YABASE, August, 1891.
DEAR PROFESSOR CHAMBERLAIN,--I have discovered Yabase. No European seems
to have ever been here before. On arriving at Shimo-ichi to see the
Bon-odori, I found I had come three days too soon, and the little town
is very hot and uncomfortable.
Well, Yabase is an extremely quiet, pretty little town, with a much
better hotel than I have seen for quite a while,--and a superb beach.
Strange to say, there are no boats and nobody ever thinks of going
into the sea, except children. So whenever I go to swim, the entire
population crowd the beach to look on. Happily I am a very good
swimmer,--could swim for twenty-four hours without fatigue. Thus the
people have a _mezurashii mono_ to behold. Another queer thing about
Yabase is that it is the only place I have seen in Japan where there
is no shrine of Inari. It is a strictly Buddhist town, and Nichiren
prevails. There is a _yashiro_ on a neighbouring mountain, however.
There is no Bon-odori here, one must go to the next town to see it,
which I will do to-night. There has been much rough weather--tremendous
seas breaking along the coast. At Kizuki I thought the hotel was going
to be carried away; and all the approaches to it, bridges, etc., were
dashed to pieces. Here, the sea is opposed by a loftier coast, but it
becomes something one cannot laugh at on a windy day.
I must tell you an incident of the revival of pure Shintō. At Kizuki,
until very recently, two of the hotels were kept by families belonging
to some Buddhist sect, as well as to the Kizuki sect of Shintō, and
so in their establishments, as in nearly every Izumo household, there
was a _butsudan_ as well as a _kamidana_. But some pilgrims who came to
Kizuki, full of fiery Shintō zeal, were wroth to see a _butsudan_
in the inns of the Sacred City, and girded up their loins, and sought
out an hotel where no Buddha was, and went there,--and sent out word
to their fellow pilgrims. The result has been that all the hotels in
Kizuki have suppressed Buddhism, or at least its externals: they have
become pure Shintō. This incident is rather anomalous, but it is
a confirmation of what I said before, regarding the predominance of
Shintō.
From Mionoseki, I hope to send you some _o fuda_ of interest. The
prospects of getting to Oki are growing small, however,--for the time
being.
* * * * *
P.S. Alas! I have not discovered Yabase! Some detestable missionary was
here before me--for one hour only, it is true, but he was here!--And
to-day, being a day of high surf, there came down to the beach with
planks, divers boys, who swam far out and came in, as the Americans say,
"a-kite-ing," on the crests of waves--swimming unspeakably well, after
the fashion of the Polynesian islanders. So that I feel small! I offered
to teach them what I know in exchange for instruction as to how to come
"a-kite-ing" on the top of a wave.