and larches, whose dwarfed and twisted forms showed the hardship of
their lives, and among them were some flowers too, clusters of a
delicate pink rhododendron, crimson wild roses, columbines, clematis,
golden-rod, and orange lilies.
The glissade of fine ashes brought us down as far as Number Five
station, and there we rejoined the upward path, for no one tries to
ascend over this loose stuff. High up in the gully we had seen men
digging out snow from under the ashes, and taking it across the flank of
the mountain to supply one of the rest-houses on the ridge to our right,
and troops of ascending pilgrims were visible now and then as a turn of
their path brought them in profile against the sky. Below Number Five
there is but one track; it plunges at once into a thick undergrowth of
bushes, and after this we had no more desolate wastes of ashes, but a
constant succession of trees and flowers, temples, and luxurious
rest-houses, gay with the cotton flags presented to them by their
patrons. The forest through which this path leads covers a steep ridge
of lava; the trees are mostly pine and other conifers, often very fine
old specimens, and under them is a tangle of flowering shrubs and plants
and of fallen timber. The people we met coming up seemed to appear
suddenly under our feet out of the green gloom; one party had always to
draw aside while the other passed; at times the path was a stairway of
old roots, at others a ditch between high banks, and never wide enough
for two to walk abreast. We heard a sound of singing below us, and stood
on the bank while about twenty white-clad pilgrims filed by, men of all
ages, each with a little bell tinkling at his waist; the front ones
chanted a short strain, which those at the back took up and answered,
and their song was faintly audible in the woods above us long after the
last had disappeared up the winding path. The chant is called “Rokkon
shōjō”--the six senses purified--the six, according to the Buddhists,
being eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and heart, and it is only sung by
the Fuji pilgrims.
At Number Two station we made a long halt, emptied the ashes out of our
boots, and washed our feet in the tubs of water which the little
servants brought us. It was a very different kind of place from the
rough shelter on the Gotemba side; the path came down a few steps as it
emerged from the wood, passed under a torii by a small temple, and then
spread out into quite a wide space in front of a long tea-house crowded
with pilgrims. On the opposite side of this space were three or four
platforms, spread with blankets and shaded with matting; these too were
occupied by groups of guests, who smoked and drank tea as they rested,
and below them the tops of the trees were cut away to give a space of
open sky and a view of the distance. Hundreds of little flags were
fluttering from long bamboo poles, and at the other end of this lively
scene the path went down a few more steps, and became again a narrow
track through the dense forest. The flowers all the way were abundant
and beautiful, constantly varying as we descended from one zone to
another; at last the wood became thinner, and we could get glimpses of
the distance, and of the grassy ridges on each side of us, tinged with
pale mauve by masses of funkia in blossom; and when we reached the
temple and the large open square of the Uma-gaeshi we were at the end of
the trees, and before us was a great slope of moorland leading down for
miles and miles to the pine grove by Yoshida.
There is but one break in the long walk through flowers and grass--a
little tea-house called Naka-no-chaya, whose three pine-trees are
distinguishable for a long distance across the moor. All round it there
are monumental pillars covered
[Illustration: NAKA-NO-CHAYA, ON THE NORTHERN SLOPE]
with inscriptions, which look like tombstones, but were really erected
by pilgrims to commemorate the number of ascents which they have made.
The variety of plants which grow and flourish on this slope of fine
cinders is truly remarkable. The most abundant flower was a pale mauve
scabious, which gave a prevailing tint to the whole moorland, but the
most conspicuous was a tall, slender day-lily
[Illustration: THE RED-PINE GROVE AT YOSHIDA]
with a pale yellow flower, which shone like a star in the evening when
the color had gone from all the others. A dark purple-blue campanula
(_Platycodon grandiflorum_) was also very effective, and a bright
crimson pink (_Dianthus superbus_) with beautifully fringed petals. But
it would be hopeless to try and enumerate them. I find in a sketchbook a
list of fifty-seven which I noted on the way between Naka-no-chaya and
Yoshida. A little later in the year this mass of flowers and grass is
mown down and carried to the villages at the foot of the mountain.
The last part of our walk was through a grove of grand red pines, which
seem to do better on this volcanic soil than anywhere else in Japan, and
then across a few fields to the top of the long village street, where we
at last found our tea-house and our baggage, and comfortable rooms, and
settled down for a night of well-earned repose.
[Illustration: FUJI OVER THE RICE-FIELDS OF SUZUKAWA]
FUJI FROM SUZUKAWA.
Oct. 3, 1892.
Fuji is quite free from clouds this morning, and in the soft autumnal
sunshine every detail is clearly visible as I sit with the shutters wide
open and eat my breakfast. The foreground is a level plain of
rice-fields, which stretches away for three or four miles to where the
first gentle ascent is marked by a line of villages and trees, and in
some
[Illustration: THE FLOWERY MOORLAND]
places, where irrigation is possible, the terraced fields climb a little
way up the mountain. Above them is a band of cultivated country, the
general effect of it dark green, varied by stripes of paler green
fields. At first the forms are sharply defined, but higher up the whole
becomes a blue-green mass. Next above this is a band of moorland with no
trees on it, lighter and warmer in color, the grasses and plants which
cover it tinged with yellow or orange by the autumn. As the morning sun
shines on it little blue shadows, in spots and waving lines, mark the
undulations of its surface. This belt of moorland reaches to the height
of about five thousand feet, and is very rich in flowers. Above it,
again, is a great band of forest; the warm color of the deciduous trees
at its lower edge gradually merges into the dark blue-green of the
pines, which mount a long way up on the summits of the ridges that at
this point seam the surface of the mountain. It is over this forest-land
that the morning clouds generally begin to form. As I write, a little
one, that looks like a puff of white steam, is beginning to float over
the trees, and this will grow until in an hour’s time the upper part of
Fuji will be invisible. The well-defined gullies are a light orange-red
tint, and the contrast between them and the dark pines on the dividing
ridges is the strongest opposition of color on Fuji, except that where
the snow and the black lava meet at its summit. As the gullies ascend
and the pines disappear the color again becomes more uniform, dark gray
with a tinge of Indian red, the red disappearing and the gray becoming a
rich purple as it runs up in irregular points and lines among the lower
snows. Only the very highest band is a solid white; on the left of the
truncated top is Kenga-mine, the highest point of the crater’s edge, and
next it a flat line shows where the Murayama path enters; to the right
of this a well-marked ridge of lava runs high up into the snow, and can
be traced down to the moorland, cutting off the Hōeizan portion from the
rest of the mountain. Beyond this ridge are two flatter curves--the
summits of Jizotaké and Kwannon-také--on the eastern side of the crater.
The general outline of the mountain on the left is one simple curve, the
almost level line where it begins to ascend from the Fujikawa River
becoming steeper and steeper towards the top. The most distinct
acceleration of grade is where the forests end and the ridges of lava
begin. The outline on the right is broken just above the pine-clad
ridges by the projection of Hōeizan, and again at the top of the
moorland by another smaller hill--Tsurugi-zan; and the effect on this
side is not so much a curve as two inclined planes, the first from
Kwannon-také to Hōeizan, the second from there to the moorland, after
which it becomes an undulating line of mounds leading away to the
Ashitaka range of older mountains. On this right side there is much less
variety of color, a sharp ridge of warm orange lava makes a crest to
Hōeizan, but the great cup-like hollow behind it and the treeless slope
below it are one uniform gray. Nearly two centuries have passed since
the eruption which altered this outline of Fuji and destroyed the
vegetation, and many more will have to elapse before the ashes are
sufficiently disintegrated to entice back the trees and flowers.
[Illustration]
SOME WANDERINGS IN JAPAN
[Illustration: TRICYRTIS HIRTA, ATAMI]
SOME WANDERINGS IN JAPAN
[Illustration]
The lakes which lie to the north of Fuji are not much visited by
foreigners; they are rather difficult of access, and the accommodation
in the tea-houses in that district is not luxurious; but for those who
can walk well, and put up with ordinary Japanese food and lodging, the
scenery will atone for everything. The old hills on the north once
looked over a great sloping plain to the shore of Suruga Bay, but the
upstart Fuji arose and blocked their view to the south; streams of lava
poured from it, and rolled down till they were stopped by these
buttresses of ancient rock, damming the rivers, and so forming this
chain of lakes at their base. Where the lava has been covered with fine
ashes, vegetation soon begins to conceal the work of destruction, but
the larger flows resist all attempts at cultivation; they still stand
in wide ridges above the rest of the country, gray lichens cover them,
and dwarfed trees find a foothold in the crevices between their blocks.
The winding tracks which lead across them are bad enough, for every
little hump in the path is not a pebble which rolls aside as your foot
touches it, but is a knob of solid rock, and it is your toe that has to
give way; the untrodden part of the scrubby forest would stop any animal
but an active monkey. We traversed one of the widest flows, called
Aoki-ga-hara (green-tree moor), from the number of evergreens which grow
over it, on the way between Shoji, the smallest, and Motosu, the largest
of the lakes, walking for hours in single file along a narrow trail with
hardly an opening anywhere in the dense foliage; it was late in the
evening, and the imprecations in Japanese and English ought to have
thrown a lurid light on that dusky path. The dividing-line between the
lava and the older rock is as clearly visible now as it was on that day
when the molten torrent was arrested in its course and piled itself in a
solid wave against the immovable hills. Some subterranean settling must
still be going on, for a few years ago the lakes began to rise, and they
have remained at the higher level, so that as we rowed along the shore
we could see below us the roofs of cottages and the fences of
rice-fields, and forests of dead pines rose gaunt and bare out of the
water. Of all the places I saw in Japan, Motosu seemed the most remote;
the rise of the lake must have ruined many of the inhabitants, and a
settled gloom seemed to hang over the few charcoal-burners,
wood-cutters, and fishermen who remain. We found rooms in an old
tea-house, where fine wood-work, now blackened and decayed, showed signs
of a former prosperity which will hardly revive unless prices rise, for
when we left the next morning the landlord sadly presented us with a
bill for nineteen sen (about sixpence), which for two foreigners and
two servants came to a very modest sum per head. We crossed the lake by
boat, and were landed at the foot of a trackless hill-side, overgrown
with tall grasses and wild flowers, through which it was difficult to
walk, but our local guides soon found a path which led us in the
direction of the Fujikawa. Here we were off the volcanic soil, the
beeches and other trees were magnificent, and in one wood we walked
between banks of maidenhair fern (_Adiantum pedatum_) growing five or
six feet high. How well I remember that day of glorious sunshine, the
view back over the lake with Fuji towering
[Illustration: TAGO-NO-URA]
behind it, the mountain road through forests with new trees and plants
at every turn, the gaudy butterflies, the long zigzag descent by the
pine-clad spur which brought us to the Suzukawa Valley, and the gorgeous
sunset as we whirled down the rapids to Shimoyama. There are five lakes
in the chain, Motosu, Shoji, Nemba, Kawaguchi, and Yamanaka, and they
descend in level from Motosu on the west to Yamanaka on the east. Nemba
lies in a hollow of wooded hills, with a couple of partially drowned
villages on its shore, in which the cottage roofs are strangely
constructed, and the people wear long knickerbockers of blue striped
cotton. Kawaguchi is the most beautiful of them all; its waters have
only risen a foot or two, so that no damage has been done except the
submersion of a few fields, and Funatsu and Kodachi, with picturesque
old temples and cottages shaded with gourds, like Jonah’s, are thriving
towns compared with the other lake-side hamlets.
[Illustration: COTTAGES AT NEMBA]
I was staying at Yoshida, within easy walking distance of Funatsu, in
the early part of September, when all the countryside was keeping the
Bon festival in memory of the dead--a sort of Japanese All-Souls day
which lasts for a week. Fires were lighted at night on all the
hill-sides; the path leading up to every little temple could be traced
by a line of blazing spots, and the great lonely slope of Fuji was
dotted with them here and there, marking the positions of the
rest-houses and the few scattered huts of grass-cutters and
charcoal-burners. I have seen the same thing in Switzerland, near
Martigny, where on the eve of St. John’s day every cattle-tender far up
the mountains greeted his distant neighbors with a bonfire. This part of
the ceremony is called, in Japanese, _hi-matsuri_ (fire festival). Other
observances are placing offerings of food before the family graves,
which in Yoshida were generally at the end of the back garden, and
erecting a little altar in the house, on which dishes of rice, fruit,
and sweetmeats are laid, and before which prayers are said.
We had a typhoon on the 4th of September, with such torrents of rain and
gusts of wind that the houses had to be enclosed with their wooden
shutters, and there was nothing to be done but lie on the floor in the
darkness and listen to the turmoil of the elements outside. Suddenly,
above all the other noises, I heard a monotonous chant, and, opening a
crack in my shutters, I saw a procession of men, dressed only in “kasa”
and straw rain-coats passing down the village street. Some of them
carried big drums slung to poles, on which the others banged, while all
of them groaned in unison a sentence which I could not catch. It was a
long time before I could induce Matsuba to tell me what it all meant;
but at last he confessed that it was done to drive away the storm-demon;
he was evidently ashamed of this method of praying for fair weather, and
explained that it was only in these out-of-the-way places his countrymen
were so superstitious. Anyhow, it was efficacious, for the typhoon blew
itself out during the night. There was more or less rain for some days
after, but we had nothing again like that day’s downpour, and I started
in more promising weather for a walk over the hills to Kofu. From
Funatsu I crossed a corner of Kawaguchi, and took a steep mountain road
on the other side; some kind of matsuri was going on there too, and the
lake was dotted with boatfuls of people beating drums and singing. The
road we took is said in the guide-books to be practicable for
jinrikishas, but the typhoon had completed the work of destruction which
the heavy rains in July had begun, and there were very few yards of it
left over which a wheeled vehicle could travel. On the other side of the
pass, Misaka-toge, where I stayed to lunch and admire the view of Fuji,
and to collect seeds of a grand red lychnis which grew there abundantly,
we went through a village, Nakagawa, that had been almost destroyed by a
torrent. The street and the gardens were filled with bowlders and gravel
and fallen tree trunks, and the roofs only were visible above the mass
of wreckage. The well-fitted timbers of a Japanese roof, especially when
there is a heavy thatch over them, make it the least destructible part
of the house; the lower part may collapse in a typhoon or earthquake,
but the roof settles down over the ruins practically uninjured. I saw
one near the Tokaido which had been taken off bodily by the wind and
deposited in a field the other side of the road without losing its
shape. I looked for the river which had done all this damage to
Nakagawa, and found only a little, innocent, prattling brook about a
yard wide.
Kofu is a busy place in the centre of a large silk-growing district. All
the hill-sides around are covered with scrubby-looking mulberry bushes,
and in the villages almost every cottage had its pile of golden cocoons,
which the women were winding off into skeins as they sat and chattered
by their doorways. As you pass Japanese houses in fine weather you see
almost everything that is going on inside; they are set down close to
the road, and the sliding-screens allow you to look right through to the
garden at the back. When it is cold or wet all the wooden shutters are
closed, and they have then a very sad and deserted appearance. I went to
a very good theatre in Kofu, and afterwards to what might be called a
wax-work show, but that the figures were
[Illustration: LAKE SUWA AND THE NAKASENDO MOUNTAINS, FROM
KAMI-NO-SUWA]
made of carved and painted wood, where the incidents of the murder of
Ii-Kamonno-Kami were represented with a startling fidelity to nature. He
was assassinated one winter’s night in the streets of Tōkyō by the
retainers of a rival Daimio, and the snowy ground showed to advantage
all the details of disembowelled bodies and mangled limbs. The last two
figures were mechanical. A retainer kneeling in front of the Daimio
slowly opened a bloody handkerchief and showed him the head of his
enemy, whereupon the Daimio’s eyebrows went up and the corners of his
mouth went down, giving him a most comical expression of horror.
The roads are wider here than in most parts of Japan, and there are
comparatively few jinrikishas. Most of the travelling is done in basha,
small wagonettes with no springs, which jolt the very life out of you. I
engaged one to take me on to Lake Suwa, on the Nakasendo road, a journey
of forty miles, and arrived there feeling like an aching jelly. After
travelling a few miles from Kofu we came to a river where the bridge had
been washed away. I and my baggage were ferried over, and the driver
attempted to ford it, but the water was too deep for him, and I was left
stranded with my impedimenta on a wide waste of pebbles. Fortunately the
man with whom I had made my bargain had foreseen this possibility, and
when I could get some coolies to help me with my baggage across half a
mile of stones and bowlders, I found another basha waiting for me. All
the first part of the journey was a long ascent through wooded, hilly
country, with road-side villages at short intervals. In one of them,
Tsutaki, where we stopped to change horses, a school treat was going on.
The place was gayly decorated with lanterns and arches of leaves and
paper flowers, and in the temple court-yard the children had made
realistic figures, among them a life-sized tiger, ingeniously
constructed with straws of different colors. The low wooden cottages,
with broad eaves and stones piled on the top, looked very like Swiss
chalets, except that they all had green roof crests, sometimes of iris,
but more often of a bunchy kind of lycopodium which the natives called
yuwashiba. Almost every one had a screen of bamboo on the south side,
with gourds of different kinds growing up it and tumbling over the roof
and the out-buildings. At last, with long spells of walking, very
welcome as a rest from the weary jolting, we reached the tea-house at
the top of the pass, and then rattled down a somewhat better road for
about twelve miles, emerging at dusk into the broad mountain-guarded
valley in which Suwa lies. The flat lands near the lake are intersected
by little streams and canals, along which the peasants go to their work
in long, narrow punts, very like those which are used for the same
purpose in Picardy--another instance of the way in which similar
conditions in widely distant countries lead to similar habits and
inventions.
I stayed at Kami-no-suwa in a delightful tea-house, with clean polished
wood-work, and quilts covered with a soft thin silk called kaiki, very
pleasant and cooling to a mosquito-tortured skin. Cleanliness is the
great luxury of the Japanese; their foot-gear is always removed before
entering the house, so that the mats may not be soiled; the wood-work is
never painted, stained, or varnished, but left with a well-planed
surface, which shows its natural color; the ceilings are thin planks,
slightly overlapping each other, the grain of each being carefully
selected to combine with the lines in those next it; there are no
hangings or fixed pieces of furniture to collect the dust, and no
carpets to be taken up and shaken, so that spring cleaning, that terror
of the Western house-keeper, is unnecessary; the whole room can be swept
out every morning, the walls and ceiling rubbed with a duster, and there
it is, all as neat as a
[Illustration: TOURISTS AT A WATERFALL]
[Illustration: NIEGAWA, ON THE NAKASENDO]
new pin. At Shimo-no-suwa, about three miles on, the Koshu-kaido, along
which I had been travelling from Kofu, joins the Nakasendo, the central
mountain road, one of the main routes between Kyoto and Tōkyō. A new
road has been made most of the way, admirably engineered, with gentle
gradients, but so badly executed that it had already fallen to pieces in
some places, and it was covered with loose road-metal which made
jinrikisha travelling very laborious. My men usually preferred the old
steep road, which cuts off corners, and is solid though very rough, and
after a couple of days I sent back all the jinrikishas except the one
which carried my baggage, finding my own legs the best means of
conveyance. From the Shiojiri Pass I looked back over Suwa, saw Fuji
through the blue haze of a lovely autumn morning, a long way off, but
still towering above all the other hills, and then dropped down into a
new set of mountains, rivers, and valleys. The scenery of the Nakasendo
gets more and more picturesque, until it reaches a climax in the valley
of the Kisogawa, on which I first looked from the summit of the Torii
Pass, four thousand and odd feet above the sea. Each village on the road
had its own peculiarities of costume, architecture, and
manufacture--cheap lacquer-ware, combs, pickles, and so on, and of all
these Matsuba bought a stock, for it is the habit of every Japanese on
his travels to take back with him “meibutsu,” the characteristic
productions of the places he has visited, as presents for those he has
left at home.
[Illustration: A LITTLE SHINTO SHRINE, NEAR THE NAKASENDO]
There are many celebrated mountains in this district, each with its own
special god and shrines, and I constantly met bands of pilgrims dressed
in white, with long staves and big hats, or saw boat-loads of them going
down
[Illustration: A BOAT-MENDER BY THE TENRYUGAWA]