I had tea, with a priest named Daitetsu, the abbot of Kaikanji temple,
and a lay-youth of about twenty-four years, as my fellow-guests, and
Nami-san’s father, of course as mine host, in his own room. Nami-san is
the name of the O-Jo-san of Shiota.
The room was one of about six mats, but looked rather small and narrow,
with a large square short-legged rose-wood table in the centre. The
table stood partly on a Chinese rug and partly on a tiger skin, which
together nearly filled the floor of the room. The youth and I squatted
cross-legged on the rug, and the priest and the host on the skin. There
was something undeniably continental in the rug, with a crazy sort of
appearance in its figures, as is the case with most things Chinese.
But that is where their value resides. You gaze at Chinese furniture
and ornaments. You think they are dull or grotesque; but presently
you become conscious that there is in that dullness or grotesqueness
something that has a power of fascinating you irresistibly, and
that is what makes them precious. Japan produces her art goods
with the attitude of a pickpocket; and the West is large in scale and
fine in execution, but inalterably worldly and practical. A train of
thought of some such trend was coursing in me as I sat down, with the
youth sharing the rug.
The tiger skin, on which the priest sat, had its tail stretched out
near my knees, and its head under mine host, who seemed to have had
all his grey hair pulled out of his head and planted in his cheeks and
chin. Whiskers and beard were growing rampantly in a striking contrast
to the shiny smoothness of his uppermost regions. He, the host, lay
on the table tea things, not the ♦paraphernalia for stiff ceremonial
powdered tea drinking, but just for sipping clear green tea.
♦ “paraphelnalia” replaced with “paraphernalia”
“We have a guest in the house—we haven’t had one for quite a while—and
I thought, we should have a quiet tea party....” said the old man
turning toward the priest.
“Thank you for your invitation. I have not called on you for weeks, and
was thinking I should come down to see you today.” The priest looked
about sixty years old, with a ♦rotund face, that would do credit to a
picture of Bodhidharma in a congenial mood. He seemed to be a
friend of mine host of long standing.
♦ “rotand” replaced with “rotund”
“Is this gentleman your guest?”
Nodding his head in acknowledgment, the old gentleman took up a kyusu
tea-pot and poured—no—permitted a few drops of yellowish green liquid
to trickle, in turns, into four tea cups, producing faint echoes of
pure sweet flavour on my olfactory organ.
“You must feel lonesome, alone in a country place like this?” The
priest began to speak to me.
“Haa,” I answered in a most equivocal sort of way; for a “yes” would
have told a lie; but if I said “no,” it would have required a long
string of explanations.
“No, Osho-san,” interposed my host “this gentleman has come out here
for painting. He is even keeping himself busy.”
“Oh, so, that is good. Of the Nanso school?”
“No, Osho-san,” I replied this time. I thought he would not understand,
if I said oil painting, and I did not say so.
“No”, the old one again took it upon himself to complete information,
“his is that oil painting.”
“Ah, I see, the Western painting, which Kyuichi-san, here works
at? I saw the kind, for the first time, in his production; it was very
beautifully done.”
The young one opened his mouth at length and most diffidently asserted
that “It was a poor affair.”
“You showed some of your stuff to Osho-san?” asked the old man. Judging
by the tone in which this was said and the attitude assumed by the old
one towards the young, they would seem to be relatives.
“No, it was only that I was caught painting by the Osho-sama at
Kagamiga Ike pond, the other day.”
“Hum, is that so? Well, here is a cup of tea for you,” said the host,
placing a cup each before his guests. There were a few drops of tea
in, though the cups were quite large. They were dark grey in colour
outside, with a yellowish picture or design on them, delightfully
tasteful, but the name of their maker was quite undecipherable.
“It is Mokubey’s,” briefly explained the old gentleman.
“This is very interesting,” I complimented briefly also.
“There are many imitations in Mokubeys. These have the inscription;
look at the base,” says the host.
I took up my cup and held it towards the semi-transparent shoji. On
the screen was seen a potted “haran” plant casting its shadow warmly.
I looked into the base twisting my head, and saw there “Mokubey”
burnt in diminutively. Inscriptions are not indispensables for real
connoisseurs; but amateurs seem, generally, very sensitively particular
about them. I brought the cup to my lips, instead of putting it back
on the table. Leisurely lovers of real good tea rise to the seventh
heaven, when, drop, drop, they let the correctly drawn aromatic liquid
roll on the tip of their tongues. Ordinarily, people think that tea is
to be drunk; but that is not correct. A drop on your tongue; something
refreshing spreads over it, you have practically nothing more to send
down your throat, except that a delightfully soothing flavour travels
down the alimentary canal into the stomach. It is vulgar to bring the
teeth to service; but pure fresh water is too light. “Gyokuro” tea is
thicker than water, but not heavy enough for the molar action. It is a
fine beverage. If the objection be that tea robs one of sleep, then I
should say “better be without sleep than be without tea.” In the
midst of my usual philosophical musing, the priest spoke to me again.
“Can you paint in oil on fusuma?(27) If you can, I should like to have
some painted.”
If the priest would have me do it, I may not refuse; but that it
would please him was not at all certain, and I should hate to retire
crestfallen, by having it declared that an oil painting is no good,
after I had spared no labour for its execution.
“I do not think oil paintings will go well on a fusuma.”
“You do not think so? You are probably right. What I have seen of
Kyuichi-san’s production will make me think that it will look perhaps
too gay on a fusuma.”
“Mine is no good. It was an idle piece of work,” says the youth with a
stress on his words, ♦apologetically and abashedly.
♦ “apologically” replaced with “apologetically”
“Where is that what-do-you-call-it pond?” I asked the youth for my
information.
“In the hollow of valley just in the rear of Kaikanji temple. It is a
quiet lonely place. That picture.... I took lessons in school ... I
just tried it to while away the time.”
“And that Kaikanji?”
“Kaikanji is the name of a temple in my charge. It is a fine place,
with the sea stretching from right under you. You must come and see me,
while you are here. It is not more than a mile from here. From that
verandah ... there you can see its stone steps.”
“♦Won’t I make myself unwelcome by ♠calling on you any time to please
myself?”
♦ “Wont” replaced with “Won’t”
♠ “caling” replaced with “calling”
“Decidedly not; you will always find me in. O-Jo-san of this house pays
me visits quite often. Speaking of the O-Jo-san, O-Nami-san does not
seem to be around, today. Anything the matter with her, Shiota-san?”
“Has she gone out? Has she been your way, Kyuichi?”
“No, uncle; we haven’t seen her around.”
“Out on one of her solitary walks, again, perhaps. Ha, ha, ha.
O-Nami-san is pretty strong-legged. A clerical business took me down
to Tonami the other day. About Sugatami bridge I thought I saw one
very like her, and it was she. She almost sprang on me, taking me by
surprise, with one of her outbursts: ‘Why are you dragging along, so,
Osho-san? Where are you going?’ She was in her pair of straw sandals,
with her skirt tucked up. ‘Where have you been in that attire?’ I
asked her. ‘I have been picking marsh-parsley; you shall have some.’
Saying this, she took out a handful of unwashed mud-covered plants and
pushed it down my sleeve. Ha, ha, ha.”
“That girl did!” said that girl’s father with one of the grimmest of
smiles, and seized the first opportunity to change the topic, by taking
down from rose-wood book case something heavy looking in a damask silk
bag. He informed us that the bag contained an ink-stone, that once
belonged to Rai Sanyo, as one of desk stationeries most treasured by
that famous poet-historian and ♦scholar-calligrapher of generations ago.
This naturally led to a critical discussion of autographs of Shunsui,
Kyohei, Sanyo, Sorai, etc. The ink-stone brought to view at last drew
forth admiration from the priest, who was infatuated with the “eyes”
and the irridescent colour of the stone. It went without saying that
the ink-stone was originally imported from China.
♦ “scholar-caligrapher” replaced with “scholar-calligrapher”
“A stone like this must be rare even in China, Shiota-san?”
“Yes.”
“I should like to have one like this. May I ask you to get me one,
Kyuichi-san?” ventured the abbot.
“He, he, he, I might be killed before I found one,” retorted the youth.
“Hoi, I am forgetting, it is no time to talk of getting an ink-stone
and things of that kind. By-the-by, when do you start?”
“I leave here in a few days, Osho-sama.”
“You should go down to Yoshida, to see him off, old man.”
“I am getting on in years and ordinarily I should excuse myself. But
this time we may part never to meet again, and I am resolved to go down
to see him off.”
“No, uncle, you must not take trouble to go down to Yoshida for me.”
I now felt sure that the youth was really a nephew of mine host. I even
saw some resemblance between them.
“You must not say so. You should let your uncle see you off. A
river-boat will take him down there in no time. Isn’t that so
Shiota-san?”
“Yes. Crossing the mountain will be some job, but by taking a boat,
though a little detour....”
The youth did not decline this time; but remained silent.
“Are you going to China?” I ventured to ask.
“Yes.”
The ♦monosyllable left me musing that he might not be the worse for a
few more; but I felt no particular necessity to dig, and I held my
peace. I noticed that the shadow of “haran” had changed its position.
♦ “monosylable” replaced with “monosyllable”
“Well, gentleman, you see the present war—he was formerly with the
colours in one year service—and he has been called out to join his old
regiment.”
My old host volunteered in his nephew’s place to let me understand
that the youth was destined to leave for Manchuria in a day or two. I
had thought that there was only feathered songsters to listen to, only
flowers to see fall, only hot spring to warble forth in this dreamy
land of poetry in a mountain bosom, in peaceful Spring. Alas, the
living world had come crossing the sea and mountain and oozing into
this home of a forgotten tribe, and the time may come when a small
fraction of blood making a crimson sea of bleak Manchuria may flow from
this youth’s arteries. This very youth is sitting next to an artist who
sees nothing worth seeing in human life but dreaming. He sits so near
that the artist may hear his heart throb. In that throb may be
resounding even now, the tide rolling high in a plain hundreds of miles
away. Fate has accidentally brought these two together in a room, but
tells nothing else, nor gives the reason why.