Chapter VII: Part 7

The heat was still intense even in the night, within fifty yards of the sea; we went down to the quay and hired a boat with man and boy, to drift out into the hazy moonlight. The boy did the main part of the work: we lay in the boat, seeing nothing but this little body, and the flapping of its garments, and everything else a vague space of lightened shadow. We rowed or sculled far away, came near to a shore where there was a tea-house, for women opened its closed sides and, revealed by their lanterns, came down and called to us. But we pulled off and later, in a far-off ocean with no shore nor sky, came across a little summer-house built on piles, through which the volume of the sea pressed and recoiled. Nothing could be more abandoned, more improbable. There was nothing in sight. Had we entered the little pavilion, and moored our boat or let it float away, we might have felt as if out in the distant sea. We were the center of a globe of pearl; no edges nor outlines of anything visible, except a faint circular light above, from which the pearly color flowed tremulously, and a few wrinkles of silver and dark below; no sound but a gentle sway of water. And we came home, having had the sense of the possibility of intense isolation in a fairyland of twilight.

AT SEA, OFF IZU, September 3.

We sailed this morning on the French steamer. It is now quite late in the afternoon. The Pacific keeps its blue under us, and a blue sea haze separates us from the violets and greens of the mountains of the shore, behind which the light is slowly sinking. All is gentle and soothing; but our captain says that he is not sure, and that "_hors d'Izu nous aurons la houle du Pacifique_." While waiting for this long, angry roll, I shall tell you about yesterday, of which there was little--for we had undertaken too much.

We left rather too late, and drove a good way in the foggy morning, passing much culture, and under many trees, of all of which I remember little. It was late when we stopped to breakfast at the little inn from which we were to be taken by _kuruma_, first to the big statue of Buddha, then wherever we might have time to go. We left the place, and reached the hollow between hills where the statue dwells, after passing through a curious deep cutting right through the rocks, which marks some old approach to the former city; for these hollows and fields were once covered by a great city, the city of Kamakura, the city of Yoritomo, and the great statue now out of doors was once in a temple of that city. Places are shown you in the dells: this was where was once the mansion of such a hero, here was that of the administrators of the military rule in the fifteenth century; here stood the palace where, with his two hundred and eighty last followers, such a one retired to perform harakiri, and perish in the flames, when overwhelming forces had captured the great city which was once the other capital of Japan. Trees and ordinary culture cover these spaces now.

And here was the temple. Sixty-three pillars supported its roof, and many of their bases are still there. But a great inundation from the sea, now some miles distant, destroyed the temple and its adjacent buildings. This happened as far back as the end of the fifteenth century, and the temple has not been rebuilt. The desire of Yoritomo to see the great statue made during his lifetime was not granted; but one of his waiting-ladies, after his death, collected the necessary funds, and it appears to have been cast in 1252 by Ono Go-rō-ye-mon. I know nothing about him, but if he be the artist, it is pleasant to record his name. The image is made of bronze cast in pieces brazed together and finished with the chisel. It is nearly fifty feet high as it sits; and if these points help you to its size, learn that its eyes, for instance, are four feet long, the length across its lap from knee to knee is thirty-five feet, and the circumference of the thumb is fully three feet. But these measures, though they show a large scale and great size, do not indicate a proportion, as we should understand it. The whole modeling is for effect, and the means and methods of the modeling are simple and elementary. Like all work done on archaic principles, the main accentuations are overstated, and saved in their relations by great subtleties in the large surfaces. It is emphatically modeled for a colossus; it is _not a little thing made big_, like our modern colossal statues; it _has always been big_, and would be so if reduced to life-size.

We saw it first from the side through trees, as we ran rapidly to the front, where are a temple gate, and a long courtyard still in order, that leads up to the statue. From the side one can see how it bends over, and rough as it is from behind, the impression of something real was strong as its gray form moved through the openings of the trees. The photographs must long have made you know it, and they also show the great base and the immense temple ornaments that stand upon it at the feet of the statue. They show also the little lodge at the side, where the priest in attendance lives, and gives information, and sells photographs and takes them, and generally acts as showman. We took many photographs from new points of view, and we even removed the thatch of a penthouse so as to get nearer and under the statue to the side; and I painted also, more to get the curious gray and violet tone of the bronze than to make a faithful drawing, for that seemed impossible in the approaching afternoon. We did not know how long a time we had spent lingering about it. The clouds had begun to open, and a faint autumnal light filled the little hollow, which has only small trees, and no imposing monuments like the great cryptomeria, which alone might seem fit to grow about here. All, on the contrary, was gentle and small--the lines of the hills, the trees, the garden plants about us: we might have been anywhere. Perhaps it is just as well; the whole impression comes from the statue, with the only objection or detraction that we can get near enough to it to see the mechanism, the means, and details of its expression. An accident, the breaking of its prison temple by a great cataclysm of nature, a great wave of the sea coming far inland and destroying the great building, has given to the statue something that it could never have had to the physical eye--in the degree it has now. Now, freed from its shrine, the figure sits in contemplation of entire nature, the whole open world that we feel about us, or its symbols--the landscape, the hills, the trees and fields, the sky and its depths, the sunshine playing before the eyes of the seated figure, the air in which dance all the things that live in air, from the birds that fly to the atoms of dust, and the drifting leaves and blossoms, the confusion or the peace of the elements, the snow in crystals, and the rain in drops. All this world of ours, which to the contemplative mind is but a figurative fragment of the universe, lies before the mental gaze of the Buddha. Unwinking, without change of direction, he looks forever; his will is forever subdued and held beneath him, as his fingers pressed together indicate his freedom from all the disturbances of that past of being which is subject to time and change, and his cognition, undisturbed, envelops and images the universe in final contemplation.

Astounding success of the artist in what he has really done, for there is no trace of means; the sum of realism is so slight, the conventional has so great a part; each detail is almost more of an ornament than of a representation. One almost believes that the result may be partly accidental: that, as one cannot fathom the reason of the expressiveness of a countenance, or of the influence of a few musical notes, even though one knows the mechanism, so it seems difficult to grant that there was once a choice in the other mind that caused it, that there were once many paths opened before it.

And still more do I believe that the accident of the great tempest has given a yet more patent and subtle meaning to the entire figure. Once upon a time its details, indeed, if not its entirety, must have looked more delicate in the reflected light of the temple building, when the upper part of the figure was bathed in mysterious gloomy light, while the lower glittered in answer to the openings of the doors. But could anything ever have rivaled the undecidedness of this background of veiled sky and shifting blue, which makes one believe at times that the figure soon must move? As one looks longer and longer at it, with everything around it gently changing, and the shadows shifting upon its surface, the tension of expectation rises to anxiety. The trees rustle and wave behind it, and the light dances up and down the green boughs with the wind; it must move--but there is no change, and it shall sit forever.

As we left, and I walked down the long pavement in front of the statue, in the early autumn sunshine and the rising freshness of the wind, I turned again and again, each time with the realization that the statue was still sitting, until we turned out of sight, a vague, unreasonable sense of having left it alone accompanying me, until other, different, light, and gay impressions broke the influence and allowed me to think of what I had seen as a work of art, such as I could understand and decompose--and, if I wished, make also.

And we lunched at Hase, near by, and from the comfortable inn could see on the gray hill above the temple of Kuwannon, and its red buildings and balustrades. After a very long lunch, we walked up to the temple, and from the platform in front looked toward the afternoon sea right before us, and the plain of Kamakura. Then we entered, and were taken in behind the great screen doors to a narrow but high place--lighted only from the little entrance--wherein stood right by us and over us a standing figure of the divinity, all golden in the dark. It is over thirty feet high, and whether it be great art or not,--for the darkness was too great to judge of form,--the glitter of a smile of gold far up above our heads, in the obscurity of the roof, was an impression that, even so near to the great statue out of doors, remains distinct. It was late afternoon; we dared look at no more statues, nor at relics of warriors of Kamakura, and started for the beach, partly with the hope of seeing Fuji behind us. But all was veiled in the sky; we walked along the beach, our _kurumas_ dragging behind us, and crossed a little stream, and while A---- bathed in, and thereby took possession of, the Pacific, I walked up the sand-hills toward the little village at the end of the strand. As I came near it, an unfortunate distorted being, scarred with some leprous disease, plunged toward me in the twilight from some vague opening in the hills, and begged piteously, following me afterward with a thankful wail of "O Danna San! Danna San! Danna San!" that I hear yet. We reëntered our _kurumas_ and drove in triumph to the inn of the little village. I say in triumph: _I_ drove in triumph, observed of all observers--I had my usual costume and was clothed. A----, rather than wait to get dry, rode along with only a partial covering of _yukatta_, and attracted no attention. Had he had nothing on at all, he would have been still more in keeping with many of our neighbors. Night was falling, nothing more could be done; we got back to our carriage and horses, and drove back in the warm darkness to Yokohama. And I close as we begin to feel the roll, "_la houle du Pacifique_."

[9] The gentry, the old Samurai, however, still constitute the
governing class to-day apparently, and the aristocratic spirit
stands in the way of indiscriminate rise of the plebeians.

KIOTO

September 16.

We came into Kioto from Osaka, by rail, one fine afternoon. I had a half-childish hope of being surprised, a memory of days when, a boy, I read of the great forbidden city. Only a few years ago it was still forbidden, and now the little respectable car was hurrying us there as prosily as older life translates the verse of our early dreams. We were in September heat and glare. We passed over wide spaces of plain, edged by sharp mountains, looking hot and barren; through great plantations and stretches of green, with here and there a temple half hidden,--and over dried river-beds.

The station closed all views on our arrival, and the sudden transfer to streets showing no European influences was as if we had passed through a city's walls.

The first sensation was merely the usual one of a whirl through innumerable buildings, low, of wood, and more or less the same; extremely wide streets, all very clean; many people; a great bridge across the stony bed of a river almost dry; then some trees and little gardens and corners of temples with heavy roofs, as we turned through little roads and drove up to the gate of the hotel inclosure, which is placed on the edge of the outside hills and looks down upon Kioto. We were high up, in rooms, looking over trees just below; next to us the corner of temple grounds that rounded away out of sight.

Early on most mornings I have sat out on our wide veranda and drawn or painted from the great panorama before me--the distant mountains making a great wall lighted up clearly, with patches of burning yellow and white and green, against the western sky. The city lies in fog, sometimes cool and gray; sometimes golden and smoky. The tops of pagodas and heavy roofs of temples lift out of this sea, and through it shine innumerable little white spots of the plastered sides of houses. Great avenues, which divide the city in parallel lines, run off into haze; far away always shines the white wall of the city castle; near us, trees and houses and temples drop out occasionally from the great violet shadows cast by the mountain behind us. Before the city wakes and the air clears, the crows fly from near the temples toward us, as the great bell of the temple sounds, and we hear the call of the gongs and indefinite waves of prayer. Occasionally a hawk rests uneasily on the thin branches below. Then the sun eats up the shadows, and the vast view unites in a great space of plain behind the monotony of the repeated forms of the small houses, broken by the shoulders of the roofs and pagodas of many temples. But near us are many trees and tea-houses and gardens, and we are as if in the country.

We have worked conscientiously as mere sightseers until all is confused as with an indigestion of information. I could hardly tell you anything in a reasonable sequence, for in and out of what I go to see runs a perpetual warp of looking at curios, of which occupation I feel every day disgusted and ashamed, and to which I return again as a gambler might, with the hope of making it all right with my conscience by some run of luck. This began on our very first day, when at our first visit to an excellent merchant, for whom we had letters, we spent the hours after dinner looking at the bric-à-brac brought together for our purchase or amusement. We had had the presentation and disappearance of the ladies of the house after their customary genuflections; and a European dinner, waited upon, in part, by lesser clients of our entertainer. Meanwhile his one little girl sat beside him, half behind him, and occasionally betrayed her secret love for him by gently pressing his leg with the sole of her little stockinged foot. Japanese children are one of the charms of Japan, and this one is a type of their stillness; her sweet, patient face watching the talk of the elders, no change in her eyes revealing anything, but the whole person taking everything in--the little delicate person, which disappeared in a dress and sash not unlike her elders', except for color. Then there was a visit to another merchant, in the oldest house of the city, built low, so that none might perchance look down upon the sovereign lord's procession. Display of family relics--marriage gifts and complete _trousseaux_ of the past; marriage dresses of the same time, symbolical in color,--white, red, and finally black. We are told to notice that the gold and silver fittings of precious lacquers are wanting, because many years ago some sumptuary edict of the Tokugawa government suddenly forbade the display or use of the precious metals in excess--a gradation to be determined by inspecting officials--for persons who, like merchants, should not pretend to pass a certain line.

Then, owing to other letters, we have paid our devoirs to the governor, and called, and subsequently received the polite attentions of his intelligent secretary. Under his guidance we visit the School of Art and see boys sketching, and enter rooms of drawing devoted respectively to the schools of the North and the South.

And we visit the school for girls, where the cooking-class is one bloom of peach-like complexions, like a great fruit-basket; where the ladylike teacher of gymnastics and child etiquette wears divided skirts; where the rooms for the study of Chinese classics and history contain a smaller number of fair students, looking more reasonable and much paler; and where, on admiring in the empty painting-class a charming sketch of Kioto wharves, like the work of some lesser Rico, I am told that the fair artist has disappeared--married, just as if it had happened with us at home. But with a difference worth weighing gravely, for our guide and teacher informs me that the aim of this education is not to make girls independent, but rather to make more intelligent and useful daughters, sisters, or wives. And in this old-fashioned view I come to recognize the edges of a great truth.

Then temples, for Kioto is a city of temples; and every day some hours of hot morning have been given to visits, all of which make a great blur in my mind. The general memory is impressive and grand; the details run one into the other.

Thus we are paying dear for sightseeing, but it is impossible to set aside the vague curiosity which hates to leave another chance unturned. And when again shall I return, and see all these again? Now, however, all is associated with heat and glare, and with the monotony of innumerable repeated impressions, differing only in scale. Still, probably, when I shall have left I shall recall more clearly and separately the great solemn masses of unpainted wood, for which early forests have been spoiled; the great size of their timbers, the continuous felicity of their many roofings, the dreary or delicate solemnity of their dark interiors, the interminable recurrence of paintings by artists of the same schools; the dry and arid court-yards, looked at, in this heat of weather, from the golden shadows, where are hidden sometimes lovely old statues, sometimes stupid repetitions; images of the whole race of earlier shoguns; the harsh features of the great Taiko Sama, the sleek and subtle face of the great Iyéyasŭ, or the form of K'wan-on, carved by early art, leaning her cheek on long fingers; or noble, tapestried figures, rich in color and intensity of spotting, painted by the Buddhist Cho-Den-Su....

I should like to describe the temple ceilings, in which are set the lacquered coffers of the war junk of Taiko, or of the state carriage of his wife....

I have sketched in his reception hall, peopled to-day only by specters of the past--with gilt and painted panels on which may have looked the great Iyéyasŭ, who was to succeed him, and the blessed Xavier, and the early Jesuits, and the chivalric Christian lords who were to die on great battlefields. And close to a great room, where many monks bent over peaceful books, the little closet, with dainty shelves, in which Taiko looked at the heads of his dead enemies, brought there for inspection.

And we have gone up into the plain little pavilion, sacred to the ceremonies of tea-drinking, where the rough and shrewd adventurer offered to grim, ambitious warriors, as honorific guerdon for hard service, the simple little cups of glazed clay that collectors prize to-day.

I run over these associated details, because certainly the question of the great buildings is too weighty for my present mood. But the greater part of the romance of Japan is called up at every moment by what we see just now.

At Uji, among the tea gardens, we stopped on our way to Nara, the older capital, to see the temple of Bio-do-in and its "Phœnix hall," built in wood, that is now over eight hundred years old; its statues; its half-defaced paintings of the "Paradise in the West"; its high, dusty ceiling, inlaid with mother-of-pearl; and its sweet-toned bell.

And we saw the legendary bow of Yorimasa, which you will recall with me whenever you see a picture of the bow of the moon, across which flies the Japanese cuckoo. It was here that he defended Uji bridge, with a forlorn hope, against the army of the Taira, that his prince might have time to escape; and here, at Bio-do-in, while his last followers kept off the rush of the enemy, Yorimasa ran himself through with his sword, as a final duty paid to the honor of Japan.

On this side of the bridge, as I walked up other temple steps, hedged in by trees, with our friend Oye-San, the violet butterflies and blue dragon-flies crossed our path in every bar of sunshine.

At the monastery of Kurodani, on the edge of the mountain near us, are shown the graves of Nawozane and of the young Atsumori, whom he killed in battle. We are shown the portrait of the victim, painted in sorrow by the victor, and the pine-tree still stands upon which the warrior hung his armor when, tormented by remorse, he carried out his vow of never more bearing arms, and sought this place to enter religion and pray for the soul of the youth he had unwillingly slain. Strange flower of human pity, blooming out of the blood of civil wars like some story of Italy in the coeval day of St. Francis.

At that time the great war of the Genji and the Heike was devastating Japan, and in 1184, in a great battle by the sea, Yoshitsune, the hero of romance of Japan, serving his brother Yoritomo, whose story I told you at Nikko, defeated the Heike, and the "death of Atsumori" took place. This delicate boy, a prince of the Heike, scarcely sixteen years old, met in the battle the veteran Nawozane. Atsumori had fought bravely on the shore, having at first fled, and then returned, forcing his horse through the water. The greater strength of the older man prevailed, and the child fell under the blows of the powerful man-at-arms. When Nawozane disengaged his enemy's helmet, intending to take off the usual trophy of a head, the sight of the youthful face recalled his own son slain in battle, and he hesitated in inflicting on other parents a suffering like his own. But if he did not kill him others would, and his reputation would be endangered. He killed him, Atsumori bravely meeting death, and bore off the terrible trophy. Then, in the revulsion of remorse, he vowed himself to a religious life; he restored to Atsumori's father the son's fair head and his armor, and, going to Kioto, became a disciple in religion of the holy Hónen Shónin, the founder of Kurodani; and there, near its lovely garden, are the tombs of the man and of the boy.

Or, while we are thinking of heads cut off, I pass again and again a lofty monument, under great trees, on a wide avenue beautifully macadamized, and kept in the trim of our Central Park, along which ride officers in Western uniform, or pass the police, in a dress whose type is borrowed from at least three European states. Under this tomb are buried the ears and noses of the Koreans slain in the wars that Hideyoshi waged at the end of the sixteenth century. They were carried here as more convenient than the heads, the usual evidence of work well done, brought by the warriors to their commander. The memory of what the great pile means serves to confuse still more my admiration of the ultra-modern success of the wide carriage drive on which it stands.

OSAKA, September 18.

We have come to Osaka to spend an entire day in bric-à-brac: to arrive early at the big shop; to have tea offered us in the little back room of the merchant, which looks out and steps out upon his garden of a few trees and little pebbly walks and some stone lanterns--a garden that is for us, which his own may or may not be. Then cigars, and pieces of porcelain brought from the storehouses; then more tea, and an inspection of the many rooms full of odds and ends. Then more tea, and more pieces slowly and reluctantly drawn from the storehouse, as if we could not be so unreasonable; then lunch and tea, always in the house; then adjournment to the upper rooms, when the hundreds of kakemonos are unrolled, one after the other, to a crescendo of exasperation. Then rediscussion of matters below-stairs and visits to other rooms full of wares not spoken of before; then more tea, and the last pieces grudgingly produced from the same occult storehouses; purchases amid final bewilderment; tea again, and departure.

We had come to Osaka on our way back from Nara, and we again return to Kioto, which we left three days ago. The trip to Nara was fatiguing and delightful, and I should like to recall it for you, but I have no time and have made no notes; and, besides, my memories are again beginning to merge one into another, and they themselves to blend with what I see in Kioto. But certainly something floats over, which a few lines can give.

We were out in our _kurumas_ early in the morning, each with three runners. We found Oye-San waiting for us patiently, outside at Inari, where he had expected us from the earliest morning. It is from him that I get the little clay fox, given me for good luck, in a partnership with the one he retained. I need not speak of the heat. The roads were dusty and dry where they were not muddy and wet, in the country paths we took. We passed the edge of the city, which ends suddenly in rice fields, occupying what were once streets and houses. For Kioto is only a part of what it has been; and even when it was larger, not so many years back, it must still have been only the remainder of a greater past.

As we get into what is really the country, passing from broad road to narrow tracks, our runners sometimes lifted us over soft, wet places, or bumped us over narrow ditches, or guided us, at full tilt, on the edges of the stones that are bridges. Sometimes more patiently we halted to allow the files of black bulls to meander past us, dragging loads on wheels or carrying bales.

Rarely we met peasants, and then usually women, sometimes with horses of a larger breed than that we saw last month in the east. Once, among rice fields in the basin of a circle of low hills, I saw the grove which covers the tomb of some divine emperor of early times. As we circled around the slope, far away from this solitary oasis of trees, we could see the grove on every side, finished and complete and rounded by time, as if sculptured in nature from some of those sketches that Japanese artists make for carving when they give all four sides, and the bottom, and the top, on a single page. Nothing else, but perhaps some uninscribed stone, marks the tomb of emperors, dotted about the plains of this oldest province of Japan. Strange enough, even in this strange country, is this evidence of the extreme of simplicity in death, as in life, of the oldest line of Oriental despots, absolute lords and masters, ever-present patterns of the deity, who make this one solitary exception of simplicity in history. It is as if Japan itself was their tomb, as if they passed back into the nature of which their divine ancestors were gods--the gods of the sun and of the earth.

Blue hills and pagodas, and temples in the distance, and we came into Nara, which is but a breath, a ruin, a remnant of what it was. I had been told so often of the place, as a ruin among rice fields, that I was unprepared for the beautiful lay-out of what remains--for the well-planned roads and avenues, such as may well have belonged to some great capital, such as would have been heard of by travelers who, returning in days of Charlemagne from other Eastern cities to Byzantium, might have talked of Zipango.

Nothing remains but a few buildings, belonging to temples, but their approaches are splendid, even though there be often nothing more than the general grading and disposition. I should have written to you from our inn, where I looked, in the evening and morning, toward the slopes of distant hills, and heard, out of the darkness, the sound of the great bell which rang first some eleven centuries ago, and the singing of the frogs in the fields which were once a city. It is now too late to begin to describe anything of what I saw; anything of temple buildings, from one of which to another we wandered, or of the old statues and relics, or of the religious dances of young girls which we looked at, standing or sitting near the balustrade of the dancing-shed, while inside, in the greater shade, they moved to the music and hymns of the priests--red and white figures, with long tresses of black hair and chaplets of flowers; with faces all painted white, and brilliant, indifferent eyes that saw me sketching clearly, however, and hands that waved, in a cadence of routine, fans and bunches of little bells with long streamers of violet, blue, green, red, and white. Or of the great park-like avenue, that made me think of England, through which still wander tame deer, as did those that, long ago, served as models for Okio the painter. I fear that what I have seen will remain only as an embroidery upon the stuff that my memory tries to unroll.

It was late on a sweltering afternoon when we managed to leave Nara, and we reached Horiuji for too short a visit; for we were due in Osaka the next day. We wandered in the late afternoon and evening through its courts, kindly received by the priests, for whom we had the recommendation of a friendly name.

At least I had time to see the Golden Hall, one of the earliest buildings, now more than twelve centuries and a half old, and the noble paintings on its walls attributed to some famous sculptor of that day. Their placid elegance, the refinement of their lines, their breath of religious peace, explained those claims to a solemn and glorious past for Japan, which look like a conventional exaggeration in a to-day that is delicate and small and dry.

The recall of Greek perfection was not forced, and while still vaguely unwilling to confuse one excellence by referring to another, I could not help again thinking of the Greek and of Tanagra images, when I saw, by the light of the torches, in the great pagoda, as old as the great hall, groups modeled in clay by the same old sculptor, whose name is given to the paintings--Amida, and Kuwan-on, and Monju, and the scenes of the death of Buddha. An admirable antiquity was to be the continuous impression of the evening, carried out into our last looks at the Treasure House. Its very air of an old New England barn or crib raised upon posts, its rough red painting, the high wooden steps of entrance, the gigantic wooden latch-key with which the guardian priest fumbled at its door, gave the note of extreme early simplicity--the feeling of a persisting indifference to the adornments and changes of centuries of fashions.

It has been useless all along to detail anything, but the impressions of the last things seen remain with me as types of all. For there hung on the old walls of the Treasure House a framed banner, once carried in ancient battles, its brocaded pattern exactly like that which we know in Babylonian art: the circles with the lilies between, and in each circle the Assyrian monarch struggling with lions--imitation or original of coeval Sassanian Persia, I suppose, but housed here all these thousand years, and in its persistence of pattern connecting with that heavy and oppressive antiquity of Nineveh which knows nothing older than itself for our story, except oldest Egypt.

* * * * *

But I was yet to find something old that would be directly meant for me,--a painting by the legendary painter of Japan, the Cimabue of a thousand years ago, inheritor or student of still older Chinese art--Kose-no-Kanaoka.

The painting is still in fair condition, though injuries of time reveal, as usual, the methods used by the painter. And it was a delight in me, in this mood of veneration for past greatness, to recognize in the veilings and sequences of this painting of the lotus methods I had used myself, working at such distance of time and place, when I had tried to render the tones and the transparency of our fairy water-lily; and I know you will forgive the superstitious sense of approval of my re-inventions from this indefinite past of art.

We wandered among the buildings until night had set in; we signed on the register of visitors, and contributed a small sum to the repairs of these decaying relics of the greatness of Japan; we received some little gifts of impressions and prints in acknowledgment, and then rested in the neighboring inn, waited upon by fat, good-natured tea-girls, most certainly belonging to to-day.

We had now to take a long night ride, and at length we rushed out into the moonlight, our fourteen runners appearing and disappearing as we came in and out of the shadows in the long procession of our train.

We whirled past the houses of the small town, indiscreetly close to the paper screens, lighted from within, against which were profiled the shadows of faces, sometimes with pipes or cups lifted to their lips or the outlines of coiffures piled up on the head--all pictures more Japanese than their very originals; then between rounded hills on which stood masses of maple-trees; then near to empty spaces of water; then sank into dark hollows, at the bottom of which rivers ran as fast the other way.

I watched and looked as long as fatigue allowed, but fell asleep in the uncomfortable kuruma, waked every now and then by some sudden jolt to my extended arm and head.

Occasionally I had dreamy glances at what I remember as a vast plain, with lofty, colorless mountains at one side, and perhaps I saw glimpses of the sea. The night air was cool in the hollows after the sweltering day, and I found my arm and face damp with the dew. A Japanese poet would have said that it was but the spray from off the oars of some heavenly boat which sailed that night across the starry stream of the Milky Way.

In the dawn we saw the white walls of the castle of the city of Osaka, and ran across its many bridges, all silent in the morning.

September 19.

We spent the late afternoon and early evening in the state apartments of the temple of the Green Lotus, where we looked at strange dances and listened to curious music.

All was sacred and mystic, according to traditions transmitted orally from early ages, and all the more liable to disappear as the heredity of occupation which has been the mark of Japan is more and more endangered by modern views and modern "openings."

When we had wandered through those shady apartments in the long, low buildings of the temple gardens, and had seen the paintings of their screen walls, and the carvings of their transoms, we sat down in one of the largest rooms, the wall screen was removed which divided us from another, and we had then a ready-made stage before us. Light came in from the open veranda, now stripped of all screens, against whose platform many unbidden, unofficial guests, acquaintances of acquaintances, and people about the temple, leaned in a mass of heads and arms and busts. Outside the light was filtered green and orange through the trees, and caught the edges of all forms in the shade within. The orchestra of flutes and drums occupied a little recess, from behind which the dancers appeared in turn. Behind the musicians, a great violet curtain, with three temple crests in white, made a twilight background for their white and blue dresses, gilded by the lights in the tall candlesticks on the floors before them. With the sound of the instruments two boys came around the corner of the screen, and, saluting, stepped off in short, zigzag movements, evidently learned by rote, and which had a certain strange elegance. They were performing the butterfly dance, and made out very distinctly the crisscross flight of the insects. When they lighted or poised before lighting their feet struck the ground and they swayed without stepping away. They wore butterfly wings, and wide sleeves melting into them, and their silver diadems, filled up with twigs of flowering plants, made out a faint fringe of antennæ. They wore the ugly ancient trousers of yellow silk, and long trains of embroidered green satin trailed on the mats behind them. Broad bands of blue and white across the chest, and a white belt, recalled the insect original, and blue and white wings drooped over their wide green satin garments. Each carried a flowering branch in his hand. It was all more strange than beautiful, with a mysterious impression of remote antiquity, as if invented for some prehistoric Polynesian worship. In some of the next dances, whose names I do not remember, and which were carried out by men, the flat mask, with a wide triangle for eyes and another for the mouth, made out just this similitude. In another dance two men glided about the room, listening and finding their way; then warriors in antique Chinese costume, with great helmets and halberds, and coats of mail, and long trains, appeared singly and by twos, and marched and counter-marched; and finally, standing by their lances, laid at their feet, drew and held up their swords, while each other peaceful hand was extended in the gesture that we know as the pontifical blessing; and this ended the dance of "Great Peace," probably some relic of early triumphant Chinese dynasties.

It was now evening: the blue light of the open veranda made large square openings in the golden room. Outside, against the balustrade, pressed dark forms, with faces reddened by the light inside--the outside lookers-on. Inside, the gold walls and the gilded ceiling, the great gold temple drum, the yellow mats, and the white dresses of the musicians, made a soft bloom like the hollow of a lotus, when the last performer, in rose-red and crimson, glided into the room, swinging from side to side, and brandishing a gilded scepter. Uncouth gestures and enormous strides, with no meaning that I could make out, a frightful mask that hung far away from the face, with loose jaw and projecting mane and a long red, pointed hood, made an impression as barbarous, as meaningless, as splendid, and as annoying as what we might feel before the painted and gilded idol of some little known and cruel creed. This was the dance of "_Ra_ Dragon King," and closed the entertainment.

We exchanged some words with the late performers in their insignificant everyday clothes, and rode home in the twilight through the little roads, where Kioto gentlemen were rushing their horses up and down, wrapped in wide riding trousers, which fluttered along the horses' flanks....

* * * * *

We have also given a _soirée_,--that is to say, a supper, with the proper trimmings of musical entertainment and dancing, and were probably the most amused of all the people there. The amusement consisted, in great measure, of our not knowing just what we were going to have, for otherwise the details were simple to monotony. We had one of the upper floors of a fashionable inn. It was very hot, and we were glad to find that we should be at supper in our loosest bath robes. There was nothing unusual--though everything is novel to us--but the extreme smallness of the many _gei-shas_, who sat between us at the end of the dinner, passed the _sakè_, said witty things, of which we understood not one word, gave us much music on the _samisen_ (the three-stringed guitar) and on the flute, and sang, and gave us dances. But they were absolutely incredible in the way of littleness. It did not seem possible that there were real bones inside their narrow little wrists and dolls' fingers. What there was in most of their little heads I don't know, but I could have imagined sawdust. For the doll illusion, for the painted face and neck and lips, all done upon the same pattern from pure conventionality (not at all like our suggestive painting), and the sudden stopping sharply at a line on the little slender neck, gave me the feeling of their having artificial heads. The gentle little bodies disappeared entirely inside of the folds of the dress and the enormous bows of the sash. And when the tall youngsters, Americans, whom we had invited, began to romp with the playthings, late in the evening, I felt anxious about possible breakage, such as I remember, in nursery days, when we boys laid hold of our sisters' dolls.

But this artificial impression disappears as with all novelty in people, and when one of the youngest of these child-women, at some moment in the evening, removed the mask of the jolly fat woman (that you know by the prints), behind which she had been singing, the little sad face told its contradictory story as touchingly as with any of her Aryan sisters. And late in the evening, when the fun, I suppose, was uproarious, we went to the extreme of writing and painting on fans, and one of our merchant guests wasted India-ink in mock tattooing of his bared arm and shoulder.

September 21.

We leave to-morrow morning.

This has been Sunday, our last day in Kioto. I have been trundled all day in a fearful rain, to see last sights, to look up shops for the last time. My runners have taken me to this or that place, near the great temples, where I hope finally to decide upon some little Buddha or Amida, which have tempted me among other sculptures, and I have dallied in the other shops that supply the small things that adhere to worship, and finally I have made a long visit to the good lady who has sold me pottery, and who once shocked my Western prudery by dilating upon the merits of unmentionable designs and indescribable bric-à-brac.

At length I return in the gray noon, giving a last look at each shop that I know; at the long facade of the "Inn of Great Wealth," at the signs and the flags of the theater; at the little _gei-shas_ trotting about in couples, whom I recognize (for how can I tell them from those whom I know?); at the quaint, amusing little children, always a fresh delight; at the little pavilion near us, where the archers shoot; at the places where horses stand under the trees to be ridden by amateurs; at the small tea garden's pretty gates; at the latticed windows which open in the dusk; and then, with their coats sticking to their backs, and wet, stained legs, my runners leave me at the gate of the hotel; final settlement of purchases in boxes, packing, and receiving visits of departure.

In the late afternoon we go to the temples on the edge of the hill near us (the temples of Kiyomidzu) with two of our good friends and their children. Our runners insist upon dragging and bumping us up many steps, and finally escort us, almost to the temple itself, in a procession of double file, which, like a long tail, halts when we stop, and again waggles after us in uncertainty when we set off anew. We walk along the ascending street and stop to bargain at the innumerable little shops, full of little odds and ends, half playthings and half religious emblems or images, which are sold certainly to the pleasure of the many children who throng the place. And I, too, feel pleased at having children with us, and at having occasionally the timid little fingers of Miss Kimi in mine. In her other small hand she holds a fan that I painted yesterday for her father, and I wonder occasionally whether she wishes me to notice her possession. I surmise that the foreign gentleman gives her sometimes a little doubtful fear, as I catch her eyes looking up cautiously from below her "bangs." We talk, exactly of what it would be hard to say, for there is not with us enough of any one language "to go round," and our interpreter has been left out; but we feel distinctly that we understand each other, and our older companions explain quite a number of things in this partnership of a few words.

We ascend the high steps on one side of the tower and pass with the Sunday crowd through the great hall, like a corridor, along which are seated on altar steps golden images of gods, in a shadow dusted by the long beams of the afternoon sun, that pour across it from one open side. Through this veil of dancing motes we see the statues and the great gilded lotuses and candelabra, and the forms of attendant priests, and the crowd that passes, and that stops for a moment in prayer. The words that they repeat come into cadence with the shuffling of their feet, and the creaking of the planks of the flooring, and the sounds of the dropping of offerings.

The crowd is quiet, orderly, but amused at being out. The women smile out of their slanting eyes and walk leaning forwards, and their black hair shines like lacquer, and the artificial flowers in the great folds of the coiffure dance in the sunlight. They are quietly dressed, all but the young girls, who wear bright colors and blue satin sashes. The men slide about, also in quiet silk or cotton. A large part of them are dressed in every shade of blue; occasionally the bare leg comes out, but all wear holiday dress, except our runners or their fellows, who keep their workday looks. And the children--they are all everywhere, and all at home; they are all dressed up, with full, many-colored skirts, and showy sashes, and every little head with some new and unexplainable spot of tonsure.

Many of the crowd turn around the building, or its veranda, touching the columns with their hands and following tracks, worn deep like ruts, in the planking of enormous thickness. Oye-San points this out to me, and indicates its religious intention. Both he and our other companion clap their hands and pray for a moment. A wave of seriousness and abstraction passes over their faces; then again all is as before, and we step out upon the wide balcony, which, built upon gigantic piles, hangs over a deep hollow filled with trees and buildings, all in the shadow now. From below rise, with the coolness of the green trees and grass, the sounds of dropping waters. In time we descend the path and the steps, and drink from one of the streams which fall from gigantic gargoyles, out of a great mass of wall.

* * * * *

But it is late: we look again upon Kioto from the temple above, all swimming in light and haze, and walk back to our _kurumas_, a final good-by to the children, but we shall see their parents again; and then we return, and look from our veranda for the last time at the city stretched out in the evening, lost almost entirely in the twilight of a great lake of violet fog. A few shapes are just felt in the misty space, but no more than as waves in water, or as greater densities in the undulations of the colored vapor. So uncertain is everything that the nearest temple building loses its place, and floats all below its roof; but its wet tiles glitter, reflecting the rose-colored drift in the highest pale turquoise sky.

Below us, the trees make a delicate pattern of dark, wet lace.

Then the rose-color deepens and dulls, the upper sky becomes colorless; all floats in unreal space, and Kioto disappears from before my eyes: forever, I suppose--as the charm of this scene, which will never come again; as the little maiden whom I met to-day, only for an eternal good-by.

A JAPANESE DAY.--FROM KIOTO TO GIFU

NAGOYA, September.

Notwithstanding the long parting, which kept us up very late, the same courteous Japanese friends were at the hotel in the morning to bid us a still more final good-by. Oye-San alone remained faithful to his self-intrusted care of us, and determined to see us as far as the land would allow,--that is to say, to the shores of Biwa Lake.