his arm he carried a long glass bottle, stoppered with a
cloth-wound plug. He held up the bottle before us. It was filled with
a dirty, pale yellow liquid. Pushed into the bottle was a twisted root
holding in the tangle of fibres two or three stones furred with slime.
The stones looked somewhat like asbestos.
“What do you think it is?” he asked mysteriously.
We said that we had no idea.
“I wouldn’t dare tell you the secret,” he went on, “as the bottle is
worth five hundred thousand _yen_. If you should pay me a hundred
_yen_ I would not allow you one taste.”
We expressed our happiness that he should have such a fortune. Then he
asked if we were Americans and, upon hearing that we were, he formally
inquired for an answer as to whether the American nation would buy the
bottle. “I can tell you this much,” he concluded, “it contains the
elixir of eternal life.”
The ancient seemed to be such proof in himself that he had lived
forever that there was no arguing about eternity with him. For the
sake of saying something Hori made the casual guess, “Is it radium?”
He was startled into palsy. The crowd stared. Evidently they had
heard of radium and it meant magic. Alas! We had gouged out the
secret. “Ah-h-h!” said he, “since you know so much, how can you resist
the opportunity of living forever?” We explained that under the
circumstances of our poverty it looked as if we should have to die
along with the rest of the world.
“I have been but testing your faith and knowledge,” he said. “The
radium of the rocks is permanent. Listen! The bottle may be filled
again and again without losing its strength. For only thirty _yen_ you
may drink.”
Forthwith he uncorked the bottle and there escaped an odour so vile
that if he had said the tube was the sarcophagus of the lost egg of
the great auk we should have believed without dispute. He poured a few
drops into a glass and said: “Drink, and you will live forever!”
It is not alone honour that may make one choose death.
The crowd, however, sought eagerly for eternity. They passed the glass
around and touched their tongues to the liquid. If any out of the
number of that circle escaped typhoid that fact alone ought to convince
them of their strength to continue a long way on the road to eternity.
XV THE END OF THE TRAIL
Whether or no the Bosen-ka inn of Kofu does possess a wide reputation
for comfort, it should deservedly have it. O-Shio-san was the name of
the maid. This means O-Salt-san, but we renamed her “O-Sato-san,” which
means Miss Sugar. She said that she had been at the inn for fifteen
years, but until the day before there had never come a foreigner, and
now there were two besides ourselves. I do not understand how such
immunity could have been possible in a city the size of Kofu. However,
the fact that there were Occidentals under the roof of the hostelry
at that moment was proved by sight and sound. After the many days of
hearing only the Japanese cadence, the sound of Western tongues was
almost startling. The large room, which became ours, was in the main
building and faced the garden. We could look across to the wing where
the two foreigners were sitting on their balcony. They were eating
tiffin and talking vigorously. One was a short, black-haired, merry
Frenchman, the other a tall, blond, closely-cropped German. They
spoke either language as the words came. Quite likely they had been in
the same university in some European city, and their travelling was a
leisurely grand tour. They could not have been hurried or they would
not have taken time to search out Kofu. Their gay spirit was charming.
They looked into the eyes of the world with a friendly gaze and the
world smiled back at them. Within the month, France and Germany were to
declare the implacable war.
High-pitched footbridges linked together the miniature islands of the
garden and carried a labyrinthine path over the lotus-covered pond.
Lying on the cool, clean mats of our room, sheltered from the sun, the
thought of antique shops lured me not. I declared for contemplation,
but Hori and O-Owre-san wandered forth. O-Shio-san brought fresh tea
and a brazier of glowing charcoal for my pipe. My contemplation began
and ended with a luxurious enjoyment of the view of the garden. Through
the quiet air came the slow, deep tones of temple gongs. It was a day
of special masses. My thoughts found rest in sensuous nothingness and I
drifted tranquilly in a glory of inaction. Another day of such devotion
to passivity might have started the unfolding within me of the leaves
of appreciation for the philosophy of Nirvana, but in the morning some
illogical shame for such laziness urged me into joining the pilgrimage
of Hori and O-Owre-san to the Sen-sho cañon.
[Illustration: O-SHIO-SAN IN THE BOSEN-KA INN GARDEN.]
The deep, sharp cleft in the granite through which that mountain stream
pitches has a rugged beauty. Most perversely, if we had discovered
the grandeur for ourselves and had not been over-persuaded by the
innkeeper to take the long walk, we would undoubtedly have been more
enthusiastic, but as it was we decided that we would rather have spent
the day wandering about in Kofu. Even the unscalable cliffs took on
sophistication from the well-worn path below, which proclaimed that
the view had been the conventional thing for centuries. Despite all
the instruction which the innkeeper had given us about distances and
direction, he had escaped correctness in every detail. As often, there
was no information obtainable from the heavily-laden coolies tramping
along the way. If there is really any mystery which separates East and
West it is the East’s oblivious indifference to time and space and
our complete inability to understand the working of a mind which has
over and over again been on a journey and yet has never considered it
sufficiently worth while to take cognizance either of the distance or
the hours.
As we were walking over the flat plain to the beginning of the valley,
we stopped for a few minutes to watch a field drill of the conscript
army. It was a very hot day, but the uniforms seemed designed for a
Manchurian winter. A few of the men had fallen out of the ranks from
exhaustion. We heard later that during that hot week in one of the
provinces some officer with a new theory had issued an order against
the drinking of water during drill, and that the lives of a number
of soldiers had been sacrificed to sunstroke. It stirred up an angry
scandal. My knowledge of positive thirst would have made me a hanging
judge if I had sat on the inquiring court-martial.
We walked on and had forgotten the drill when four or five men and a
panting officer overtook us. They entered into a sharp debate with
Hori. Finally they dropped behind but followed us until we were a mile
away. They had suspected that we were Russian spies.
We lingered in Kofu for several days but at last again took the old
road which runs through the long valleys to Tokyo. This trail from Kofu
on is rather closely followed by the railway just as is the Tokaido
in the South. I do not know whether it was in honour of (or in disgust
at) all such modernities that feudal Yedo changed its name to Tokyo.
The capital was our destination and we had intended keeping along the
direct road but upon a whim (and a look at the map) we suddenly decided
to climb the ridge between us and Fuji-san, and then to encircle the
base of the sacred mountain until we should find again the Tokaido
which we had forsaken at Nagoya.
It was at the moment of this decision that the demon bicycle collapsed
utterly. If it had acquiesced to the change of route it would have had
to submit to being carried on the back of a coolie. I have not dared to
record all the subtle ingenuities of that mechanical contrivance which
it had concocted from time to time to achieve its ends. Its soul had
been factoried under a star hostile to human dignity. It could bring
about a loss of face to the most innocent who crossed its path. It had
the pride of never having been successfully outwitted, and its soul was
as proud as the soul of Lucifer. It had no intention of submitting to
the indignity of being packed on a coolie nor to have the world see it
with its wheels wobbling idly in the air. In desperate determination
it committed _hara-kiri_. Its suicide was heroically completed. As
I recorded in the chapter when the bicycle was introduced, Hori gave
a shining piece of silver to the coolie to see that the remains had
suitable interment. Peace be to those twisted spokes and to that
jerry-contraptioned frame!
About noon we found a man with a horse. The man hired himself out to
run along behind and Hori mounted the animal. The summit between us
and Fuji was only about three thousand feet above our heads but as
we continually had to go down into deep valleys and come up again
our gross climbing took many steps. The thatched villages were very
primitive, and the people were very nude. The homes which clung
desperately to the edges of the cliffs must have had to breed a special
race of children to survive tumbles, just as in the villages underneath
on the shores of the small lakes, they must have had to breed an
instinctive knowledge of floating. The houses of those peasants were
as much a part of nature as are birds’ nests, and they so welded
themselves into the unity of the view from the ridges that we did not
even think to call them picturesque.
Poor Hori had not a moment when he could sit perpendicularly on his
steed. The road was either a scramble or a slide. Finally he dismissed
the coolies and the horse. We were at the beginning of a path which was
built in sharp zigzags up the side of the mountain. A half-dozen coolie
girls with huge chests strapped on their shoulders stopped at a spring
and sat down for a moment to fan their flushed, pretty faces. They told
us that this was the last climb but they were indefinite about the
remaining distance or the time that it would take. It had been our plan
to get to the top in time for the sunset view of Fuji and the lakes.
Perhaps the demon bicycle had been granted one last diabolical wish. We
were within a few feet of the summit, the air was seemingly clear, when
down came a thick, wet cloud from nowhere at all, and our expectation
for the crowning glory of the day vanished.
All the way down the other side of the mountain the fog hung over
us but it lifted when we reached the shore of Lake Shoji. A village
straggled along the water edge. We knew that across the lake was a
foreign hotel, but if we had not known it we should nevertheless have
had some such suspicion. From the attitude of the villagers it was
evident that we had traversed again into tourist territory. The mild,
jocular incivility of the natives of any tourist resort any place in
the world, except when there is some restraint under the immediacy
of employment, is innate and needs no aggravation for its flowering.
We were tourists, therefore we must be imbecilic. Derisive hooting
followed our ears when we started walking around the lake instead of
conventionally taking a boat. Between the fog on the mountain top and
our reception in the village we were somewhat out of sympathy with
the last hour of the day, and we were even less happy when we reached
the hotel, and it was brought to our attention that we had failed to
remember that foreign prices prevail at foreign hotels. True, there
were excellent reasons why the charges should be higher than at the
native inns. The foreign supplies had to be brought long distances
on coolie back. This knowledge, however, did not increase the number
of _yen_ in our pockets. We were in a fitting mood for turning away
and pushing on to some isolated village. Such a mood can drive a good
bargain and the end was that we were given a room with three iron
cots at a minimum charge. I must pay this tribute to that iron cot:
I relaxed on its springs in an abandonment to sleep which I shall
never forget. But there were other things foreign which were not
so pleasant. To have to wait until eight o’clock for a formal dinner
when we were accustomed to having meals served at the clapping of our
hands, and to have to thump over rough board floors after we had known
the refinement of soft matting, and to have to endure all the other
half-achieved attempts at foreign service--well, “going native,” as the
Britishers say in final judgment, “had been the ruining of us.”
Waiting until the late foreign breakfast hour in the morning almost
numbed the cheerfulness that had risen in me from the exhilarating
sleep on the luxurious bed of springs, but the day was shining in such
perfection when we found an unfrequented trail north of the chain of
lakes, and Fuji-san was resting so clearly in the crystal air across
the pine tree plain, that we quickly dumped into a maw of forgetfulness
any remembrance of such mundane annoyances as foreign hotels. It may
have been that volcanic gases were breaking through the clefts in the
rocks and that the fumes inspired us with a Delphic madness; our mood
became ecstatic. We unburdened ourselves of wild and soaring theories
of art and religion, of love and life--and there were theories that
came forth which we had never dreamed existed in cosmos. We scattered
these inspired words in wanton waste as if we were on a journey to some
world where such wealth would be dross.
The town which we found for the night was on what is called “the Shoji
route around Fuji.” We avoided the semi-foreign hotel but that did
not save us from being tourists. The native inn had ready for us in
the morning a bill almost twice as large as it should have been. In
consequence we added no “tea-money.” If we had, we should have gone
from the village penniless. In all our wandering this was the first
deliberate overcharge, and in one way it may have been justified in the
opinion of the mistress. She had probably learned from the semi-foreign
hotel across the street that foreigners know not the custom of
tea-money and ignorantly pay only the bill that is presented without
adding a suitable and proportionate present.
Truly we were now in the domain not only of the foreign tourist but of
the native pilgrim as well. All day we walked through the towns which
serve as starting points for the different routes of ascent for Fuji.
It was the height of the season for the sacred climb and the towns,
purveying every imaginable necessity and souvenir, had mushroomed
into crowded camps. We were unworthy guests. As far as our purchasing
ability was concerned, a postcard was an outside luxury. When we
reached Gotemba we sat down for a conference, following the rule of
“when in doubt drink a pot of tea.”
By rail to Yokohama was fifty-one miles. We had leisurely covered about
twenty-five miles that day. Even if we should make ten or fifteen miles
more before night, there would be a sufficiently long, scorching,
penniless day to come. The country was not new to us as we had both
tramped through the exploited Miyanoshita and Kamakura districts.
“Since these things are so,” I made argument, “let’s use our remaining
coppers to buy tickets on the express to Yokohama.” As no one’s pride
sufficiently demanded that we had to take the fifty-one miles on foot,
this plan was our final agreement.
Our linen suits were perhaps not as freshly laundered as those of
the other haughty _seiyo-jins_ who were riding on the first and
second-class cars of the train, but otherwise our poverty did not
particularly proclaim itself. We walked to our hotel in Yokohama and
took rooms, relying that future funds would come out of the letter
which was supposedly waiting at the bank for me. In the meantime in the
bag which had been forwarded from Nagoya I found a two-dollar American
bill. This gift we cashed into _yen_ and sat through the evening on a
terrace over the bund along the water front, sipping forgotten coffee
and ordering long, iced, fresh lemon drinks. A steamer had landed that
day and at the next table to ours was a charming group of American
girls. They were filled with enthusiasm for the exotic. The soft,
evening air, the passing life along the street, and the gay tables
carried me back to my own first night in Japan, which had been spent
eleven years before on that very terrace.
The hoped-for letter was waiting for me at the bank. The amount above
the exact sum necessary for my steamship ticket had been intended for
insurance against extras. It was now necessary for mere existence. We
entered into an infinite calculation of finance down to the ultimate
_sen_. Yokohama was no place for economy and we shook off its dust
for that of Tokyo and were happy again in a native inn. With our
linen suits laundered, we called on old friends and shopped betimes
on credit. It was a rather queer sensation to be bargaining for
luxuries when a mere _bona fide_ payment of a ’ricksha charge meant a
most delicate readjustment of our entire capital. Dealers were quite
willing to forward boxes to America with hardly more guarantee than
our promise to pay sometime. I felt that if we were to ask them
suddenly for ten _yen_ in cash our credit would have crashed to earth.
Nevertheless we were confident of our dole outlasting our needs. We
lived our moments gaily. We saved _yen_ to pay the inn bill, and our
boat was scheduled to sail on a certain day.