I had come to see coal, and to find out where it was. The maps are so
small (Geol. Survey though they be) that one is extremely dependent on
local information. To do all this in Japanese with people who did not
understand a syllable of English, was no joke! It is the first time I
have been so absolutely cut off from English; they could not even read
Japanese names in Romaji print, in which my maps and all scientific
things are now done. It was interesting--and I hammered away till I
got my end, and found the _Triassic_ coal I sought, but, alas, there
was nothing in it of value to me. The trouble I had to get it began in
Tokio, where they told me first it didn’t exist, second, that it was
finished and the mines stopped down. In Okayama also they said no coal
in this district existed--instinct kept me at it, however, and though
the people even here said there was none, I insisted there was--and lo!
after a while they took me to it. It was the very smallest and most
primitive coal mine I ever saw, it is true--but it was coal. To-morrow
I am going to another place: it is sad to find no fossils just here,
they would have been such a triumph!
My dinner consisted of rice, green peas, and boiled chestnuts, with a
little fish as well. One learns to value green peas, even though they
be cold and floating in the water in which they were boiled, and eaten
one by one with chop-sticks!
No three consecutive minutes of peace were allowed to me. I was
desperately tired, and though I sat with my eyes shut for quite long
periods and hardly spoke to them at all, my visitors sat on and on till
I was frantic. I have a fellow-feeling now for animals at the Zoo.
=October 10.=--While still in bed, visitors began again this morning,
and I had to shout to prevent an official visitor from coming in while
I was taking off my night-gown. On starting two of them came with
me, and their number more than doubled before the day was out. More
terrible hours of _kuruma_ riding--but the little village of Jito was
worth a visit. Early in the morning heavy downy mists hung round the
hills, and swirled up from the trees as the sun caught them. All the
thousands of cobwebs were like fairy banners on the trees, and the
rocky sides of the mountains rose from the rivers to be lost in the
alluring distances. It was a sight well worth the shivering and the
jolting, and directly the sun shone on one it gave a comforting heat.
The nights are extremely cold, almost wintry, but the days are as hot
as midsummer, hence the thick mists.
We entered the mine, which, unfortunately, though Triassic, is of no
interest to me. A kind of dinner was given at the hotel at 2 o’clock,
and I saw many rather crude native customs.
The man who had led me in the mine, whom I took to be a coolie, and
to whom I gave sixpence, turned up at dinner. In the mine his entire
costume had consisted of a striped flannelette shirt, very short,
and a stand-up white collar!! Literally no more, and that was donned
of course in my honour. Trousers with a red stripe down each leg, and
socks, were added for the dinner.
Everything in this country seems to be the reverse of what it is with
us, and here the dinner _starts_ with much drinking of _saké_ and very
frequent exchange of the small cups; then no more is drunk and the food
begins and finishes the feast.
After the coal mine business was finished, I was taken to a big school
where there were festive sports going on, very similar in the main to
our school sports, and obviously in imitation of them. Many of the boys
and girls (the schools are mixed) were pretty and bright, though the
Japanese child has not yet appealed to me as it does to those who gush
over it.
=October 11.=--Things began at 6 this morning, when all the world was
shivering in its thick white mantle of mist. After riding for a couple
of hours the sun drove it all away, and by 10 o’clock I was streaming
with perspiration from every pore as I went up the hills toward the
little coal mine I had come out to see.
I thought I had fully impressed on the Japanese man who acted as local
guide that I was desperately pressed for time and must return to the
railroad town to-night--but after a couple of hours I found myself
inside the big “middle school,” bowing to an English-speaking head,
who soon asked me to give a lecture! Of course I refused, and said I
was going _at once_ to the coal mine, and would then return to Tatai,
but he accompanied me to the mine, leaving his rightful duties with
not the smallest compunction, and on the way requested me to stop and
have my photograph taken. The Japanese are perfectly infuriating to
one with a definite object and precious time. I cannot here retail the
multitudinous instances of senseless delay I have had to suffer from,
nor the irrelevant things I have had to examine. If I were to go at
their rate I should be still looking at coal mines in Japan ten years
hence. But I must not forget that I am seeing the country if I am not
getting directly to my goal, and that I am in myself a certain amount
of entertainment for them, a kind of creature they have not heard of
before.
After a rather fruitless couple of hours in the mine (results locally
interesting, as the Imperial Survey has mapped the district as solid
granite) I had six hours in a _kuruma_ returning to Tatai. The _kuruma_
was just as uncomfortable as country ones always are, and as I was
packed in with my fossils so that I could not change my position, and
the roads were in places very bad, I was hardly in the mood at the
end of the journey to be put into a train, merely to wait stock-still
at the first local stopping-place for three-quarters of an hour. I am
becoming far more patient than Job ever was, but at times my stock of
patience runs out.
Apart from the mere weariness of one’s bones, the _kuruma_ ride was
very delightful. Every time I see the little groves of feathery bamboo
in their grace and sweetness I rejoice anew. The valleys along which
the road wound were very steep, and the great granite hills majestic
and beautiful. The plants, too, are often charming, and one frequently
sees a single trail of ampelopsis flung across the grey boulders. One
great wall of granite was covered with blood-red ampelopsis and capped
with the native pine, which is so rich in curious curves, and so green
against the sapphire sky.
Although the country is quite wild and unspoiled, all along the
flatter part of the valleys were very many houses--clusters of houses
or hamlets lying at intervals of about one-eighth of a mile. It seems
curious how the little rice fields, which are tucked into every
available damp corner, can support so many people. Straw plaiting
is also a source of income, and in almost every house some one was
twisting the short lengths of gleaming white straw into braids.
The greatest charm of Japan is the way the natives have of inhabiting,
even thickly populating, a district without in the least spoiling
it--except of course where there is a railway, a few yards on either
side are necessarily spoiled a little.
The single line of telegraph wire puzzled me not a little to-day. I
could not imagine why, when it was raised in the usual way on posts 20
feet or more, it should be made of _barbed wire_, when I discovered
that the effect was caused by millions of dragon-flies, perched singly
on it at intervals of about 6 inches from each other! I never saw two
closer than that, or more than 18 inches apart, for about 10 miles!
Now and then one would fly off, or another settle, but most of them sat
quite motionless on the wire. So the only “barbed wire” I have seen in
Japan was made voluntarily by blue dragon-flies who sat there to sun
themselves.
=October 12.=--The hour for rising gets earlier every day. This morning
it was 5 o’clock, with the prospect of 12–14 hours in a wretched slow
train. I am writing in the train now, at the stoppings, which are
never less than five minutes, and often ten or fifteen minutes long,
at every station. The whole distance in all these hours of travel will
be less than 200 miles. The people in the train are, of course, a
little interesting, but far more saddening. Where the train with its
Western atmosphere has penetrated, the beautiful and dignified robes,
the silken skirts and kimonos of both men and women, though principally
of the men, are giving place to a hybrid mixture of all the vulgar and
hideous garments of “civilisation.” Only a few of the most cultured
Japanese know how to dress in good taste in our things, the others are
unspeakable.
Just now the train is skirting a part of the coast of the famous
“Inland Sea,” and small islands lie thickly scattered in it, with their
pines clinging by great twisting roots on to their rocks. The persimmon
trees, with their great golden fruits, look very beautiful beside the
pines, and are richly laden with their delicious fruit, so that they
are noticeable from quite a distance.
After arriving at Tokuyama in the evening I went at once to the Naval
Briquette factory of the Government, who own the coal mine farther on
which I wish to see. A most courteous and charming Director, who had
been in both France and England, put me on my way.
=October 13.=--I started early by train for Omine, where the mine lies
on a little railway built on purpose for it during the last war. The
coal is one of the very few smokeless ones in Japan, and therefore very
important. Omine is a tiny hamlet, practically composed of miners and
mine officials,--where the inn is poor but every one only too anxious
to please.
The mines are interesting scientifically, of Rhaetic age. As they
belong to the Navy, the surgeon attached to the mines wears the
uniform of a Naval Officer, little sword and all, and is very smart.
The coal is carried for a long distance by iron baskets on wires
across valleys--stretches of wire 200 yards, with no support. It is so
strange to find the mixture of modern engineering and science with such
primitive native ways.
The weather is lovely, still scorching midsummer sunshine floods the
hills, on which a tree here and there shows a flare of crimson autumn
colouring.
=October 14.=--The Chief Engineer here is most helpful, and offered to
come with me to Habu, a very small mine 20 kilometres or so distant,
where we had to travel by _kuruma_. At first I refused, but afterwards
I was very glad his importunity had prevented my coming alone. The
_kuruma_ left us to walk the last 3-4 kilometres. There was no
definite road, and an old woman volunteered to guide us across little
tracks through rice fields and along the sandy seashore, and through
rice fields again. The maps of course show none of these footpaths,
and without Japanese help it would have been impossible to find the
place. The mine, when we got there, was the most primitive I have
ever seen, smaller than at Nariwa. On the way our old woman leader
took us up from the shore to a big house standing by itself, telling
us that here the manager of the mine lived. As we had despaired of
ever finding the mine, this encouraged us, but we found the house was
only in the process of building, and was of course not inhabited. It
was a beautiful house, with a great temple-like porch gate, an inner
courtyard, and quite a number of out-houses and servants’ dwellings.
Then, when we came to the mine, we found the owner to be a common
working man, and we saw his wife going into the mine to work like the
rest of the peasant women! The whole situation seemed so ridiculously
incongruous. A case of _nouveau riche_ retaining their old habits while
their palace was being built.
In the mines I have often come across women, naked to the waist and
up to the knee, working underground with the men. To-day I saw such a
pretty girl, and her beautiful rounded body was far too sweet to be
smeared with coal.
To-night we went on to Shimonoseki, and my Omine companion kindly
took me to his father’s house there. A delightful house, with a
great flight of rough granite steps leading up to it like those to a
temple. Here I inhabited three big rooms, opening out of each other,
as well as a dressing-room. They were extremely kind, and only spoiled
things by refusing to believe that I could prefer not to have chairs,
etc. brought into their rooms for my use. I pleaded with them, and
was allowed to sit on cushions on the floor, but could not escape a
European dinner instead of the true Japanese meal. However, it was
very good, and I made up for several past meals of poor quality.
I was given the seat of honour, and my host and I ate alone--his
father, mother, aunt, and sister visiting us for short intervals, and
bringing various things, but never sitting with us. They are certainly
wealthy people, and not very cultured, yet there was not the slightest
attempt at display. All that the rooms contained were a single vase
of beautiful flowers in the corner by the _kakemono_ (long picture),
a couple of quaint ornaments, cushions, and in one of the rooms a
beautiful polished table 6 inches high, on which was a carved tray with
hand-painted tea-cups, and the _hibachi_ (charcoal brazier) with an
ornamental kettle boiling on it.
=October 15.=--I got up about 5.30, and crossed over to Kiushiu--my
host coming to see me off and giving all possible help. I did not
arrive at the mine--Namazuta--till 12.30. The mine is a large one, and
though of Tertiary age, contains very many interesting stones.
After examining the mine I returned very late at night to Fukuoka,
having escaped proper meals all day. The chief of the coal mine kindly
gave me fish and rice and a few real Japanese things at 4.30. At
Fukuoka the inn very noisy, but otherwise all right.
=October 16.=--Noise kept me awake till after 12, and I had to get up
about 6.30. I visited the head office, where officials are arranging
for my introduction to several small mines in Amakusa, which is an
island off the island of Kiushiu--and on which no human being speaks a
word of English, and all the natives speak such a curious dialect that
even the Japanese themselves cannot understand it. I guess I shall have
a gay time. On this whole expedition the amount of hours of travelling
per hour in a coal mine is very great, and I seem to be going night and
day to see a mine here and there. (Things have got wrong here somehow.
I have forgotten to mention the Miike mine.)
Some of the scenery is very beautiful, and though, of course, I am
missing all the regulation sights, I see glimpses of beauty here and
there.
The train arrived very late at Misumi, a little port, from which I
shall go to Amakusa. The moon was shining over the calm sea, stretching
into many inlets and set with many islands, and the effect was most
beautiful and romantic. Though I thought the train had landed me in
Misumi, it turned out that I had to take a _kuruma_ to the hotel, and
it went right out into the country, over a hill where not a human being
or habitation was to be seen, and I began to think the _kuruma_ man
had designs on my life and purse. After half an hour he landed me on
the other side of the peninsula, where the village proper lies, and
where there is a moderately good hotel. On the ride we passed many
mud-walled thatched cottages, without a sign of life in them. The
Japanese live in open houses by day, but at night they put boarded
shutters up before every window, so that no one (at least no Japanese,
_I_ insist on mine being opened) in Japan sleeps with fresh air round
him, which, I believe, is the reason there is so much consumption. They
cannot see the silliness of doing this, and are constantly bragging
that they live in the open air, when all their eight to nine hours of
sleep are spent in these very stuffy rooms, with a lamp and generally a
charcoal fire burning beside them.
=October 17.=--The boat was supposed to start at 9 A.M.
this day, but 1 P.M. saw it still gaily coaling. It is the
very smallest steamer I have ever been in, not really as good as a
ferry-boat, but the prospective journey is to last twelve hours. While
waiting about the landing-place I saw many strange fish which were
being brought in. One big fishing-boat had a load of huge creatures,
bigger than men, of two kinds. One kind like lovely dragons, with long
snouts and great wing-like fins, the other fish the most curious I have
ever seen, and apparently, though I don’t know at all, some kind of
shark. They were about 8 feet long and thick as a man’s body, and their
heads were quite flat and square-ended.
I could not have imagined such strange creatures, a drawing gives none
of the extraordinary effect they made lying there in numbers, their
great flat bodies heavier than a man could lift unaided. They are to be
eaten, but seem to me to be terribly coarse.
There is no first class on this steamer, and I am the only second class
passenger, but as my portion should be in a minute cabin with stuffy
curtains and tightly fixed port-holes, I am squatting on deck with
the third class people, who are as thick as flies round a honey-pot.
There are mats spread on the deck, and most of the people are lying
on them wedged against each other. I am sitting on my bags, leaning
fairly comfortably against the rail and next to the only man who is a
real cute traveller. He has spread his blanket (Japanese always travel
with blankets, generally _white_ ones!) its full size, and is lying in
the middle, with a clear 2 feet of spare space all round him, and it
is characteristic of Japanese travellers that though the others are
terribly crowded no one sits on his blanket or asks him to curtail its
extent. The scenery is lovely, and the sea without a ripple. On every
side are hills with range after range of jagged peaks, and in the sea
countless pine-decked islands; land lies all round, and it is difficult
to believe one is at sea. 2 P.M.--I am certainly seeing life:
we have just had tea in picnic fashion, squatting here together--and
indeed most picnics are made to far less beautiful places than this
island-dotted sea. One of the women had brought a tray of small cakes,
all looking excellent, but most of them made with the sweet bean
paste I have not yet learned to like, though there were delicious
sponge-cakes as well, five of which I got for 1¼d.--and I paid three
farthings for my tea, which was three times what any one else did. They
would have given it to the foreigner for nothing--but one must support
the honour of one’s country in a far land, and I have learned that
though the Japanese give very freely and refuse a dozen times to take
payment, they are not really at all averse to receiving it.[3]
[3] I now know that I ought to have given very much more than three
times the price to the peasants had I been anywhere but in the most
unsophisticated parts.
We are twisting in and out of the inlets and coming very close to the
islands, and if the landscape were not so much softer and greener and
more rounded, I could well imagine we were in the Fjords of Norway.
The rocks are in places very white, and here and there near villages
are groups of lime-kilns of primitive type. There are fleets of
fishing-boats everywhere--and I believe (by this time I have seen a
good deal of the country) that there are no consecutive 2 miles along
the whole coast of Japan without a fishing village! It is not on the
coast, but in the mountains that the really solitary places are to be
found.
I arrived almost in the middle of the night, to be welcomed on the ship
by various folk, from the inn-keeper upwards and downwards--there was a
regular lantern procession of people. They all stopped round or in my
room to talk or stare, according to their social stations; the landlord
coming midway, he sat just outside the limit of the room--which was,
of course, widely opened on three sides--and held converse with all of
us within, or hurled abuse at all the maids and boys and small children
who collected without. Fortunately the chief official of the mines
left soon, intimating that it was late, so I got to bed earlier than
I expected and slept well, though, as my window-walls were wide open,
it was so light that I had to put up my umbrella. It is getting quite
usual for me to sleep under my open umbrella, and as the mats they
spread on the floor are never more than 3 or 4 inches thick, it feels
very like sleeping on the seashore, and I quite enjoy it, though at
first I used to wake up and wonder where I could be.
=October 18.=--Early this morning I started to look at mines--with five
people in my official train. This island is one of the least civilised
of Japan, and there are practically no roads on it, though tracks here
and there, and some surprisingly big coal mines. We went from place to
place on foot and in small fishing-boats across the bays, which would
have caused very long detours to walk round; and these were numerous,
for these islands are very much cut up, and the sea surprises one
everywhere one goes, generally on two or three sides at once.
Some of the bigger fishing-boats we passed were most interesting, and
looked, on a small scale, exactly like my imagination of what an old
Egyptian boat must have been. The six oars (one can hardly call them
oars in our sense of the word, for they are thick, and much the same
shape from end to end, and with a little twist in them) were manned
each by three naked men, all standing clad in their skins (which the
scorching hot sun had burnt a lovely brown gold colour), and with the
minutest white-and-blue waist cloth. Round their heads they had a white
or white-and-blue towel tied fillet fashion, with a bow on one side.
As they bent and rose over the oars they shouted all the time and
very hoarsely a sort of meaningless refrain--but it was very good for
keeping time and could be heard a long way off. Of the three oars on
each side of the ships, two were pulled one way and one the other, and
as the pullers kept forgetting which was which, I could not understand
how the boats ever progressed, but they did, and at a pretty good
speed, but far out at sea they put up sails. My little boat tried a
sail for a short time. It was nearly square, with a bamboo to keep it
out at each end, but the peg which held it down gave out when a puff of
wind came and the boat tipped over gaily. The mast was tied in a very
primitive fashion, and I wondered how the fishermen ever dared to go
out to sea in such a craft. It landed us safely, however. One coal mine
we went to was high up, 700 feet straight up from the sea, and amid
pretty scenery. At one mine, where the people were most kind, they had
gone to the extent of carrying a tea-cup with a handle for me, because
they said I could not use their kind without a handle (as though I
never drank out of glasses), but the owner of the mine took off all his
English clothes, down to the shortest shirt I have ever seen, which
was open up the back, and did not think I might find _that_ a little
more difficult to put up with than a cup without a handle. It is a good
thing that I had all the up-to-date ideas of hygiene before I came!
=October 19.=--To-day was spent in returning to the main island of
Kiushiu, for the little ship took nine to ten hours about it. The start
to-day was made in good time, so that three separate sets of people
were late, and the steamer stopped to take them on one by one. A skiff
came along propelled by three boards pulled up from the bottom of the
boat, and left us two passengers. In order to get to the north of this
small island of Amakusa, though only 25 miles or so from the south
of the island, I must go back to the main island, to Mogi, and take
another steamer back to the northern port of Amakusa!--multiplying the
distance a hundred-fold, but there seems nothing else to do, it is
impossible (they assert) to go on foot, and very dangerous to go in a
small boat round the coast, and no steamer runs. The chief manager of
the mines, who has some in the north and some in the south, has to go
this ridiculous round every time he goes between them.
As the northern mines are the same formation and contain identical
specimens with those I have collected in sufficient quantity in the
south, I shall not return, it is too ridiculous and too expensive of
time.
=October 20.=--I reached Nagasaki and found Mr. G---- (the half
Japanese son of a Scotchman and an important person here) most kind.
He arranged for a delightful steam-launch all to myself to take me to
Takashima, a small island which exists for, and is entirely populated
by, the coal-mining people, to whom it belongs.
The mine was the first opened in Japan, and was for some time owned
by Mr. G----’s father; it is the most completely arranged I have yet
seen, probably owing to its age, but is rather dangerous to work, as it
goes miles under the sea, and there is a large quantity of gas. Last
year 300 men were killed in it--I was on the very spot where the chief
engineer was found dead.