on Mr. and Mrs. B----, who have come up to Tokio for a couple of weeks
from Sapporo, where the snow is in parts 28 feet deep--the worst they
have had for more than twenty years. They have brought up their adopted
daughter--the Aino girl I described from Sapporo--this time we were
able to talk in Japanese, which of course she generally speaks.
=March 31.=--I am making the experiment of going on a walking tour for
a few days with friends, and we have chosen Boshu peninsula, as it is
little frequented and beautiful. We were up at 5 o’clock this morning.
Very late too, as we should have got up at 4.30. However, we managed
to catch the boat which is to take us to Boshu Province, the scene of
our tour. The sail past Tokio down the bay was very calm and lovely; we
had perfect weather and were allowed, as a special privilege, to go on
the top front part of the deck, where we had a good view. Fuji gleamed
white over clouds and pine tree foregrounds, and the sky was blue. The
journey lasted seven hours, and we saw many small bays and islands down
the coast, of perfect loveliness.
Landing at Hojo in Boshu about 1 o’clock, we walked across a point of
the peninsula to Mera. Here the inn we expected to find was demolished,
but we found another and got put up. It was next door to a big school,
however, and we had a very large and very interested audience of about
a hundred children in constant attendance. C---- had never been to a
Japanese inn before, and we were a very merry party indeed. The scenery
here was in no way striking, that I hope is to come.
[Illustration: A LARGE AND INTERESTED AUDIENCE OF SCHOOL CHILDREN
WATCHED OUR PROCEEDINGS AT MERA]
=April 1–5.=--We have been walking all day all these days, and there
was no time to write in this journal, for though we have walked and
slept very little we have eaten and talked and laughed so much that
we had time for nothing else.
The first day’s walk was disappointing, flat, not very near the sea,
and with villages every half-mile or so, but we reached a pretty place
by 5 o’clock, and slept at Chikura in greater comfort than we did at
Mera.
Between Chikura and Wada, our next day’s walk, the coast was prettier,
but the weather dull, raining, in fact, and we did not get the
sea-bathing we had hoped. At luncheon-time it was very wet, and we sat
in a row under the porch of a Buddhist temple (it is like a country
lich-gate) and ate our cold rations. An old woman stopped to gaze at
us, and M---- (who speaks excellent Japanese, having been here since
she was two years old) asked her if she thought we were funny to sit
there. “No,” she said, “you came to play and you are playing. This
child” (pointing to a baby of nine months on her back) “also plays.”
Parts of the road were fascinating, through bits of pine wood and past
many a little temple. I particularly noticed the great hedges, walls
really, of podocarpus, and the numerous lovely blooming camellias,
peach and cherry trees. Between Wada and Kominato the road was still
prettier, with rocky bays and pines. We attracted a good deal of
attention, because C---- and M---- had red hair and J---- yellow. I
alone escaped most of it. The evenings were really very funny. We all
dropped into Japanese ways soon enough. We had many jokes, but none of
them would interest folk eleven thousand miles away. Wada to Kominato
was our longest day, and half the walking party got driven! What with
our pack-horse laden with luggage and the two _kurumas_, M---- and I
were highly amused at the walking tour. We were able to get milk nearly
everywhere, which is noteworthy in Japan, where it is usually a great
difficulty to find it outside the cities. The Boshu people drink it
themselves, and excellent it was.
Kominato to Katsuura was a short walk, but a very wet one, and we
became more Japanese than ever. I discarded boots and walked with my
skirts up to my knees, bare legs and Japanese _tabi_, as did J---- and
C----. We bought the great round bamboo hats the coolies wear, and were
altogether very picturesque. I came to no harm, but the others were not
so well wrapped up in woollen under-things, and C---- in particular
suffered. It was funny, when she broke down, to see her gobble up
three hard-boiled eggs faster than M---- could peel them for her! It
became one of the jokes of the party. My saucepan (the little one I
have carried in all my walking and many other tours, and that I bought
in beloved München and made jam in) has also become proverbial. I told
every one to bring one, but they all laughed the advice to scorn, and
now grudgingly acknowledge the service mine does, though it runs itself
off its legs to provide them with cocoa, and to turn hard uneatable
meat into soup.
The hotels we have stopped at have been fairly good, but Japanese
cooking does not always coincide with our tastes.
At Katsuura we turned in, wet to the skin, and very hungry, to the inn
recommended to us, but found it rather more of a pot-house than any we
had been in, so M---- and I went out in the torrents and sought another
and found it--one with three stories (the first I have seen outside the
city), the top one consisting of two lovely rooms, with verandah, which
we took, and the beauty of the wooden trellis-work in the _soji_, the
reverential politeness of the men and maids, and the luxury of silk to
lie on and to cover us, was well worth the 5s. a day it cost! Hotels
in Boshu are very cheap, and for the first time I have been astonished
by the smallness of our bills--of course it is out of the way of Tokio
and Yokohama people (seven hours in a small steamer, with sudden and
frequent storms, keeps off a crowd), and there are no mines or special
industries to bring commercial people. It seems to be a little scrap of
Japan of thirty years ago, where the people were all simple-minded and
polite, and content with little money. The beauty is not superlative,
but is really very charming, and unspoiled, and with the lovely shore
and blue sea, the place is well worth the visit.
On Sunday (5th) it was simply pelting with rain, and the roads were
unspeakably awful with the heavy recent rains, so that we were quite
gloomy. The third miserable day in succession, and we had such
brilliant weather in Tokio for weeks! Ōhara is about 10 miles off,
and we had reckoned to walk in there in time to catch the 3 train to
Tokio, but it was impossible, and we chartered a _basha_ (a kind of
carriage), reputed to hold eight, but we four found it a tight fit. I
went with the others in it, instead of walking, though I felt like a
shorn Samson, because I wanted to see them off at Ōhara, and really
walking was an impossibility. After seeing them to the train, I was
going on farther by myself. They had to return, because they teach in
a school, and the holidays were to be over on Monday--but I am free a
little longer.
Well, that _basha_, it was quite worth going into! No windows, but
sides of beaten brass that would let down at our pleasure. The only
drawback to brass as a window is that it necessitates patience. Unless
we opened the windows we couldn’t see out, if we shut them they
crashed and clattered like drums and cymbals. If we shut them we were
stuffy, and if we opened them we were frozen and drowned by driving
rain. We managed with forbearance and care to fit our knees into the
space between the seats, but thought with wonder how a single other
knee could get in, and the space was legally that for four more! The
road was as indescribably rutty and muddy as a country road can be
in any country of the world, and it had further a dash of a Swiss
mountain road as it came along some of the cliffs by the sea. We were
frightfully cold, and stopped at a tea-house to fill “Tommy,” the
hot-water bottle, who had hitherto been a useless burden to the party,
but was at a premium to-day. At this tea-house we also bought three
bright red lobsters for 1¼d. each, and they helped to amuse us. Not
long after we found that the wheel was only held together by its
rim, and it had to be knocked into shape every few minutes; fortunately
it was the off-side one from the cliff. When I said farewell at the
train we were loath to part--but as I tucked up my skirts, slung on
my knapsack and put on my mountaineering cloak, I was consoled by the
thought I was really off _walking_ and _alone_, and once more had the
open road before me and my fancy as my guide.
As the roads were so terrible, and it was late and wet, I decided to
stop off for the night near by--and went about a mile and a half to
the coast and found a perfectly ideal inn. It was in a tiny bay, all
by itself, or rather on the cliff above a tiny bay, on the peninsular
point of which was a miniature temple. No human foot-print but mine was
on the sand of the shore, and none but the maids of the house within
call. I took a small room upstairs, facing the sea, where the breakers
dashed on to the cliffs, and found that though inside the house, on one
side it was open, because a big piece of cliff stuck right into the
building. This gave a charming view of moss-grown rocks, and a hollow
stone with a lake in it, all lying between me and the next-door room.
The bath-room was downstairs, and to reach it one went along a long
corridor hewn out of solid rock. The bath-room itself was also built in
the solid rock, and was a great vault-like place. How J---- and M----
would have revelled in it!
The food was such that my saucepan worked wonders with it, and
converted stony chicken, hard rice, and half-cooked green pickle
into a very tasty stew. The beds were excellent, though not of silk,
and I slept splendidly. Last night we had talked till one o’clock,
so to-night I turned in at 8.30 and slept till 8.15. Alternations of
solitude and company are refreshing, and though I enjoyed those girls
immensely, and laughed as I haven’t done since I left England, it is
delicious to be alone with the grey sea in a hotel half hewn out of
solid rock.
=April 6.= After pouring all night the clouds broke about 9 o’clock,
and I set forth in sight of gleams of blue between the grey; the hotel
people were all very polite, though all they got out of me was 2s. 8d.
It is a hotel I shall note and hope to return to, I wish I could bring
some of my friends there from home. In the next little bay, where the
cliffs are also very steep right down to the sea, so that there is no
beach at high tide, the fishermen beach their boats on a series of
piles and trestles, and very picturesque and quaint they look.
The cliffs here are all limestony and sandy, and seem rather recent and
unfossiliferous.
[Illustration: THE COAST ROAD ALONG WHICH WE WALKED ROUND BOSHU]
I walked partly by road, partly along the shore about 14 miles, a short
distance, but the way was very heavy and the day hot. About half-way
were some lovely pine woods with mossy floor and May-flowers, and I
lay there for lunch. Violets of many kinds had been the chief, almost
I might say the only, wild flower we had noted hitherto, but here were
several others. Daisies, like our home ones, only bigger and _purple_;
a lovely intense blue sedum, and a small shrub, with crimson flowers,
the Japonica, were the most striking and beautiful of those I noticed.
The last 4 or 5 miles lay along a curious shore. A greater contrast to
that of my last night’s lodging could not be imagined. The whole coast
was flat for several miles inland, and the beach was a great stretch
of dark grey sand with the small beginnings of dunes here and there,
and must have been more than a mile in width. Along its desolate extent
were dotted little houses, grey as the sand, and built with their
roofs touching the ground on two sides!--these sides presumably being
those of the prevailing winds. They looked as though the full tide
should sweep over them, the beach behind them appeared so unreclaimed,
but they seem to have stood there for long, some were almost buried
under the piled-up sand. I can give no idea of the vastness and the
desolation of this view. The houses seemed mere hummocks in the
wilderness, for under the eaves a man can hardly stand upright, and
the boats look almost as big as the houses. There is absolutely no
vegetation near them, only, at the edge of the dunes, a few small pine
trees venture farther out than anything, but the little ones run grave
risks of being buried. I had intended to spend the night at Jehinomiya,
but found it lies a mile from the coast, so when I found groves of pine
trees, a broad river, with a tiny village and a lot of country houses
of the summer-house type, I put up at the inn, which is not bad. The
hamlet is called Sendocre, and the inn looks out over a broad river and
into deep groves of pine. The frogs are all making as much noise as
they can with their watchman’s rattle-like voices, but otherwise there
is perfect peace; everything is in complete contrast to last night’s
cliff-perched, spray-splashed, storm-tossed house.
=April 7.=--What a day of sights and impressions! I cannot tell a
quarter of them, or to-day’s experiences would fill this volume.
The mile to Jehinomiya lay along the river by a narrow foot-path, with
pine plantations near at hand. From thence to the next town (Mobara)
was 10 miles of road, at first between villages and large farm-houses.
The rice fields lying on each side of the road were the scene of the
country people’s labours, men and women working together up to their
knees in the soft black squelchy mud. They were dressed quite alike,
with dark-blue cotton clothes, very tight-fitting trousers down to the
ankle, and long tunics with a blue-and-white towel tied over their
heads. Some of them burrowed in the mud for roots of weeds, some used
a heavy fork to bring the soil into ridges, and in one field I saw
a wooden plough dragged by a dejected-looking horse. The chickens,
everywhere abundant, seem a particularly large and healthy type,
and they too worked in the rice fields, hopping from ridge to ridge
after the workers had turned it over and revealed small grains and
worms, which they captured. As in Boshu, so in this province, cows are
remarkably plentiful and good-looking. The clusters of cottages with
their grey thatched roofs made a series of lovely pictures, beside
each was one or more glowing bush of apricot or peach, and the white
feathery branches of cherry flower, soft, rich, and with a feeling like
whipped-cream when you kissed them, floated over the rest like white
clouds. For 3 or 4 miles the road lay through pine woods, real pine
woods, with a soft mossy floor and violets, not the high, coarse bamboo
usual in Japan, that makes it impossible to pass. At the edge of the
road were many low shrubs with thick masses of the terra-cotta-coloured
flowers, like Japonica, so that a line glowed on either side of the
sandy track. There were also purple pansies and pale violets, and the
world seemed a very fair place.
At Mobara I passed a school just coming out, and very few of the
little boys even troubled to follow me; none called out any remarks.
My knapsack is carried in somewhat the native fashion for slinging
bundles, and even though I wear skirts, they think I am a man--their
men wear skirts too, and a plain panama sun hat very like mine. Thank
heaven my hair isn’t red. A few discover I am a woman, but the fact
excites little interest.
A less beautiful 5 miles took me to Chōnan, and from there 2½ more
to the place where I branched off across the rice fields to see a
famous temple of great age. The last mile of the road was splendidly
hilly and well wooded, and on the banks were huge blue forget-me-nots.
The road passed under one of the hills by a bent tunnel, pitch dark,
and very weirdly echoing. I could not see where my feet were going, and
wondered if any local bandits made it their headquarters; they could
not have found a more excellent place. Slightly disappointing, was it
not, that I went through that cavernous tunnel alone and without any
incident? To reach the temple I had then to follow narrow paths across
the rice fields, and was not surprised to learn from the people at a
tea-house at the foot of the temple hill that they had never seen a
foreign lady before. The hill on which the Buddhist temple of Kasamori
is built is magnificently wooded; on the summit stands a high isolated
pyramid of rock, and on the top of this the temple is built. This main
building dates from 1028, extremely old for Japan, where the original
buildings of the oldest temples have usually been destroyed by fire and
rebuilt again and again.
The view from the temple itself was superb. One stood on a level with
the topmost branches of the giant trees, and looking through them saw
all round stretch after stretch of green valleys, and crest after crest
of darkly wooded hills. The trunks of the trees near by were covered
with epiphytes and creepers, and in the valleys grew ferns and violets.
In a little tea-house I made myself some cocoa in my saucepan, and
the people wanted to taste it, and seemed highly amused with me,
particularly with my folding knife and spoon, and the metal cup that
fitted on so neatly. Thus fortified I retraced my steps to Chōnan,
and towards Mobara. I expected to find an inn on the way, but none
appeared, and I had to walk right back to Mobara. Then troubles began,
and after walking these 27 miles I was tossed from inn to inn, no room
anywhere! Not that there were so many inns, for it is a small town,
and at last, in despair, I decided to go to the station and take a
train to Chiba, the provincial capital, where there would surely be
room, but I was tired and hungry, and had two hours to wait for the
train. In Japanese inns it is very different from ours; if you have no
room you cannot get a meal, as there is no such thing as a dining-room.
However, I found a charming little tea-house, where I got a rest and a
meal, and they arranged with a hotel by the station to put me up, or
shall I say “take me in”? for certainly I would not have gone to the
place under other conditions.
=April 8.=--Came back by the 8.15 train and reached Tokio early in the
afternoon. After calling on Miss B---- I went to the P----s to dinner
and to make the finishing touches to the arrangements about my removal,
which is planned for two days hence. The blow that awaited me should
not have been unexpected in this land, where no one seems to consider
a promise more binding than a compliment is true. Well! though I had
taken it before I went to Boshu on certain understandings, I found my
house _sold_ to some one else when I returned! As I had arranged with
my present people to leave directly on my return from Boshu, I was not
a little vexed, particularly as the house suited me so perfectly in
every way.
The new owner was willing to let it at a rent of 40% higher than I
had taken it for, and he further refused to do any of the necessary
papering and plastering that I had had guaranteed me, so that instead
of ordering the removal carts, I have to sit down and argue with the
landlord, and it may take three weeks to settle. I really grieve that
it is so utterly impossible to trust the Japanese; I had loved them so
before I had suffered so much of this sort of thing.
=April 9.=--The cherry flowers yesterday were like great clouds touched
rosy by the setting sun, and to-morrow is the garden party of Professor
_S----’s_ ambitions, and to-day! nearly a foot of snow on my window
ledge--everything buried and broken, as none have seen them before.
There is more snow to-day than there was through all the winter put
together, and the pink cherry flowers are cloaked so as to conceal
their very existence; they do not lend the snow even a flush of pink.
There was no way of getting to the Botanical Institute but by walking,
and I am very glad indeed that I did choose to venture out, instead
of listening to the counsels of the Japanese and remaining at home.
The streets were almost deserted, and I trod unspoiled snow, which
sometimes reached half-way to my knees. It still snowed heavily, and
the weight of the umbrella became a burden, as well as being a useless
encumbrance, as I was always putting it to one side or the other to
gaze at some new delight, while the gusts whirled in and under it from
every side. Devastation and ruin lay on every side; great boughs were
blown off the cherry trees and lay across the road. The magnolias which
yesterday sent up glittering white chalices to heaven, to-day hung
limp yellow rags beneath the snow-laden boughs; even the glow of the
flaring crimson plum was quenched. In front of a temple I daily pass, a
great cryptomeria was shattered across the road, its main shaft broken
into three pieces, so that the whole tree shut down like a concertina.
Every telegraph and telephone wire was broken, the ends lying like
traps curled under the snow ready for one’s legs, and the rest looped
from pole to pole in festoons of white rope, for the snow stuck to
the wires till they were as thick as my arm. On the tram lines a few
snowed-up and deserted trams stood helpless, and not even a _kuruma_
passed to jeer at them.
It continued snowing all day, and as the roads were so unspeakably and
unusually bad, I decided to go calling and see the town thoroughly
when I was about it. So I walked to the Embassy, about 2½ miles or
so, and saw the streets, one after the other, in the same condition of
ruin. The traffic was still almost _nil_, but some people had been up
and down the big main street by the Kudan, and a certain amount of snow
had melted. That Kudan hill was a bog on the surface and a river below,
and as there were no footpaths, I was through it nearly to my knees.
After paying several calls in the neighbourhood, I decided to go and
see what Azabu looked like, and walked over there; the P----s would not
let me away again, the roads were too terrible, and so I stopped the
night there.
Obviously the garden party is postponed.
=April 10.=--The snow is still lying thickly everywhere, but on the
road the foot tracks are nearly knee-deep in slush. The papers are full
of accounts of yesterday’s storm. It appears that all the railways, as
well as trams and telegraphs, were cut off. There was no possibility of
getting to Yokohama even, and the Kobe express was snowed up for the
day 10 miles from Tokio. A few trams are running this morning--they
are repairing wires as quickly as possible. By the end of the day
nearly all the cars were in working order; I think they have been quite
remarkably quick over them, but the telegraph wires are still hanging
in festoons or tripping one up.
It is quite a good thing the snow put the party off, for it is the
funeral day of the young Prince Arusigawa, and also we were not nearly
ready with the cutting-machine--the automatic carborundum apparatus is
still far from complete.
=April 11.=--I removed from Yakuojimaimachi to my own little house.
After there was the bother of them having sold it while I was away,
there was so much talk and bother about rent, cleaning, papering, and
everything, that I got cross and said I would move on the 11th, as I
originally said I would, and when I was in the house I would discuss
all these points! That soon settled matters; my goods were put on two
man-carts with great care by the entire family, and plants and all were
safely brought to my little Azabu house. I began to pack this morning
at 8.30, and was ready for the carts at 10.30! That is the outcome of
the Japanese _feruské_ (a square ornamental cloth in which goods are
tied), it is so easy to tie up quilts, cushions, and looking-glasses
all together in one huge coloured pocket-handkerchief. The placing of
my few goods on the little carts took till 12.30, but they were in
Azabu, unpacked and paid, by 2.30. Some things are cheap in Japan.
Fortunately it was a lovely bright day, so nothing got wet.