YABASE, August, 1891.
DEAR MR. NISHIDA,--I have had a pleasant time in different little drowsy
sea-villages,--sleeping, eating, drinking sake, and bathing. Yabase is
about the most pleasant place I ever stopped at here.
But, alas!--_I saw no Bon-odori_ at all at Shimo-ichi. I seemed to have
gone too soon;--at Yabase, there is no Bon-odori; and at Ōtsuka,
where I next travelled, on foot, to see the Bon-odori, I had an
adventure of a peculiar kind.
Ōtsuka seems to be a rough sort of place. Its folk are big hustling
noisy countrymen; and when they are full of sake inclined to be
mischievous. They stopped dancing to see the foreigner. The foreigner
took refuge from the pressure of the crowd in a house, where he sat
upon the floor, and smoked. The crowd came into the house and round
the house, and uttered curious observations and threw sand and water
at the foreigner. Therefore the people of Yabase, who had accompanied
the foreigner to Ōtsuka, arose and made vigorous protests; and we
all returned to Yabase together. At Yabase, the police and some of
the principal people more than made up to me for the rudeness of the
Ōtsuka folk,--they apologized for the Ōtsuka folk until I was
really ashamed of being so kindly looked after; and I was entertained
very generously; and the police told me that anything in the world
I wished their advice or help about, only to send them word. (The
hostility of the Ōtsuka folk was really a very childish sort of
thing, not worth making a fuss about;--a Western crowd would have thrown
stones or rotten eggs. Indeed I am not sure whether the crowd was really
hostile at all. I rather think that they wanted to see the foreigner
move,--so they tried to make him stir about,--like a _kedamono_ in a
cage.)
To-morrow I return to Matsue, by way of Mionoseki;--I really regret
leaving Yabase: the people are the kindest, most honest, straightforward
folk imaginable. And I have made several friends;--at the temple of
Nichiren here, I got some beautiful _o fuda_.