III.

The Usui Pass.

The first object to catch my eye, when the shoji were pushed apart,

the next morning, was a string of the ubiquitous paper fish, dangling

limp in the motionless May air from a pole in a neighboring yard;

highly suggestive of having just been caught for breakfast. The

sight would have been painfully prophetic but for the food we had

brought with us; for, of all meals, a Japanese breakfast is the most

cold, the most watery, and the most generally fishy in the world.

As it was, breakfast consisted of pathetic copies of consecrated

originals. It might have been excellent but for the canned milk.

No doubt there are persons who are fond of canned milk; but, for my

part, I loathe it. The effect of the sweetish glue upon my inner man

is singularly nauseating. I have even been driven to drink my

matutinal coffee in all its after-dinner strength rather than

adulterate it with the mixture. You have, it is true, the choice of

using the stuff as a dubious paste, or of mixing it with water into a

non-committal wash; and, whichever plan you adopt, you wish you had

adopted the other. Why it need be so unpalatably cloying is not

clear to my mind. They tell me the sugar is needed to preserve the

milk. I never could make out that it preserved anything but the

sugar. Simply to see the stuff ooze out of the hole in the can is

deterrent. It is enough to make one think seriously at times of

adding a good milch cow to his already ample trip encumberment, at

the certain cost of delaying the march, and the not improbable chance

of being taken for an escaped lunatic. Indeed, to the Japanese mind,

to be seen solemnly preceding a caravan of cattle for purposes of

diet would certainly suggest insanity. For cows in Japan are never

milked. Dairy products, consequently, are not to be had on the road,

and the man who fancies milk, butter, or cheese must take them with

him.

It used to be the same in Tokyo, but in these latter days a dairy has

been started at Hakone, which supplies fresh butter to such Tokyoites

as like it. One of my friends, who had been many years from home,

was much taken with the new privilege, and called my attention to it

with some pride. The result was a colorless lardy substance that

looked like poor oleomargarine (not like good oleomargarine, for that

looks like butter), but which was held in high esteem, nevertheless.

My friend, indeed, seriously maintained to me once that such was the

usual color of fresh butter, and insisted that the yellow hue common

elsewhere must be the result of dyes. He was so positive on the

point that he almost persuaded me, until I had left him and reason

returned. It took me some time to recover from the pathos of the

thing: a man so long deprived of that simple luxury that he had quite

forgotten how it looked, and a set of cows utterly incapable, from

desuetude, of producing it properly.

After I had duly swallowed as much as I could of the doubtful dose

supposed to be cafe au lait, the cans were packed up again, and we

issued from the inn to walk a stone's throw to the train.

Takasaki stands well toward the upper end of the plain, just below

where the main body of it thrusts its arms out into the hills.

Up one of these we were soon wending. Every minute the peaks came

nearer, frowning at us from their crumbling volcanic crags. At last

they closed in completely, standing round about in threatening

pinnacles, and barring the way in front. At this, the train,

contrary to the usual practice of trains in such seemingly impassable

places, timidly drew up.

In truth, the railway comes to an end at the foot of the Usui toge

(toge, meaning "pass"), after having wandered up, with more zeal than

discretion, into a holeless pocket. Such untimely end was far from

the original intention; for the line was meant for a through line

along the Nakasendo from Tokyo to Kioto, and great things were

expected of it. But the engineering difficulties at this point, and

still more at the Wada toge, a little farther on, proving too great,

the project was abandoned, and the through line built along the

Tokaido instead. The idea, however, had got too much headway to be

stayed. So it simply jumped the Usui toge, rolled down the Shinano

valley, climbed another divide, and came out, at last, on the sea of

Japan.

The hiatus caused by the Usui pass is got over by a horse railroad!

Somehow, the mere idea seemed comic. A horse railroad in the heart

of Japan over a pass a mile high! To have suddenly come upon the

entire Comedie Francaise giving performances in a teahouse at the top

could hardly have been more surprising. The humor of the thing was

not a whit lessened by its looks.

To begin with, the cars were fairly natural. This was a masterly

stroke in caricature, since it furnished the necessary foil to all

that followed. They were not, to my eye, of any known species, but,

with the exception of being evidently used to hard lines, they looked

enough like trams to pass as such. Inside sat, in all seriousness,

a wonderful cageful of Japanese. To say that they were not to the

horse-car born conveys but a feeble notion of their unnaturalness.

They were propped, rather than seated, bolt upright, with a decorum

which would have done more than credit to a funeral. They did not

smile; they did not even stir, except to screw their heads round to

stare at me. They were dummies pure and simple, and may pass for the

second item in the properties.

The real personnel began with the horses. These were very sorry-looking

animals, but tough enough admirably to pull through the performance.

Managing them with some difficulty stood the driver on the front

platform, arrayed in a bottle-green livery, with a stiff military cap

which gave him the combined look of a German officer and of a

musician from a street band. His energy was spent in making about

three times as much work for himself as was needed. On the tail of

the car rode the guard, also notably appareled, whose importance

outdid even his uniform. He had the advantage of the driver in the

matter of a second-class fish-horn, upon which he tooted vigorously

whenever he thought of it; and he was not a forgetful man.

Comedie Francaise, indeed! Why, here it all was in Japanese farce!

From the passivity of the passengers to the pantomime of the driver

and guard, it could hardly have been done better; and the actors all

kept their countenances, too, in such a surprising manner.

A captious critic might have suggested that they looked a thought too

much at the audience; but, on the whole, I think that rather added to

the effect. At all events, they were excellently good, especially

the guard, whose consequential airs could not have been happier if

they had been studied for years.

There was no end of red tape about the company. Though the cars were

some time in starting, so that I got well ahead of them, they could

not admit me on the road, when my baggage kuruma turned out to be too

slow, because I had not bought a ticket at the office. So I was

obliged to continue to tramp afoot, solacing myself with short cuts,

by which I gained on them, to my satisfaction, and by which I gained

still more on my own baggage, to my disgust, in that I ceased to be

near enough to hasten it.

I had to wait for the latter at the parting of the ways; for the tram

had a brand-new serpentine track laid out for it, while the old trail

at this point struck up to the right, coming out eventually at a

shrine that crowned the summit of the pass. Horse-railroads not

being as new to me as to the Japanese, I piously chose the narrow way

leading to the temple, to the lingering regret of the baggage

trundlers, who turned sorry eyes down upon the easier secular road at

every bend in our own.

A Japanese pass has one feature which is invariable: it is always

longer than you think it is going to be. I can, of my own

experience, recall but two exceptions to this distressing family

likeness, both of which were occasions of company which no doubt

forbade proper appreciation of their length, and vitiates them as

scientific observations. When toiling up a toge I have been tempted

to impute acute ascentomania to the Japanese mind, but sober second

thought has attributed this inference to an overheated imagination.

It seems necessary, therefore, to lay the blame on the land, which,

like some people, is deceptive from very excess of uprightness.

There is so much more soil than can possibly be got in by simple

directness of purpose, or even by one, more or less respectable,

slope.

It was cold enough at the summit to cool anything, imaginary or

otherwise. Even devotion shivered, as, in duty bound, it admired the

venerable temple and its yet more venerable tree. The roofs of the

chalets stood weighted with rocks to keep them there, and the tree,

raised aloft on its stone-girded parapet, stretched bare branches

imploringly toward the sky. So much for being a mile or so nearer

heaven, while still of the earth and earthy.

Half-way down the descent, Asamayama came out from behind the brow of

a hill, sending his whiffs of smoke dreamily into the air; and a

little lower still, beyond a projecting spur on the opposite side,

the train appeared, waiting in the plain, with its engine puffing a

sort of antiphonal response. The station stood at the foot of the

tramway, which tumbled to it after the manner of a cascade over what

looked to be a much lower pass, thus apparently supporting the theory

of "supererogatory climb." The baggage passed on, and Yejiro and I

followed leisurely, admiring the view.

Either the old trail failed to connect with the railway terminus,

which I suspect, or else we missed the path, for we had to supply a

link ourselves. This resulted in a woefully bad cut across a

something between a moor and a bog, supposed to be drained by

ditches, most of which lay at right angles to our course. We were

not much helped, half-way over, by a kindly intentioned porter, who

dawned upon us suddenly in the distance, rushing excitedly out from

behind the platform, gesticulating in a startling way and shouting

that time was up. We made what sorry speed was possible under the

circumstances, getting very hot from exertion, and hotter still from

anxiety, and then waited impatiently ten good minutes in our seats in

the railway carriage for the train to start. I forget whether I

tipped that well-meaning but misguided man.

The tram contingent had already arrived,--had in fact finished

feeding at the many mushroom teahouses gathered about the station,--

and were now busy finding themselves seats. Their bustle was most

pleasing to witness, till suddenly I discovered that there were no

first-class carriages; that it was my seat, so to speak, for which

they were scrambling. The choice, it appeared, began with

second-class coaches, doomed therefore to be doubly popular.

Second-class accommodation, by no means merely nominal, was evidently

the height of luxury to the patrons of the country half of this

disjointed line, which starts so seductively from Tokyo. Greater

comfort is strictly confined to the more metropolitan portion.

The second-class coaches had of course the merit of being cheaper,

but this was more than offset by the fact that in place of panes of

glass their windows had slats of wood with white cotton stretched

over them,--an ingenious contrivance for shutting out the view and a

good bit of the light, both of which are pleasing, and for letting in

the cold, which is not.

"If you go with the crowd, you will be taken care of," as a shrewd

financier of my acquaintance used to say about stocks. This occurred

to me by way of consolation, as the guard locked us into the carriage,

in the approved paternal government style. Fortunately the

locking-in was more apparent than real, for it consisted solely in

the turning of a bar, which it was quite possible to unturn, as all

travelers in railway coaches are aware, by dropping the window into

its oubliette and stretching the arm well down outside,--a trick of

which I did not scruple to avail myself. My fellow-passengers the

Japanese were far too decorous to attempt anything of the kind, which

compelled me to do so surreptitiously, like one who committeth a crime.

These fellow-passengers fully made up for the room they took by their

value as scientific specimens. I would willingly have chloroformed

them all, and presented them on pins to some sartorial museum;

for each typified a stage in a certain unique process of evolution,

at present the Japanese craze. They were just so many samples of

unnatural development in dress, from the native Japanese to the

imitated European. The costume usually began with a pot-hat and

ended in extreme cases with congress boots. But each man exhibited a

various phase of it according to his self-emancipation from former

etiquette. Sometimes a most disreputable Derby, painfully

reminiscent of better bygone days, found itself in company with a

refined kimono and a spotless cloven sock. Sometimes the metamorphosis

embraced the body, and even extended down the legs, but had not yet

attacked the feet, in its creeping paralysis of imitation. In another

corner, a collarless, cravatless semiflannel shirt had taken the

place of the under tunic, to the worse than loss of looks of its

wearer. Opposite this type sat the supreme variety which evidently

prided itself upon its height of fashion. In him the change had gone

so far as to recall the East End rough all over, an illusion

dispelled only by the innocence of his face.

While still busy pigeonholing my specimens, I chanced to look through

the open window, and suddenly saw pass by, as in the shifting background

of some scenic play, the lichenveiled stone walls and lotus-mantled

moats of the old feudal castle of Uyeda. Poor, neglected, despised

bit of days gone by!--days that are but yesterdays, aeons since as

measured here. Already it was disappearing down the long perspective

of the past; and yet only twenty years before it had stood in all the

pride and glory of the Middle Ages. Then it had been

A daimyo's castle, wont of old to wield

Across the checkerboard of paddyfield

A rook-like power from its vantage square

On pawns of hamlets; now a ruin, there,

Its triple battlements gaze grimly down

Upon a new-begotten bustling town,

Only to see self-mirrored in their moat

An ivied image where the lotus float.

Some subtle sense of fitness within me was touched as it might have

been a nerve; and instantly the motley crew inside the car became not

merely comic, but shocking. It seemed unseemly, this shuffling off

the stage of the tragic old by the farce-like new. However little

one may mourn the dead, something forbids a harlequinade over their

graves. The very principle of cosmic continuity has a decency about

it. Nature holds with one hand to the past even as she grasps at the

future with the other. Some religions consecrate by the laying on of

hands; Nature never withdraws her touch.