it before, when I came to this place hunting plants; and then the
hills began, but the road was splendidly graded, and I rode up all
but one with great ease. The road followed the winding valley, and
sometimes seemed to hang over the roaring flood of the river beneath,
so precipitous was the slope. At each curve of the road a broiling
sun shone on me, and at each convex bend there was a waterfall, which
seemed to emanate the coolness of hidden ice, and as the road curved
and wound in and out like a Chinese dragon’s tail, I did not lack
sensations. The beauty of the solitude of a million trees whispering
together, of the silvery blue water and the grey rocks, shone with a
clearness and brilliance that is so rare in England, and that is one of
the chief charms of this country.
When I arrived and settled into my rooms, I had a bath. It was a big
hotel, built for the hot springs which ran directly into the baths, and
I was ushered into a bath-room where a man and woman were disporting
themselves after the manner of Adam and Eve before the Fall. I felt
like the serpent; but refused, with more tact than he showed, to form
a third. This surprised the bath-attendant, who, however, allowed me
to wait, and then stood outside the door all the time I was bathing to
keep others out, and only peeped through the broken glass in the door
now and then just to see whether I was ready to come out. After the
bath he escorted me across the road (I had to sleep in the annexe),
holding the umbrella over me, as I trotted along in a kimono and a
pair of stilt-like gheta. In the luxury of idleness after supper I
watched a woman in the house opposite. She was clad in a brilliant
blue kimono, just the right old china blue--open at the throat, and
her face and neck were the colour of warm sun-tanned unstained wood.
“Olive,” I suppose people call the complexion, but it was warmer,
and more beautiful than that, while her hair was smooth and black as
polished ebony, arranged with a series of rich curves in it. The old
abused word “chaste” expressed her more exactly than any other I know.
The tawdry fluffiness of most of our women’s dress and hair seemed
like flannelette beside rich satin as compared with her. Yet a curl
may bewitch one and entangle one’s soul, I know--a curl, but not the
frippery and broken lines that are so rife in Europe. I wonder till
I verge on lunacy how it is that the West has not yet discovered the
glory that lies in smooth curves and gleaming surfaces, and in lines of
cloth, unbroken by frilling and tucking and ruching and pleating.
=August 5.=--I hunted fossil insects morning and afternoon, and got a
haul, better than I might have expected, if not so good as I had hoped.
I left the bicycle at a primitive little saw-mill, turned by the river
one has to cross to get the fossil quarry. The people are all greatly
interested in it, never having seen a woman’s bicycle before. The hotel
is about a couple of miles from the fossil place, so I go on it as far
as I can get, for it is hot to walk, and stones are heavy to carry.
=August 6.=--Another quiet day. I took a walk over the stream up a
branch valley. How gloriously limpid and clear the water is. The
solitude is complete, and yet there are footpaths where one can wander
without battling with _sasa_. It is a particularly charming place.
=August 7.=--I got very wet while getting fossils, indeed, it was
like fishing rather than anything else. After I got back there was
a terrible storm, really a small typhoon; one realised then why the
houses are built with such greatly projecting roofs. The rain washed
over them in a torrent, a white cascade, and streamed off the sides
and swirled up into the air like a great waterfall. I have never seen
anything like it; the whole building was like a giant fountain of
dashing white water, and the wind blew till I feared for our roof.
=August 8.=--I had great luck cycling back to the station in excellent
weather, but found the train was two hours late, owing to the
destruction of last night’s storm; and before we got back to Tokio it
was three hours late, so that instead of getting home just in time for
dinner, I arrived, famished, at nearly 10. A kind Japanese lady gave me
some biscuits in the train, for which I was grateful indeed; they were
Huntley and Palmers’ “Osborne,” and M’Vitie and Price’s Shortbread! The
joy of meeting these dear old friends in such an unexpected place was
even greater than the relief my internal economy felt. They must have
been wealthy people to have such biscuits, as, indeed, I had previously
suspected, for the girls’ blue and white kimonos, that would naturally
have been of cotton, were made of silk--poor children! for it is really
much hotter than the plebeian cotton.
=August 9.=--A quiet day of rest. It is very hot, and I expect I am the
only foreigner fool enough to be in Tokio.
=August 10–12.=--I spent a short time at the Institute and the rest at
home, writing in my garden, and battling with mosquitoes and mould, but
really having a restful time, for I ran away (thinking it the better
part of valour) from the former, and write inside a mosquito net.
=August 13.=--I set off with my bicycle to Yejiri to see the cycads
again. As it is 7½ hours’ journey by slow train, I went to the
farther station of Shizuoka, at which the express stops, and got there
in five hours, to bicycle 7 miles back to the temple. The wicked old
sinner of a priest had written to me, in answer to my requests, to say
that there were no cones this year, and I had believed him till I heard
by chance it was false. And I found quantities of cones--twenty-six
huge things, a foot and a half long, on one tree!
The smell of these cones is very strong, like pineapple and cake
fermented together; it is a very thick smell, and in a room one of the
cones was very persistent and penetrating, though it did not seem to
attract any insects at all.
I had difficulty with the females, for the trees are awfully tall and
shaky, but by tying two ladders together I got at them, and clung for
my life to the sturdy leaves. The temple is as sweet as ever, but the
evening was wet. As I sat over my supper in the house, which is all
opened up so as to look very big, the priest unconcernedly took off his
only garment and had his bath without closing the bath-room partition,
while his wife went about all the time with about a yard of cotton
round her hips.
Clothes, you will say, fill a large part of this journal, but Japan
is one great exhibition in the art, mistakes, or want of clothes.
Everything from perfection to nothingness is to be seen nearly
every day. Everything from a soul-thrilling beauty and dignity to a
side-aching farce of incongruity.
=August 14.=--I set off at half-past six to get back to Shizuoka, as I
expected Professor B---- to tea in the afternoon in Tokio. Well, first
they put me on the sea road, which at the start seems more direct than
the one I came by, but actually follows the bays and hills, and adds
several up and down miles to the journey. Then, even when I started,
it was steadily pouring with rain. Then both my tyres went flat with
punctures, quite unmendable in those wilds. Then the road was bad and
narrow, and made of stones the size of marbles up to the size of a
doubled fist. Then the streams flooded, and I had to go through thirty
or forty of them which had decided to go _over_ instead of under
or beside the road. Then the roar of a landslip added a fillip of
excitement. Then the growl of thunder and the brilliance of lightning,
which I fancied might be attracted by my spokes. Then, not torrents of
rain, but cataracts, waterspouts, Niagara falls!
I said naughty things ever so many times, but stuck on my bicycle
and wouldn’t get off for the stony-bedded little torrents that
impertinently crossed the roads, and just went through them. What
matter if I couldn’t see the bottom upon my bicycle, I couldn’t see it
any better if I waded them. I folded up the sheets (I always travel
with sheets for sleeping), put them in a pad under my cloak to try and
keep my back dry, but soon they were saturated and merely added to the
general weight of water. I never felt more depressed and more weary;
what with the road as it was, the floods, and the punctures, I couldn’t
go much more than 5 miles an hour, and that with jolting like an Irish
cart, and at an expense of effort that would have taken me 20 miles an
hour the day before. All the time I ploughed along I remembered the
part I was to act by 4 o’clock in Tokio, clad in white samite (I mean
muslin), gracefully dispensing tea and small talk to a distinguished
visitor.
There was nothing to do to counterbalance the leg-aching pedalling or
to lend a little warmth to the clammy, dripping mass that I was. I got
to the station and missed the train! There was two hours’ interval
to the next, and I was so drowned I couldn’t go to a hotel, for the
abominable sun had come out as I got to the station and the sky was
blue and innocent-looking, and every one was dry, and supercilious to
a creature who left pools at every step. A little sweet-shop provided
hot water and peppermint, and things drained off a little as I rode
slowly back, and then walked round and round and round the waiting-room
reading Thackeray’s _Pendennis_, as the crowd entertained itself with
speechless staring, and the porters volubly sympathised as I took a
towel out of my bag, which was less saturated than the rest of me, and
dried my hair a little.
When the next train came it was mercifully the Nagasaki express, with
a dining-car attached, so I left my car and went along and had coffee.
The waiters were so sympathetic, that as I was the only customer, one
offered to lend me a nice dry kimono of his own while I took everything
off, and they dried them over the train fire. As every other passenger
was in a kimono I felt less shy than the situation warranted, till I
saw the stuck-up nose of an English lady tourist at the far end of the
passenger car as I returned in my Japanese rig-out.
However, it was better than sitting five hours in a super-saturated
condition. They dried my things very quickly, for fortunately they had
nothing else to do (the weather was now glorious), and except that all
the colours from belts, books, and cases had got on to the garments I
was normal again, and got back to Tokio in time to have just changed my
dress, when the cheery voice of Professor B---- hailed me in the garden.
=August 17.=--What a thunder-storm! I never could have imagined
anything like it. One peal lasted eleven minutes, and another began
again after a couple of seconds’ interval, and so they kept it up for
an hour and a half, rolling round and round the heavens, as though
the gods played nine-pins with Mount Fuji. The lightning was almost
continuous, too, and filled the heavens with broad sheets of flame. Yet
with all the terrific massiveness and grandeur of the storm, it lacked
the point of sharp concentration that would have added terror. I always
enjoy a storm, unless it is centred and concentrated just above me.
And this stupendous storm was the finest display I have ever imagined,
let alone experienced, and I did not grudge the hours of sleep of which
it robbed me.
The morning dawned clear and still, but the garden was full of wrecked
things.
=August 19.=--Are the gods never going to have mercy and stop their
cruel play of battering Professor _F----_, and through him me and our
fossil work? Instead of coming early in the morning, as we arranged,
he came very late, with the horrible news that he had just heard that
the people who lived in his house before him (he moved last year) had
a _leper_ in the family! Consequently he and his household have stood
grave danger of getting this ghastly disease, and may actually have
it now, the latent period is so uncertain and often so long that the
doctor cannot tell for some time to come. It sometimes lies dormant for
years. Of course, he must move at once, and in the meantime take every
possible precaution. A nice waste of time, even if there were not the
horror hanging over it all!
How this country can possibly pretend to be a first-class Power, how it
can build warships and drill armies to the blare of trumpets, how it
can have a “World’s Fair” in a few years, and invite all the nations to
join in its Exhibition, and all the time have hundreds and thousands
of lepers scattered about the country, and _marrying_--how they can do
this simply passes my comprehension.
In this land of islands why don’t they take one, fenced round by the
sea, and isolate the fearful disease? In a generation Norway cleared
the country of lepers--but here one may touch one any day. On my
way back I saw several beggars, ghastly creatures, kneeling by the
wayside, with fingerless hands, all purple blotched. True, it is not so
contagious as we imagine it to be, being chiefly hereditary, but that
makes it all the easier to stamp out if they will do it.
I am not really afraid (not terrified, at least) for Professor _F----_
(and through him, for myself), but I fear the removal will still
further hinder the progress of the fossil work.
=August 21.=--I worked all day at fossils, and was much vexed to
find that the powerful heat has brought bubbles in the Canada Balsam
of nearly every slide! Botanists alone will understand the tragic
significance of this, and they will sympathise and be merciful when I
bring the bubbly preparations home!
You at home can hardly understand how hot the sun is, really burning
hot, and many of my trays were so placed that the sun has been falling
on them all the time I was away, resulting in thousands of bubbles. I
discovered it by chance to-day, when I had mounted and examined some,
and then left them for an hour where the sun got at them, and I found a
thousand minute bubbles in each of the scorching slides. Alack!
=August 27.=--This morning at breakfast, thinking over cones, a
question arose in my mind about those of _Cryptomeria_ which I could
not settle without a specimen, and which checked my line of thought,
so I gave it up and glanced out of the window beside which I was
sitting in search of lighter amusement (for there is a nice vine there
whose tendrils curl round and round in a very pretty way), and by my
hand, growing on the little hedge I had never noticed very specially
before, was a _Cryptomeria_ cone! Having associated the _Cryptomeria_
always with the stately giants that surround the temples, I had never
associated these green hedges, three feet high, with them, nor did I
realise that they could bear cones while so young. It still remains
a problem whether perhaps a fairy, listening to my thoughts, had not
touched with her magic wand the branch nearest me, so that it produced
the cone, for not another was to be found anywhere around.
I gathered it, cut it open, and settling the point I wanted, was able
to pick up all the dropped stitches of the argument and carry it on.
Fairies are most useful creatures to scientists!
=August 28.=--As my bicycle was once more having a puncture mended, I
had to go in the tram, as it is far too hot to walk all the way. In
this boiling weather the tram was as full as ever, 50 people where but
20 should be, standing so thickly all down the middle that they were
pressed against each other on all sides, and _every window_ and _every
ventilator_ and the door all closed! I slammed down two windows, but
could not reach the ventilators, as they are so high up; directly I got
the chance, I opened a window on the opposite side, but no one else
followed the example, though the Japanese seem to feel the heat much
more than I do, _when not in a foreign style_ vehicle or house.
Taking this in conjunction with the remarks Japanese have often made to
me about the foreigners’ dislike of fresh air, and in conjunction also
with numerous other observations of a similar nature, I am forced to
conclude that the Japanese, as a nation, are not at all sensitive to
bad air. Their houses, built according to the ancient plan, force them,
by their construction, to live in ideally fresh rooms, but put them in
a foreign house, and everything is hermetically sealed.
=August 29.=--I went into one of the Laboratories to-day, and found
four men, three gas burners, and a stove at work, without an inch of
window open--it nearly stifled me. I have noticed this Laboratory
before, and _never_, all through this scorching summer, have I seen the
windows unclasped. It is a foreign style building, of course.
=August 30.=--I got up very early and set off on my bicycle to see
the sacred lotus flowers on the great pond near Oyeno Park, but I did
not get there in time to see them burst open, for that takes place at
sunrise, but the flowers were fresh and fair, still unfaded by the heat
of the day when I got to the edge of the water. There must have been
several acres of them, with their great leaves overtopped by huge rosy
flowers. The purity and radiance of their opaque yet lustrous petals is
something I have never seen surpassed in any other flowers, and as they
stand up in a rich succession of curves to form a 9-inch bowl, their
cumulative effect is magnificent, while in them glows a golden radiance
of captured sun-rays. Glorious flowers!
A little island lies in the pond, which is reached by a bridge, and on
it is a temple, with shrines standing on it. There those who come to
see the lotus worship in their simple way, pulling the temple bell and
clapping their hands to ensure that the gods hear the short muttered
prayer and put to their credit the half-farthings they bestow. One is
always hearing of the lack of religion among the Japanese, but there
never was a land with so many shrines and temples. On my way back I
passed a shrine under a tree trunk on a crowded thoroughfare. It was
only a toy building a couple of feet high, but a workman was busy
arranging his offering of dangling white papers. Religion and daily
life are mingled here.
=September 2.=--I set off for Hayama, a little seaside place not far
from Tokio, hoping to escape this dreadful heat. Though really a very
trifling journey, it takes several hours, as the trains are so slow.
It lies beyond the well-known Kamakura, and is much more beautiful and
open, as it is round the point of the bay, and is mercifully free from
most of the crowd that overwhelms Kamakura in summer.
The little hotel I went to stands on a hill among the woods, looking
down on the sea; it was beautifully quiet, but it was “foreign style,”
and the beds were miserable. I made a most interesting observation very
shortly after my arrival: some ants had built the most extraordinary
galleries all up the branches of a tree, and they had taken the leaves
and rolled them up, and built houses inside them.
Then in some cases they had covered the whole twig over with their
sandy houses, and just left little bits of leaves sticking out here and
there.[5] I was ever so much interested, and found several plants of
the same kind (a species of smooth-leaved holly) with the same thing
happening. I fancy it is new to science, and I wish now I had brought
down some instruments and reagents to examine it properly, but I
brought nothing as I decided I would have one week’s real holiday.
[5] An account of this has appeared in the _Transactions of the
Manchester Philosophical Society_, 1909.
It was amusing to find how difficult it was to get anything to fix the
specimens and bring them back home. There was only one shop that sold
foreign biscuits and so had tins, but they wouldn’t sell or give a tin
for love or money. No, they said, they had no tins; of course I did not
believe them, and roamed round the shop opening every tin to see what
was in it, and I found one that was empty. But they refused absolutely
to sell it. They were returning to Tokio, it was the end of the season,
and they needed it for packing their own things, and they would not
sell it--no, not for a yen. But I grew desperate in the thought of my
specimens, probably new to the scientific world, and whose preservation
depended on that tin; the man who owned it sat and smiled on his
Japanese mats, his _geta_ (sandals) were not in sight, and I knew I
could run fast enough to get a start any way. So I took the tin under
my arm (a huge square biscuit one it was too) and smiling, explained
that I _must_ and would have that tin, and put down 30 sen on his table
and said I was just going to take it, and off I went. He didn’t chase
me; I suppose he thought it hopeless, and besides, I had paid a very
good price, for the tin was ancient and bent.
Then came the search for spirit to preserve it in, for I wanted to
have the ants and all _in situ_; but one could not expect to find
spirit in such a village, and it was no shock to find there was none.
Then I bethought me of _saké_, the poet-famed drink, the wine of the
marriage cups and the friendly festival, and I sent a maid for a jorum
of _saké_; the wine is reported to be very highly alcoholic, I know two
spoonfuls sent me to sleep after weeks of sleeplessness, and in the
_saké_ I plunged my specimens and hoped for the best.
=September 3.=--I moved to a Japanese hotel down on the shore, far more
comfortable for bathing--and with much cosier sleeping arrangements.
It is curious, but I am miserable in a bed now unless it is soft and
_safe_ feeling. If it is hard and rises up in the middle I dream of
precipices all night, for all this year I have slept on the floor,
which seems so nice and _safe_, and really the obvious thing to do when
you have _tatami_ floors.
This hotel has a garden with pine trees, and a swing and cross bars,
so I can exercise myself to my heart’s content, while it is quite
isolated, the last house in the village and far from its neighbours. A
delightful spot, to which I shall hope to return. The maid, O Sayo San,
is the politest I ever met; and of all wonderful things, they refused
_Chadai_ money the first night when I offered it in an envelope in the
ultra best Japanese way on my arrival.
=September 4.=--It is rather too bad, but the weather has turned
miserably cold, both here and in Tokio, and I should have been at work
in comfort, while bathing is not the pleasure it would have been the
week before in the broiling sun. But there are several nice people down
here, Tokio friends.
=September 5.=--I got the loan of the “Bromide” book from Mrs. C----,
how good it is. Have all you who read this read the little book called
“_Are you a Bromide?_” If not, do so; for I fear if you haven’t, much
of the humour of life is a sealed book to you. It has added greatly to
my enjoyment, and it can be read in half an hour.
Coming home I looked into the grove of the village temple, a pretty
little place on a small hill, and was at first much puzzled by an
apparition.
You know (or more probably don’t know) that the most usual form of
decoration in a temple is torn strips of white paper, which hang down.
Real paper usually--only very grand temples have gold as a symbol of
torn paper! Such hanging strips are put in the mouths of the sacred
animals very often, and you may see a pair of foxes sitting, carved
in stone, with these paper spouts streaming from their mouths or
floating on the breeze as they sit immovable. These foxes are often
more dog-like than fox-like, and sometimes cleverly painted, but no
one could confuse them with a _real_ dog. But in this temple grove was
a wonderful creature--a single one, not a pair as is usual--and instead
of sitting on either side of the path to the shrine, he sat absolutely
in the middle of the path--upright, pointed nose straight ahead, ears
erect, and from his mouth the long fluttering streamer of sacred paper;
so he sat, immovable, and before him I stood immovable but astonished,
so marvellously was he wrought and coloured; could he but move, one
would swear he was alive, but his gleaming eyes fixed glassy and
unwinking on the distance to infinity in front of him, and only the
paper fluttered in the breeze. I walked to either side and gazed--there
was something impellingly arresting about this silent image--and for
ten minutes I must have lingered near it, perhaps hypnotised by the
fluttering white paper and the gleaming eyes; and then the creature
rose, still holding the sacred paper in its mouth, and without a sound
or a movement except the inevitable placing of its feet, walked down
the centre of the path into the shadows of the shrine.
A dog?--a spirit? A wonderful dog then, and surely a spirit such as one
only meets in the haunts of medieval religions.