Kabanata Kabanata 1 · My First Day in the Orient

. My First Day in the Orient

'Do not fail to write down your first impressions as soon as possible,'

said a kind English professor [Basil Hall Chamberlain: PREPARATOR'S

NOTE] whom I had the pleasure of meeting soon after my arrival in Japan:

'they are evanescent, you know; they will never come to you again,

once they have faded out; and yet of all the strange sensations you may

receive in this country you will feel none so charming as these.' I am

trying now to reproduce them from the hasty notes of the time, and

find that they were even more fugitive than charming; something has

evaporated from all my recollections of them--something impossible to

recall. I neglected the friendly advice, in spite of all resolves to

obey it: I could not, in those first weeks, resign myself to remain

indoors and write, while there was yet so much to see and hear and feel

in the sun-steeped ways of the wonderful Japanese city. Still, even

could I revive all the lost sensations of those first experiences, I

doubt if I could express and fix them in words. The first charm of Japan

is intangible and volatile as a perfume.

It began for me with my first kuruma-ride out of the European quarter

of Yokohama into the Japanese town; and so much as I can recall of it is

hereafter set down.

Sec. 1

It is with the delicious surprise of the first journey through Japanese

streets--unable to make one's kuruma-runner understand anything but

gestures, frantic gestures to roll on anywhere, everywhere, since all

is unspeakably pleasurable and new--that one first receives the real

sensation of being in the Orient, in this Far East so much read of, so

long dreamed of, yet, as the eyes bear witness, heretofore all unknown.

There is a romance even in the first full consciousness of this

rather commonplace fact; but for me this consciousness is transfigured

inexpressibly by the divine beauty of the day. There is some charm

unutterable in the morning air, cool with the coolness of Japanese

spring and wind-waves from the snowy cone of Fuji; a charm perhaps due

rather to softest lucidity than to any positive tone--an atmospheric

limpidity extraordinary, with only a suggestion of blue in it, through

which the most distant objects appear focused with amazing sharpness.

The sun is only pleasantly warm; the jinricksha, or kuruma, is the most

cosy little vehicle imaginable; and the street-vistas, as seen above

the dancing white mushroom-shaped hat of my sandalled runner, have an

allurement of which I fancy that I could never weary.

Elfish everything seems; for everything as well as everybody is small,

and queer, and mysterious: the little houses under their blue roofs,

the little shop-fronts hung with blue, and the smiling little people

in their blue costumes. The illusion is only broken by the occasional

passing of a tall foreigner, and by divers shop-signs bearing

announcements in absurd attempts at English. Nevertheless such discords

only serve to emphasise reality; they never materially lessen the

fascination of the funny little streets.

'Tis at first a delightfully odd confusion only, as you look down one of

them, through an interminable flutter of flags and swaying of dark blue

drapery, all made beautiful and mysterious with Japanese or Chinese

lettering. For there are no immediately discernible laws of construction

or decoration: each building seems to have a fantastic prettiness of

its own; nothing is exactly like anything else, and all is bewilderingly

novel. But gradually, after an hour passed in the quarter, the eye

begins to recognise in a vague way some general plan in the construction

of these low, light, queerly-gabled wooden houses, mostly unpainted,

with their first stories all open to the street, and thin strips

of roofing sloping above each shop-front, like awnings, back to the

miniature balconies of paper-screened second stories. You begin to

understand the common plan of the tiny shops, with their matted floors

well raised above the street level, and the general perpendicular

arrangement of sign-lettering, whether undulating on drapery or

glimmering on gilded and lacquered signboards. You observe that the same

rich dark blue which dominates in popular costume rules also in shop

draperies, though there is a sprinkling of other tints--bright blue and

white and red (no greens or yellows). And then you note also that the

dresses of the labourers are lettered with the same wonderful lettering

as the shop draperies. No arabesques could produce such an effect.

As modified for decorative purposes these ideographs have a speaking

symmetry which no design without a meaning could possess. As they appear

on the back of a workman's frock--pure white on dark blue--and large

enough to be easily read at a great distance (indicating some guild or

company of which the wearer is a member or employee), they give to the

poor cheap garment a fictitious appearance of splendour.

And finally, while you are still puzzling over the mystery of things,

there will come to you like a revelation the knowledge that most of the

amazing picturesqueness of these streets is simply due to the profusion

of Chinese and Japanese characters in white, black, blue, or gold,

decorating everything--even surfaces of doorposts and paper screens.

Perhaps, then, for one moment, you will imagine the effect of English

lettering substituted for those magical characters; and the mere idea

will give to whatever aesthetic sentiment you may possess a brutal

shock, and you will become, as I have become, an enemy of the

Romaji-Kwai--that society founded for the ugly utilitarian purpose of

introducing the use of English letters in writing Japanese.

Sec. 2

An ideograph does not make upon the Japanese brain any impression

similar to that created in the Occidental brain by a letter or

combination of letters--dull, inanimate symbols of vocal sounds. To the

Japanese brain an ideograph is a vivid picture: it lives; it speaks; it

gesticulates. And the whole space of a Japanese street is full of such

living characters--figures that cry out to the eyes, words that smile or

grimace like faces.

What such lettering is, compared with our own lifeless types, can be

understood only by those who have lived in the farther East. For even

the printed characters of Japanese or Chinese imported texts give no

suggestion of the possible beauty of the same characters as modified

for decorative inscriptions, for sculptural use, or for the commonest

advertising purposes. No rigid convention fetters the fancy of the

calligrapher or designer: each strives to make his characters more

beautiful than any others; and generations upon generations of artists

have been toiling from time immemorial with like emulation, so that

through centuries and centuries of tireless effort and study, the

primitive hieroglyph or ideograph has been evolved into a thing

of beauty indescribable. It consists only of a certain number of

brush-strokes; but in each stroke there is an undiscoverable secret art

of grace, proportion, imperceptible curve, which actually makes it seem

alive, and bears witness that even during the lightning-moment of its

creation the artist felt with his brush for the ideal shape of the

stroke equally along its entire length, from head to tail. But the art

of the strokes is not all; the art of their combination is that

which produces the enchantment, often so as to astonish the Japanese

themselves. It is not surprising, indeed, considering the strangely

personal, animate, esoteric aspect of Japanese lettering, that there

should be wonderful legends of calligraphy relating how words written by

holy experts became incarnate, and descended from their tablets to hold

converse with mankind.

Sec. 3

My kurumaya calls himself 'Cha.' He has a white hat which looks like

the top of an enormous mushroom; a short blue wide-sleeved jacket; blue

drawers, close-fitting as 'tights,' and reaching to his ankles;

and light straw sandals bound upon his bare feet with cords of

palmetto-fibre. Doubtless he typifies all the patience, endurance, and

insidious coaxing powers of his class. He has already manifested his

power to make me give him more than the law allows; and I have been

warned against him in vain. For the first sensation of having a human

being for a horse, trotting between shafts, unwearyingly bobbing up

and down before you for hours, is alone enough to evoke a feeling of

compassion. And when this human being, thus trotting between shafts,

with all his hopes, memories, sentiments, and comprehensions, happens to

have the gentlest smile, and the power to return the least favour by

an apparent display of infinite gratitude, this compassion becomes

sympathy, and provokes unreasoning impulses to self-sacrifice. I think

the sight of the profuse perspiration has also something to do with

the feeling, for it makes one think of the cost of heart-beats and

muscle-contractions, likewise of chills, congestions, and pleurisy.

Cha's clothing is drenched; and he mops his face with a small sky-blue

towel, with figures of bamboo-sprays and sparrows in white upon it,

which towel he carries wrapped about his wrist as he runs.

That, however, which attracts me in Cha--Cha considered not as a motive

power at all, but as a personality--I am rapidly learning to discern

in the multitudes of faces turned toward us as we roll through these

miniature streets. And perhaps the supremely pleasurable impression

of this morning is that produced by the singular gentleness of popular

scrutiny. Everybody looks at you curiously; but there is never anything

disagreeable, much less hostile in the gaze: most commonly it is

accompanied by a smile or half smile. And the ultimate consequence of

all these kindly curious looks and smiles is that the stranger finds

himself thinking of fairy-land. Hackneyed to the degree of provocation

this statement no doubt is: everybody describing the sensations of his

first Japanese day talks of the land as fairyland, and of its people as

fairy-folk. Yet there is a natural reason for this unanimity in

choice of terms to describe what is almost impossible to describe more

accurately at the first essay. To find one's self suddenly in a world

where everything is upon a smaller and daintier scale than with us--a

world of lesser and seemingly kindlier beings, all smiling at you as

if to wish you well--a world where all movement is slow and soft, and

voices are hushed--a world where land, life, and sky are unlike all

that one has known elsewhere--this is surely the realisation, for

imaginations nourished with English folklore, of the old dream of a

World of Elves.

Sec. 4

The traveller who enters suddenly into a period of social

change--especially change from a feudal past to a democratic present--is

likely to regret the decay of things beautiful and the ugliness of

things new. What of both I may yet discover in Japan I know not; but

to-day, in these exotic streets, the old and the new mingle so well that

one seems to set off the other. The line of tiny white telegraph poles

carrying the world's news to papers printed in a mixture of Chinese and

Japanese characters; an electric bell in some tea-house with an Oriental

riddle of text pasted beside the ivory button, a shop of American

sewing-machines next to the shop of a maker of Buddhist images;

the establishment of a photographer beside the establishment of

a manufacturer of straw sandals: all these present no striking

incongruities, for each sample of Occidental innovation is set into an

Oriental frame that seems adaptable to any picture. But on the first

day, at least, the Old alone is new for the stranger, and suffices to

absorb his attention. It then appears to him that everything Japanese is

delicate, exquisite, admirable--even a pair of common wooden chopsticks

in a paper bag with a little drawing upon it; even a package of

toothpicks of cherry-wood, bound with a paper wrapper wonderfully

lettered in three different colours; even the little sky-blue towel,

with designs of flying sparrows upon it, which the jinricksha man uses

to wipe his face. The bank bills, the commonest copper coins, are

things of beauty. Even the piece of plaited coloured string used by

the shopkeeper in tying up your last purchase is a pretty curiosity.

Curiosities and dainty objects bewilder you by their very multitude: on

either side of you, wherever you turn your eyes, are countless wonderful

things as yet incomprehensible.

But it is perilous to look at them. Every time you dare to look,

something obliges you to buy it--unless, as may often happen, the

smiling vendor invites your inspection of so many varieties of one

article, each specially and all unspeakably desirable, that you flee

away out of mere terror at your own impulses. The shopkeeper never asks

you to buy; but his wares are enchanted, and if you once begin buying

you are lost. Cheapness means only a temptation to commit bankruptcy;

for the resources of irresistible artistic cheapness are inexhaustible.

The largest steamer that crosses the Pacific could not contain what you

wish to purchase. For, although you may not, perhaps, confess the fact

to yourself, what you really want to buy is not the contents of a shop;

you want the shop and the shopkeeper, and streets of shops with their

draperies and their inhabitants, the whole city and the bay and the

mountains begirdling it, and Fujiyama's white witchery overhanging it in

the speckless sky, all Japan, in very truth, with its magical trees

and luminous atmosphere, with all its cities and towns and temples, and

forty millions of the most lovable people in the universe.

Now there comes to my mind something I once heard said by a practical

American on hearing of a great fire in Japan: 'Oh! those people can

afford fires; their houses are so cheaply built.' It is true that the

frail wooden houses of the common people can be cheaply and quickly

replaced; but that which was within them to make them beautiful

cannot--and every fire is an art tragedy. For this is the land of

infinite hand-made variety; machinery has not yet been able to introduce

sameness and utilitarian ugliness in cheap production (except in

response to foreign demand for bad taste to suit vulgar markets), and

each object made by the artist or artisan differs still from all others,

even of his own making. And each time something beautiful perishes by

fire, it is a something representing an individual idea.

Happily the art impulse itself, in this country of conflagrations, has a

vitality which survives each generation of artists, and defies the flame

that changes their labour to ashes or melts it to shapelessness.

The idea whose symbol has perished will reappear again in other

creations--perhaps after the passing of a century--modified, indeed, yet

recognisably of kin to the thought of the past. And every artist is a

ghostly worker. Not by years of groping and sacrifice does he find his

highest expression; the sacrificial past is within him; his art is an

inheritance; his fingers are guided by the dead in the delineation of a

flying bird, of the vapours of mountains, of the colours of the morning

and the evening, of the shape of branches and the spring burst of

flowers: generations of skilled workmen have given him their cunning,

and revive in the wonder of his drawing. What was conscious effort in

the beginning became unconscious in later centuries--becomes almost

automatic in the living man,--becomes the art instinctive. Wherefore,

one coloured print by a Hokusai or Hiroshige, originally sold for less

than a cent, may have more real art in it than many a Western painting

valued at more than the worth of a whole Japanese street.

Sec. 5

Here are Hokusai's own figures walking about in straw raincoats, and

immense mushroom-shaped hats of straw, and straw sandals--bare-limbed

peasants, deeply tanned by wind and sun; and patient-faced mothers with

smiling bald babies on their backs, toddling by upon their geta (high,

noisy, wooden clogs), and robed merchants squatting and smoking their

little brass pipes among the countless riddles of their shops.

Then I notice how small and shapely the feet of the people are--whether

bare brown feet of peasants, or beautiful feet of children wearing tiny,

tiny geta, or feet of young girls in snowy tabi. The tabi, the

white digitated stocking, gives to a small light foot a mythological

aspect--the white cleft grace of the foot of a fauness. Clad or

bare, the Japanese foot has the antique symmetry: it has not yet been

distorted by the infamous foot-gear which has deformed the feet of

Occidentals. Of every pair of Japanese wooden clogs, one makes in

walking a slightly different sound from the other, as kring to krang; so

that the echo of the walker's steps has an alternate rhythm of tones. On

a pavement, such as that of a railway station, the sound obtains immense

sonority; and a crowd will sometimes intentionally fall into step, with

the drollest conceivable result of drawling wooden noise.

Sec. 6

'Tera e yuke!'

I have been obliged to return to the European hotel--not because of the

noon-meal, as I really begrudge myself the time necessary to eat it,

but because I cannot make Cha understand that I want to visit a Buddhist

temple. Now Cha understands; my landlord has uttered the mystical words:

'Tera e yuke!'

A few minutes of running along broad thoroughfares lined with gardens

and costly ugly European buildings; then passing the bridge of a canal

stocked with unpainted sharp-prowed craft of extraordinary construction,

we again plunge into narrow, low, bright pretty streets--into another

part of the Japanese city. And Cha runs at the top of his speed between

more rows of little ark-shaped houses, narrower above than below;

between other unfamiliar lines of little open shops. And always over the

shops little strips of blue-tiled roof slope back to the paper-screened

chamber of upper floors; and from all the facades hang draperies dark

blue, or white, or crimson--foot-breadths of texture covered with

beautiful Japanese lettering, white on blue, red on black, black on

white. But all this flies by swiftly as a dream. Once more we cross

a canal; we rush up a narrow street rising to meet a hill; and Cha,

halting suddenly before an immense flight of broad stone steps, sets the

shafts of his vehicle on the ground that I may dismount, and, pointing

to the steps, exclaims: 'Tera!'

I dismount, and ascend them, and, reaching a broad terrace, find

myself face to face with a wonderful gate, topped by a tilted, peaked,

many-cornered Chinese roof. It is all strangely carven, this gate.

Dragons are inter-twined in a frieze above its open doors; and the

panels of the doors themselves are similarly sculptured; and there are

gargoyles--grotesque lion heads--protruding from the eaves. And the

whole is grey, stone-coloured; to me, nevertheless, the carvings do not

seem to have the fixity of sculpture; all the snakeries and dragonries

appear to undulate with a swarming motion, elusively, in eddyings as of

water.

I turn a moment to look back through the glorious light. Sea and sky

mingle in the same beautiful pale clear blue. Below me the billowing of

bluish roofs reaches to the verge of the unruffled bay on the right, and

to the feet of the green wooded hills flanking the city on two sides.

Beyond that semicircle of green hills rises a lofty range of serrated

mountains, indigo silhouettes. And enormously high above the line of

them towers an apparition indescribably lovely--one solitary snowy

cone, so filmily exquisite, so spiritually white, that but for its

immemorially familiar outline, one would surely deem it a shape of

cloud. Invisible its base remains, being the same delicious tint as the

sky: only above the eternal snow-line its dreamy cone appears, seeming

to hang, the ghost of a peak, between the luminous land and the luminous

heaven--the sacred and matchless mountain, Fujiyama.

And suddenly, a singular sensation comes upon me as I stand before this

weirdly sculptured portal--a sensation of dream and doubt. It seems

to me that the steps, and the dragon-swarming gate, and the blue sky

arching over the roofs of the town, and the ghostly beauty of Fuji, and

the shadow of myself there stretching upon the grey masonry, must all

vanish presently. Why such a feeling? Doubtless because the forms before

me--the curved roofs, the coiling dragons, the Chinese grotesqueries

of carving--do not really appear to me as things new, but as things

dreamed: the sight of them must have stirred to life forgotten memories

of picture-books. A moment, and the delusion vanishes; the romance of

reality returns, with freshened consciousness of all that which is

truly and deliciously new; the magical transparencies of distance,

the wondrous delicacy of the tones of the living picture, the enormous

height of the summer blue, and the white soft witchery of the Japanese

sun.

Sec. 7

I pass on and climb more steps to a second gate with similar gargoyles

and swarming of dragons, and enter a court where graceful votive

lanterns of stone stand like monuments. On my right and left two great

grotesque stone lions are sitting--the lions of Buddha, male and female.

Beyond is a long low light building, with curved and gabled roof of blue

tiles, and three wooden steps before its entrance. Its sides are simple

wooden screens covered with thin white paper. This is the temple.

On the steps I take off my shoes; a young man slides aside the screens

closing the entrance, and bows me a gracious welcome. And I go in,

feeling under my feet a softness of matting thick as bedding. An immense

square apartment is before me, full of an unfamiliar sweet smell--the

scent of Japanese incense; but after the full blaze of the sun, the

paper-filtered light here is dim as moonshine; for a minute or two I

can see nothing but gleams of gilding in a soft gloom. Then, my eyes

becoming accustomed to the obscurity, I perceive against the paper-paned

screens surrounding the sanctuary on three sides shapes of enormous

flowers cutting like silhouettes against the vague white light. I

approach and find them to be paper flowers--symbolic lotus-blossoms

beautifully coloured, with curling leaves gilded on the upper surface

and bright green beneath, At the dark end of the apartment, facing the

entrance, is the altar of Buddha, a rich and lofty altar, covered with

bronzes and gilded utensils clustered to right and left of a shrine like

a tiny gold temple. But I see no statue; only a mystery of unfamiliar

shapes of burnished metal, relieved against darkness, a darkness

behind the shrine and altar--whether recess or inner sanctuary I cannot

distinguish.

The young attendant who ushered me into the temple now approaches,

and, to my great surprise, exclaims in excellent English, pointing to

a richly decorated gilded object between groups of candelabra on the

altar:

'That is the shrine of Buddha.' 'And I would like to make an offering to

Buddha,' I respond. 'It is not necessary,' he says, with a polite smile.

But I insist; and he places the little offering for me upon the altar.

Then he invites me to his own room, in a wing of the building--a large

luminous room, without furniture, beautifully matted. And we sit down

upon the floor and chat. He tells me he is a student in the temple. He

learned English in Tokyo and speaks it with a curious accent, but with

fine choice of words. Finally he asks me:

'Are you a Christian?' And I answer truthfully: 'No.' 'Are you a

Buddhist?' 'Not exactly.' 'Why do you make offerings if you do not

believe in Buddha?' 'I revere the beauty of his teaching, and the faith

of those who follow it.' 'Are there Buddhists in England and America?'

'There are, at least, a great many interested in Buddhist philosophy.'

And he takes from an alcove a little book, and gives it to me to

examine. It is an English copy of Olcott's Buddhist Catechism.

'Why is there no image of Buddha in your temple?' I ask. 'There is a

small one in the shrine upon the altar,' the student answers; 'but

the shrine is closed. And we have several large ones. But the image of

Buddha is not exposed here every day--only upon festal days. And some

images are exposed only once or twice a year.

From my place, I can see, between the open paper screens, men and

women ascending the steps, to kneel and pray before the entrance of

the temple. They kneel with such naive reverence, so gracefully and so

naturally, that the kneeling of our Occidental devotees seems a clumsy

stumbling by comparison. Some only join their hands; others clap them

three times loudly and slowly; then they bow their heads, pray silently

for a moment, and rise and depart. The shortness of the prayers

impresses me as something novel and interesting. From time to time I

hear the clink and rattle of brazen coin cast into the great wooden

money-box at the entrance.

I turn to the young student, and ask him: 'Why do they clap their hands

three times before they pray?'

He answers: 'Three times for the Sansai, the Three Powers: Heaven,

Earth, Man.'

'But do they clap their hands to call the Gods, as Japanese clap their

hands to summon their attendants?'

'Oh, no!' he replied. 'The clapping of hands represents only the

awakening from the Dream of the Long Night.' [1]

'What night? what dream?'

He hesitates some moments before making answer: 'The Buddha said: All

beings are only dreaming in this fleeting world of unhappiness.'

'Then the clapping of hands signifies that in prayer the soul awakens

from such dreaming?'

'Yes.'

'You understand what I mean by the word "soul"?'

'Oh, yes! Buddhists believe the soul always was--always will be.'

'Even in Nirvana?'

'Yes.'

While we are thus chatting the Chief Priest of the temple enters--a very

aged man-accompanied by two young priests, and I am presented to them;

and the three bow very low, showing me the glossy crowns of their

smoothly-shaven heads, before seating themselves in the fashion of

gods upon the floor. I observe they do not smile; these are the first

Japanese I have seen who do not smile: their faces are impassive as the

faces of images. But their long eyes observe me very closely, while the

student interprets their questions, and while I attempt to tell them

something about the translations of the Sutras in our Sacred Books of

the East, and about the labours of Beal and Burnouf and Feer and Davids

and Kern, and others. They listen without change of countenance, and

utter no word in response to the young student's translation of my

remarks. Tea, however, is brought in and set before me in a tiny cup,

placed in a little brazen saucer, shaped like a lotus-leaf; and I am

invited to partake of some little sugar-cakes (kwashi), stamped with a

figure which I recognise as the Swastika, the ancient Indian symbol of

the Wheel of the Law.

As I rise to go, all rise with me; and at the steps the student asks for

my name and address. 'For,' he adds, 'you will not see me here again, as

I am going to leave the temple. But I will visit you.'

'And your name?' I ask.

'Call me Akira,' he answers.

At the threshold I bow my good-bye; and they all bow very, very low, one

blue-black head, three glossy heads like balls of ivory. And as I go,

only Akira smiles.

Sec. 8

'Tera?' queries Cha, with his immense white hat in his hand, as I resume

my seat in the jinricksha at the foot of the steps. Which no doubt

means, do I want to see any more temples? Most certainly I do: I have

not yet seen Buddha.

'Yes, tera, Cha.'

And again begins the long panorama of mysterious shops and tilted eaves,

and fantastic riddles written over everything. I have no idea in what

direction Cha is running. I only know that the streets seem to become

always narrower as we go, and that some of the houses look like great

wickerwork pigeon-cages only, and that we pass over several bridges

before we halt again at the foot of another hill. There is a lofty

flight of steps here also, and before them a structure which I know

is both a gate and a symbol, imposing, yet in no manner resembling the

great Buddhist gateway seen before. Astonishingly simple all the lines

of it are: it has no carving, no colouring, no lettering upon it; yet it

has a weird solemnity, an enigmatic beauty. It is a torii.

'Miya,' observes Cha. Not a tera this time, but a shrine of the gods of

the more ancient faith of the land--a miya.

I am standing before a Shinto symbol; I see for the first time, out of a

picture at least, a torii. How describe a torii to those who have never

looked at one even in a photograph or engraving? Two lofty columns, like

gate-pillars, supporting horizontally two cross-beams, the lower and

lighter beam having its ends fitted into the columns a little distance

below their summits; the uppermost and larger beam supported upon the

tops of the columns, and projecting well beyond them to right and left.

That is a torii: the construction varying little in design, whether made

of stone, wood, or metal. But this description can give no correct idea

of the appearance of a torii, of its majestic aspect, of its mystical

suggestiveness as a gateway. The first time you see a noble one, you

will imagine, perhaps, that you see the colossal model of some beautiful

Chinese letter towering against the sky; for all the lines of the thing

have the grace of an animated ideograph,--have the bold angles and

curves of characters made with four sweeps of a master-brush. [2]

Passing the torii I ascend a flight of perhaps one hundred stone steps,

and find at their summit a second torii, from whose lower cross-beam

hangs festooned the mystic shimenawa. It is in this case a hempen

rope of perhaps two inches in diameter through its greater length, but

tapering off at either end like a snake. Sometimes the shimenawa is

made of bronze, when the torii itself is of bronze; but according to

tradition it should be made of straw, and most commonly is. For it

represents the straw rope which the deity Futo-tama-no-mikoto

stretched behind the Sun-goddess, Ama-terasu-oho-mi-Kami, after

Ame-no-ta-jikara-wo-no-Kami, the Heavenly-hand-strength-god, had pulled

her out, as is told in that ancient myth of Shinto which Professor

Chamberlain has translated. [3] And the shimenawa, in its commoner and

simpler form, has pendent tufts of straw along its entire length, at

regular intervals, because originally made, tradition declares, of grass

pulled up by the roots which protruded from the twist of it.

Advancing beyond this torii, I find myself in a sort of park or

pleasure-ground on the summit of the hill. There is a small temple

on the right; it is all closed up; and I have read so much about the

disappointing vacuity of Shinto temples that I do not regret the

absence of its guardian. And I see before me what is infinitely more

interesting,--a grove of cherry-trees covered with something unutterably

beautiful,--a dazzling mist of snowy blossoms clinging like summer

cloud-fleece about every branch and twig; and the ground beneath them,

and the path before me, is white with the soft, thick, odorous snow of

fallen petals.

Beyond this loveliness are flower-plots surrounding tiny shrines; and

marvellous grotto-work, full of monsters--dragons and mythologic beings

chiselled in the rock; and miniature landscape work with tiny groves of

dwarf trees, and Lilliputian lakes, and microscopic brooks and bridges

and cascades. Here, also, are swings for children. And here are

belvederes, perched on the verge of the hill, wherefrom the whole fair

city, and the whole smooth bay speckled with fishing-sails no bigger

than pin-heads, and the far, faint, high promontories reaching into the

sea, are all visible in one delicious view--blue-pencilled in a beauty

of ghostly haze indescribable.

Why should the trees be so lovely in Japan? With us, a plum or cherry

tree in flower is not an astonishing sight; but here it is a miracle of

beauty so bewildering that, however much you may have previously read

about it, the real spectacle strikes you dumb. You see no leaves--only

one great filmy mist of petals. Is it that the trees have been so long

domesticated and caressed by man in this land of the Gods, that they

have acquired souls, and strive to show their gratitude, like women

loved, by making themselves more beautiful for man's sake? Assuredly

they have mastered men's hearts by their loveliness, like beautiful

slaves. That is to say, Japanese hearts. Apparently there have been some

foreign tourists of the brutal class in this place, since it has been

deemed necessary to set up inscriptions in English announcing that 'IT

IS FORBIDDEN TO INJURE THE TREES.'

Sec. 9

'Tera?'

'Yes, Cha, tera.'

But only for a brief while do I traverse Japanese streets. The houses

separate, become scattered along the feet of the hills: the city thins

away through little valleys, and vanishes at last behind. And we follow

a curving road overlooking the sea. Green hills slope steeply down to

the edge of the way on the right; on the left, far below, spreads a vast

stretch of dun sand and salty pools to a line of surf so distant that

it is discernible only as a moving white thread. The tide is out; and

thousands of cockle-gatherers are scattered over the sands, at such

distances that their stooping figures, dotting the glimmering sea-bed,

appear no larger than gnats. And some are coming along the road before

us, returning from their search with well-filled baskets--girls with

faces almost as rosy as the faces of English girls.

As the jinricksha rattles on, the hills dominating the road grow higher.

All at once Cha halts again before the steepest and loftiest flight of

temple steps I have yet seen.

I climb and climb and climb, halting perforce betimes, to ease the

violent aching of my quadriceps muscles; reach the top completely out

of breath; and find myself between two lions of stone; one showing his

fangs, the other with jaws closed. Before me stands the temple, at the

farther end of a small bare plateau surrounded on three sides by low

cliffs,-a small temple, looking very old and grey. From a rocky height

to the left of the building, a little cataract rumbles down into a pool,

ringed in by a palisade. The voice of the water drowns all other sounds.

A sharp wind is blowing from the ocean: the place is chill even in the

sun, and bleak, and desolate, as if no prayer had been uttered in it for

a hundred years.

Cha taps and calls, while I take off my shoes upon the worn wooden steps

of the temple; and after a minute of waiting, we hear a muffled step

approaching and a hollow cough behind the paper screens. They slide

open; and an old white-robed priest appears, and motions me, with a low

bow, to enter. He has a kindly face; and his smile of welcome seems

to me one of the most exquisite I have ever been greeted with. Then he

coughs again, so badly that I think if I ever come here another time, I

shall ask for him in vain.

I go in, feeling that soft, spotless, cushioned matting beneath my feet

with which the floors of all Japanese buildings are covered. I pass the

indispensable bell and lacquered reading-desk; and before me I see

other screens only, stretching from floor to ceiling. The old man, still

coughing, slides back one of these upon the right, and waves me into

the dimness of an inner sanctuary, haunted by faint odours of incense.

A colossal bronze lamp, with snarling gilded dragons coiled about its

columnar stem, is the first object I discern; and, in passing it, my

shoulder sets ringing a festoon of little bells suspended from the

lotus-shaped summit of it. Then I reach the altar, gropingly, unable yet

to distinguish forms clearly. But the priest, sliding back screen after

screen, pours in light upon the gilded brasses and the inscriptions;

and I look for the image of the Deity or presiding Spirit between the

altar-groups of convoluted candelabra. And I see--only a mirror, a

round, pale disk of polished metal, and my own face therein, and behind

this mockery of me a phantom of the far sea.

Only a mirror! Symbolising what? Illusion? or that the Universe exists

for us solely as the reflection of our own souls? or the old Chinese

teaching that we must seek the Buddha only in our own hearts? Perhaps

some day I shall be able to find out all these things.

As I sit on the temple steps, putting on my shoes preparatory to going,

the kind old priest approaches me again, and, bowing, presents a bowl. I

hastily drop some coins in it, imagining it to be a Buddhist alms-bowl,

before discovering it to be full of hot water. But the old man's

beautiful courtesy saves me from feeling all the grossness of my

mistake. Without a word, and still preserving his kindly smile, he takes

the bowl away, and, returning presently with another bowl, empty, fills

it with hot water from a little kettle, and makes a sign to me to drink.

Tea is most usually offered to visitors at temples; but this little

shrine is very, very poor; and I have a suspicion that the old priest

suffers betimes for want of what no fellow-creature should be permitted

to need. As I descend the windy steps to the roadway I see him still

looking after me, and I hear once more his hollow cough.

Then the mockery of the mirror recurs to me. I am beginning to wonder

whether I shall ever be able to discover that which I seek--outside of

myself! That is, outside of my own imagination.

Sec. 10

'Tera?' once more queries Cha.

'Tera, no--it is getting late. Hotel, Cha.'

But Cha, turning the corner of a narrow street, on our homeward route,

halts the jinricksha before a shrine or tiny temple scarcely larger than

the smallest of Japanese shops, yet more of a surprise to me than any of

the larger sacred edifices already visited. For, on either side of

the entrance, stand two monster-figures, nude, blood-red, demoniac,

fearfully muscled, with feet like lions, and hands brandishing gilded

thunderbolts, and eyes of delirious fury; the guardians of holy things,

the Ni-O, or "Two Kings." [4] And right between these crimson monsters

a young girl stands looking at us; her slight figure, in robe of

silver grey and girdle of iris-violet, relieved deliciously against the

twilight darkness of the interior. Her face, impassive and curiously

delicate, would charm wherever seen; but here, by strange contrast with

the frightful grotesqueries on either side of her, it produces an

effect unimaginable. Then I find myself wondering whether my feeling

of repulsion toward those twin monstrosities be altogether lust, seeing

that so charming a maiden deems them worthy of veneration. And they even

cease to seem ugly as I watch her standing there between them, dainty

and slender as some splendid moth, and always naively gazing at the

foreigner, utterly unconscious that they might have seemed to him both

unholy and uncomely.

What are they? Artistically they are Buddhist transformations of Brahma

and of Indra. Enveloped by the absorbing, all-transforming magical

atmosphere of Buddhism, Indra can now wield his thunderbolts only in

defence of the faith which has dethroned him: he has become a keeper

of the temple gates; nay, has even become a servant of Bosatsu

(Bodhisattvas), for this is only a shrine of Kwannon, Goddess of Mercy,

not yet a Buddha.

'Hotel, Cha, hotel!' I cry out again, for the way is long, and the sun

sinking,--sinking in the softest imaginable glow of topazine light.

I have not seen Shaka (so the Japanese have transformed the name

Sakya-Muni); I have not looked upon the face of the Buddha. Perhaps I

may be able to find his image to-morrow, somewhere in this wilderness of

wooden streets, or upon the summit of some yet unvisited hill.

The sun is gone; the topaz-light is gone; and Cha stops to light his

lantern of paper; and we hurry on again, between two long lines of

painted paper lanterns suspended before the shops: so closely set, so

level those lines are, that they seem two interminable strings of pearls

of fire. And suddenly a sound--solemn, profound, mighty--peals to my

ears over the roofs of the town, the voice of the tsurigane, the great

temple-bell of Nogiyama.

All too short the day seemed. Yet my eyes have been so long dazzled

by the great white light, and so confused by the sorcery of that

interminable maze of mysterious signs which made each street vista seem

a glimpse into some enormous grimoire, that they are now weary even

of the soft glowing of all these paper lanterns, likewise covered with

characters that look like texts from a Book of Magic. And I feel at last

the coming of that drowsiness which always follows enchantment.

Sec. 11

'Amma-kamishimo-go-hyakmon!'

A woman's voice ringing through the night, chanting in a tone of

singular sweetness words of which each syllable comes through my open

window like a wavelet of flute-sound. My Japanese servant, who speaks a

little English, has told me what they mean, those words:

'Amma-kamishimo-go-hyakmon!'

And always between these long, sweet calls I hear a plaintive whistle,

one long note first, then two short ones in another key. It is the

whistle of the amma, the poor blind woman who earns her living by

shampooing the sick or the weary, and whose whistle warns pedestrians

and drivers of vehicles to take heed for her sake, as she cannot see.

And she sings also that the weary and the sick may call her in.

'Amma-kamishimo-go-hyakmon!'

The saddest melody, but the sweetest voice. Her cry signifies that for

the sum of 'five hundred mon' she will come and rub your weary body

'above and below,' and make the weariness or the pain go away. Five

hundred mon are the equivalent of five sen (Japanese cents); there are

ten rin to a sen, and ten mon to one rin. The strange sweetness of the

voice is haunting,--makes me even wish to have some pains, that I might

pay five hundred mon to have them driven away.

I lie down to sleep, and I dream. I see Chinese texts--multitudinous,

weird, mysterious--fleeing by me, all in one direction; ideographs white

and dark, upon signboards, upon paper screens, upon backs of sandalled

men. They seem to live, these ideographs, with conscious life; they are

moving their parts, moving with a movement as of insects, monstrously,

like phasmidae. I am rolling always through low, narrow, luminous

streets in a phantom jinricksha, whose wheels make no sound. And always,

always, I see the huge white mushroom-shaped hat of Cha dancing up and

down before me as he runs.