KOBÉ AND ARIMA
Travellers had cause to rejoice when the Tokaido railroad made it a
twenty-four hours’ journey on dry land from Tokio to Kobé, the foreign
settlement adjoining the ancient town of Hiogo. It is almost always a
miserable trip by water, notwithstanding the beauty of Fuji and the
coast. Chopping seas, cross-currents, and unexpected pitchings and
motions disturb the equilibrium even of an old sailor, and the trip to
Kobé often lays him low, while smiling skies and seemingly smooth waters
seem to make a mock of him. When typhoons sweep, the province of Kii is a
magnet for them, and frightful seas rage around that point which guards
the entrance to the Inland Sea.
Kobé, as the port of Osaka and Kioto, and the outlet of the great
Yamashiro tea-district, is an important place commercially; its growth
more than equalling Yokohama’s since the opening of the port. Beginning
with less than 10,000 native inhabitants in the town of Hiogo in 1868,
it had risen to more than 80,000 in 1887, and to 215,786 in 1900. The
foreign trade of 1888 amounted to $42,971,976; in 1900 to $97,805,206,
of which $60,144,764 were imports, and $37,660,442 were exports. Ships
of all nations lie at anchor in its busy harbor, and the many American
sailing vessels that come out loaded with kerosene return with cargoes of
rags, camphor, and curios, by which general invoice name are included the
cheaper porcelains, lacquers, fans, lanterns, toys, and trifles made for
the foreign trade.
Kobé, lying at the head of the Inland Sea, sheltered from the ocean, and
screened even from the land by the low range of mountains back of it,
possesses the best and driest climate of any of the treaty ports now
open for the residence of foreigners. The soil is sandy, and the site,
facing southward, enjoys to the full the winter sun and summer winds. The
town, beginning in lines of houses that run down from each velvet, green
ravine in the abrupt hill-wall, slopes steeply to the water’s edge, and
there spreads out in a long Bund, one part of which, lined with foreign
residences, banks, and consulates, is the pride of Kobé. This foreign
Bund is much less picturesque than the native or Hiogo Bund, off which
lie hundreds of curious junks, that at night display constellations
of softly glowing lanterns on their masts, while the whole harbor and
hill-side twinkle with open lights, and the electric search-lights of the
men-of-war flash broad rays over the scene.
At the end of the native Bund Government buildings close the street, and
the railway wharf and sea-wall follow a long point of land that runs far
out into the bay, and is capped by a fortress with a round stone tower
and a light-house. A double line of ancient trees marks the course of
the Minatogawa, which centuries ago was turned from its proper channel
and made to run along this high embankment. A steep slope of forty feet
in some places leads from the level of the Hiogo streets to the banks
of this watercourse, which are turfed over, shaded with rows and groves
of pines and enormous camphor-trees, and made gay with garden-plots
and picturesque tea-houses. The dry river-bed is a play-ground for
legions of children, and during matsuris it is crowded with booths and
side-shows. Hiogo, meaning “arsenal,” figures prominently in ancient
history, and here Kusunoki Masashige, that ideal hero and model of
chivalric valor, fought the last battle of the War of the Chrysanthemums
and established the sovereignty of the Emperor Go-Daigo in the fourteenth
century. Kusunoki’s memory is worshipped everywhere, but the Nanko temple
in Hiogo is dedicated to his memory, and on anniversary days its matsuris
are brilliant and picturesque affairs. Besides this great Shinto temple,
Hiogo has a Buddhist establishment of equal importance—the Shinkoji,
outside whose sanctuary sits a colossal bronze Buddha of serene, majestic
countenance, its granite pedestal rising as an island in the midst of a
lotus pond.
Properly speaking, the Minatogawa lies in Hiogo, but where ancient Hiogo
ends and modern Kobé begins no mortal can see. The Motomachi, the main
street of Kobé, winds its narrow length from the banks of the Minatogawa
to the Foreign Concession, beyond which warehouses, tea-firing godowns,
and foreign residences stretch and spread in every way outside the narrow
limits of the tract conceded to alien residents in the treaties. Kobé
means “head,” or “gate of god,” probably in reference to its position
at the entrance of the Inland Sea. While so picturesquely placed it is
the model foreign settlement of the East, and the municipal council—a
mixed board of consular and native officials—has never allowed its right
to that fame to be questioned. A pretty park down in the heart of the
Concession, shaded with ancient camphor-trees and ornamented by hedges,
groups of palms, thatched summer-houses, and a bell-tower, was once the
execution-ground of Hiogo. A small temple that stood near it has given
way to a large tea-firing godown, and native children tumble and play
where the headsman used to bind mutilated bodies or ghastly heads to
high poles and set them up at the corners, after immemorial usage. The
park, or recreation-grounds for the foreign colony, lies, beside the long
embankment of another elevated river-bed on the opposite side from the
Minatogawa.
Every gap in the Kobé hills leads to some lovely little valley, and
orange groves dot the hill-sides. In one green ravine are the falls of
Nunobiki, where a clear mountain stream takes two long plunges down
sheer granite walls, drops in foaming cascades past old rice-mills, and
courses on over the sloping plain to the sea. The Moon temple shines,
a white spot, far up towards the summit of the steep, green mountain,
and, with the more accessible falls, offers the two favorite points for
visitors’ excursions. Farther along the brow of the hill stands the
Gold Ball temple, a whitewashed structure, looking like an exaggerated
country meeting-house, with its roof surmounted by a gilded sphere, and
with nothing even suggesting Buddhism in its appearance. While it is
an eye-sore to every one else, the natives, who contributed the money
to build this monstrosity of what they consider foreign architecture,
are delighted with its unique and bizarre appearance. Around it lies a
populous graveyard, many of the stones gray with the mosses of centuries.
Others, newly erected, are family memorials, bearing the names of those
members already buried there written in black characters, and the names
of the living in red. It is a curious custom; but to the Japanese, who
even point with pride to the red letters of their own names on these
family monuments, it is rational and right. Cremation is the funeral rite
preferred, and up a narrow valley behind the temple is the crematory,
much used both by rich and poor. The process is simple and inexpensive,
and the visitor always encounters some funeral train accompanying a body
to that little white temple of fire, or some family group bearing the
ashes down to the cemetery for final rest.
A line of tea-houses bands the brow of the hill; innumerable Shinto
shrines lost among the pine-trees show their long lines of torii at the
edges of the groves; and at another point the schools and homes of the
large American missionary colony make a settlement quite to themselves.
Kobé is almost entirely given up to the trade in cheap goods for the
foreign market. The streets are lined and the shops filled with such
porcelain, bronze, paper, and lacquer monstrosities; such burlesques of
embroidery and nightmares of color as crowd the Japanese stores in the
cities of America, chief customers of this trade. One Chicago importing
house takes more of such goods annually than the whole kingdom of
Belgium, one of the oldest, richest, and most densely populated countries
of Europe. The curio-shops proper have diminished in numbers as the
rage for foreign trade increased, until there remains almost alone the
establishment of an old samurai, who still retains the shaved crown
and gun-hammer cue of his class. Despising modern ways and business
signs, this one simply hung a huge sword over his gate-way and left
his customers to stumble upon him accidentally, push their way through
a rubbish and lumber-room, and pursue their unguided path across the
garden. Of recent years even this old conservative has relented a little
and made his entrance more plainly alluring; but formerly each comer
felt the excitement of discovering some jealously hidden treasure-house.
Within, there is still a room full of old saddles, state kagos, military
trappings, and banners; a place crowded with spears, lances, and color
standards; a chamber piled high with brocade gowns, uniforms and temple
hangings; hundreds of carved and gilded Buddhas, divine Kwannons more
or less battered and worn, and hoards of old porcelain, lacquer,
bronze, and carvings. The last room looks upon a little garden with its
inevitable miniature pond crossed by a stone bridge with stone lanterns,
and stunted pines on the slope of a small mountain. Beyond this garden
are more stores of armor, coins, and ancient things, and a second
story doubles the whole lower labyrinth of the place. An army might be
equipped from this magazine of military stores, or a pantheon fitted
out with Buddhas, Kwannons, Nios, lesser gods, and gilded images. All
these deities are certified to have come from the Nara or Mount Hiyeizan
temples, which are the miraculous sources of supply of everything
sacerdotal in this part of Japan. One fortunate tourist, who bought a
Buddha of Hari Shin, found that the jewel in the forehead was a diamond
instead of a crystal, which, when cut in facets, proved to be worth
several hundred dollars. Of this incident the old samurai prefers not
to talk, and to change the subject his agile son refills the tea-cups,
unrolls more kakemonos, or displays the swords and helmets “of my
father’s young time.”
Through Kobé the colored straw mosaics of Tajima province on the west
coast find their market, as well as the basket wares of Arima, a village
lying fifteen miles inland. One goes from Kobé to Arima by jinrikisha,
and starting in the dew and freshness of a summer morning at six o’clock,
we reached the grateful shade of the Taiko’s maple in the tea-house
garden soon after nine. As we rose by degrees through the suburbs of
Kobé, and drew nearer its glorious green hill-wall, we had a superb view
of the opaline bay, set with the black hulls of great merchant ships,
the white ones of foreign men-of-war, and dotted with the square white
sails of hundreds of junks and fishing-boats. A sudden turn in the road
took us behind the sharp spur of a hill, and a narrow cañon lay before
us with the road clinging to one side wall. All the way we followed
watercourses—the road now in some wild ravine, and again running up some
emerald rice valley. All the way we met primitive ox-carts carrying their
loads down to Kobé, each driver bearing an equally heavy load hanging
from the ends of a pole across his shoulders. The oxen’s horns were bound
with fantastic bits of red cloth, their feet shod with straw sandals;
and the cart was braked on the slopes by the main force and strength
of the driver exerted against a long tongue or pole that also served
to guide it. These placid, easy-going oxen, with their hard-working
drivers walking beside them, afford some of the best pictures of the old
road-side scenes. Small boys trudged at their fathers’ heels with bundles
of baskets or firewood over their shoulders, and women carried their
share of the family load.
When the bamboo groves and rice fields of Arima’s neighborhood appeared,
the paddy fields, lying terrace below terrace on a rounding hill-side in
waving, irregular lines, easily suggested the terraced basins around the
Yellowstone hot springs; the Japanese farmer unconsciously repeating, in
larger outlines of vivid green, what the overflowing waters have built
up in snowy deposits in the Montana Park. Arima, which lines the sides
of a steep gorge through which a wild mountain-stream dashes, is as
picturesque as a mountain village in Switzerland. The houses are built
almost one on top of another, with narrow, winding streets, where the
heavy projecting roofs almost meet. Stone steps ease the steep slopes for
the villagers, and the clatter of clogs and the sight of the peasants
going up and down the stair-ways, half-hidden by the loads of grass or
straw on their backs, recall similar pictures in the crooked little
mountain hamlets of Northern Italy. At the tea-house we wandered through
an intricate garden before reaching the steps of the detached pavilion,
on whose balcony were chairs and hammocks, and before which loomed a
perpendicular green mountain-wall with its base sunk in the feathery,
spray-like tops of bamboo groves. To us came peddlers and packs with
samples of everything the town could offer, and the rooms were soon a
bazaar of bamboo wares.
[Illustration: FARM LABORERS]
All the afternoon we roamed about Arima, climbing its steep streets and
threading its narrow by-ways. In the glaring white sunlight the shops
were caves of cool shadow, and we found them filled with everything that
bamboo will make, from clothes-baskets to toothpicks, and all selling
for a song. Their weight is almost nothing, but, with the most ingenious
packing, the space they consume makes the cost of shipment to America
equal that of production. Except the necessaries of life, nothing seems
to be sold in Arima save bamboo baskets and straw work; and every house
is a basket-factory, where father, mother, children, and almost babes,
weave baskets or prepare the bamboo. Heredity asserts itself again, and
these descendants of generations of basket-makers work with a dexterity
equalling sleight-of-hand tricksters. Arima’s industrial life is a fine
study in political economy.
The hill-side is musical with the boom of Buddhist bells and echoing
clang of Shinto gongs; but more strangers toil upward for a drink from
the sparkling, ice-cold soda spring beside one temple, than to pray
at its door-way. For centuries Arima’s hot-springs have wrought their
cures, and sufferers from rheumatism and skin diseases have flocked to
its pools. The Government has charge of the springs, and the waters are
conducted to a large bath-house in the heart of the village, where free
baths in the common pool are open to every one, and where private baths
may be obtained at a trifling charge.