It was dark and threatening the next morning but we decided to be on our way. We bought a couple of paper umbrellas. We soon found that when we needed them at all that day we needed a roof much more. Hori was off on his bicycle and we arranged to overtake him at the village of Fujimi. We were hardly out of Kama-Suwa before we had to make our first dash for shelter to escape drowning in the open road. The thatched house which we besieged for shelter would probably have been most picturesque on a sunny day but it was exceedingly primitive for a storm. Our hostess was a very old woman, diminutive and smiling. The rain pounded against her hut and discovered every possible chance to force its way in. She tried to start a fire from damp sticks and charcoal and succeeded after a long effort. The fire was to heat the water for our tea. It was useless to protest. No guests might leave her house unhonoured by a cup of tea.
WE BOUGHT PAPER UMBRELLAS
WE BOUGHT PAPER UMBRELLAS
WE BOUGHT PAPER UMBRELLAS
Japan never seems so remote from the West as when seen through the rain. Fishermen, in straw raincoats, were wading in the creeks with hand nets. The children in the villages were wading in the gutters.
The towns seemed self-sufficient and prosperous. They had captured the mountain streams and had led them away from their channels to run in deep, wide canals through the streets. Innumerable waterwheels drew upon this energy for the miniature factories. We were walking through one of these towns—the sun was shining brightly at the moment—when there was a sprinkling of giant drops. We knew that that meant another cloudburst and we turned in at the first door. It was a barber’s shop. We asked permission for standing room, but the men who had been sitting around a large brazier lifted it away and insisted upon giving us their places on the matting.
The chairs, the mirrors, the shampoo bowls, the razors, and all the rest of the elaborate paraphernalia looked so immaculate and usable that I expected O-Owre-san to decide that it would be discourteous for him to waste such an opportunity of having his beard trimmed. He surprised me by suggesting that we toss up to seewhich one should make the experiment of the complete surrender to all the inventions. Perhaps he was tactfully suggesting that my unkemptness showed the greater necessity, but the turn of the coin made him the adventurer.
The rain was now falling so that it swept the streets in a flood. The thunder was shaking the hills. A thunderstorm, for me, is the most soporific inducer in the world and my eyes began to waver and soon I was many times asleep. When I awoke, under O-Owre-san’s urge, the sun was out again. My joints were stiff, I was sleepy, and I was old, but the world seemed very new after its scrubbing, and nothing less than jauntiness could express the state of transformation, brought about by clippers, shears, hot towels, and everything that went with the treatment, in the appearance of my companion. The barber and his two assistants, with their huge palm fans, were bowing and smiling with an air of complete satisfaction. I was out of sympathy both with refurnished nature and the revamped man. I remarked irritably that his pursuit of beauty would be the ruination of our joint purse.
“Yes,” he said, “and the fees equalled the bill. I had to pay some rent for your taking up the entire floor for your siesta.”
The bill had been fivesenand the fees had been fivesen, so that altogether we had squandered five cents of our money.
Fujimi is little more than a hamlet. It is tucked away in a fold of the hills off the main paths of the trail. Its days are probably as ancient as the worship of Fuji. The view of the sacred mountain from Fujimi is a paradox of the beautiful. The sudden sight of the blue outline of the mountain against the sky comes crushingly into one’s consciousness as an extraordinary awakening and quickening, and yet the emotion is deep, reverent, and silent. Maybe it was our undue imagination but the peasants of the valley seemed marked by quietude. While Fuji-yama was cloud hidden that first day, on the long walk of the next we found the lonely labourers of the isolated farm terraces often staying their work for a moment, their consciousness lost in passionate gaze toward the sacred slope.
It was only by much questioning of the peasants whom we met on the road that we were able to find the hamlet. Once when we were unable to understand the answer, with a quick smile to disarm our protests, the questioned one turned back his steps until he could point out the path. We had been swinging along at our best pace inthe hours between torrents and it was not long after mid-day when we found Hori’s bicycle outside an inn. O-Owre-san declared that our sixteen or so miles had not aroused him from the sluggishness brought on by a full day’s rest at Kama-Suwa and he was for going on, but as the rain was now falling again, this time in a settled drizzle, he had to be a martyr to enduring a roof over his head or else to seek his own drenching.
The inn was the most meagre in ordinary equipment of any that we had found. It was not much more than a rest-house, although it had evidently at one time been of more pretence. The fear expressed by our host that his house was unworthy had the ardour of conviction. In order to know better what to borrow from his neighbours for the entertainment of theseiyo-jinshe suggested a scale of three prices. We chose the middle quotation of oneyen, twentysen(sixty cents). The fire was then started in the kitchen.
Japanese architecture is said to be in direct line of descent from the nomadic tent of Central Asia. Just as the roof and the four corner posts are the essentials of the tent, in the building of a Japanese house, the corner posts are first set up and the roof is built next. Our inn might haveserved this theory of descent as an admirable example. The roof was the chief reason for its existence. There were no wings. The stairway was on the outside, coming up through the balconies which ran completely around the two upper floors. In winter days when wooden shutters enclose and darken the rooms the bare simplicity may grow dreary. The wind is then the father of shivering draughts which creep over the floor, but for the days of summer, when the green valley of Fujimi lies in the shelter of the great granite ranges, the memory of the stifling cave-like rooms of our Western architecture seemed barbarous and of dull imagination in comparison. The philosophy of Japan’s housebuilding appears to be that it is better fully to live with nature in nature’s season of wakefulness than to invent a compromise shelter equally reserved against nature through the revolution of the year.
O-Owre-san had gone exploring to find the bath. A few minutes later our host excitedly came up the stairs to warn us that the bearded foreigner was tempting destruction. Rumour that foreigners have experimented with cold baths and have discovered reactions within themselves to endure such rigour had not reached Fujimi. When the impatient foreigner had learned that the hotbath was not ready, he filled the tub with the icy water that came spouting through a bamboo pipe. In the midst of our efforts to calm our host, O-Owre-san, himself, appeared, red and beaming. Nevertheless, neither his rosiness nor his exhilaration could allure Hori and me into following his recommendation to go and do likewise. We decided, instead, to take the host’s advice. He sent us to the public baths. Armed with towels, and in borrowedkimonosand borrowed woodengeta, we set forth. Mykimonocame to my knees, no lower, and it was restricted in other dimensions. For the women and children sitting in the doorways our progress through the street may have brought some interest into a rainy and perhaps otherwise dull afternoon.
The baths, housed in a low, small, ramshackle building, were famous for leagues about. The keeper of the baths was a “herbist.” He went out into the mountains—on stealthy and secret excursions which the cleverest tracker had never followed—and brought back sweet-scented hay which his wife sewed into bags and threw into the hot water. Everything about the discovery, she said, was their own secret. Whatever was the secret of the herbs, the natural, delicate perfume was pleasing. The two tubs for the men werefairly large tanks. They had been freshly filled with heated spring water just before we entered. It was not yet the men’s hour, but a half-dozen women were in their half of the building, either busily pouring water over themselves on the scrubbing platform or sitting placidly up to their chins in the hot water. The mistress was most energetic. She had a pair of large scrubbing brushes which she was applying to their backs. Back scrubbing in Japan is an ancient institution and the practice may have some real physiological merit. At least the vigorous scrubbing up and down the vertebrae produces a soothing and restful reaction.
A phrase that I had come across in my dictionary had stuck in my memory. Translated, it was: “Will you kindly honour me by scrubbing my back?” I asked Hori whether my remembrance and pronunciation of the Japanese words were correct.
“Pretty good,” said he, and then I saw a slumbering twinkle in his black eyes. “But why do you practise on me? Why don’t you say it to the mistress to see whether she will understand?”
“Stop!” I spluttered. But it was too late. He had called out to the busy mistress to ask the foreigner to ask to have his back scrubbed.Until that moment we had been inconspicuous in our dark end of the room, but now everybody looked up and edged along for the entertainment of hearing a foreigner speak Japanese. I was responding, but my phrases were directed at Hori and had nothing to do with back scrubbing.
There are exigencies of fate which come down upon one like an avalanche. The revenue to the busy mistress from the use of her scrubbing brush was threesenfrom each person, which was a fullsenmore than for the bath itself, and thus business was business and a serious matter with her. She descended upon me with her three-legged stool and scrubbing brushes and proceeded to earn the extrasen. I was completely cowed by her determination.
We sat parboiling ourselves in the tub for some time. All the customers had now either been scrubbed or had not asked to be scrubbed, and the mistress could sit down for a moment to rest and to talk. Particularly did she talk. She talked on and on, exploiting the merits of the local advantages of Fujimi. Ah, where could one go to find Fujimi’s equal? Such views! And we must promise to visit the tea-house. It was unfair to refuse that to Fujimi. The maids, it was true, were notgeishas, but they were everywhit as talented as anygeishaof Tokyo, and sang and played and danced far better than provincialgeishas.
Back in our inn the extra twentysenapiece above the minimum rate had wrought marvels in the kitchen. We were hungry. We were always hungry. And we had learned always to expect the inn dinners to satisfy our demands. That night we truly had marvellous dishes. The bamboo shoots were as tender as bamboo shoots can be. Whether supreme genius or chance was responsible for the sauce for the chicken, the result was perfection. Dinner was very early. After the meal I found a longerkimonoand, as the rain had stopped for an interval, Hori and I walked to a hill to see the sunset. On our way back we passed the tea-house which had been so enthusiastically recommended by the mistress of the baths. We went in. Green peaches were brought to us to nibble at, and tea and warm beer to sip.
The house was indeed gorgeous with its gold screens and polished wood. The decorations almost kept within traditional taste, and simplicity had not been too grievously erred against; but the atmosphere of proportion and rhythm had been missed by that narrow margin which perverselyis more irritating inversely to the width of the escape. We may possibly have had the added impulse to this critical judgment by the insidious predilection of the mosquitoes for us rather than for the two maids who were paring the peaches. One of them explained that the mosquitoes of Fujimi are famous for preferring outsiders.
Two of the rooms were crowded with supper parties, of wine, women, and song, but compared to the revelries of bucolic bloods in other lands, something might be said in praise of such restraint as prevailed in the Fujimi tea-house. It may be no honour nor compliment to the spirit of refinement to wish vice as well as virtue clothed in some modicum of grace and retirement, but it does make the world easier to live in.
The soft rain stopped dripping from the eaves some time in the night and the sky was clear when the sun leaped above the mountain ridge, as if impatient to find the radiance of the glorious, virginal day. The green of the valley was a glowing emerald and the mountains were sharp and grey with no shielding haze.
Our host sent his daughter to lead us through a short cut in the hills to the main road. Hori, with his bicycle, had to take the conventional path.The littlemusumetrotted along at our side with a full sense of responsibility, her feet twinkling down the rocky pitches, herkimonosleeves fluttering out like wings. Suddenly she pointed the way and then, before we could thank her, ran back. Skipping and dancing she ran, reaching out her hands to the leaves on the bushes or waving them to the flying insects.
The rain clouds had hidden Fuji-san the day before. On this morning as we came through the sharp cut in the rocks which led to the main road, outlined against the sky we saw the long purple slope. We climbed to a terrace on the side of a granite block and sat with our feet dangling and our chins in our hands. There was one white cloud, no bigger than a man’s hand. It floated slowly toward the crater and then hesitated above the snow ribs on the sides. Then came another cloud across the sky, then another and another, until the summit was hidden by the glowing veils. We slid down from our rock and walked on toward the mountain.
From the day that we left the plains and turned into the hills our tramping had been long climbs but now the road again dropped away toward the lowlands. We had easily forgotten the hours of dancing heat waves, but, with a start, I beganto remember Nagoya, of the rice plains, of those stifling nights and brazen days. The memory had also grown dim of my once rhapsodical joy in finding shaved ice to slake my dusty thirst. If I had never known anything but the quiet, velvet smoothness of water from wells and springs and the knowledge of the grind of ice particles against my tongue had been denied me, then I might well have mistaken affection for passion. There was no spring nor stream to be found. The lower path of the widening valley was growing into a road but we were following a trail higher up on the ridge. Down under the leaves of the trees we thought we saw a thatched roof. If there was a house there, there would be water. We found a path downward by making it, and we were rewarded by seeing a house under the trees.
An old woman was reeling silk from the cocoons which she had floating in a bowl of hot water. She glanced up casually when she heard our step, but when she saw what she saw her mouth and eyes opened and the cocoons dropped from her fingers. It was the purity of absolute surprise without admixed fear or any other diluting emotion. I began to doubt that she would ever have another emotion but at last the need forbreath racked her, and the resulting gasp freed her from the spell of silence which, indeed, was a most unusual state. She assailed us with a deluge of questions. With every possible variation of the query she demanded to know if we were really foreigners. I was repeating, “Hei, hei, seiyo-jin” as best I could when I heard coming through the valley the welcome rattle of the demon bicycle.
I turned over my task to Hori and he took up the assurance to the old woman that she was actually in the presence of flesh and blood foreigners. With his every reiteration the wider became the smile of her satisfaction. She stood on one foot and then the other and clapped her hands and finally ran across the road to another house. She called into the door and a young woman came out. The girl was the wife of her grandson and the explanations had to be made over again for her. Then we sat down on the floor and she brought tea and cold water and red peaches. The questions still came. Our wrinkled hostess was a delighted child. She stared at one of us and then turned to stare at the other. At last she settled a continuing gaze upon me. She was enduring some restraint but it could be humanly endured no longer. She walked over to me andnaïvely unbuttoned the top buttons of my flannel shirt.
“It is so,” she said to her granddaughter-in-law, “they are white all over.”
When we got up to go I asked permission to take her picture. We all stepped into the road together. When the camera clicked and was again in my rucksack, she dramatically raised her eyes to the mountain tops and gave us hervale.
“I am eighty years old. I have never seen a foreigner. I have wanted all my life to see a foreigner. Now that I have seen foreigners I can die happy.”
We gave her one of our paper umbrellas as a remembrance so that if she should wake up the next morning with a doubt that it had all really happened there would be that visible evidence standing in the corner. The testimony of our visitation in the shape of a fifteen-cent umbrella was evidently appreciated. She took it cherishingly in her arms as if it were newborn and of flickering life.
It is fourteen miles by railroad from Fujimi to Hinoharu. The railroad would be the shortest distance for a crow, but even that bird might find himself the blacker if he should essay the long, sooted tunnels. We found many extra milesby exploring the up-and-down paths for the changing views of Fuji, but nevertheless it was early in the afternoon when we reached Hinoharu. I then discovered two shaved ice shops, one after the other, and the intoxication pitched my mood to full ebulliency. For one day O-Owre-san could have as much walking as he could digest as far as I was concerned. We shouldered our rucksacks and Hori coasted off down the hill with the promise of a welcome of shaved ice and a hot bath at the best inn in Nirasaki.
Some distance out of Hinoharu and well into the country we discovered two brothers of the road. They were trying to manufacture a cup out of a piece of bamboo to reach into the recesses of the rocks to get at the water of a trickling spring. We offered them the aid of our aluminum cup. Japan may affirm, as she does, the non-existence of any variety of native hobo, but I am sure that either of our new friends would have answered to the call of “Hello, Jack!” After salutations and thanks were passed, O-Owre-san and I climbed up the bank to the plot of grass in front of a wayside temple and sat down for a contemplative rest in the shade. We always tempted calamity, it seemed, when we tried to rest under the shadow of a temple. The two Jacks cametumbling after and shared our cigarettes with Oriental appreciation. They were rather picturesque individuals. Their cotton clothes were not only in tatters but were imaginatively patched. In a land where there is nudity and not nakedness patches do seem an affectation of the imagination.
I was sleepy from the sun and I dropped back in a natural couch between the roots of a tree and pulled my cork helmet down over my face to keep off the flies, leaving to O-Owre-san the study of the habits and customs of the Nipponese tramp. As I lay there in drowsy half-sleep one of those companions, so I judged from the sounds which crept under my hat into my ears, was suffering from a mood of restlessness. Also he was afflicted with a strange, gasping wheeze. I had just reached the point of being interested enough to look out from under my hat when a panting breath was expulsed over my neck, and my hat arose from no effort of mine. I was left lying between the roots to look into a pair of pitiless, yellow eyes.
It took me a frigid moment to discover that my vis-à-vis was a horse. The animal stood over me, holding my hat in his teeth just beyond any sudden swing of my hand. After he had had sufficiency of staring he tossed his head, still holdingfast to the hat, and ambled off towards the road. I jumped to my feet and followed. As soon as the bony, ill-kempt creature stepped out of the temple grounds his malevolence vanished. He dropped the hat into the gutter and jogged away to find a more conventional pasture. We could now add animals to the list of uncanny powers that from time to time had driven us from resting in temple grounds. I had no temper left for facing the laughter of the two Japanese tramps. I called back to O-Owre-san that I was on my way and he kindly brought my rucksack.
Instead of the usual sharp differentiation between city and country, Nirasaki has an indefinite beginning of straggling houses. The town lies along the shore of the Kamanashigawa river, which has cut its way through the granite rocks of the valley, a strong current flowing a thick, whitish grey colour. As we were entering the outskirts we heard the shrill whistle of the reed pipe of a pedlar and a moment later we saw him coming out of a gate carrying his swinging boxes of trays hung from a yoke across his shoulders. He was so abnormally tall for a Japanese that we quickened our step to have a look at him. He dropped the reed from his lips to sing-song his wares—odds and ends of shining trumpery. Thewords were Japanese but the intoning called us back to China, and when we saw his face we were sure that he was a Manchu. He knew the last ingratiating artifice that has ever been accredited either to pedlar or Celestial. We delayed to appreciate his technic, to see him approach the women of the open-sided houses, and to fascinate them by the intensity of his will to please, and also by his ingratiating gallantry.
“Take care!” we felt like saying oracularly to all Japan. “Take care that you never attempt the conquest of China. China may be conquered but never the Chinese. They will rise up and slay you not by arms but by serving you better than you can serve yourselves.”
We found Hori resting in an ice shop. He had judged truly that the easiest way to find us was to let us find him, trusting that as long as I had asenI would never pass akoriflag. The very pretty maid had herkimonosleeves tied back from her graceful arms. I do not know what story Kenjiro Hori had concocted to tell her but after she had handed me my cupful of snow she watched me steadily with the air that she expected black magic at any moment. I caught a glimpse of Hori’s twinkle. I was filled with suspicion. Finally the maid turned upon Hori in exasperationand said many things. Some strange tale told about foreigners must have been one of Hori’s best creations, but in some way we had failed to live up to our heralding. She was exceedingly pretty and a pretty girl in a pretty tempest is just as interesting and bewitching in Nirasaki as in any other spot in the world. However, any translation of his tale to her Hori refused absolutely.