A whole week of my too short stay was given to Myanoshita, whither I was
driven by the impossibility of retaining a room in either Yokohama or
Tokio, and where I stayed willingly on, out of delight in the place
itself. After being cooped up for so long on ships, and kept inactive
under the heat of India, it was like a new existence to take immense
walks among these mountains in the keen rarified air, even though there
was both rain and snow. Myanoshita stands some four thousand feet high
and is situated in a valley in which are many summer cottages and health
resorts. The heart of this Alpine settlement is the Fujiya Hotel,
where I was living, which is kept by an enterprising Americanised and
Europeanised Japanese proprietor and his very charming wife, Madame
Yamaguchi, whose father was the founder of the house, and, I believe,
the discoverer of the district, and who herself is famous as a
gracious hostess throughout Japan. No hotel so well or so thoughtfully
administered have I ever stayed in; nor was I ever in another where the
water for the bath gushes in from a natural hot spring. But hot springs
are numerous in this region, while there is a gorge which I visited,
some four miles distant, where boiling sulphur hisses and bubbles for
ever and aye.
Many of the Myanoshita dishes were new to me and welcome. There is an
excellent salad called "Slow," and the bamboo, which is Japan's best
friend--serving the nation in scores of ways: as fences, as walls,
as water-pipes, as supports, as carrying-poles, as thatch, as
fishing-rods--here found its way into the salad bowl and was not
distasteful. The custom of drinking a glass of orange juice before
breakfast might well be adopted with us; but not the least of the
oddities of England which I realised as I moved about the earth is our
unwillingness to eat fruit. Japan also has a perfect mineral water,
"Tansan."
When not making long expeditions to catch new glimpses of Fuji I roamed
about the hill-sides among the little villages, or leaned over crazy
bridges to watch the waterfalls beneath; for there is water everywhere,
tumbling down to the distant ocean, a wedge of which can be seen from
the hotel windows. This Japanese valley might be in Switzerland, save
for the absence of any but human life. Not a cow, not a goat.
The labourers wear blue linen smocks, usually with some device upon
them, and they merge into the landscape as naturally as French or
Belgian peasants. These men, whether working on the soil or the roads,
or engaged in cutting bamboos or building houses, wear the large straw
hats that one sees in the old Japanese prints. Nothing has changed in
their dress. But the modernized Japanese, the dweller in the cities or
casual visitor to the country, pins his faith to the bowler. The bowler
is so much his favourite headgear that he wears it often with native
costume on his body. Perhaps it is to Japan that all the bowlers have
gone, now that London has taken to the soft Homburg. It was odd to meet
groups of these bizarre little men among the precipices: even stranger
perhaps were their little ladies, especially on Sunday, in the gayest
Japanese clothes, their faces plastered with rice powder and cigarettes
in their mouths. Too many of them are disfigured by gold teeth, which
are so common in Japan as to be almost the rule. An English resident
assured me that I must not assume that the Japanese teeth are therefore
unusually defective: often the gold is merely ostentation, a visible
sign that the owner of the auriferous mouth is both alive to American
progress and can afford it.
Even in Myanoshita Fujiyama has to be sought for and climbed for, the
walls of rock that form the valley being so high and enclosing. But the
result is worth every effort. Immediately above the hotel is a hill from
whose summit the upper part of the enchanted mountain can be seen, and I
ascended tortuously to this point within an hour of my arrival. The next
day I walked to Lake Hakone (where the Emperor has a summer palace),
some eight miles away, in the hope of getting Fuji's white crest
reflected on its surface; but a veil of mist enshrouded all. And then
twice I went to the edge of the watershed at the head of the valley:
once struggling through the snow to the Otome Pass, on an immemorial
and nearly perpendicular bridle path, and once by the modern road to
the tunnel which, with characteristic address, the Japanese have bored
through the rock, thus reducing a very steep gradient.
In the tunnel the icicles were hanging several feet long and as big as
masts, and the air was biting. But one emerged suddenly upon a prospect
the wonder of which probably cannot be excelled--a vast plain far below,
made up of verdure and villages and lakes, with distant surrounding
heights, and immediately in front, filling half the sky, Fuji himself.
It is from this point, and from the ancient Otome Pass, a mile or
so away on the same ridge, that the symmetry of the mountain is most
perfect; and here one can best appreciate the simplicity of it, the
quiet natural ease with which it rises above its neighbours. There was
more snow on the slopes than when I had seen it from the train a few
days before; and the sky again was without a cloud. I have never been so
conscious of majestic serenity, without any concomitant feeling of awe.
Fuji is both sublime and human.
No other country has a symbol like this. When the Japanese think of
Japan they visualise Fuji: returning exiles crowd the decks for the
first glimpse of it; departing exiles with tears in their eyes watch
it disappear. There is not a shop window but has Fuji in some
representation; it is found in every house; its contours are engraved
on teaspoons, embossed on ash-trays. You cannot escape from its
counterfeits; but if you have seen it you do not mind.
When on my way home I found myself in an American picture gallery,
either in San Francisco, Chicago, Boston or New York, I lingered longest
in the rooms where the coloured prints of the Japanese masters hang--and
America has very fine collections, particularly in Boston--and I stood
longest before those landscapes by Hokusai and Hiroshige in which Fuji
occurs. Hokusai in particular venerated the mountain, and in many of his
most beautiful pictures people are calling to each other to admire some
new and marvellous aspect of it. It was he who drew Fuji as seen through
the arch of a breaking wave! I was looking at the British Museum's
example of this daring print only a few days ago, and, doing so, living
my Myanoshita days again.
There is much in Japan that is petty, much that is too material and not
a little that is disturbing; but Fuji is there too, dominating all, calm
and wise and lovely beyond description, and it would be Fuji that lured
me back.