THE ASCENT OF FUJIYAMA
It was in the third week of July that we made our long-talked-of ascent
of Fujiyama. There were nine of us, all told, four stalwart men, three
valiant women, and two incomparable Japanese boys, or valets. For forty
miles we steamed down the old line of the Tokaido, drawing nearer to
the sea in its deep indentation of Odawara Bay, and to the blue bar of
the Hakone range that fronts the ocean. At Kodzu we took wagonettes and
rattled over the plain and up a valley along the Tokaido, children being
snatched from under the heels of the horses, and coolies, with poles
and baskets over their shoulders, getting entangled with the wheels all
the way. A Japanese driver is a most reckless Jehu, and the change to
jinrikishas, after the wild ten-mile charge up the valley, was beatific.
Ascending a narrow cañon, and rounding curve after curve, we saw at last
the many lights of Miyanoshita twinkling against the sky.
Miyanoshita, the great summer resort, is the delight alike of Japanese
and foreigner. It has excellent hotels kept in western fashion, clear
mountain air, mineral springs and beautiful scenery, and it is the very
centre of a most interesting region. All the year round its hotels are
well patronized, the midwinter climate being a specific for the malarial
poison of the ports of southern China. Famous, too, is the wooden-ware of
Miyanoshita, where every house is a shop for the sale of Japanese games,
household utensils, toys and trifles, all made of the beautifully-grained
native woods, polished on a wheel with vegetable wax. Exquisite mosaics
of a hundred broken patterns amaze one with their nicety of finish and
cheapness, and no one escapes from the village without buying.
Guides and coolies had been engaged for us at Miyanoshita, and at six
o’clock, on the morning after our arrival, the three kagos of the
ladies were carried out, and the four cavaliers, the two boys, and six
baggage coolies followed. The broad path zigzagged upward to the narrow,
knife-edge ride of the mountain range known as the O Tomi Toge pass. From
its summit we looked back along the checkered green valley to Miyanoshita
and Hakone Lake, with the Emperor’s island palace. Looking forward across
a checkered plain, we saw Fujiyama rise straight before us, its obstinate
head still hidden in clouds. Dropping quickly to the level of the plain,
we reached Gotemba, and, changing to jinrikishas, were whirled away to
Subashiri, six miles distant.
Trains of descending pilgrims and farmers, perched high on the backs of
pack-horses, smiled cheerfully at the procession of foreigners bound for
Fuji, and at each rest-house on the way women and children, petrified
with astonishment, stood staring at us. Black cinders and blocks of lava
announced the nearness of the volcano, and the road became an inky trail
of coal-dust through green fields. Banks of scoriæ, like the heaps of
coal-dust around collieries, cropped out by the road-side, and the wheels
ground noisily through the loose, coarse slag. The whole of Subashiri,
crowding the picturesque street of a typical Japanese village, welcomed
us. In the stream of running water, on either side of the broad highway
danced, whirled, and spouted a legion of mechanical toys, some for
the children’s pleasure, and others turning the fly-brushes hung over
counters of cakes and sweetmeats. The place looks in perpetual fête,
with the hundreds of pilgrim flags and towels fluttering from each
tea-house, and at the end of the street is a torii, leading to an ancient
temple in a grove, where all Fuji pilgrims pray before beginning the
ascent of the mountain. In the light of the afternoon, the double row of
thatched houses and the street full of bareheaded villagers looked like a
well-painted stage scene. Meanwhile the sun sank, and in the last crimson
glow of its fading the clouds rolled away, and Fuji’s stately cone stood
over us, its dark slopes turning to rose and violet in the changing light.
We rose with the sun at four o’clock, looked at Fuji, all pink and lilac
in the exquisite atmosphere of the morning, snatched a hasty breakfast
and set off, the women in their kagos and the men on mettlesome steeds
that soon took them out of sight along the broad cindery avenue leading
to the base of the slanting mountain. In that clear light Fuji looked
twice its twelve thousand feet above the sea, and the thought of toiling
on foot up the great slope was depressing. Instead of a fifteen-mile
walk, it looked fifty miles at least. All along the forest avenue
moss-grown stone posts mark the distance, and at one place are the
remains of a stone wall and lantern-guarded gate-way setting the limit of
the mountain’s holy ground. From that point the soil is sacred, although
horses and kagos are allowed to go a mile farther to a mat-shed station,
known as Umagayeshi (Turn Back Horse). Thence the great Fuji sweeps
continuously upward, and a tall torii at the head of the stone staircase
marks the beginning of the actual ascent, the holy ground on which only
sandaled feet may tread.
In the mat-shed the kagos were stored for a two days’ rest, luggage was
divided and tied on the backs of the coolies, who were as gayly fringed
as Indians on the war-path, with the many pairs of straw sandals tied
at their waists and hanging from their packs. The coarse cinders cut
through boot-soles so quickly that foreigners tie on these waraji to
protect their shoes, allowing eight pairs of the queer galoshes for the
ascent and descent of Fuji. From Umagayeshi, the path goes up through
woods and stunted underbrush and on over bare cinder and lava, pursuing
the even slope of the mountain without dip or zigzag to break the
steady climb. Three small Shinto temples in the woods invite pilgrims
to pray, pay tribute, and have their staff and garments marked with a
sacred seal. Beyond these temples, ten rest-houses, or stations, stand
at even distances along the path, the first, or number one, at the edge
of the woods, and the tenth at the summit. Priests and station-keepers
open their season late in June, before the snow is gone, and close in
September. In the midsummer weeks the whole mountain-side is musical
with the tinkling bells and staffs of lines of white-clad pilgrims.
Notwithstanding their picturesqueness, these devotees are objectionable
companions, as they fill tea-houses and mountain stations, devour
everything eatable, like swarms of locusts, and bear about with them
certain smaller pilgrims that make life a burden to him who follows
after. Nearly thirty thousand pilgrims annually ascend Fujiyama. These
pious palmers are chiefly from the agricultural class, and they form
mutual pilgrimage associations, paying small annual dues, from the sum
of which each member in turn has his expenses defrayed. They travel
in groups, each man furnished with his bit of straw matting for bed,
rain-coat, or shelter. They carry, also, cotton towels marked with the
crest of their pilgrim society, to be hung, after using, at temple
water-tanks, or as advertisements of their presence at the tea-houses
which they patronize. At each new shrine they visit the priests stamp
their white clothing with the red seal of the temple.
Fujiyama is invested with legends, which these pilgrims unquestioningly
accept. It is said to have risen up in a single night two thousand years
ago, when a great depression appeared to the southward, which the waters
of Lake Biwa immediately filled. For a thousand years pilgrims have
toiled up the weary path to pray at the highest shrine and to supplicate
the sun at dawn. Fuji-san, the goddess of the mountain, hated, it is
said, her own sex, and stories of devils, who seize women and fly off
into the air with them, still deter all but the most emancipated Japanese
women from making the ascent. It was after Fuji-san had quarrelled with
all the other gods that she set up this lofty mountain of her own, where
she might live alone and in peace. No horse’s foot is allowed to fall on
the steep approaches to her cloudy throne, and even the sand and cinders
are so sacred, that whatever dust is carried down on the pilgrims’ feet
by day is miraculously returned by night. Even to dream of the peerless
mountain is a promise of good-fortune, and Fuji, with the circling storks
and the ascending dragon, symbolizes success in life and triumph over
obstacles.
Until the year 1500, Fuji wore a perpetual smoke-wreath, and every
century saw a great eruption. The last, in 1707, continued for a month,
and threw out the loose cinders, ashes, and lumps of baked red clay that
still cover the mountain. Ashes were carried fifty miles, damming a
river in their path, covering the plain at its base six feet deep with
cinders, and forming an excrescence on the north side, which still mars
the perfect symmetry of the cone.
Umagayeshi, or Turn Back Horse, is four thousand feet above the sea, and
the other eight thousand feet are surmounted in a distance of fifteen
miles. We desired to reach Station Eight by four o’clock; either to sleep
there until three o’clock the next morning, or to push on to the tenth
and last station, rest there, and see the sun rise, from the door-way
of that summit rest-house. Our two Colorado mountaineers had faced the
slope like chamois, and were leaping the rocks walling the first station,
before the female contingent had left the torii. Of the fifteen coolies
accompanying us, three were assigned to each woman, with orders to take
her to the top if they had to carry her pickaback. After an established
Fuji fashion, one coolie went first with a rope fastened around the
climber’s waist, while another pushed her forward. Aided still further by
tall bamboo staffs, we were literally hauled and boosted up the mountain,
with only the personal responsibility of lifting our feet out of the
ashes.
For the first three or four miles, the path led through a dense, green
bower, carpeted with vines, and starred with wild flowers and great
patches of wild strawberries. Scaling moss-covered log steps, we passed
through temples with _gohei_, or prayer papers, hanging from the gates
and doors, and bare Shinto altars within. At one shrine, the sound of
our approaching footsteps was the signal for blasts from a conch-shell
horn and thumps on the hanging drum, and the priests, in their purple and
white gowns and black pasteboard hats, gave us a cheerful welcome, and
many cups of hot barley-tea. At our request, they stamped our clothing
with big red characters, the sacred seal or crest of that holy station,
and sold us the regulation pilgrim’s staff, branded with the temple
mark. The old priest, to dazzle us with his acquirements, and to show
his familiarity with foreign customs, glibly placed the price of the
alpenstock at “Sen tents.”
The forest ended as suddenly as if one had stepped from a door-way, and
a sloping dump of bare lava and cinders stretched upward endlessly; the
whole cone visible, touched with scudding bits of thin white clouds.
Every dike and seam of lava between the forest edge and the summit was
clearly seen, and the square blocks of rest-houses, though miles away,
stood out on the great ash-heap as if one could touch them. It was
apparent that the walk would be merely a matter of perseverance. There
are no dizzy precipices, no dangerous rocks, no hand-over-hand struggles,
nor narrow ledges, nor patches of slippery stone—only a steadily
ascending cinder path to tread. Above the forest line, nothing interrupts
the wide views in every direction, and the goal is in plain sight.
After we had passed the third station, the scudding clouds closed in and
hid the summit, and we trudged along, congratulating ourselves on our
escape from the glaring sun while we were out on the open lava slope.
Station Number Four was closed and its roof in partial ruins, where a
rolling stone had crashed in during the winter, but at the next two huts
we rested, in company with a sturdy mountaineer, his wife and baby, who
were going up to open Station Number Nine for the summer. The baby was
strapped on its father’s back, its little bare toes sticking out from its
tight swaddling-gown and curling up in comical balls as the wind grew
colder. Our two veterans of Pike’s Peak were far ahead, merely white
spots on the dark, chocolate-brown slope, but we all intended to overtake
them and come in with them at the end of the day.
Suddenly the drifting clouds swept down, curling along the dark lava,
like steam, and wrapping us in a gray mist that blotted out everything.
Another gust of wind brought a dash of rain, and hurried us to the lee
wall of a closed hut for shelter. The shower came harder and faster, and
the baggage-coolies with water-proofs and umbrellas were far in advance,
invisible in the mist. We pushed on, and after climbing a hundred yards
in loose ashes, found ourselves on the sliding track of the descent.
We struck away blindly to the right and mounted straight upward. A
seam of hard lava soon gave us secure foothold, but presently became a
net-work of tiny cascades. My cheerful little coolie, in his saturated
cotton suit, tried to encourage me, and passing the rope around a horn
of lava at one breathing-stop, pointed upward, and assured me that there
was clear sunshine above. Glancing along the sloping lava-track, we saw
a foaming crest of water descending from those sunny uplands, and had
barely time to cross its path before the roaring stream came on and cut
off retreat.
After two hours of hard climbing in the blinding rain and driving wind,
we reached the shelter of Station Number Eight, chilled and exhausted.
This hut, a log-cabin faced with huge lava blocks, its low roof held
down by many bowlders, and its walls five feet in thickness, consists
of one room about twelve by thirty feet in size. Two doors looked sheer
down the precipitous mountain-slope, and a deep window, like that of a
fortress, was set in the end wall. The square fireplace, sunken in the
floor, had its big copper kettle swinging from a crane, and the usual
stone frame for the rice-kettle. When the doors were barred and braced
with planks against the fury of the storm, the smoke, unable to escape,
nearly blinded us. Our dripping garments and the coolies’ wet cotton
clothes were hung to dry on the rafters over the fireplace, where they
slowly dripped. The master of Number Eight had opened his rest-house only
five days before, and with his young son and two servants found himself
called on to provide for us with our retinue of seventeen servants, for
four young cadets from the naval college in Tokio, storm-bound on their
way down the mountain, and a dozen pilgrims—forty-two people in all.
Warmed, and comforted with a stray sandwich, we were glad enough to go
to bed. Each of us received two futons, one of which made the mattress
and the other the covering, while basket-lids served for pillows. The
floor was cold as well as hard, and the rows of cotton towels hung on the
walls by preceding pilgrims fluttered in the draughts from the howling
blasts that shook the solid little hut. The shriek and roar and mad
rushes of wind were terrifying, and we were by no means certain that the
little stone box would hold together until morning. One hanging-lamp shed
a fantastic light on the rows of heads under the blue futons, and the
stillness of the Seven Sleepers presently befell the lonely shelter.