“Are you there?” I said, but no response came.
I was standing before the humblest shop, which had at its rear papered
sliding screens, shutting from view a room behind. A bunch of ♦straw
sandals for sale was hanging from the eve, swinging ♠forlornly. Under
a low counter were a few trays of cheap sweets, with some small coins
lying about.
♦ “straw-sandals” replaced with “straw sandals”
♠ “forelornly” replaced with “forlornly”
“Are you there?” I said again. The ejaculation startled, this time, a
hen and her lord, which awoke ♦clucking on a mortar, on which they had
been standing bulged and asleep. I was glad to find fire going in a
clay furnace, part of which had its colour changed by the rain that had
been falling a minute ago. A tea-kettle was hanging from a suspender
over the furnace. It was black with smoke, too black, indeed, to tell
whether it was earthen or silver.
♦ “chucking” replaced with “clucking”
Receiving no answer, I took the liberty of walking into the shop and
sitting on a bench before the fire, and this made the fowls flap their
wings and hop from the mortar onto the raised and matted floor and
they would have gone through the inner room had it not been for the
screens. The birds clucked and cackled in alarm as if they thought I
were a fox or a cur.
Presently footsteps were heard, a paper screen slid open, and out came
an old woman, as I knew somebody would, with a fire going, and money
lying scattered about. This was somewhat different from the city, that
a woman could, with no concern, be away, leaving her shop to take care
of itself and it was at any rate, unlike the twentieth century, that I
could go into the shop and sit on a bench uninvited to wait, wait and
wait. All this “unhuman” condition of things delighted me immensely.
What charmed me most was, however, the look of the aged shop-keeper who
had come out.
I discovered in her, living, the aged, masked dame of Takasago whom I
saw at the Hosho “Noh” theatre, two or three years ago. I snapped that
dame’s image into my mind’s camera at the time as most fascinating,
wondering how an old woman could look so gentle and reverentially
attractive. I say, I saw in flesh and blood this “Noh” figure in the
lowly shop-keeper bowing before me. In response to my apologetic remark
that I had taken possession of her bench in her absence, she said
very civilly:
“I did not know that you had come in, Danna-sama.”(4)
“Had been raining rather hard?”
“Bad weather, Danna-sama, you must have had a hard time of it. Why
you are drenching wet. Wait, I will make a big fire and let you dry
yourself.”
“Thank you. Put just a little more wood there, and I shall warm and dry
myself. The rest has made me feel cold.”
We kept on talking about the quietness of the place, the uguisu,(5)
and so on. Out came my sketch book, and I made a hasty picture of the
old woman, as she worked at the fire. The rain had stopped, and the
sky cleared up. I saw the “Hobgoblin Cliff” by turning my eyes in the
direction towards which my good woman pointed. I glanced at the cliff
and then at the woman, and last of all I looked at them both half
and half. Of the impressions of old women carved permanently in my
head, there were that of the face of the Takasago dame of the “Noh”
mask, and that of the she-spirit of the mountain drawn by Rosetsu.
The Rosetsu picture has made me think that an ideal old woman is
a weird creature and that she should be seen only among autumn tinted
trees or else in cold moonlight. But on seeing the mask of the Takasago
dame I was astonished at the extent to which the aged of the other
sex could be made to look so sweet. I have since thought she could,
with her warm and graceful expression, ornament a golden screen, be a
figure in a balmy Spring breeze or that she could go well, even with
cherry blossoms. As I looked at my homely dressed hostess of motherly
kindness, with a beaming light on her face, I fancied she made a
picture better in keeping with the Spring scenery of the mountain, than
with the “Hobgoblin Cliff,” she was pointing at, with one hand shading
her eyes. I had almost finished sketching her when her pose broke. It
was disconcerting, and with chagrin I held my book to the fire to dry.
“You look hale and hearty, O-Bahsan.”(6)
“Yes, thank you, Danna-sama. I can sew; I can spin hemp.”
She added triumphantly, “I can grind rice for dumpling flour!” I felt I
would like to see her work at the mill stones. However such a request
was out of place, and I changed the topic of conversation by asking
her if it was not more than two and a half miles to Nakoi.
“No, Danna-sama, about two miles they say. You are going to the hot
spring there, then?”
“I may stop there a while, if the place is not crowded. Or rather I
should say if I am in the mood.”
“No crowding, I am sure, Danna-sama. The place has been almost deserted
since the war (Russo-Japanese) broke out. The spa hostelry is all but
closed.”
“Well, well. They ♦won’t let me stop there then.”
♦ “wont” replaced with “won’t”
“Oh, yes, they will any time, Danna-sama, if you just ask them.”
“There is only one hotel there; isn’t that so?”
“Yes, Danna-sama, ask for Shiota and anybody will tell you. Squire
Shiota is a rich man of the village and one doesn’t know to call the
place which, a hot-spring resort or the old gentleman’s pleasure
retreat.”
“Is that so? Guest or no guest makes no difference to him then?”
“Danna-sama is going there for the first time?”
“No, not quite. I was there once long ago.”
There came a temporary lull in our conversation, here, as if by
mutual agreement. In the silence that followed, I once more took out my
sketch book and began to make a picture of the rooster and his mate,
when the jingling of bells caught my ear, the sound making a music of
its own in my head. I felt as if I were listening, in a dream, to a
mortar-and-pestle rhythm coming from a neighbour’s. I stopped sketching
and wrote down instead:
“Harukazeya Inen-ga mimini(7)
Umano Suzu.”(n)
Coming up the mountain, I passed five or six pack horses and found
them all wearing aprons between their fore and hind legs, with
bells jingling about their necks. I could not help imagining I was
encountering in spirit ghosts long past. Presently there rose above the
jingling of bells a quaintly long drawn note of mago-uta(8), floating
dreamily in the peaceful Spring air of the mountain, and gradually
coming upward. This made my rustic but gentle hostess say, as if
speaking to herself: “Somebody is coming again.”
Every passer, coming and going seemed to be the good woman’s
acquaintance, since the pass lay in a single line, and all traffic
must go by the humble tea-stall. All of the half-dozen drivers of
pack-horses, I met on the road, must have come up or gone down the
mountain, everyone of them making her think somebody was coming. I
could not help wondering how often, indeed, times out of number, her
ears must have caught the jingling of bells in the years past, that had
turned her hair so completely grey. Oh, how long she must have lived
in this little place with its lonely road, where spring had come and
gone, gone and come, with no ground to walk on, lest one crushed little
flowers under foot! I wrote down another “haiku” in my book:
“Mago-utaya Shiragamo
Somede Kururu Haru”(o)
The little verse did not quite express my poetical fancy, and I was
gazing at the point of my pencil to compress into seventeen ♦syllables
the ideas of grey hair, and the cycles of years as well as the quaint
tunes of a country pack-horse driver, and departing Spring, when a live
bucolic individual, leading a ♠pony, halted before the shop and greeted
the old woman:
“Good day, Obasan!”(9)
♦ “sylables” replaced with “syllables”
♠ “poney” replaced with “pony”
“Why, it is you Gen-san. You are going down to the town?”
“I am, and shall be glad to get, if there be anything you want down
there.”
“Let me see. Stop at my daughter’s, if you happen to go along Kajicho,
and ask her to get for me a holy tablet of the Reiganji temple.”
“All right, only one, eh? Your O-Aki-san(10) is very lucky that she has
been so well married, don’t you think so, Obasan?”
“I am thankful that she is not in want of daily needs. Maybe she is
happy.”
“Of course she is. Look at that Jo-sama(11) of Nakoi!”
“Poor O-Jo-sama, my heart aches for her and she is so beautiful. Is she
any better these days?”
“No, the same as ever.”
“Too bad,” sighs mine hostess, and “Yes, too bad” assents Gen-san,
patting his horse on the head. A gust of wind came just then and shook
a cherry tree outside and the rain-drops lodging precariously among its
leaves and flowers shed like a fresh shower, making the horse toss his
long mane up and down with a start. I had by this time fallen into a
train of fancy from which I was awakened by Gen-san’s “Whoa” and the
jingling of the horse’s bells, to hear the Obasan say:
“Ah, I still see before me the Jo-sama in her bridal dress with her
hair done up in a high ‘Shimada’ style and going horse-back....”
“Yes, yes, she went on horse-back, not by boat. We stopped here, didn’t
we, Obasan?”
“Aye, when the Jo-sama’s horse stopped under that cherry tree, a
falling petal alighted on her hair, dressed so carefully.”
The old woman’s word-sketch was fascinating, well worthy of a picture;
of poetry. A vision of a charming bride came before my mind’s eye, and
musing on the scene described, I wrote down in my sketch book:
“Hanano Koro-o Koete
Kashikoshi Umani Yome.”♦(p)(12)
♦ missing footnote tag added “(p)”
I had a clear vision of the girl’s hair and dress, the horse and the
cherry tree; but strangely enough, her face would not come to me,
eagerly as my fancy travelled from one type to another. Suddenly
Millais’ Ophelia came into the vision under the bride’s “shimada”
coiffure. No good, I thought and let my vision crumble away. The
same moment the bridal dress, hair, horse, and cherry tree and all
disappeared from my mind’s setting; but Ophelia floating above the
water with her hands clasped, remained behind mistily in my mind,
lingering with a faintness, as of a cloud of smoke brushed with a palm
fibre whisk, and producing a weird sensation as when looking at the
fading tail of a shooting star.
“Well, goodbye Obasan.”
“Come again on your way back. Bad time we had with the rain. The road
must be pretty bad about the ‘Seven Bends’.”
Gen-san began to move and his horse to trot as he said: “rather a job,”
leaving behind the jingling of bells.
“Was that man from Nakoi?”
“Yes, he is Gembei of Nakoi.”
“Do I understand that that man crossed this mountain with a bride on
the back of his horse, some time or other?”
“He passed here with the Jo-sama of Nakoi on the back of his horse,
when the lady-bird went to her future husband’s house.—Time goes fast;
it was five years ago.”
She is of a happy order, who laments the turning white of her hair only
when she looks into the glass. Nearer an immortal, I thought, was my
old woman who became conscious of the swiftness of fleeting time only
by counting five years on her fingers. I observed to her:
“She must have been charming.—I wish I was here to see her.”
“Haw, haw, but you may see her. She will come out, I am sure, to
receive you, if you put up at the hot-spring hotel of Nakoi.”
“Why, then, is she back in her father’s house, now? I wonder if I could
see her in her bridal dress, with her hair done up in the shimada.”
“Only ask her; she will most likely oblige you by appearing in the
dress of her bridal tour.”
Impossible! I thought, but my bah-san(13) was quite in earnest. After
all, my “unhuman” tour would be insipid, if it were all common-place
with no such characters. My good woman went on:
“There is so much alike between the Jo-sama and Nagarano Otome.”
“You mean in their looks?”
“No, I mean in their life.”
“But who is this Nagarano Otome?”
“Long, long ago, there was the maid of Nagara, the beautiful daughter
of a rich man, and the pride of this village.”
“Yes?”
“Well, Danna-sama, two men, Sasada-otoko and Sasabe-otoko fell in
love with her both at once.”
“I see.”
“Shall she accept the hand of the Sasada man or should give her heart
to the Sasabe man? She tormented herself for days, weeks, and months,
with the perplexing problem, until unable to allow herself the choice
of one in preference to the other, she ended her life by throwing
herself into a river, leaving behind her an ode:
“Akizukeba Obanaga Uyeni
Okutsuyuno
Kenubekumo Wawa
Omohoyurukana.”(m)
I had little expected to hear such a quaint romance told in such
old-fashioned language, least of all from such an old woman in the
depth of a mountain like this.
“You go down about 600 yards East from here Danna-sama and you will
come upon the ‘five elements’ spiral tombstone on the roadside, that
marks the eternal home of Nagarano Otome. You should pay a visit to the
grave, on your way to Nakoi.”
I resolved by all means to see the grave. The Bahsan went on to tell me:
“The Jo-sama of Nakoi had, in her evil days, her hand sought by two
suitors. One of them was a young man she met while she was at school in
Kyoto, and the other a son of the wealthiest man in the castled town.”
“So? Which did she choose?”
“The Jo-sama herself would have had her lover in Kyoto if she could
make her own choice; but her father forced her to accept the young man
of the castled-town.”
“That is to say, she fortunately escaped drowning herself in the river?”
“To her young husband she was as dear as his own life, and he did all
he could to please her; but she was not happy to the worry of all. Soon
after the present war had broken out her husband lost his job, the bank
where he was working closing its doors, while the same cause wrought
the ruin of his own family. This made the Jo-sama come back to her
father’s house in Nakoi, and gossip has been busy making a heartless
and ungrateful woman of her. As a girl, the Jo-sama was always coy and
gentle; but she has latterly been changing into a woman of unwomanly
high spirits. So says Gembey every time he passes here, as he feels
really sorry for her.”
I did not want to hear more, to have my fancies spoiled. The woman’s
story was beginning to smell of human ills and worries and I felt as
if somebody was wanting back the fairy wand, when I was just becoming
celestial. It cost me uncommon pains to negotiate the perils of the
“Seven Bends,” and reach here. All that and the very reason of my
wandering out of my house would have been lost, if I were now to be so
recklessly brought back to the every-day world. This and that of life
are all very well up to a certain point; but past that limit it brings
a worldly odor that enters you through the pores of the skin and makes
you feel heavy with dirt. So I started to go, with this departing word,
after depositing a silver piece on the bench: “The road is straight to
Nakoi, is it not Obahsan?”
“Turn right, down the slope from the tomb of Nagarano Otome and you
will make a saving of some half a mile. The road is not very good; but
a young gentleman like you would make a short cut.... God bless you for
such generosity. Take good care of yourself, Danna-sama.”