THE WHITE COW
When Hanano was fifteen, the family council brought up the subject I
had been most dreading. According to Japanese custom, when there are
only daughters in a family, a son is adopted, who takes the family
name and marries the eldest daughter. Thus the name is perpetuated.
The question of the selection of a son for me, I had dealt with in as
tactful a manner as possible, but after having refused two or three
offers, I saw that I was expected to give a positive decision soon.
It is never wise for a Japanese woman, if she wishes to retain a
position of influence and dignity, to say much on any subject. Actions,
not words, are her most successful means of expression; but the time
came when I saw that I must speak. With a letter of wise suggestions
from my ever-faithful American mother in my hand, I went before the
council and asked to be allowed to take the children back to my former
home for a few years more of study. This request caused excited
discussions; but I now had friends in the council, both of Matsuo's
family and of my own, and my past faithful adherence to their wishes
brought a glorious reward. Again my petition was granted, and, with my
heart weighted with gratitude and my soul singing with joy, I began my
preparations to return to America.
With Chiyo, our going was a question of whether to be glad or sad.
Leaving her little friends and her loved school, to go back to a
vagueness in which only "Grandma" stood out vividly was a serious
thing. But Hanano's joy was profound. She was quiet, but busy every
moment, going about with light, quick steps and singing softly all the
while; and I never glanced at her that I did not meet a bright smile.
Many times during the weeks of preparation, as I watched her happy
face, the thought came to me that if--if--such a cruel thing could
happen as that she would never reach the land of her heart's love, I
should always be grateful, anyway, for the quiet, overflowing joy of
this season of hope. Nothing could ever take away that happy memory.
The busy weeks flew by, and at last there came a morning when the
children, who had been turning down their fingers to count the days,
gleefully announced that only two wide-spread hands were left. Ten
days! We were almost ready, but however well one may plan, there always
seem to be some unfinished things that are pushed away until the last
crowded days.
The children had never been to Nagaoka. Many times I had planned to
go, but life was full for us and something had always interfered. But
I could not allow them to leave Japan without a visit to the place
where their grandmother lay beside her husband among the graves of our
ancestors; so early one spring morning we started.
How different was this trip from the one of years before which I took
with my brother when on my way to school in Tokyo! Instead of a journey
of several days, spent, sometimes perched upon a high wooden saddle,
sometimes tucked snugly into a swinging _kago_ and sometimes rolled and
jolted along the rough path in a jinrikisha, this was only fourteen
hours of comfortable riding on a brisk little narrow-gauge train, that
wound its puffing way up the mountains, through twenty-six tunnels
that represented some of the world's finest engineering. Between these
dashes of darkness were welcome glimpses of sunny hill-sides terraced
with ricefields, and a narrow, winding road that I remembered well.
Just at twilight we found ourselves on the station platform of a busy
town having a background of hills bristling with the skeleton towers of
multitudinous oil wells. I had been told of these changes, but my slow
mind had failed to realize how entirely my Nagaoka was a dream of the
past.
I was glad that the children's first sight of the town was in
cherry-blossom time; for, even to me, the buildings looked smaller and
the streets narrower than I had pictured them in my stories. Everything
might have proved a disappointment to them had it not been for the glow
and freshness that peeped over the plaster walls, glorified the temple
yard, and showed from the tinted branches of the trees lining every
street. There was a faint breeze on our first morning, and as our slow
jinrikishas jogged along the strangely unfamiliar road to Chokoji the
air was filled with fragrance from the pink, shell-like petals that
were continually dropping, or lying in drifts on the sloping roofs of
the snow-sheds which hung over the sidewalks.
"How we love these fruitless, beautiful trees--emblem of our dying
knighthood!" I thought with a sigh; and then I looked toward the hill
where the castle used to stand, and an amused gleam of satisfaction
came to me. The old spirit of protection still dwelt amidst the ruins,
for on the foundation rocks rose a huge fire-tower with its high
platform and warning gong.
The old house was no more. I had hoped that Brother would decide to
return, in time, and spend his old age in the home of his youth; for
the gentle little wife that he had taken in late middle life had lived
only long enough to bring an heir to the Inagaki family and then had
drifted out of life as gently as she had lived in it during her scant
score of quiet years. But all Brother's interests were in a distant
city amidst the progressive whir of factories and modern life, and he
would listen to no plans beyond the education of his son.
So the gods of Utility and Commerce had taken charge, and all that
were left of our worthless treasures were removed to Sister's godown.
Then Jiya and Ishi had gone to distant homes; and now, in place of the
great rambling house with its sagging thatch and tender memories, stood
the ugly foreign buildings of "The Normal School for Girls." The old
chestnut tree beneath which was Shiro's grave, and the archery field,
where so often I had seen Father and Mr. Toda, each with his right
sleeve slipped from a bare shoulder, in a strenuous, but laughing,
game of competition, was lost in a wide gravelled campus, where modern
schoolgirls marched and drilled in pleated skirts and foreign shoes.
Strange indeed it seemed--and full of heart-ache for me! I realized
that these changes pointed toward a future of usefulness and hope,
and I would not have retarded them for the world; but all the quiet
pleasures and picturesque life of the past had been merged into a
present that looked cheap and sordid. It was hard for me, during my few
days in the old town, to keep my memories of beautiful old customs and
ideals from completely overshadowing the new, progressive path that I
was striving to follow.
When our duty of love and honour to the dear ones was over, we went
with Sister, who had come to Nagaoka to meet us, to her home on a
mountain a few hours' jinrikisha ride distant. It was an odd little
village where she lived. So narrow was the ledge upon which it
stretched its one-street length that, from the valley below, it looked
as if a toy town of plaster walls and thatched roofs had been pinned up
against the green side of the mountain.
We left the valley, each with tandem pullers and a pusher behind. It
was a steep climb up a winding path from which reached out, on either
side, long, even lines of scrubby trees. Occasionally the men would
stop and, bracing themselves, would rest the shafts against their hips
and wipe their hot faces.
"It's a breathless climb," said one, as he smiled and pointed down
into the valley, "but it's worth the labour just to see yon terraces
of green against the great brown rocks, and the sunny blue of the sky
reflected brokenly in the rippling stream below."
"_Hai_," said another, "so it is. The city fellows see naught but level
streets and dusty roofs peeping above walls or fences of wood. I pity
them."
Then on they went--panting but content.
"What are all these low, twisted bushes with the gray trunks and so
many little fresh buds?" asked Hanano, in one of these pauses.
"Mulberry trees," replied Sister. "This is a silk-culture district, and
the mountain is covered with cocoon villages. Almost every house here
has wooden frames filled with trays of silkworms, and on a quiet day
you can hear the rustle of their feeding as you walk along the street."
That sounded interesting indeed to the children and as we went on, they
shouted questions and exclamations to each other about silkworms and
their mulberry-leaf diet, until the long climb ended in a short, steep
pull and an abrupt turn into a broad street of low, wide-eaved houses.
At the farther end stood the large house of the village--Sister's home.
Its brownish-yellow thatch rose above a wall of rounded stones topped
with a wooden fence, so like the one surrounding my old home in Nagaoka
that the sight brought a shadow-ache of homesickness to my heart.
With cordial country manners, the servants had come out to the big
wooden gateway, and as our jinrikishas rolled between the two lines
of bowing figures, I caught murmurs of the familiar, old-fashioned
greeting, "_O kaeri asobase!_"--"Your return is welcome!"
The quiet house seemed very restful after our long, jolting ride, and
the hot bath which is always ready in old-fashioned Japan for the
expected visitor refreshed us wonderfully. The children and I had just
returned to the living room, where, settling ourselves comfortably on
soft cushions, we were gazing across the porch straight out into the
blue sky, for the valley and the world were far below us, when two
maids appeared bringing in the dainty little tables for luncheon.
"You'll have to do without meat up here," said Sister apologetically,
as she came hurrying in. "We have only chickens and vegetables from my
farm, and fish from the mountain streams. We cannot get meat or bread."
"That matters nothing," I replied. "The children are fond of fish and
rice; and you know that I always liked everything green that grows.
Don't you remember the 'white cow'?"
Sister laughed; and Hanano, always on the alert for a story, asked,
"What is it about a white cow?"
So, as we ate, Sister told a story of my childhood which dated back so
far that my knowledge of it was only what others told me.
"Your mother was not a very strong child," she began, "yet she was
never really sick, either. At that time many of the Nagaoka people,
when they were puzzled and helpless about a really serious matter,
used to consult the priestess of a small Shinto shrine just outside
the town; and Honourable Grandmother asked Father to send for the holy
woman. For two days before she came, Etsu-bo was not allowed to eat
whale-meat soup, or onion, or any food with an odour; and she was
carefully instructed to be extremely good, both in behaviour and in
thought.
"Early on the important morning Ishi sprinkled her with cold water.
Then she dressed her in her crest dress and took her to Honourable
Grandmother's room. All the family were there, and several women
relatives. I remember how Etsu-bo looked as she toddled in, holding on
to Mother's hand. She bowed to everyone, and Mother seated her on the
mat beside Honourable Grandmother, just a little in front of the rest
of us. The _tokonoma_ was covered with straw matting and decorated
with all the sacred Shinto emblems. Of course the priestess was in
the most honoured seat of all. She was dressed in pure white, and
her black hair was hanging down her back, tied behind the shoulders
with a band of rice-straw, from which dangled strips of white,
zigzag-cut Shinto paper. When Mother and Etsu-bo were seated, the holy
priestess prostrated herself two or three times; then she lifted from
the _tokonoma_ a whitewood rod that had on the end a bunch of long
streamers of holy paper. She waved it above Etsu-bo's head, murmuring
some religious ritual. We all sat very quiet with bowed heads. After
a moment of silence the priestess announced that she had just learned
from the gods that Etsu-bo, in a previous existence, had been a small
white cow used in drawing lumber for the building of a Shinto shrine on
the top of a mountain. The message said that the little creature had
toiled up the rocky path so patiently and faithfully day after day, and
had lent its strength so willingly for the holy duty, that the gods had
hastened the slow steps of transmigration and allowed the soul of the
white cow to enter at once into the present life as a human being.
"Do you mean that my mamma was that white cow?" asked Hanano, with
wide-open, astonished eyes; while Chiyo stopped eating and looked at me
with alarm.
"Father didn't believe the priestess," added Sister, smiling;
"nevertheless, to please Honourable Grandmother, he made a generous
gift to the shrine. But he always said it was not so much a gift of
gratitude to the gods as it was a token of satisfaction that he could
now account for Etsu-bo's exceeding fondness for all green vegetables
and her little liking for fish. Now, whether it was really true or not,
doesn't matter any more than any other fairy story; but it's lucky for
you children that your honourable mother is a faithful and a patient
puller, for she has climbed over a rocky path of obstacles and at last
is ready to pull you all the way over to America."
And she nodded merrily at the children as she served me another
generous helping of bamboo shoots and greens.
A few days later one of Sister's neighbours, whose son was a successful
oil merchant in Tokyo, came to see us. Meeting her recalled to both
Hanano and me a very amusing incident connected with a call from the
son's wife soon after we had gone to Tokyo to live. She was a lady
of the new-rich aristocracy--progressive, wealthy, and altogether
"_highkara_"--a recently coined word which implied the very essence
of what was stylish and up-to-date. She was beautifully attired, in
Japanese dress of course, for even the most progressive women had not
reached the stage where European dress was worn on elegant occasions.
After a long, ceremonious bow and the usual complimentary inquiries
regarding the health of family and relatives, and also a few tactful
remarks in praise of the flowers arranged on the _tokonoma_, she
leaned forward and unwrapped a square of beautiful crêpe exquisitely
dyed and embroidered. It is an age-old Japanese custom, when calling
upon a friend, to take a gift, and my guest lifted out and presented,
modestly but with evident pride, a large imported paper box on which
was printed in fancy English letters:
IMPORTED DAINTIES
A Foreign Delicacy Possessing the Fragrance of Flowers!
Used by Ladies and Gentlemen
in the
Cultured Society of Europe and America
It was a large, wholesale package of ordinary chewing gum. The
elaborate, ceremonious manner of my guest's every movement being in
accordance with the strictest etiquette, made the unexpected appearance
of that plebeian package a most incongruous and amusing thing. Yet
this was a perfectly natural gift for her to make. It was not easy to
choose a suitable present for a person who had lived for several years
in America, and who was believed to be foreign in her tastes; so my
guest had gone to a store where foreign things were sold and, with
considerable care, had selected this as being an especially appropriate
gift for me.
Hanano and Chiyo had been in the room when the box was presented. Chiyo
looked with grave interest upon the foreign lettering. Of course she
could not read it, but Hanano's first careless glance, as we all bowed
slightly in acknowledgment of the kindness, was followed instantly by
another quick look; then, with a strange contortion of countenance, she
bowed a deep "Excuse me" and slipped quickly from the room.
As soon as the caller had gone she hurried in to me.
"Oh, Mamma," she cried, gleefully, "just to think that Nakayama Sama
should select that gift for _you_! What would she think if she could
only know how you scolded me that time in America when I came home from
school chewing a piece of gum? And how you made me wash my mouth with
salt and told me that if I were in Japan Ishi would say that I looked
like the Buddhist pictures of a starving soul in the Hell of Hunger!"
Sister was very much interested in this story.
"It seems a peculiar custom," she said, "but it is not so harmful as
the one from which originated our blackening the teeth."
"What did start that, Sister?" I asked. "Several people in America
asked me, and I could only tell them that ridiculous old story of
the homely wife who stained her teeth by mistake, and it made her so
beautiful that she won devotion from her husband and envy from all
other wives."
"There are many stories as absurd as that, about all our old customs,"
said Sister. "When I made my first visit home with black teeth, I heard
Father and Mr. Toda talking about our ancestors once having had a
fashion of chewing something. But the story that Honourable Grandmother
told me was this:
"Long ago, when everybody had white teeth, there lived a young wife
whose jealous husband accused her of smiling to show her beautiful
teeth. That day when cutting eggplant for dinner she took some thin
peelings and put them over her teeth. The husband returned and, seeing
how beautifully the purple colour contrasted with his wife's olive skin
and scarlet lips, angrily asked why she had decorated herself. She
told him she had tried to cover her teeth so that they would not show.
Recognizing her modest worth, the husband was jealous no longer. Thus,
more attractive than ever, she became a model to imitate, and in time,
the added beauty of blackened teeth came to be the emblem of a trusted
and dutiful wife. That is the story that Honourable Grandmother was
told when she married."
What Sister had heard Father and Mr. Toda talking about was probably
the theory which is considered the most reasonable explanation of our
custom of blackening the teeth. It is an historical fact that the first
conquerors of Japan, who no doubt came originally from the hot shores
of Central Asia, planted betel orchards in the warm islands of South
Japan where they first landed; but on account of difference in soil and
climate it was almost impossible to make the trees grow. So, in a few
years the habit of betel chewing became necessarily confined to those
who represented wealth and rank. An ancient Imperial coach used by an
Emperor who reigned more than a thousand years ago, and which is now in
the Art Museum of Tokyo, was roofed with a thatch made of the husks of
betel nuts. This speaks of the rarity of the betel trees at that time,
for of course the Imperial cart was the most costly vehicle in the land.
When the time came that only people of the highest class had
betel-stained teeth, imitations became the fashion and substitutes
were found. During the Middle Ages, long after the nuts were extinct
in Japan, both men and women of high rank blackened their teeth with a
powder made from a wild nut from the mountains. The Imperial courtiers
kept up this custom to 1868. At that time even Meiji Tenno, the Emperor
of the Restoration, had blackened teeth. The samurai never stained
their teeth. They took pride in scorning any fashion that spoke more
of luxury and ease than of strength and power of arms. After the
Restoration this emblem of vanity faded before the advancing light
of Western life; but, suggestive as it was of artistic beauty and
high-class leisure, it remained with the women, and all classes adopted
it as the marriage emblem. From then on, they blackened their teeth on
their wedding day and kept them black ever after.
The fashion is not an ugly one. When blackened every morning, the
teeth look like polished ebony, and the gleam of shining black behind
coral lips brings out the clear olive of the skin and looks as
beautiful to Japanese eyes as did, to the eyes of a European, the dot
of black courtplaster on the ivory skin of a maiden in the days of
colonial America. The custom is now dying out, but it is still seen
everywhere in rural districts. Even in large cities, almost all old
ladies of very high rank and of very humble station still cling to the
custom. The middle class of Japan always leads the way in progress.