The traveller was quite hungry, and only too glad of the offer. The young woman kindled a little fire, prepared a few dishes in silence— stewed leaves of na, some aburage, some kampyo, and a bowl of coarse rice—and quickly set the meal before him, apologising for its quality. But during his repast she spoke scarcely at all, and her reserved manner embarrassed him. As she answered the few questions he ventured upon merely by a bow or by a solitary word, he soon refrained from attempting to press the conversation.
Meanwhile he had observed that the small house was spotlessly clean, and the utensils in which his food was served were immaculate. The few cheap objects in the apartment were pretty. The fusuma of the oshiire and zendana [8] were of white paper only, but had been decorated with large Chinese characters exquisitely written, characters suggesting, according to the law of such decoration, the favourite themes of the poet and artist: Spring Flowers, Mountain and Sea, Summer Rain, Sky and Stars, Autumn Moon, River Water, Autumn Breeze. At one side of the apartment stood a kind of low altar, supporting a butsudan, whose tiny lacquered doors, left open, showed a mortuary tablet within, before which a lamp was burning between offerings of wild flowers. And above this household shrine hung a picture of more than common merit, representing the Goddess of Mercy, wearing the moon for her aureole.
As the student ended his little meal the young woman observed: I cannot offer you a good bed, and there is only a paper mosquito-curtain The bed and the curtain are mine, but to-night I have many things to do, and shall have no time to sleep; therefore I beg you will try to rest, though I am not able to make you comfortable.'
He then understood that she was, for some strange reason, entirely alone, and was voluntarily giving up her only bed to him upon a kindly pretext. He protested honestly against such an excess of hospitality, and assured her that he could sleep quite soundly anywhere on the floor, and did not care about the mosquitoes. But she replied, in the tone of an elder sister, that he must obey her wishes. She really had something to do, and she desired to be left by herself as soon as possible; therefore, understanding him to be a gentleman, she expected he would suffer her to arrange matters in her own way. To this he could offer no objection, as there was but one room. She spread the mattress on the floor, fetched a wooden pillow, suspended her paper mosquito-curtain, unfolded a large screen on the side of the bed toward the butsudan, and then bade him good-night in a manner that assured him she wished him to retire at once; which he did, not without some reluctance at the thought of all the trouble he had unintentionally caused her.
Sec. 3
Unwilling as the young traveller felt to accept a kindness involving the sacrifice of another's repose, he found the bed more than comfortable. He was very tired, and had scarcely laid his head upon the wooden pillow before he forgot everything in sleep.
Yet only a little while seemed to have passed when he was awakened by a singular sound. It was certainly the sound of feet, but not of feet walking softly. It seemed rather the sound of feet in rapid motion, as of excitement. Then it occurred to him that robbers might have entered the house. As for himself, he had little to fear because he had little to lose. His anxiety was chiefly for the kind person who had granted him hospitality. Into each side of the paper mosquito-curtain a small square of brown netting had been fitted, like a little window, and through one of these he tried to look; but the high screen stood between him and whatever was going on. He thought of calling, but this impulse was checked by the reflection that in case of real danger it would be both useless and imprudent to announce his presence before understanding the situation. The sounds which had made him uneasy continued, and were more and more mysterious. He resolved to prepare for the worst, and to risk his life, if necessary, in order to defend his young hostess. Hastily girding up his robes, he slipped noiselessly from under the paper curtain, crept to the edge of the screen, and peeped. What he saw astonished him extremely.
Before her illuminated butsudan the young woman, magnificently attired, was dancing all alone. Her costume he recognised as that of a shirabyoshi, though much richer than any he had ever seen worn by a professional dancer. Marvellously enhanced by it, her beauty, in that lonely time and place, appeared almost supernatural; but what seemed to him even more wonderful was her dancing. For an instant he felt the tingling of a weird doubt. The superstitions of peasants, the legends of Fox-women, flashed before his imagination; but the sight of the Buddhist shrine, of the sacred picture, dissipated the fancy, and shamed him for the folly of it. At the same time he became conscious that he was watching something she had not wished him to see, and that it was his duty, as her guest, to return at once behind the screen; but the spectacle fascinated him. He felt, with not less pleasure than amazement, that he was looking upon the most accomplished dancer he had ever seen; and the more he watched, the more the witchery of her grace grew upon him. Suddenly she paused, panting, unfastened her girdle, turned in the act of doffing her upper robe, and started violently as her eyes encountered his own.
He tried at once to excuse himself to her. He said he had been suddenly awakened by the sound of quick feet, which sound had caused him some uneasiness, chiefly for her sake, because of the lateness of the hour and the lonesomeness of the place. Then he confessed his surprise at what he had seen, and spoke of the manner in which it had attracted him. 'I beg you,' he continued, 'to forgive my curiosity, for I cannot help wondering who you are, and how you could have become so marvellous a dancer. All the dancers of Saikyo I have seen, yet I have never seen among the most celebrated of them a girl who could dance like you; and once I had begun to watch you, I could not take away my eyes.'
At first she had seemed angry, but before he had ceased to speak her expression changed. She smiled, and seated herself before him.' 'No, I am not angry with you,' she said. 'I am only sorry that you should have watched me, for I am sure you must have thought me mad when you saw me dancing that way, all by myself; and now I must tell you the meaning of what you have seen.'
So she related her story. Her name he remembered to have heard as a boy —her professional name, the name of the most famous of shirabyoshi, the darling of the capital, who, in the zenith of her fame and beauty, had suddenly vanished from public life, none knew whither or why. She had fled from wealth and fortune with a youth who loved her. He was poor, but between them they possessed enough means to live simply and happily in the country. They built a little house in the mountains, and there for a number of years they existed only for each other. He adored her. One of his greatest pleasures was to see her dance. Each evening he would play some favourite melody, and she would dance for him. But one long cold winter he fell sick, and, in spite of her tender nursing, died. Since then she had lived alone with the memory of him, performing all those small rites of love and homage with which the dead are honoured. Daily before his tablet she placed the customary offerings, and nightly danced to please him, as of old. And this was the explanation of what the young traveller had seen. It was indeed rude, she continued, to have awakened her tired guest; but she had waited until she thought him soundly sleeping, and then she had tried to dance very, very lightly. So she hoped he would pardon her for having unintentionally disturbed him.
When she had told him all, she made ready a little tea, which they drank together; then she entreated him so plaintively to please her by trying to sleep again that he found himself obliged to go back, with many sincere apologies, under the paper mosquito-curtain.
He slept well and long; the sun was high before he woke. On rising, he found prepared for him a meal as simple as that of the evening before, and he felt hungry. Nevertheless he ate sparingly, fearing the young woman might have stinted herself in thus providing for him; and then he made ready to depart. But when he wanted to pay her for what he had received, and for all the trouble he had given her, she refused to take anything from him, saying: 'What I had to give was not worth money, and what I did was done for kindness alone. So! pray that you will try to forget the discomfort you suffered here, and will remember only the good-will of one who had nothing to offer.'
He still endeavoured to induce her to accept something; but at last, finding that his insistence only gave her pain, he took leave of her with such words as he could find to express his gratitude, and not without a secret regret, for her beauty and her gentleness had charmed him more than he would have liked to acknowledge to any but herself. She indicated to him the path to follow, and watched him descend the mountain until he had passed from sight. An hour later he found himself upon a highway with which he was familiar. Then a sudden remorse touched him: he had forgotten to tell her his name. For an instant he hesitated; then he said to himself, 'What matters it? I shall be always poor.' And he went on.
Many years passed by, and many fashions with them; and the painter became old. But ere becoming old he had become famous. Princes, charmed by the wonder of his work, had vied with one another in giving him patronage; so that he grew rich, and possessed a beautiful dwelling of his own in the City of the Emperors. Young artists from many provinces were his pupils, and lived with him, serving him in all things while receiving his instruction; and his name was known throughout the land.
Now, there came one day to his house an old woman, who asked to speak with him. The servants, seeing that she was meanly dressed and of miserable appearance, took her to be some common beggar, and questioned her roughly. But when she answered: 'I can tell to no one except your master why I have come,' they believed her mad, and deceived her, saying: 'He is not now in Saikyo, nor do we know how soon he will return.'
But the old woman came again and again—day after day, and week after week—each time being told something that was not true: 'To-day he is ill,' or, 'To-day he is very busy,' or, 'To-day he has much company, and therefore cannot see you.' Nevertheless she continued to come, always at the same hour each day, and always carrying a bundle wrapped in a ragged covering; and the servants at last thought it were best to speak to their master about her. So they said to him: 'There is a very old woman, whom we take to be a beggar, at our lord's gate. More than fifty times she has come, asking to see our lord, and refusing to tell us why— saying that she can tell her wishes only to our lord. And we have tried to discourage her, as she seemed to be mad; but she always comes. Therefore we have presumed to mention the matter to our lord, in order that we may learn what is to be done hereafter.'
Then the Master answered sharply: 'Why did none of you tell me of this before?' and went out himself to the gate, and spoke very kindly to the woman, remembering how he also had been poor. And he asked her if she desired alms of him.
But she answered that she had no need of money or of food, and only desired that he would paint for her a picture. He wondered at her wish, and bade her enter his house. So she entered into the vestibule, and, kneeling there, began to untie the knots of the bundle she had brought with her. When she had unwrapped it, the painter perceived curious rich quaint garments of silk broidered with designs in gold, yet much frayed and discoloured by wear and time—the wreck of a wonderful costume of other days, the attire of a shirabyoshi.
While the old woman unfolded the garments one by one, and tried to smooth them with her trembling fingers, a memory stirred in the Master's brain, thrilled dimly there a little space, then suddenly lighted up. In that soft shock of recollection, he saw again the lonely mountain dwelling in which he had received unremunerated hospitality—the tiny room prepared for his rest, the paper mosquito-curtain, the faintly burning lamp before the Buddhist shrine, the strange beauty of one dancing there alone in the dead of the night. Then, to the astonishment of the aged visitor, he, the favoured of princes, bowed low before her, and said: 'Pardon my rudeness in having forgotten your face for a moment; but it is more than forty years since we last saw each other. Now I remember you well. You received me once at your house. You gave up to me the only bed you had. I saw you dance, and you told me all your story. You had been a shirabyoshi, and I have not forgotten your name.'
He uttered it. She, astonished and confused, could not at first reply to him, for she was old and had suffered much, and her memory had begun to fail. But he spoke more and more kindly to her, and reminded her of many things which she had told him, and described to her the house in which she had lived alone, so that at last she also remembered; and she answered, with tears of pleasure: 'Surely the Divine One who looketh down above the sound of prayer has guided me. But when my unworthy home was honoured by the visit of the august Master, I was not as I now am. And it seems to me like a miracle of our Lord Buddha that the Master should remember me.'
Then she related the rest of her simple story. In the course of years, she had become, through poverty, obliged to part with her little house; and in her old age she had returned alone to the great city, in which her name had long been forgotten. It had caused her much pain to lose her home; but it grieved her still more that, in becoming weak and old, she could no longer dance each evening before the butsudan, to please the spirit of the dead whom she had loved. Therefore she wanted to have a picture of herself painted, in the costume and the attitude of the dance, that she might suspend it before the butsudan. For this she had prayed earnestly to Kwannon. And she had sought out the Master because of his fame as a painter, since she desired, for the sake of the dead, no common work, but a picture painted with great skill; and she had brought her dancing attire, hoping that the Master might be willing to paint her therein.
He listened to all with a kindly smile, and answered her: 'It will be only a pleasure for me to paint the picture which you want. This day I have something to finish which cannot be delayed. But if you will come here to-morrow, I will paint you exactly as you wish, and as well as I am able.'
But she said: 'I have not yet told to the Master the thing which most troubles me. And it is this—that I can offer in return for so great a favour nothing except these dancer's clothes; and they are of no value in themselves, though they were costly once. Still, I hoped the Master might be willing to take them, seeing they have become curious; for there are no more shirabyoshi, and the maiko of these times wear no such robes.'
'Of that matter,' the good painter exclaimed, 'you must not think at all! No; I am glad to have this present chance of paying a small part of my old debt to you. So to-morrow I will paint you just as you wish.'
She prostrated herself thrice before him, uttering thanks and then said, 'Let my lord pardon, though I have yet something more to say. For I do not wish that he should paint me as I now am, but only as I used to be when I was young, as my lord knew me.'
He said: 'I remember well. You were very beautiful.'
Her wrinkled features lighted up with pleasure, as she bowed her thanks to him for those words. And she exclaimed: 'Then indeed all that I hoped and prayed for may be done! Since he thus remembers my poor youth, I beseech my lord to paint me, not as I now am, but as he saw me when I was not old and, as it has pleased him generously to say, not uncomely. O Master, make me young again! Make me seem beautiful that I may seem beautiful to the soul of him for whose sake I, the unworthy, beseech this! He will see the Master's work: he will forgive me that I can no longer dance.
Once more the Master bade her have no anxiety, and said: 'Come tomorrow, and I will paint you. I will make a picture of you just as you were when I saw you, a young and beautiful shirabyoshi, and I will paint it as carefully and as skilfully as if I were painting the picture of the richest person in the land. Never doubt, but come.'
Sec. 5
So the aged dancer came at the appointed hour; and upon soft white silk the artist painted a picture of her. Yet not a picture of her as she seemed to the Master's pupils but the memory of her as she had been in the days of her youth, bright-eyed as a bird, lithe as a bamboo, dazzling as a tennin [9] in her raiment of silk and gold. Under the magic of the Master's brush, the vanished grace returned, the faded beauty bloomed again. When the kakemono had been finished, and stamped with his seal, he mounted it richly upon silken cloth, and fixed to it rollers of cedar with ivory weights, and a silken cord by which to hang it; and he placed it in a little box of white wood, and so gave it to the shirabyoshi. And he would also have presented her with a gift of money. But though he pressed her earnestly, he could not persuade her to accept his help. 'Nay,' she made answer, with tears, 'indeed I need nothing. The picture only I desired. For that I prayed; and now my prayer has been answered, and I know that I never can wish for anything more in this life, and that if I come to die thus desiring nothing, to enter upon the way of Buddha will not be difficult. One thought .alone causes me sorrow—that I have nothing to offer to the Master but this dancer's apparel, which is indeed of little worth, though I beseech him I to accept it; and I will pray each day that his future life may be a life of happiness, because of the wondrous kindness which I he has done me.'
'Nay,' protested the painter, smiling, 'what is it that I have done? Truly nothing. As for the dancer's garments, I will accept them, if that can make you more happy. They will bring back pleasant memories of the night I passed in your home, when you gave up all your comforts for my unworthy sake, and yet would not suffer me to pay for that which I used; and for that kindness I hold myself to be still in your debt. But now tell me where you live, so that I may see the picture in its place.' For he had resolved within himself to place her beyond the reach of want.
But she excused herself with humble words, and would not tell him, saying that her dwelling-place was too mean to be looked upon by such as he; and then, with many prostrations, she thanked him again and again, and went away with her treasure, weeping for joy.
Then the Master called to one of his pupils: 'Go quickly after that woman, but so that she does not know herself followed, and bring me word where she lives.' So the young man followed her, unperceived.
He remained long away, and when he returned he laughed in the manner of one obliged to say something which it is not pleasant to hear, and he said: 'That woman, O Master, I followed out of the city to the dry bed of the river, near to the place where criminals are executed. There I saw a hut such as an Eta might dwell in, and that is where she lives. A forsaken and filthy place, O Master!'
'Nevertheless,' the painter replied, 'to-morrow you will take me to that forsaken and filthy place. What time I live she shall not suffer for food or clothing or comfort.'
And as all wondered, he told them the story of the shirabyoshi, after which it did not seem to them that his words were strange.
Sec. 6
On the morning of the day following, an hour after sun-rise, the Master and his pupil took their way to the dry bed of the river, beyond the verge of the city, to the place of outcasts.
The entrance of the little dwelling they found closed by a single shutter, upon which the Master tapped many times without evoking a response. Then, finding the shutter unfastened from within, he pushed it slightly aside, and called through the aperture. None replied, and he decided to enter. Simultaneously, with extraordinary vividness, there thrilled back to him the sensation of the very instant when, as a tired. lad, he stood pleading for admission to the lonesome little cottage among the hills.
Entering alone softly, he perceived that the woman was lying there, wrapped in a single thin and tattered futon, seemingly asleep. On a rude shelf he recognised the butsudan of' forty years before, with its tablet, and now, as then, a tiny lamp was burning in front of the kaimyo. The kakemono of the Goddess of Mercy with her lunar aureole was gone, but on the wall facing the shrine he beheld his own dainty gift suspended, and an ofuda beneath it—an ofuda of Hito-koto-Kwannon [10]— that Kwannon unto whom it is unlawful to pray more than once, as she answers but a single prayer. There was little else in the desolate dwelling; only the garments of a female pilgrim, and a mendicant's staff and bowl.
But the Master did not pause to look at these things, for he desired to awaken and to gladden the sleeper, and he called her name cheerily twice and thrice.
Then suddenly he saw that she was dead, and he wondered while he gazed upon her face, for it seemed less old. A vague sweetness, like a ghost of youth, had returned to it; the lines of sorrow had been softened, the wrinkles strangely smoothed, by the touch of a phantom Master mightier than he.
Sec. 1
I RESOLVED to go to Oki.
Not even a missionary had ever been to Oki, and its shores had never been seen by European eyes, except on those rare occasions when men-of- war steamed by them, cruising about the Japanese Sea. This alone would have been a sufficient reason for going there; but a stronger one was furnished for me by the ignorance of the Japanese themselves about Oki. Excepting the far-away Riu-Kiu, or Loo-Choo Islands, inhabited by a somewhat different race with a different language, the least-known portion of the Japanese Empire is perhaps Oki. Since it belongs to the same prefectural district as Izumo, each new governor of Shimane-Ken is supposed to pay one visit to Oki after his inauguration; and the chief of police of the province sometimes goes there upon a tour of inspection. There are also some mercantile houses in Matsue and in other cities which send a commercial traveller to Oki once a year. Furthermore, there is quite a large trade with Oki—almost all carried on by small sailing-vessels. But such official and commercial communications have not been of a nature to make Oki much better known to-day than in the medieval period of Japanese history. There are still current among the common people of the west coast extraordinary stories of Oki much like those about that fabulous Isle of Women, which figures so largely in the imaginative literature of various Oriental races. According to these old legends, the moral notions of the people of Oki were extremely fantastic: the most rigid ascetic could not dwell there and maintain his indifference to earthly pleasures; and, however wealthy at his arrival, the visiting stranger must soon return to his native land naked and poor, because of the seductions of women. I had quite sufficient experiences of travel in queer countries to feel certain that all these marvellous stories signified nothing beyond the bare fact that Oki was a terra incognita; and I even felt inclined to believe that the average morals of the people of Oki—judging by those of the common folk of the western provinces—must be very much better than the morals of our ignorant classes at home.
Which I subsequently ascertained to be the case.
For some time I could find no one among my Japanese acquaintances to give me any information about Oki, beyond the fact that in ancient times it had been a place of banishment for the Emperors Go-Daigo and Go-Toba, dethroned by military usurpers, and this I already knew. But at last, quite unexpectedly, I found a friend—a former fellow-teacher—who had not only been to Oki, but was going there again within a few days about some business matter. We agreed to go together. His accounts of Oki differed very materially from those of the people who had never been there. The Oki folks, he said, were almost as much civilised as the Izumo folks: they, had nice towns and good public schools. They were very simple and honest beyond belief, and extremely kind to strangers. Their only boast was that of having kept their race unchanged since the time that the Japanese had first come to Japan; or, in more romantic phrase, since the Age of the Gods. They were all Shintoists, members of the Izumo Taisha faith, but Buddhism was also maintained among them, chiefly through the generous subscription of private individuals. And there were very comfortable hotels, so that I would feel quite at home.
He also gave me a little book about Oki, printed for the use of the Oki schools, from which I obtained the following brief summary of facts:
Sec. 2
Oki-no-Kuni, or the Land of Oki, consists of two groups of small islands in the Sea of Japan, about one hundred miles from the coast of Izumo. Dozen, as the nearer group is termed, comprises, besides various islets, three islands lying close together: Chiburishima, or the Island of Chiburi (sometimes called Higashinoshima, or Eastern Island); Nishinoshima, or the Western Island, and Nakanoshima, or the Middle Island. Much larger than any of these is the principal island, Dogo, which together with various islets, mostly uninhabited, form the remaining group. It is sometimes called Oki—though the name Oki is more generally used for the whole archipelago. [1]
Officially, Oki is divided into four kori or counties. Chiburi and Nishinoshima together form Chiburigori; Nakanoshima, with an islet, makes Amagori, and Dogo is divided into Ochigori and Sukigori.
All these islands are very mountainous, and only a small portion of their area has ever been cultivated. Their chief sources of revenue are their fisheries, in which nearly the whole population has always been engaged from the most ancient times.
During the winter months the sea between Oki and the west coast is highly dangerous for small vessels, and in that season the islands hold little communication with the mainland. Only one passenger steamer runs to Oki from Sakai in Hoki In a direct line, the distance from Sakai in Hoki to Saigo, the chief port of Oki, is said to be thirty-nine ri; but the steamer touches at the other islands upon her way thither.
There are quite a number of little towns, or rather villages, in Oki, of which forty-five belong to Dogo. The villages are nearly all situated upon the coast. There are large schools in the principal towns. The population of the islands is stated to be 30,196, but the respective populations of towns and villages are not given.
Sec. 3
From Matsue in Izumo to Sakai in Hoki is a trip of barely two hours by steamer. Sakai is the chief seaport of Shimane-Ken. It is an ugly little town, full of unpleasant smells; it exists only as a port; it has no industries, scarcely any shops, and only one Shinto temple of small dimensions and smaller interest. Its principal buildings are warehouses, pleasure resorts for sailors, and a few large dingy hotels, which are always overcrowded with guests waiting for steamers to Osaka, to Bakkan, to Hamada, to Niigata, and various other ports. On this coast no steamers run regularly anywhere; their owners attach no business value whatever to punctuality, and guests have usually to wait for a much longer time than they could possibly have expected, and the hotels are glad.
But the harbour is beautiful—a long frith between the high land of Izumo and the low coast of Hoki. It is perfectly sheltered from storms, and deep enough to admit all but the largest steamers. The ships can lie close to the houses, and the harbour is nearly always thronged with all sorts of craft, from junks to steam packets of the latest construction.
My friend and I were lucky enough to secure back rooms at the best hotel. Back rooms are the best in nearly all Japanese buildings: at Sakai they have the additional advantage of overlooking the busy wharves and the whole luminous bay, beyond which the Izumo hills undulate in huge green billows against the sky. There was much to see and to be amused at. Steamers and sailing craft of all sorts were lying two and three deep before the hotel, and the naked dock labourers were loading and unloading in their own peculiar way. These men are recruited from among the strongest peasantry of Hoki and of Izumo, and some were really fine men, over whose brown backs the muscles rippled at every movement. They were assisted by boys of fifteen or sixteen apparently—apprentices learning the work, but not yet strong enough to bear heavy burdens. I noticed that nearly all had bands of blue cloth bound about their calves to keep the veins from bursting. And all sang as they worked. There was one curious alternate chorus, in which the men in the hold gave the signal by chanting 'dokoe, dokoel' (haul away!) and those at the hatch responded by improvisations on the appearance of each package as it ascended:
Dokoe, dokoe!Onnago no ko da.Dokoe, dokoe!Oya dayo, oya dayo.Dokoe, dokoelChoi-choi da, choi-choi da.Dokoe, dokoe!Matsue da, Matsueda.Dokoe, dokoe!Koetsumo Yonago da, [20] etc.
But this chant was for light quick work. A very different chant accompanied the more painful and slower labour of loading heavy sacks and barrels upon the shoulders of the stronger men:—
Yan-yui!Yan-yui!Yan-yui!Yan-yui!Yoi-ya-sa-a-a-no-do-koe-shi! [3]
Three men always lifted the weight. At the first yan-yui all stooped; at the second all took hold; the third signified ready; at the fourth the weight rose from the ground; and with the long cry of yoiyasa no dokoeshi it was dropped on the brawny shoulder waiting to receive it.
Among the workers was a naked laughing boy, with a fine contralto that rang out so merrily through all the din as to create something of a sensation in the hotel. A young woman, one of the guests, came out upon the balcony to look, and exclaimed: 'That boy's voice is RED'—whereat everybody smiled. Under the circumstances I thought the observation very expressive, although it recalled a certain famous story about scarlet and the sound of a trumpet, which does not seem nearly so funny now as it did at a time when we knew less about the nature of light and sound.
The Oki steamer arrived the same afternoon, but she could not approach the wharf, and I could only obtain a momentary glimpse of her stern through a telescope, with which I read the name, in English letters of gold—OKI-SARGO. Before I could obtain any idea of her dimensions, a huge black steamer from Nagasaki glided between, and moored right in the way.
I watched the loading and unloading, and listened to the song of the boy with the red voice, until sunset, when all quit work; and after that I watched the Nagasaki steamer. She had made her way to our wharf as the other vessels moved out, and lay directly under the balcony. The captain and crew did not appear to be in a hurry about anything. They all squatted down together on the foredeck, where a feast was spread for them by lantern-light. Dancing-girls climbed on board and feasted with them, and sang to the sound of the samisen, and played with them the game of ken. Late into the night the feasting and the fun continued; and although an alarming quantity of sake was consumed, there was no roughness or boisterousness. But sake is the most soporific of wines; and by midnight only three of the men remained on deck. One of these had not taken any sake at all, but still desired to eat. Happily for him there climbed on board a night-walking mochiya with a box of mochi, which are cakes of rice-flour sweetened with native sugar. The hungry one bought all, and reproached the mochiya because there were no more, and offered, nevertheless, to share the mochi with his comrades. Whereupon the first to whom the offer was made answered somewhat after this manner:
'I-your-servant mochi-for this-world-in no-use-have. Sake alone this- life-in if-there-be, nothing-beside-desirable-is.
'For me-your-servant,' spake the other, 'Woman this-fleeting-life-in the-supreme-thing is; mochi-or-sake-for earthly-use have-I-none.'
But, having made all the mochi to disappear, he that had been hungry turned himself to the mochiya, and said:—'O Mochiya San, I-your-servant Woman-or-sake-for earthly-requirement have-none. Mochi-than things better this-life-of-sorrow-in existence-have-not !'
Sec. 4
Early in the morning we were notified that the Oki-Saigo would start at precisely eight o'clock, and that we had better secure our tickets at once. The hotel-servant, according to Japanese custom, relieved us of all anxiety about baggage, etc., and bought our tickets: first-class fare, eighty sen. And after a hasty breakfast the hotel boat came under the window to take us away.
Warned by experience of the discomforts of European dress on Shimane steamers, I adopted Japanese costume and exchanged my shoes for sandals. Our boatmen sculled swiftly through the confusion of shipping and junkery; and as we cleared it I saw, far out in midstream, the joki waiting for us. Joki is a Japanese name for steam-vessel. The word had not yet impressed me as being capable of a sinister interpretation.
She seemed nearly as long as a harbour tug, though much more squabby; and she otherwise so much resembled the Lilliputian steamers of Lake Shinji, that I felt somewhat afraid of her, even for a trip of one hundred miles. But exterior inspection afforded no clue to the mystery of her inside. We reached her and climbed into her starboard through a small square hole. At once I found myself cramped in a heavily-roofed gangway, four feet high and two feet wide, and in the thick of a frightful squeeze—passengers stifling in the effort to pull baggage three feet in diameter through the two-foot orifice. It was impossible to advance or retreat; and behind me the engine-room gratings were pouring wonderful heat into this infernal corridor. I had to wait with the back of my head pressed against the roof until, in some unimaginable way, all baggage and passengers had squashed and squeezed through. Then, reaching a doorway, I fell over a heap of sandals and geta, into the first-class cabin. It was pretty, with its polished woodwork and mirrors; it was surrounded by divans five inches wide; and in the centre it was nearly six feet high. Such altitude would have been a cause for comparative happiness, but that from various polished bars of brass extended across the ceiling all kinds of small baggage, including two cages of singing-crickets (chongisu), had been carefully suspended. Furthermore the cabin was already extremely occupied: everybody, of course, on the floor, and nearly everybody lying at extreme length; and the heat struck me as being supernatural. Now they that go down to the sea in ships, out of Izumo and such places, for the purpose of doing business in great waters, are never supposed to stand up, but to squat in the ancient patient manner; and coast, or lake steamers are constructed with a view to render this attitude only possible. Observing an open door in the port side of the cabin, I picked my way over a tangle of bodies and limbs—among them a pair of fairy legs belonging to a dancing-girl—and found myself presently in another gangway, also roofed, and choked up to the roof with baskets of squirming eels. Exit there was none: so I climbed back over all the legs and tried the starboard gangway a second time. Even during that short interval, it had been half filled with baskets of unhappy chickens. But I made a reckless dash over them, in spite of frantic cacklings which hurt my soul, and succeeded in finding a way to the cabin-roof. It was entirely occupied by water-melons, except one corner, where there was a big coil of rope. I put melons inside of the rope, and sat upon them in the sun. It was not comfortable; but I thought that there I might have some chance for my life in case of a catastrophe, and I was sure that even the gods could give no help to those below. During the squeeze I had got separated from my companion, but I was afraid to make any attempt to find him. Forward I saw the roof of the second cabin crowded with third- class passengers squatting round a hibachi. To pass through them did not seem possible, and to retire would have involved the murder of either eels or chickens. Wherefore I sat upon the melons.
And the boat started, with a stunning scream. In another moment her funnel began to rain soot upon me—for the so-called first-class cabin was well astern—and then came small cinders mixed with the soot, and the cinders were occasionally red-hot. But I sat burning upon the water- melons for some time longer, trying to imagine a way of changing my position without committing another assault upon the chickens. Finally, I made a desperate endeavour to get to leeward of the volcano, and it was then for the first time that I began to learn the peculiarities of the joki. What I tried to sit on turned upside down, and what I tried to hold by instantly gave way, and always in the direction of overboard. Things clamped or rigidly braced to outward seeming proved, upon cautious examination, to be dangerously mobile; and things that, according to Occidental ideas, ought to have been movable, were fixed like the roots of the perpetual hills. In whatever direction a rope or stay could possibly have been stretched so as to make somebody unhappy, it was there. In the midst of these trials the frightful little craft began to swing, and the water-melons began to rush heavily to and fro, and I came to the conclusion that this joki had been planned and constructed by demons.
Which I stated to my friend. He had not only rejoined me quite unexpectedly, but had brought along with him one of the ship's boys to spread an awning above ourselves and the watermelons, so as to exclude cinders and sun.
'Oh, no!' he answered reproachfully 'She was designed and built at Hyogo, and really she might have been made much worse. . . ' 'I beg your pardon,' I interrupted; 'I don't agree with you at all.'
'Well, you will see for yourself,' he persisted. 'Her hull is good steel, and her little engine is wonderful; she can make her hundred miles in five hours. She is not very comfortable, but she is very swift and strong.'
'I would rather be in a sampan,' I protested, 'if there were rough weather.'
'But she never goes to sea in rough weather. If it only looks as if there might possibly be some rough weather, she stays in port. Sometimes she waits a whole month. She never runs any risks.'
I could not feel sure of it. But I soon forgot all discomforts, even the discomfort of sitting upon water-melons, in the delight of the divine day and the magnificent view that opened wider and wider before us, as we rushed from the long frith into the Sea of Japan, following the Izumo coast. There was no fleck in the soft blue vastness above, not one flutter on the metallic smoothness of the all-reflecting sea; if our little steamer rocked, it was doubtless because she had been overloaded. To port, the Izumo hills were flying by, a long, wild procession of' broken shapes, sombre green, separating at intervals to form mysterious little bays, with fishing hamlets hiding in them. Leagues away to starboard, the Hoki shore receded into the naked white horizon, an ever- diminishing streak of warm blue edged with a thread-line of white, the gleam of a sand beach; and beyond it, in the centre, a vast shadowy pyramid loomed up into heaven—the ghostly peak of Daisen.
My companion touched my arm to call my attention to a group of pine- trees on the summit of a peak to port, and laughed and sang a Japanese song. How swiftly we had been travelling I then for the first time understood, for I recognised the four famous pines of Mionoseki, on the windy heights above the shrine of Koto-shiro-nushi-no-Kami. There used to be five trees: one was uprooted by a storm, and some Izumo poet wrote about the remaining four the words which my friend had sung:
Seki no gohon matsuIppun kirya, shihon;Ato wa kirarenu Miyoto matsu.
Which means: 'Of the five pines of Seki one has been cut, and four remain; and of these no one must now be cut—they are wedded pairs.' And in Mionoseki there are sold beautiful little sake cups and sake bottles, upon which are pictures of the four pines, and above the pictures, in spidery text of gold, the verses, 'Seki no gohon matsu.' These are for keepsakes, and there are many other curious and pretty souvenirs to buy in those pretty shops; porcelains bearing the picture of the Mionoseki temple, and metal clasps for tobacco pouches representing Koto-shiro- nushi-no-Kami trying to put a big tai-fish into a basket too small for it, and funny masks of glazed earthenware representing the laughing face of the god. For a jovial god is this Ebisu, or Koto-shiro-nushi-no-Kami, patron of honest labour and especially of fishers, though less of a laughter-lover than his father, the Great Deity of Kitzuki, about whom 'tis said: 'Whenever the happy laugh, the God rejoices.'
We passed the Cape—the Miho of the Kojiki—and the harbour of Mionoseki opened before us, showing its islanded shrine of Benten in the midst, and the crescent of quaint houses with their feet in the water, and the great torii and granite lions of the far-famed temple. Immediately a number of passengers rose to their feet, and, turning their faces toward the torii began to clap their hands in Shinto prayer.
I said to my friend: 'There are fifty baskets full of chickens in the gangway; and yet these people are praying to Koto-shiro-nushi-no-Kami that nothing horrible may happen to this boat.'
'More likely,' he answered, 'they are praying for good-fortune; though there is a saying: "The gods only laugh when men pray to them for wealth." But of the Great Deity of Mionoseki there is a good story told. Once there was a very lazy man who went to Mionoseki and prayed to become rich. And the same night he saw the god in a dream; and the god laughed, and took off one of his own divine sandals, and told him to examine it. And the man saw that it was made of solid brass, but had a big hole worn through the sole of it. Then said the god: "You want to have money without working for it. I am a god; but I am never lazy. See! my sandals are of brass: yet I have worked and walked so much that they are quite worn out."'
Sec. 5
The beautiful bay of Mionoseki opens between two headlands: Cape Mio (or Miho, according to the archaic spelling) and the Cape of Jizo (Jizo- zaki), now most inappropriately called by the people 'The Nose of Jizo' (Jizo-no-hana). This Nose of Jizo is one of the most dangerous points of the coast in time of surf, and the great terror of small ships returning from Oki. There is nearly always a heavy swell there, even in fair weather. Yet as we passed the ragged promontory I was surprised to see the water still as glass. I felt suspicious of that noiseless sea: its soundlessness recalled the beautiful treacherous sleep of waves and winds which precedes a tropical hurricane. But my friend said:
'It may remain like this for weeks. In the sixth month and in the beginning of the seventh, it is usually very quiet; it is not likely to become dangerous before the Bon. But there was a little squall last week at Mionoseki; and the people said that it was caused by the anger of the god.'
'Eggs?' I queried.
'No: a Kudan.'
'What is a Kudan?'
'Is it possible you never heard of the Kudan? The Kudan has the face of a man, and the body of a bull. Sometimes it is born of a cow, and that is a Sign-of-things-going-to-happen. And the Kudan always tells the truth. Therefore in Japanese letters and documents it is customary to use the phrase, Kudanno-gotoshi—"like the Kudan"—or "on the truth of the Kudan."' [4]
'But why was the God of Mionoseki angry about the Kudan?'
'People said it was a stuffed Kudan. I did not see it, so I cannot tell you how it was made. There was some travelling showmen from Osaka at Sakai. They had a tiger and many curious animals and the stuffed Kudan; and they took the Izumo Maru for Mionoseki. As the steamer entered the port a sudden squall came; and the priests of the temple said the god was angry because things impure—bones and parts of dead animals—had been brought to the town. And the show people were not even allowed to land: they had to go back to Sakai on the same steamer. And as soon as they had gone away, the sky became clear again, and the wind stopped blowing: so that some people thought what the priests had said was true.'
Sec. 6
Evidently there was much more moisture in the atmosphere than I had supposed. On really clear days Daisen can be distinctly seen even from Oki; but we had scarcely passed the Nose of Jizo when the huge peak began to wrap itself in vapour of the same colour as the horizon; and in a few minutes it vanished, as a spectre might vanish. The effect of this sudden disappearance was very extraordinary; for only the peak passed from sight, and that which had veiled it could not be any way distinguished from horizon and sky.
Meanwhile the Oki-Saigo, having reached the farthest outlying point of the coast upon her route began to race in straight line across the Japanese Sea. The green hills of Izumi fled away and turned blue, and the spectral shores of Hoki began to melt into the horizon, like bands of cloud. Then was obliged to confess my surprise at the speed of the horrid little steamer. She moved, too, with scarcely any sound, smooth was the working of her wonderful little engine. But she began to swing heavily, with deep, slow swingings. To the eye, the sea looked level as oil; but there were long invisible swells—ocean-pulses—that made themselves felt beneath the surface. Hoki evaporated; the Izumo hills turned grey, a their grey steadily paled as I watched them. They grew more and more colourless—seemed to become transparent. And then they were not. Only blue sky and blue sea, welded together in the white horizon.
It was just as lonesome as if we had been a thousand leagues from land. And in that weirdness we were told some very lonesome things by an ancient mariner who found leisure join us among the water-melons. He talked of the Hotoke-umi and the ill-luck of being at sea on the sixteenth day of the seventh month. He told us that even the great steamers never went to sea during the Bon: no crew would venture to take ship out then. And he related the following stories with such simple earnestness that I think he must have believed what said:
'The first time I was very young. From Hokkaido we had sailed, and the voyage was long, and the winds turned against us. And the night of the sixteenth day fell, as we were working on over this very sea.
'And all at once in the darkness we saw behind us a great junk—all white—that we had not noticed till she was quite close to us. It made us feel queer, because she seemed to have come from nowhere. She was so near us that we could hear voices; and her hull towered up high above us. She seemed to be sailing very fast; but she came no closer. We shouted to her; but we got no answer. And while we were watching her, all of us became afraid, because she did not move like a real ship. The sea was terrible, and we were lurching and plunging; but that great junk never rolled. Just at the same moment that we began to feel afraid she vanished so quickly that we could scarcely believe we had really seen her at all.
'That was the first time. But four years ago I saw something still more strange. We were bound for Oki, in a junk, and the wind again delayed us, so that we were at sea on the sixteenth day. It was in the morning, a little before midday; the sky was dark and the sea very ugly. All at once we saw a steamer running in our track, very quickly. She got so close to us that we could hear her engines—katakata katakata!—but we saw nobody on deck. Then she began to follow us, keeping exactly at the same distance, and whenever we tried to get out of her way she would turn after us and keep exactly in our wake. And then we suspected what she was. But we were not sure until she vanished. She vanished like a bubble, without making the least sound. None of us could say exactly when she disappeared. None of us saw her vanish. The strangest thing was that after she was gone we could still hear her engines working behind us—katakata, katakata, katakata!
'That is all I saw. But I know others, sailors like myself, who have seen more. Sometimes many ships will follow you—though never at the same time. One will come close and vanish, then another, and then another. As long as they come behind you, you need never be afraid. But if you see a ship of that sort running before you, against the wind, that is very bad! It means that all on board will be drowned.'
Sec. 7
The luminous blankness circling us continued to remain unflecked for less than an hour. Then out of the horizon toward which we steamed, a small grey vagueness began to grow. It lengthened fast, and seemed a cloud. And a cloud it proved; but slowly, beneath it, blue filmy shapes began to define against the whiteness, and sharpened into a chain of mountains. They grew taller and bluer—a little sierra, with one paler shape towering in the middle to thrice the height of the rest, and filleted with cloud—Takuhizan, the sacred mountain of Oki, in the island Nishinoshima.
Takuhizan has legends, which I learned from my friend. Upon its summit stands an ancient shrine of the deity Gongen-Sama. And it is said that upon the thirty-first night of the twelfth month three ghostly fires arise from the sea and ascend to the place of the shrine, and enter the stone lanterns which stand before it, and there remain, burning like lamps. These lights do not arise at once, but separately, from the sea, and rise to the top of the peak one by one. The people go out in boats to see the lights mount from the water. But only those whose hearts are pure can see them; those who have evil thoughts or desires look for the holy fires in vain.
Before us, as we steamed on, the sea-surface appeared to become suddenly speckled with queer craft previously invisible—light, long fishing- boats, with immense square sails of a beautiful yellow colour. I could not help remarking to my comrade how pretty those sails were; he laughed, and told me they were made of old tatami. [5] I examined them through a telescope, and found that they were exactly what he had said— woven straw coverings of old floor-mats. Nevertheless, that first tender yellow sprinkling of old sails over the soft blue water was a charming sight.
They fleeted by, like a passing of yellow butterflies, and the sea was void again. Gradually, a little to port, a point in the approaching line of blue cliffs shaped itself and changed colour—dull green above, reddish grey below; it defined into a huge rock, with a dark patch on its face, but the rest of the land remained blue. The dark patch blackened as we came nearer—a great gap full of shadow. Then the blue cliffs beyond also turned green, and their bases reddish grey. We passed to the right of the huge rock, which proved to be a detached and uninhabited islet, Hakashima; and in another moment we were steaming into the archipelago of Oki, between the lofty islands Chiburishima and Nakashima.
Sec. 8
The first impression was almost uncanny. Rising sheer from the flood on either hand, the tall green silent hills stretched away before us, changing tint through the summer vapour, to form a fantastic vista of blue cliffs and peaks and promontories. There was not one sign of human life. Above their pale bases of naked rock the mountains sloped up beneath a sombre wildness of dwarf vegetation. There was absolutely no sound, except the sound of the steamer's tiny engine—poum-poum, poum! poum-poum, poum! like the faint tapping of a geisha's drum. And this savage silence continued for miles: only the absence of lofty timber gave evidence that those peaked hills had ever been trodden by human foot. But all at once, to the left, in a mountain wrinkle, a little grey hamlet appeared; and the steamer screamed and stopped, while the hills repeated the scream seven times.
This settlement was Chiburimura, of Chiburishima (Nakashima being the island to starboard)—evidently nothing more than a fishing station. First a wharf of uncemented stone rising from the cove like a wall; then great trees through which one caught sight of a torii before some Shinto shrine, and of a dozen houses climbing the hollow hill one behind another, roof beyond roof; and above these some terraced patches of tilled ground in the midst of desolation: that was all. The packet halted to deliver mail, and passed on.
But then, contrary to expectation, the scenery became more beautiful. The shores on either side at once receded and heightened: we were traversing an inland sea bounded by three lofty islands. At first the way before us had seemed barred by vapoury hills; but as these, drawing nearer, turned green, there suddenly opened magnificent chasms between them on both sides—mountain-gates revealing league-long wondrous vistas of peaks and cliffs and capes of a hundred blues, ranging away from velvety indigo into far tones of exquisite and spectral delicacy. A tinted haze made dreamy all remotenesses, an veiled with illusions of colour the rugged nudities of rock.
The beauty of the scenery of Western and Central Japan is not as the beauty of scenery in other lands; it has a peculiar character of its own. Occasionally the foreigner may find memories of former travel suddenly stirred to life by some view on a mountain road, or some stretch of beetling coast seen through a fog of spray. But this illusion of resemblance vanishes as swiftly as it comes; details immediately define into strangeness, and you become aware that the remembrance was evoked by form only, never by colour. Colours indeed there are which delight the eye, but not colours of mountain verdure, not colours of the land. Cultivated plains, expanses of growing rice, may offer some approach to warmth of green; but the whole general tone of this nature is dusky; the vast forests are sombre; the tints of grasses are harsh or dull. Fiery greens, such as burn in tropical scenery, do not exist; and blossom-bursts take a more exquisite radiance by contrast with the heavy tones of the vegetation out of which they flame. Outside of parks and gardens and cultivated fields, there is a singular absence of warmth and tenderness in the tints of verdure; and nowhere need you hope to find any such richness of green as that which makes the loveliness of an English lawn.
Yet these Oriental landscapes possess charms of colour extraordinary, phantom-colour delicate, elfish, indescribable—created by the wonderful atmosphere. Vapours enchant the distances, bathing peaks in bewitchments of blue and grey of a hundred tones, transforming naked cliffs to amethyst, stretching spectral gauzes across the topazine morning, magnifying the splendour of noon by effacing the horizon, filling the evening with smoke of gold, bronzing the waters, banding the sundown with ghostly purple and green of nacre. Now, the Old Japanese artists who made those marvellous ehon—those picture-books which have now become so rare—tried to fix the sensation of these enchantments in colour, and they were successful in their backgrounds to a degree almost miraculous. For which very reason some of their foregrounds have been a puzzle to foreigners unacquainted with certain features of Japanese agriculture. You will see blazing saffron-yellow fields, faint purple plains, crimson and snow-white trees, in those old picture-books; and perhaps you will exclaim: 'How absurd!' But if you knew Japan you would cry out: 'How deliciously real!' For you would know those fields of burning yellow are fields of flowering rape, and the purple expanses are fields of blossoming miyako, and the snow-white or crimson trees are not fanciful, but represent faithfully certain phenomena of efflorescence peculiar to the plum-trees and the cherry-trees of the country. But these chromatic extravaganzas can be witnessed only during very brief periods of particular seasons: throughout the greater part of the year the foreground of an inland landscape is apt to be dull enough in the matter of colour.
It is the mists that make the magic of the backgrounds; yet even without them there is a strange, wild, dark beauty in Japanese landscapes, a beauty not easily defined in words. The secret of it must be sought in the extraordinary lines of the mountains, in the strangely abrupt crumpling and jagging of the ranges; no two masses closely resembling each other, every one having a fantasticality of its own. Where the chains reach to any considerable height, softly swelling lines are rare: the general characteristic is abruptness, and the charm is the charm of Irregularity.
Doubtless this weird Nature first inspired the Japanese with their unique sense of the value of irregularity in decoration—taught them that single secret of composition which distinguishes their art from all other art, and which Professor Chamberlain has said it is their special mission to teach to the Occident. [6] Certainly, whoever has once learned to feel the beauty and significance of the Old Japanese decorative art can find thereafter little pleasure in the corresponding art of the West. What he has really learned is that Nature's greatest charm is irregularity. And perhaps something of no small value might be written upon the question whether the highest charm of human life and work is not also irregularity.
Sec. 9
From Chiburimura we made steam west for the port of Urago, which is in the island of Nishinoshima. As we approached it Takuhizan came into imposing view. Far away it had seemed a soft and beautiful shape; but as its blue tones evaporated its aspect became rough and even grim: an enormous jagged bulk all robed in sombre verdure, through which, as through tatters, there protruded here and there naked rock of the wildest shapes. One fragment, I remember, as it caught the slanting sun upon the irregularities of its summit, seemed an immense grey skull. At the base of this mountain, and facing the shore of Nakashima, rises a pyramidal mass of rock, covered with scraggy undergrowth, and several hundred feet in height—Mongakuzan. On its desolate summit stands a little shrine.
'Takuhizan' signifies The Fire-burning Mountain—a name due perhaps either to the legend of its ghostly fires, or to some ancient memory of its volcanic period. 'Mongakuzan' means The Mountain of Mongaku—Mongaku Shonin, the great monk. It is said that Mongaku Shonin fled to Oki, and that he dwelt alone upon the top of that mountain many years, doing penance for his deadly sin. Whether he really ever visited Oki, I am not able to say; there are traditions which declare the contrary. But the peaklet has borne his name for hundreds of years.
Now this is the story of Mongaku Shonin:
Many centuries ago, in the city of Kyoto, there was a captain of the garrison whose name was Endo Morito. He saw and loved the wife of a noble samurai; and when she refused to listen to his desires, he vowed that he would destroy her family unless she consented to the plan which he submitted to her. The plan was that upon a certain night she should suffer him to enter her house and to kill her husband; after which she was to become his wife.
But she, pretending to consent, devised a noble stratagem to save her honour. For, after having persuaded her husband to absent himself from the city, she wrote to Endo a letter, bidding him come upon a certain night to the house. And on that night she clad herself in her husband's robes, and made her hair like the hair of a man, and laid herself down in her husband's place, and pretended to sleep.
And Endo came in the dead of the night with his sword drawn, and smote off the head of the sleeper at a blow, and seized it by the hair and lifted it up and saw it was the head of the woman he had loved and wronged.
Then a great remorse came upon him, and hastening to a neighbouring temple, he confessed his sin, and did penance and cut off his hair, and became a monk, taking the name of Mongaku. And in after years he attained to great holiness, so that folk still pray to him, and his memory is venerated throughout the land.
Now at Asakusa in Tokyo, in one of the curious little streets which lead to the great temple of Kwannon the Merciful, there are always wonderful images to be seen—figures that seem alive, though made of wood only— figures illustrating the ancient legends of Japan. And there you may see Endo standing: in his right hand the reeking sword; in his left the head of a beautiful woman. The face of the woman you may forget soon, because it is only beautiful. But the face of Endo you will not forget, because it is naked hell.
Sec. 10
Urago is a queer little town, perhaps quite as large as Mionoseki, and built, like Mionoseki, on a narrow ledge at the base of a steep semicircle of hills. But it is much more primitive and colourless than Mionoseki; and its houses are still more closely cramped between cliffs and water, so that its streets, or rather alleys, are no wider than gangways. As we cast anchor, my attention was suddenly riveted by a strange spectacle—a white wilderness of long fluttering vague shapes, in a cemetery on the steep hillside, rising by terraces high above the roofs of the town. The cemetery was full of grey haka and images of divinities; and over every haka there was a curious white paper banner fastened to a thin bamboo pole. Through a glass one could see that these banners were inscribed with Buddhist texts—'Namur-myo-ho-renge-kyo'; 'Namu Amida Butsu'; 'Namu Daiji Dai-hi Kwan-ze-on Bosats,'—and other holy words. Upon inquiry I learned that it was an Urago custom to place these banners every year above the graves during one whole month preceding the Festival of the Dead, together with various other ornamental or symbolic things.
The water was full of naked swimmers, who shouted laughing welcomes; and a host of light, swift boats, sculled by naked fishermen, darted out to look for passengers and freight. It was my first chance to observe the physique of Oki islanders; and I was much impressed by the vigorous appearance of both men and boys. The adults seemed to me of a taller and more powerful type than the men of the Izumo coast; and not a few of those brown backs and shoulders displayed, in the motion of sculling what is comparatively rare in Japan, even among men picked for heavy labour—a magnificent development of muscles.
As the steamer stopped an hour at Urago, we had time to dine ashore in the chief hotel. It was a very clean and pretty hotel, and the fare infinitely superior to that of the hotel at Sakai. Yet the price charged was only seven sen; and the old landlord refused to accept the whole of the chadai-gift offered him, retaining less than half, and putting back the rest, with gentle force, into the sleeve of my yukata.
Sec. 11
From Urago we proceeded to Hishi-ura, which is in Nakanoshima, and the scenery grew always more wonderful as we steamed between the islands. The channel was just wide enough to create the illusion of a grand river flowing with the stillness of vast depth between mountains of a hundred forms. The long lovely vision was everywhere walled in by peaks, bluing through sea-haze, and on either hand the ruddy grey cliffs, sheering up from profundity, sharply mirrored their least asperities in the flood with never a distortion, as in a sheet of steel. Not until we reached Hishi-ura did the horizon reappear; and even then it was visible only between two lofty headlands, as if seen through a river's mouth.
Hishi-ura is far prettier than Urago, but it is much less populous, and has the aspect of a prosperous agricultural town, rather than of a fishing station. It bends round a bay formed by low hills which slope back gradually toward the mountainous interior, and which display a considerable extent of cultivated surface. The buildings are somewhat scattered and in many cases isolated by gardens; and those facing the water are quite handsome modern constructions. Urago boasts the best hotel in all Oki; and it has two new temples—one a Buddhist temple of the Zen sect, one a Shinto temple of the Izumo Taisha faith, each the gift of a single person. A rich widow, the owner of the hotel, built the Buddhist temple; and the wealthiest of the merchants contributed the other—one of the handsomest miya for its size that I ever saw.
Sec. 12
Dogo, the main island of the Oki archipelago, sometimes itself called 'Oki,' lies at a distance of eight miles, north-east of the Dozen group, beyond a stretch of very dangerous sea. We made for it immediately after leaving Urago; passing to the open through a narrow and fantastic strait between Nakanoshima and Nishinoshima, where the cliffs take the form of enormous fortifications—bastions and ramparts, rising by tiers. Three colossal rocks, anciently forming but a single mass, which would seem to have been divided by some tremendous shock, rise from deep water near the mouth of the channel, like shattered towers. And the last promontory of Nishinoshima, which we pass to port, a huge red naked rock, turns to the horizon a point so strangely shaped that it has been called by a name signifying 'The Hat of the Shinto Priest.'
As we glide out into the swell of the sea other extraordinary shapes appear, rising from great depths. Komori, 'The Bat,' a ragged silhouette against the horizon, has a great hole worn through it, which glares like an eye. Farther out two bulks, curved and pointed, and almost joined at the top, bear a grotesque resemblance to the uplifted pincers of a crab; and there is also visible a small dark mass which, until closely approached, seems the figure of a man sculling a boat. Beyond these are two islands: Matsushima, uninhabited and inaccessible, where there is always a swell to beware of; Omorishima, even loftier, which rises from the ocean in enormous ruddy precipices. There seemed to be some grim force in those sinister bulks; some occult power which made our steamer reel and shiver as she passed them. But I saw a marvellous effect of colour under those formidable cliffs of Omorishima. They were lighted by a slanting sun; and where the glow of the bright rock fell upon the water, each black-blue ripple flashed bronze: I thought of a sea of metallic violet ink.
From Dozen the cliffs of Dogo can be clearly seen when the weather is not foul: they are streaked here and there with chalky white, which breaks through their blue, even in time of haze. Above them a vast bulk is visible—a point-de-repère for the mariners of Hoki—the mountain of Daimanji. Dogo, indeed, is one great cluster of mountains.
Its cliffs rapidly turned green for us, and we followed them eastwardly for perhaps half an hour. Then they opened unexpectedly and widely, revealing a superb bay, widening far into the land, surrounded by hills, and full of shipping. Beyond a confusion of masts there crept into view a long grey line of house-fronts at the base of a crescent of cliffs— the city of Saigo; and in a little while we touched a wharf of stone. There I bade farewell for a month to the Oki-Saigo.
Sec. 13
Saigo was a great surprise. Instead of the big fishing village I had expected to see, I found a city much larger and handsomer and in all respects more modernised than Sakai; a city of long streets full of good shops; a city with excellent public buildings; a city of which the whole appearance indicated commercial prosperity. Most of the edifices were roomy two story dwellings of merchants, and everything had a bright, new look. The unpainted woodwork of the houses had not yet darkened into grey; the blue tints of the tiling were still fresh. I learned that this was because the town had been recently rebuilt, after a conflagration, and rebuilt upon a larger and handsomer plan.
Saigo seems still larger than it really is. There are about one thousand houses, which number in any part of Western Japan means a population of at least five thousand, but must mean considerably more in Saigo. These form three long streets—Nishimachi, Nakamachi, and Higashimachi (names respectively signifying the Western, Middle, and Eastern Streets), bisected by numerous cross-streets and alleys. What makes the place seem disproportionately large is the queer way the streets twist about, following the irregularities of the shore, and even doubling upon themselves, so as to create from certain points of view an impression of depth which has no existence. For Saigo is peculiarly, although admirably situated. It fringes both banks of a river, the Yabigawa, near its mouth, and likewise extends round a large point within the splendid bay, besides stretching itself out upon various tongues of land. But though smaller than it looks, to walk through all its serpentine streets is a good afternoon's work.
Besides being divided by the Yabigawa, the town is intersected by various water-ways, crossed by a number of bridges. On the hills behind it stand several large buildings, including a public school, with accommodation for three hundred students; a pretty Buddhist temple (quite new), the gift of a rich citizen; a prison; and a hospital, which deserves its reputation of being for its size the handsomest Japanese edifice not only in Oki, but in all Shimane-Ken; and there are several small but very pretty gardens.
As for the harbour, you can count more than three hundred ships riding there of a summer's day. Grumblers, especially of the kind who still use wooden anchors, complain of the depth; but the men-of-war do not.
Sec. 14
Never, in any part of Western Japan, have I been made more comfortable than at Saigo. My friend and myself were the only guests at the hotel to which we had been recommended. The broad and lofty rooms of the upper floor which we occupied overlooked the main street on one side, and on the other commanded a beautiful mountain landscape beyond the mouth of the Yabigawa, which flowed by our garden. The sea breeze never failed by day or by night, and rendered needless those pretty fans which it is the Japanese custom to present to guests during the hot season. The fare was astonishingly good and curiously varied; and I was told that I might order Seyoryori (Occidental cooking) if I wished—beefsteak with fried potatoes, roast chicken, and so forth. I did not avail myself of the offer, as I make it a rule while travelling to escape trouble by keeping to a purely Japanese diet; but it was no small surprise to be offered in Saigo what is almost impossible to obtain in any other Japanese town of five thousand inhabitants. From a romantic point of view, however, this discovery was a disappointment. Having made my way into the most primitive region of all Japan, I had imagined myself far beyond the range of all modernising influences; and the suggestion of beefsteak with fried potatoes was a disillusion. Nor was I entirely consoled by the subsequent discovery that there were no newspapers or telegraphs.
But there was one serious hindrance to the enjoyment of these comforts: an omnipresent, frightful, heavy, all-penetrating smell, the smell of decomposing fish, used as a fertiliser. Tons and tons of cuttlefish entrails are used upon the fields beyond the Yabigawa, and the never- sleeping sea wind blows the stench into every dwelling. Vainly do they keep incense burning in most of the houses during the heated term. After having remained three or four days constantly in the city you become better able to endure this odour; but if you should leave town even for a few hours only, you will be astonished on returning to discover how much your nose had been numbed by habit and refreshed by absence.
Sec. 15
On the morning of the day after my arrival at Saigo, a young physician called to see me, and requested me to dine with him at his house. He explained very frankly that as I was the first foreigner who had ever stopped in Saigo, it would afford much pleasure both to his family and to himself to have a good chance to see me; but the natural courtesy of the man overcame any scruple I might have felt to gratify the curiosity of strangers. I was not only treated charmingly at his beautiful home, but actually sent away loaded with presents, most of which I attempted to decline in vain. In one matter, however, I remained obstinate, even at the risk of offending—the gift of a wonderful specimen of bateiseki (a substance which I shall speak of hereafter). This I persisted in refusing to take, knowing it to be not only very costly, but very rare. My host at last yielded, but afterwards secretly sent to the hotel two smaller specimens, which Japanese etiquette rendered it impossible to return. Before leaving Saigo, I experienced many other unexpected kindnesses from the same gentleman.