But things are progressing, if slowly, in the general direction of
official desires. Asahigawa, for example, north of the geographical
center of the island, in what was at the beginning of the present
century an unpeopled wilderness, is already a “whale of a town,”
spreading for miles across the floor of a splendid valley, with a great
row of snow-clads all along its far eastern horizon. There is scarcely a
typical Japanese building in it, only a Shinto shrine or two, hardly a
_shoji_ or a tiled roof. Yet the spirit of Japan has in no way been lost
in the transplanting. That courteous yet subtle something which tells
the foreigner that he is welcome as a visitor but as nothing more, that
seldom spoken yet ever-sensed insistence on “Japan for the Japanese,”
are as evident here as in the most crowded portions of the main island.
[Illustration: An Ainu who has come into close contact with Japanese
civilization]
[Illustration: An Ainu girl of the younger, unmustached generation]
[Illustration: The older Ainu women of the primitive tribe of northern
Japan have flaring blue tattooed mustaches—but they are almost invisible
to the camera]
[Illustration: Preparing to propitiate the gods, and the neighbors, in
favor of a new building in Hokkaido, where religious custom remains even
if architecture changes; this ceremony seems always to take place at
sunset]
Surely, too, the public ceremonies I chanced upon were strictly
national. It seemed to be dedication day for new buildings, a propitious
phase of the moon perhaps; and at least half a dozen unfinished
structures scattered about the town, still in their two-by-four skeleton
form, were preparing to receive the blessings of the gods. The gangs of
carpenters simultaneously left off toward five in the afternoon the work
of erecting and took to raising instead, with a plethora of amateur
assistance, various symbolic contrivances at the tops of the structures.
First to be placed were five big upright banners, respectively red,
saffron, white, green, and purple in color. Then there arose a central
support bearing a small mirror—unfailing symbol of Shintoism—and a
fantastically misshapen doll god in a red bib. A rude platform having
been laid across the joist high up under this improvised chapel, and
various other minor preparations being concluded, there gingerly
ascended the sagging ladder a Shinto—priest, I suppose we must call him,
for want of a more exact term. His shaven head, topped by a sort of
mitered cap from which undulated what seemed to be the old Tokugawa
head-dress, its projecting tail-like afterpiece apparently made of
window-screening, his brilliant green robe and purple sash, and
variegated minor decorative paraphernalia, gave him an appearance
strikingly out of keeping with the generally matter-of-fact Asahigawa
style of architecture and costume. It was much as if an actor in a
Shakspere rôle had suddenly emerged in full costume among a Broadway
crowd.
While the owner of the new structure and a dozen of his assistants or
male relatives sat down on their heels along the improvised platform,
high above the increasing throng in the street below, the Shinto
functionary set up beneath the banners several little conventionalized
houses or shrines of baked clay. Of the numerous antics in which he
indulged during the succeeding half-hour the most conspicuous was the
frenzied shaking of one of those bundles of white paper strips on a
handle, like a feather-duster or fly-dislodger, that abound in Shinto
shrines, apparently for the purpose of driving off the host of evil
spirits which might menace the new building. Finally he sprinkled
everything and every one within reach with a sprig of pine branch dipped
in a bowl of what may have been mere water, but which more probably was
_sake_, the rice wine of Japan. With that his fee seemed to be earned,
though he remained long enough to grace the beginning of the last act of
the ceremony before speeding away in a rickshaw to the next skeleton
structure in need of his administrations.
The now large and jostling throng in the street below was plainly, and
quite naturally, most interested in the final formality. From his point
of vantage high above, the now broadly smiling proprietor held up a
wooden ticket, made a speech which the crowd applauded with increasing
evidence of pleasure and approval, then flung the token to the
multitude. My subsequent discovery that it was exchangeable for a silk
kimono accounted for the applause and the wild scramble for its
possession that forthwith took place in the dust-deep street. Various
less valuable and more perishable gifts followed, after which came a
deluge of presents for every one. All the men on the platform began
tearing open veritable bales of bonbons, those heavy white dough-balls
inclosing a sort of jam, which take the place of candy in Japan, and
took to flinging them in great handfuls in all directions. Fully a
quarter of an hour the bombardment lasted, the several hundred townsmen
of both sexes, of every age and social standing, engaging in a
good-natured but riotous battle for possession of the tidbits. The
purpose evidently was to make sure that every person within sight
received a present, that he might vouchsafe the new building his
blessing or good will, for when I showed no eagerness to engage in the
scramble, one of the flingers made it his special task to throw bonbons
at me until I had accepted one. The “housing crisis” is as acute in
Japan as in the rest of the civilized world. If the country has no
grafting contractors and labor-leaders—and rumor says it has—there seems
to be at least the appreciable obstacle of dispensing in religious fees
and community gifts a sum about equal to the cost of each unboarded
building.