Chapter EIGHT: From Hoki to Oki (1)

Sec. 1

I RESOLVED to go to Oki.

Not even a missionary had ever been to Oki, and its shores had never been seen by European eyes, except on those rare occasions when men-of- war steamed by them, cruising about the Japanese Sea. This alone would have been a sufficient reason for going there; but a stronger one was furnished for me by the ignorance of the Japanese themselves about Oki. Excepting the far-away Riu-Kiu, or Loo-Choo Islands, inhabited by a somewhat different race with a different language, the least-known portion of the Japanese Empire is perhaps Oki. Since it belongs to the same prefectural district as Izumo, each new governor of Shimane-Ken is supposed to pay one visit to Oki after his inauguration; and the chief of police of the province sometimes goes there upon a tour of inspection. There are also some mercantile houses in Matsue and in other cities which send a commercial traveller to Oki once a year. Furthermore, there is quite a large trade with Oki--almost all carried on by small sailing-vessels. But such official and commercial communications have not been of a nature to make Oki much better known to-day than in the medieval period of Japanese history. There are still current among the common people of the west coast extraordinary stories of Oki much like those about that fabulous Isle of Women, which figures so largely in the imaginative literature of various Oriental races. According to these old legends, the moral notions of the people of Oki were extremely fantastic: the most rigid ascetic could not dwell there and maintain his indifference to earthly pleasures; and, however wealthy at his arrival, the visiting stranger must soon return to his native land naked and poor, because of the seductions of women. I had quite sufficient experiences of travel in queer countries to feel certain that all these marvellous stories signified nothing beyond the bare fact that Oki was a terra incognita; and I even felt inclined to believe that the average morals of the people of Oki--judging by those of the common folk of the western provinces--must be very much better than the morals of our ignorant classes at home.

Which I subsequently ascertained to be the case.

For some time I could find no one among my Japanese acquaintances to give me any information about Oki, beyond the fact that in ancient times it had been a place of banishment for the Emperors Go-Daigo and Go-Toba, dethroned by military usurpers, and this I already knew. But at last, quite unexpectedly, I found a friend--a former fellow-teacher--who had not only been to Oki, but was going there again within a few days about some business matter. We agreed to go together. His accounts of Oki differed very materially from those of the people who had never been there. The Oki folks, he said, were almost as much civilised as the Izumo folks: they, had nice towns and good public schools. They were very simple and honest beyond belief, and extremely kind to strangers. Their only boast was that of having kept their race unchanged since the time that the Japanese had first come to Japan; or, in more romantic phrase, since the Age of the Gods. They were all Shintoists, members of the Izumo Taisha faith, but Buddhism was also maintained among them, chiefly through the generous subscription of private individuals. And there were very comfortable hotels, so that I would feel quite at home.

He also gave me a little book about Oki, printed for the use of the Oki schools, from which I obtained the following brief summary of facts:

Sec. 2

Oki-no-Kuni, or the Land of Oki, consists of two groups of small islands in the Sea of Japan, about one hundred miles from the coast of Izumo. Dozen, as the nearer group is termed, comprises, besides various islets, three islands lying close together: Chiburishima, or the Island of Chiburi (sometimes called Higashinoshima, or Eastern Island); Nishinoshima, or the Western Island, and Nakanoshima, or the Middle Island. Much larger than any of these is the principal island, Dogo, which together with various islets, mostly uninhabited, form the remaining group. It is sometimes called Oki--though the name Oki is more generally used for the whole archipelago. [1]

Officially, Oki is divided into four kori or counties. Chiburi and Nishinoshima together form Chiburigori; Nakanoshima, with an islet, makes Amagori, and Dogo is divided into Ochigori and Sukigori.

All these islands are very mountainous, and only a small portion of their area has ever been cultivated. Their chief sources of revenue are their fisheries, in which nearly the whole population has always been engaged from the most ancient times.

During the winter months the sea between Oki and the west coast is highly dangerous for small vessels, and in that season the islands hold little communication with the mainland. Only one passenger steamer runs to Oki from Sakai in Hoki In a direct line, the distance from Sakai in Hoki to Saigo, the chief port of Oki, is said to be thirty-nine ri; but the steamer touches at the other islands upon her way thither.

There are quite a number of little towns, or rather villages, in Oki, of which forty-five belong to Dogo. The villages are nearly all situated upon the coast. There are large schools in the principal towns. The population of the islands is stated to be 30,196, but the respective populations of towns and villages are not given.

Sec. 3

From Matsue in Izumo to Sakai in Hoki is a trip of barely two hours by steamer. Sakai is the chief seaport of Shimane-Ken. It is an ugly little town, full of unpleasant smells; it exists only as a port; it has no industries, scarcely any shops, and only one Shinto temple of small dimensions and smaller interest. Its principal buildings are warehouses, pleasure resorts for sailors, and a few large dingy hotels, which are always overcrowded with guests waiting for steamers to Osaka, to Bakkan, to Hamada, to Niigata, and various other ports. On this coast no steamers run regularly anywhere; their owners attach no business value whatever to punctuality, and guests have usually to wait for a much longer time than they could possibly have expected, and the hotels are glad.

But the harbour is beautiful--a long frith between the high land of Izumo and the low coast of Hoki. It is perfectly sheltered from storms, and deep enough to admit all but the largest steamers. The ships can lie close to the houses, and the harbour is nearly always thronged with all sorts of craft, from junks to steam packets of the latest construction.

My friend and I were lucky enough to secure back rooms at the best hotel. Back rooms are the best in nearly all Japanese buildings: at Sakai they have the additional advantage of overlooking the busy wharves and the whole luminous bay, beyond which the Izumo hills undulate in huge green billows against the sky. There was much to see and to be amused at. Steamers and sailing craft of all sorts were lying two and three deep before the hotel, and the naked dock labourers were loading and unloading in their own peculiar way. These men are recruited from among the strongest peasantry of Hoki and of Izumo, and some were really fine men, over whose brown backs the muscles rippled at every movement. They were assisted by boys of fifteen or sixteen apparently--apprentices learning the work, but not yet strong enough to bear heavy burdens. I noticed that nearly all had bands of blue cloth bound about their calves to keep the veins from bursting. And all sang as they worked. There was one curious alternate chorus, in which the men in the hold gave the signal by chanting 'dokoe, dokoel' (haul away!) and those at the hatch responded by improvisations on the appearance of each package as it ascended:

Dokoe, dokoe!
Onnago no ko da.
Dokoe, dokoe!
Oya dayo, oya dayo.
Dokoe, dokoel
Choi-choi da, choi-choi da.
Dokoe, dokoe!
Matsue da, Matsueda.
Dokoe, dokoe!
Koetsumo Yonago da, [20] etc.

But this chant was for light quick work. A very different chant accompanied the more painful and slower labour of loading heavy sacks and barrels upon the shoulders of the stronger men:--

Yan-yui!
Yan-yui!
Yan-yui!
Yan-yui!
Yoi-ya-sa-a-a-no-do-koe-shi! [3]

Three men always lifted the weight. At the first yan-yui all stooped; at the second all took hold; the third signified ready; at the fourth the weight rose from the ground; and with the long cry of yoiyasa no dokoeshi it was dropped on the brawny shoulder waiting to receive it.

Among the workers was a naked laughing boy, with a fine contralto that rang out so merrily through all the din as to create something of a sensation in the hotel. A young woman, one of the guests, came out upon the balcony to look, and exclaimed: 'That boy's voice is RED'--whereat everybody smiled. Under the circumstances I thought the observation very expressive, although it recalled a certain famous story about scarlet and the sound of a trumpet, which does not seem nearly so funny now as it did at a time when we knew less about the nature of light and sound.

The Oki steamer arrived the same afternoon, but she could not approach the wharf, and I could only obtain a momentary glimpse of her stern through a telescope, with which I read the name, in English letters of gold--OKI-SARGO. Before I could obtain any idea of her dimensions, a huge black steamer from Nagasaki glided between, and moored right in the way.

I watched the loading and unloading, and listened to the song of the boy with the red voice, until sunset, when all quit work; and after that I watched the Nagasaki steamer. She had made her way to our wharf as the other vessels moved out, and lay directly under the balcony. The captain and crew did not appear to be in a hurry about anything. They all squatted down together on the foredeck, where a feast was spread for them by lantern-light. Dancing-girls climbed on board and feasted with them, and sang to the sound of the samisen, and played with them the game of ken. Late into the night the feasting and the fun continued; and although an alarming quantity of sake was consumed, there was no roughness or boisterousness. But sake is the most soporific of wines; and by midnight only three of the men remained on deck. One of these had not taken any sake at all, but still desired to eat. Happily for him there climbed on board a night-walking mochiya with a box of mochi, which are cakes of rice-flour sweetened with native sugar. The hungry one bought all, and reproached the mochiya because there were no more, and offered, nevertheless, to share the mochi with his comrades. Whereupon the first to whom the offer was made answered somewhat after this manner:

'I-your-servant mochi-for this-world-in no-use-have. Sake alone this- life-in if-there-be, nothing-beside-desirable-is.

'For me-your-servant,' spake the other, 'Woman this-fleeting-life-in the-supreme-thing is; mochi-or-sake-for earthly-use have-I-none.'

But, having made all the mochi to disappear, he that had been hungry turned himself to the mochiya, and said:--'O Mochiya San, I-your-servant Woman-or-sake-for earthly-requirement have-none. Mochi-than things better this-life-of-sorrow-in existence-have-not !'

Sec. 4

Early in the morning we were notified that the Oki-Saigo would start at precisely eight o'clock, and that we had better secure our tickets at once. The hotel-servant, according to Japanese custom, relieved us of all anxiety about baggage, etc., and bought our tickets: first-class fare, eighty sen. And after a hasty breakfast the hotel boat came under the window to take us away.

Warned by experience of the discomforts of European dress on Shimane steamers, I adopted Japanese costume and exchanged my shoes for sandals. Our boatmen sculled swiftly through the confusion of shipping and junkery; and as we cleared it I saw, far out in midstream, the joki waiting for us. Joki is a Japanese name for steam-vessel. The word had not yet impressed me as being capable of a sinister interpretation.

She seemed nearly as long as a harbour tug, though much more squabby; and she otherwise so much resembled the Lilliputian steamers of Lake Shinji, that I felt somewhat afraid of her, even for a trip of one hundred miles. But exterior inspection afforded no clue to the mystery of her inside. We reached her and climbed into her starboard through a small square hole. At once I found myself cramped in a heavily-roofed gangway, four feet high and two feet wide, and in the thick of a frightful squeeze--passengers stifling in the effort to pull baggage three feet in diameter through the two-foot orifice. It was impossible to advance or retreat; and behind me the engine-room gratings were pouring wonderful heat into this infernal corridor. I had to wait with the back of my head pressed against the roof until, in some unimaginable way, all baggage and passengers had squashed and squeezed through. Then, reaching a doorway, I fell over a heap of sandals and geta, into the first-class cabin. It was pretty, with its polished woodwork and mirrors; it was surrounded by divans five inches wide; and in the centre it was nearly six feet high. Such altitude would have been a cause for comparative happiness, but that from various polished bars of brass extended across the ceiling all kinds of small baggage, including two cages of singing-crickets (chongisu), had been carefully suspended. Furthermore the cabin was already extremely occupied: everybody, of course, on the floor, and nearly everybody lying at extreme length; and the heat struck me as being supernatural. Now they that go down to the sea in ships, out of Izumo and such places, for the purpose of doing business in great waters, are never supposed to stand up, but to squat in the ancient patient manner; and coast, or lake steamers are constructed with a view to render this attitude only possible. Observing an open door in the port side of the cabin, I picked my way over a tangle of bodies and limbs--among them a pair of fairy legs belonging to a dancing-girl--and found myself presently in another gangway, also roofed, and choked up to the roof with baskets of squirming eels. Exit there was none: so I climbed back over all the legs and tried the starboard gangway a second time. Even during that short interval, it had been half filled with baskets of unhappy chickens. But I made a reckless dash over them, in spite of frantic cacklings which hurt my soul, and succeeded in finding a way to the cabin-roof. It was entirely occupied by water-melons, except one corner, where there was a big coil of rope. I put melons inside of the rope, and sat upon them in the sun. It was not comfortable; but I thought that there I might have some chance for my life in case of a catastrophe, and I was sure that even the gods could give no help to those below. During the squeeze I had got separated from my companion, but I was afraid to make any attempt to find him. Forward I saw the roof of the second cabin crowded with third- class passengers squatting round a hibachi. To pass through them did not seem possible, and to retire would have involved the murder of either eels or chickens. Wherefore I sat upon the melons.

And the boat started, with a stunning scream. In another moment her funnel began to rain soot upon me--for the so-called first-class cabin was well astern--and then came small cinders mixed with the soot, and the cinders were occasionally red-hot. But I sat burning upon the water- melons for some time longer, trying to imagine a way of changing my position without committing another assault upon the chickens. Finally, I made a desperate endeavour to get to leeward of the volcano, and it was then for the first time that I began to learn the peculiarities of the joki. What I tried to sit on turned upside down, and what I tried to hold by instantly gave way, and always in the direction of overboard. Things clamped or rigidly braced to outward seeming proved, upon cautious examination, to be dangerously mobile; and things that, according to Occidental ideas, ought to have been movable, were fixed like the roots of the perpetual hills. In whatever direction a rope or stay could possibly have been stretched so as to make somebody unhappy, it was there. In the midst of these trials the frightful little craft began to swing, and the water-melons began to rush heavily to and fro, and I came to the conclusion that this joki had been planned and constructed by demons.

Which I stated to my friend. He had not only rejoined me quite unexpectedly, but had brought along with him one of the ship's boys to spread an awning above ourselves and the watermelons, so as to exclude cinders and sun.

'Oh, no!' he answered reproachfully 'She was designed and built at Hyogo, and really she might have been made much worse. . . ' 'I beg your pardon,' I interrupted; 'I don't agree with you at all.'

'Well, you will see for yourself,' he persisted. 'Her hull is good steel, and her little engine is wonderful; she can make her hundred miles in five hours. She is not very comfortable, but she is very swift and strong.'

'I would rather be in a sampan,' I protested, 'if there were rough weather.'

'But she never goes to sea in rough weather. If it only looks as if there might possibly be some rough weather, she stays in port. Sometimes she waits a whole month. She never runs any risks.'

I could not feel sure of it. But I soon forgot all discomforts, even the discomfort of sitting upon water-melons, in the delight of the divine day and the magnificent view that opened wider and wider before us, as we rushed from the long frith into the Sea of Japan, following the Izumo coast. There was no fleck in the soft blue vastness above, not one flutter on the metallic smoothness of the all-reflecting sea; if our little steamer rocked, it was doubtless because she had been overloaded. To port, the Izumo hills were flying by, a long, wild procession of' broken shapes, sombre green, separating at intervals to form mysterious little bays, with fishing hamlets hiding in them. Leagues away to starboard, the Hoki shore receded into the naked white horizon, an ever- diminishing streak of warm blue edged with a thread-line of white, the gleam of a sand beach; and beyond it, in the centre, a vast shadowy pyramid loomed up into heaven--the ghostly peak of Daisen.

My companion touched my arm to call my attention to a group of pine- trees on the summit of a peak to port, and laughed and sang a Japanese song. How swiftly we had been travelling I then for the first time understood, for I recognised the four famous pines of Mionoseki, on the windy heights above the shrine of Koto-shiro-nushi-no-Kami. There used to be five trees: one was uprooted by a storm, and some Izumo poet wrote about the remaining four the words which my friend had sung:

Seki no gohon matsu
Ippun kirya, shihon;
Ato wa kirarenu Miyoto matsu.

Which means: 'Of the five pines of Seki one has been cut, and four remain; and of these no one must now be cut--they are wedded pairs.' And in Mionoseki there are sold beautiful little sake cups and sake bottles, upon which are pictures of the four pines, and above the pictures, in spidery text of gold, the verses, 'Seki no gohon matsu.' These are for keepsakes, and there are many other curious and pretty souvenirs to buy in those pretty shops; porcelains bearing the picture of the Mionoseki temple, and metal clasps for tobacco pouches representing Koto-shiro- nushi-no-Kami trying to put a big tai-fish into a basket too small for it, and funny masks of glazed earthenware representing the laughing face of the god. For a jovial god is this Ebisu, or Koto-shiro-nushi-no-Kami, patron of honest labour and especially of fishers, though less of a laughter-lover than his father, the Great Deity of Kitzuki, about whom 'tis said: 'Whenever the happy laugh, the God rejoices.'

We passed the Cape--the Miho of the Kojiki--and the harbour of Mionoseki opened before us, showing its islanded shrine of Benten in the midst, and the crescent of quaint houses with their feet in the water, and the great torii and granite lions of the far-famed temple. Immediately a number of passengers rose to their feet, and, turning their faces toward the torii began to clap their hands in Shinto prayer.

I said to my friend: 'There are fifty baskets full of chickens in the gangway; and yet these people are praying to Koto-shiro-nushi-no-Kami that nothing horrible may happen to this boat.'

'More likely,' he answered, 'they are praying for good-fortune; though there is a saying: "The gods only laugh when men pray to them for wealth." But of the Great Deity of Mionoseki there is a good story told. Once there was a very lazy man who went to Mionoseki and prayed to become rich. And the same night he saw the god in a dream; and the god laughed, and took off one of his own divine sandals, and told him to examine it. And the man saw that it was made of solid brass, but had a big hole worn through the sole of it. Then said the god: "You want to have money without working for it. I am a god; but I am never lazy. See! my sandals are of brass: yet I have worked and walked so much that they are quite worn out."'

Sec. 5

The beautiful bay of Mionoseki opens between two headlands: Cape Mio (or Miho, according to the archaic spelling) and the Cape of Jizo (Jizo- zaki), now most inappropriately called by the people 'The Nose of Jizo' (Jizo-no-hana). This Nose of Jizo is one of the most dangerous points of the coast in time of surf, and the great terror of small ships returning from Oki. There is nearly always a heavy swell there, even in fair weather. Yet as we passed the ragged promontory I was surprised to see the water still as glass. I felt suspicious of that noiseless sea: its soundlessness recalled the beautiful treacherous sleep of waves and winds which precedes a tropical hurricane. But my friend said:

'It may remain like this for weeks. In the sixth month and in the beginning of the seventh, it is usually very quiet; it is not likely to become dangerous before the Bon. But there was a little squall last week at Mionoseki; and the people said that it was caused by the anger of the god.'

'Eggs?' I queried.

'No: a Kudan.'

'What is a Kudan?'

'Is it possible you never heard of the Kudan? The Kudan has the face of a man, and the body of a bull. Sometimes it is born of a cow, and that is a Sign-of-things-going-to-happen. And the Kudan always tells the truth. Therefore in Japanese letters and documents it is customary to use the phrase, Kudanno-gotoshi--"like the Kudan"--or "on the truth of the Kudan."' [4]

'But why was the God of Mionoseki angry about the Kudan?'

'People said it was a stuffed Kudan. I did not see it, so I cannot tell you how it was made. There was some travelling showmen from Osaka at Sakai. They had a tiger and many curious animals and the stuffed Kudan; and they took the Izumo Maru for Mionoseki. As the steamer entered the port a sudden squall came; and the priests of the temple said the god was angry because things impure--bones and parts of dead animals--had been brought to the town. And the show people were not even allowed to land: they had to go back to Sakai on the same steamer. And as soon as they had gone away, the sky became clear again, and the wind stopped blowing: so that some people thought what the priests had said was true.'

Sec. 6

Evidently there was much more moisture in the atmosphere than I had supposed. On really clear days Daisen can be distinctly seen even from Oki; but we had scarcely passed the Nose of Jizo when the huge peak began to wrap itself in vapour of the same colour as the horizon; and in a few minutes it vanished, as a spectre might vanish. The effect of this sudden disappearance was very extraordinary; for only the peak passed from sight, and that which had veiled it could not be any way distinguished from horizon and sky.

Meanwhile the Oki-Saigo, having reached the farthest outlying point of the coast upon her route began to race in straight line across the Japanese Sea. The green hills of Izumi fled away and turned blue, and the spectral shores of Hoki began to melt into the horizon, like bands of cloud. Then was obliged to confess my surprise at the speed of the horrid little steamer. She moved, too, with scarcely any sound, smooth was the working of her wonderful little engine. But she began to swing heavily, with deep, slow swingings. To the eye, the sea looked level as oil; but there were long invisible swells--ocean-pulses--that made themselves felt beneath the surface. Hoki evaporated; the Izumo hills turned grey, a their grey steadily paled as I watched them. They grew more and more colourless--seemed to become transparent. And then they were not. Only blue sky and blue sea, welded together in the white horizon.

It was just as lonesome as if we had been a thousand leagues from land. And in that weirdness we were told some very lonesome things by an ancient mariner who found leisure join us among the water-melons. He talked of the Hotoke-umi and the ill-luck of being at sea on the sixteenth day of the seventh month. He told us that even the great steamers never went to sea during the Bon: no crew would venture to take ship out then. And he related the following stories with such simple earnestness that I think he must have believed what said:

'The first time I was very young. From Hokkaido we had sailed, and the voyage was long, and the winds turned against us. And the night of the sixteenth day fell, as we were working on over this very sea.

'And all at once in the darkness we saw behind us a great junk--all white--that we had not noticed till she was quite close to us. It made us feel queer, because she seemed to have come from nowhere. She was so near us that we could hear voices; and her hull towered up high above us. She seemed to be sailing very fast; but she came no closer. We shouted to her; but we got no answer. And while we were watching her, all of us became afraid, because she did not move like a real ship. The sea was terrible, and we were lurching and plunging; but that great junk never rolled. Just at the same moment that we began to feel afraid she vanished so quickly that we could scarcely believe we had really seen her at all.

'That was the first time. But four years ago I saw something still more strange. We were bound for Oki, in a junk, and the wind again delayed us, so that we were at sea on the sixteenth day. It was in the morning, a little before midday; the sky was dark and the sea very ugly. All at once we saw a steamer running in our track, very quickly. She got so close to us that we could hear her engines--katakata katakata!--but we saw nobody on deck. Then she began to follow us, keeping exactly at the same distance, and whenever we tried to get out of her way she would turn after us and keep exactly in our wake. And then we suspected what she was. But we were not sure until she vanished. She vanished like a bubble, without making the least sound. None of us could say exactly when she disappeared. None of us saw her vanish. The strangest thing was that after she was gone we could still hear her engines working behind us--katakata, katakata, katakata!

'That is all I saw. But I know others, sailors like myself, who have seen more. Sometimes many ships will follow you--though never at the same time. One will come close and vanish, then another, and then another. As long as they come behind you, you need never be afraid. But if you see a ship of that sort running before you, against the wind, that is very bad! It means that all on board will be drowned.'

Sec. 7

The luminous blankness circling us continued to remain unflecked for less than an hour. Then out of the horizon toward which we steamed, a small grey vagueness began to grow. It lengthened fast, and seemed a cloud. And a cloud it proved; but slowly, beneath it, blue filmy shapes began to define against the whiteness, and sharpened into a chain of mountains. They grew taller and bluer--a little sierra, with one paler shape towering in the middle to thrice the height of the rest, and filleted with cloud--Takuhizan, the sacred mountain of Oki, in the island Nishinoshima.

Takuhizan has legends, which I learned from my friend. Upon its summit stands an ancient shrine of the deity Gongen-Sama. And it is said that upon the thirty-first night of the twelfth month three ghostly fires arise from the sea and ascend to the place of the shrine, and enter the stone lanterns which stand before it, and there remain, burning like lamps. These lights do not arise at once, but separately, from the sea, and rise to the top of the peak one by one. The people go out in boats to see the lights mount from the water. But only those whose hearts are pure can see them; those who have evil thoughts or desires look for the holy fires in vain.

Before us, as we steamed on, the sea-surface appeared to become suddenly speckled with queer craft previously invisible--light, long fishing- boats, with immense square sails of a beautiful yellow colour. I could not help remarking to my comrade how pretty those sails were; he laughed, and told me they were made of old tatami. [5] I examined them through a telescope, and found that they were exactly what he had said-- woven straw coverings of old floor-mats. Nevertheless, that first tender yellow sprinkling of old sails over the soft blue water was a charming sight.

They fleeted by, like a passing of yellow butterflies, and the sea was void again. Gradually, a little to port, a point in the approaching line of blue cliffs shaped itself and changed colour--dull green above, reddish grey below; it defined into a huge rock, with a dark patch on its face, but the rest of the land remained blue. The dark patch blackened as we came nearer--a great gap full of shadow. Then the blue cliffs beyond also turned green, and their bases reddish grey. We passed to the right of the huge rock, which proved to be a detached and uninhabited islet, Hakashima; and in another moment we were steaming into the archipelago of Oki, between the lofty islands Chiburishima and Nakashima.

Sec. 8

The first impression was almost uncanny. Rising sheer from the flood on either hand, the tall green silent hills stretched away before us, changing tint through the summer vapour, to form a fantastic vista of blue cliffs and peaks and promontories. There was not one sign of human life. Above their pale bases of naked rock the mountains sloped up beneath a sombre wildness of dwarf vegetation. There was absolutely no sound, except the sound of the steamer's tiny engine--poum-poum, poum! poum-poum, poum! like the faint tapping of a geisha's drum. And this savage silence continued for miles: only the absence of lofty timber gave evidence that those peaked hills had ever been trodden by human foot. But all at once, to the left, in a mountain wrinkle, a little grey hamlet appeared; and the steamer screamed and stopped, while the hills repeated the scream seven times.

This settlement was Chiburimura, of Chiburishima (Nakashima being the island to starboard)--evidently nothing more than a fishing station. First a wharf of uncemented stone rising from the cove like a wall; then great trees through which one caught sight of a torii before some Shinto shrine, and of a dozen houses climbing the hollow hill one behind another, roof beyond roof; and above these some terraced patches of tilled ground in the midst of desolation: that was all. The packet halted to deliver mail, and passed on.

But then, contrary to expectation, the scenery became more beautiful. The shores on either side at once receded and heightened: we were traversing an inland sea bounded by three lofty islands. At first the way before us had seemed barred by vapoury hills; but as these, drawing nearer, turned green, there suddenly opened magnificent chasms between them on both sides--mountain-gates revealing league-long wondrous vistas of peaks and cliffs and capes of a hundred blues, ranging away from velvety indigo into far tones of exquisite and spectral delicacy. A tinted haze made dreamy all remotenesses, an veiled with illusions of colour the rugged nudities of rock.

The beauty of the scenery of Western and Central Japan is not as the beauty of scenery in other lands; it has a peculiar character of its own. Occasionally the foreigner may find memories of former travel suddenly stirred to life by some view on a mountain road, or some stretch of beetling coast seen through a fog of spray. But this illusion of resemblance vanishes as swiftly as it comes; details immediately define into strangeness, and you become aware that the remembrance was evoked by form only, never by colour. Colours indeed there are which delight the eye, but not colours of mountain verdure, not colours of the land. Cultivated plains, expanses of growing rice, may offer some approach to warmth of green; but the whole general tone of this nature is dusky; the vast forests are sombre; the tints of grasses are harsh or dull. Fiery greens, such as burn in tropical scenery, do not exist; and blossom-bursts take a more exquisite radiance by contrast with the heavy tones of the vegetation out of which they flame. Outside of parks and gardens and cultivated fields, there is a singular absence of warmth and tenderness in the tints of verdure; and nowhere need you hope to find any such richness of green as that which makes the loveliness of an English lawn.

Yet these Oriental landscapes possess charms of colour extraordinary, phantom-colour delicate, elfish, indescribable--created by the wonderful atmosphere. Vapours enchant the distances, bathing peaks in bewitchments of blue and grey of a hundred tones, transforming naked cliffs to amethyst, stretching spectral gauzes across the topazine morning, magnifying the splendour of noon by effacing the horizon, filling the evening with smoke of gold, bronzing the waters, banding the sundown with ghostly purple and green of nacre. Now, the Old Japanese artists who made those marvellous ehon--those picture-books which have now become so rare--tried to fix the sensation of these enchantments in colour, and they were successful in their backgrounds to a degree almost miraculous. For which very reason some of their foregrounds have been a puzzle to foreigners unacquainted with certain features of Japanese agriculture. You will see blazing saffron-yellow fields, faint purple plains, crimson and snow-white trees, in those old picture-books; and perhaps you will exclaim: 'How absurd!' But if you knew Japan you would cry out: 'How deliciously real!' For you would know those fields of burning yellow are fields of flowering rape, and the purple expanses are fields of blossoming miyako, and the snow-white or crimson trees are not fanciful, but represent faithfully certain phenomena of efflorescence peculiar to the plum-trees and the cherry-trees of the country. But these chromatic extravaganzas can be witnessed only during very brief periods of particular seasons: throughout the greater part of the year the foreground of an inland landscape is apt to be dull enough in the matter of colour.

It is the mists that make the magic of the backgrounds; yet even without them there is a strange, wild, dark beauty in Japanese landscapes, a beauty not easily defined in words. The secret of it must be sought in the extraordinary lines of the mountains, in the strangely abrupt crumpling and jagging of the ranges; no two masses closely resembling each other, every one having a fantasticality of its own. Where the chains reach to any considerable height, softly swelling lines are rare: the general characteristic is abruptness, and the charm is the charm of Irregularity.

Doubtless this weird Nature first inspired the Japanese with their unique sense of the value of irregularity in decoration--taught them that single secret of composition which distinguishes their art from all other art, and which Professor Chamberlain has said it is their special mission to teach to the Occident. [6] Certainly, whoever has once learned to feel the beauty and significance of the Old Japanese decorative art can find thereafter little pleasure in the corresponding art of the West. What he has really learned is that Nature's greatest charm is irregularity. And perhaps something of no small value might be written upon the question whether the highest charm of human life and work is not also irregularity.

Sec. 9

From Chiburimura we made steam west for the port of Urago, which is in the island of Nishinoshima. As we approached it Takuhizan came into imposing view. Far away it had seemed a soft and beautiful shape; but as its blue tones evaporated its aspect became rough and even grim: an enormous jagged bulk all robed in sombre verdure, through which, as through tatters, there protruded here and there naked rock of the wildest shapes. One fragment, I remember, as it caught the slanting sun upon the irregularities of its summit, seemed an immense grey skull. At the base of this mountain, and facing the shore of Nakashima, rises a pyramidal mass of rock, covered with scraggy undergrowth, and several hundred feet in height--Mongakuzan. On its desolate summit stands a little shrine.

'Takuhizan' signifies The Fire-burning Mountain--a name due perhaps either to the legend of its ghostly fires, or to some ancient memory of its volcanic period. 'Mongakuzan' means The Mountain of Mongaku--Mongaku Shonin, the great monk. It is said that Mongaku Shonin fled to Oki, and that he dwelt alone upon the top of that mountain many years, doing penance for his deadly sin. Whether he really ever visited Oki, I am not able to say; there are traditions which declare the contrary. But the peaklet has borne his name for hundreds of years.

Now this is the story of Mongaku Shonin:

Many centuries ago, in the city of Kyoto, there was a captain of the garrison whose name was Endo Morito. He saw and loved the wife of a noble samurai; and when she refused to listen to his desires, he vowed that he would destroy her family unless she consented to the plan which he submitted to her. The plan was that upon a certain night she should suffer him to enter her house and to kill her husband; after which she was to become his wife.

But she, pretending to consent, devised a noble stratagem to save her honour. For, after having persuaded her husband to absent himself from the city, she wrote to Endo a letter, bidding him come upon a certain night to the house. And on that night she clad herself in her husband's robes, and made her hair like the hair of a man, and laid herself down in her husband's place, and pretended to sleep.

And Endo came in the dead of the night with his sword drawn, and smote off the head of the sleeper at a blow, and seized it by the hair and lifted it up and saw it was the head of the woman he had loved and wronged.

Then a great remorse came upon him, and hastening to a neighbouring temple, he confessed his sin, and did penance and cut off his hair, and became a monk, taking the name of Mongaku. And in after years he attained to great holiness, so that folk still pray to him, and his memory is venerated throughout the land.

Now at Asakusa in Tokyo, in one of the curious little streets which lead to the great temple of Kwannon the Merciful, there are always wonderful images to be seen--figures that seem alive, though made of wood only-- figures illustrating the ancient legends of Japan. And there you may see Endo standing: in his right hand the reeking sword; in his left the head of a beautiful woman. The face of the woman you may forget soon, because it is only beautiful. But the face of Endo you will not forget, because it is naked hell.

Sec. 10

Urago is a queer little town, perhaps quite as large as Mionoseki, and built, like Mionoseki, on a narrow ledge at the base of a steep semicircle of hills. But it is much more primitive and colourless than Mionoseki; and its houses are still more closely cramped between cliffs and water, so that its streets, or rather alleys, are no wider than gangways. As we cast anchor, my attention was suddenly riveted by a strange spectacle--a white wilderness of long fluttering vague shapes, in a cemetery on the steep hillside, rising by terraces high above the roofs of the town. The cemetery was full of grey haka and images of divinities; and over every haka there was a curious white paper banner fastened to a thin bamboo pole. Through a glass one could see that these banners were inscribed with Buddhist texts--'Namur-myo-ho-renge-kyo'; 'Namu Amida Butsu'; 'Namu Daiji Dai-hi Kwan-ze-on Bosats,'--and other holy words. Upon inquiry I learned that it was an Urago custom to place these banners every year above the graves during one whole month preceding the Festival of the Dead, together with various other ornamental or symbolic things.

The water was full of naked swimmers, who shouted laughing welcomes; and a host of light, swift boats, sculled by naked fishermen, darted out to look for passengers and freight. It was my first chance to observe the physique of Oki islanders; and I was much impressed by the vigorous appearance of both men and boys. The adults seemed to me of a taller and more powerful type than the men of the Izumo coast; and not a few of those brown backs and shoulders displayed, in the motion of sculling what is comparatively rare in Japan, even among men picked for heavy labour--a magnificent development of muscles.

As the steamer stopped an hour at Urago, we had time to dine ashore in the chief hotel. It was a very clean and pretty hotel, and the fare infinitely superior to that of the hotel at Sakai. Yet the price charged was only seven sen; and the old landlord refused to accept the whole of the chadai-gift offered him, retaining less than half, and putting back the rest, with gentle force, into the sleeve of my yukata.

Sec. 11

From Urago we proceeded to Hishi-ura, which is in Nakanoshima, and the scenery grew always more wonderful as we steamed between the islands. The channel was just wide enough to create the illusion of a grand river flowing with the stillness of vast depth between mountains of a hundred forms. The long lovely vision was everywhere walled in by peaks, bluing through sea-haze, and on either hand the ruddy grey cliffs, sheering up from profundity, sharply mirrored their least asperities in the flood with never a distortion, as in a sheet of steel. Not until we reached Hishi-ura did the horizon reappear; and even then it was visible only between two lofty headlands, as if seen through a river's mouth.

Hishi-ura is far prettier than Urago, but it is much less populous, and has the aspect of a prosperous agricultural town, rather than of a fishing station. It bends round a bay formed by low hills which slope back gradually toward the mountainous interior, and which display a considerable extent of cultivated surface. The buildings are somewhat scattered and in many cases isolated by gardens; and those facing the water are quite handsome modern constructions. Urago boasts the best hotel in all Oki; and it has two new temples--one a Buddhist temple of the Zen sect, one a Shinto temple of the Izumo Taisha faith, each the gift of a single person. A rich widow, the owner of the hotel, built the Buddhist temple; and the wealthiest of the merchants contributed the other--one of the handsomest miya for its size that I ever saw.

Sec. 12

Dogo, the main island of the Oki archipelago, sometimes itself called 'Oki,' lies at a distance of eight miles, north-east of the Dozen group, beyond a stretch of very dangerous sea. We made for it immediately after leaving Urago; passing to the open through a narrow and fantastic strait between Nakanoshima and Nishinoshima, where the cliffs take the form of enormous fortifications--bastions and ramparts, rising by tiers. Three colossal rocks, anciently forming but a single mass, which would seem to have been divided by some tremendous shock, rise from deep water near the mouth of the channel, like shattered towers. And the last promontory of Nishinoshima, which we pass to port, a huge red naked rock, turns to the horizon a point so strangely shaped that it has been called by a name signifying 'The Hat of the Shinto Priest.'

As we glide out into the swell of the sea other extraordinary shapes appear, rising from great depths. Komori, 'The Bat,' a ragged silhouette against the horizon, has a great hole worn through it, which glares like an eye. Farther out two bulks, curved and pointed, and almost joined at the top, bear a grotesque resemblance to the uplifted pincers of a crab; and there is also visible a small dark mass which, until closely approached, seems the figure of a man sculling a boat. Beyond these are two islands: Matsushima, uninhabited and inaccessible, where there is always a swell to beware of; Omorishima, even loftier, which rises from the ocean in enormous ruddy precipices. There seemed to be some grim force in those sinister bulks; some occult power which made our steamer reel and shiver as she passed them. But I saw a marvellous effect of colour under those formidable cliffs of Omorishima. They were lighted by a slanting sun; and where the glow of the bright rock fell upon the water, each black-blue ripple flashed bronze: I thought of a sea of metallic violet ink.

From Dozen the cliffs of Dogo can be clearly seen when the weather is not foul: they are streaked here and there with chalky white, which breaks through their blue, even in time of haze. Above them a vast bulk is visible--a point-de-repere for the mariners of Hoki--the mountain of Daimanji. Dogo, indeed, is one great cluster of mountains.

Its cliffs rapidly turned green for us, and we followed them eastwardly for perhaps half an hour. Then they opened unexpectedly and widely, revealing a superb bay, widening far into the land, surrounded by hills, and full of shipping. Beyond a confusion of masts there crept into view a long grey line of house-fronts at the base of a crescent of cliffs-- the city of Saigo; and in a little while we touched a wharf of stone. There I bade farewell for a month to the Oki-Saigo.

Sec. 13

Saigo was a great surprise. Instead of the big fishing village I had expected to see, I found a city much larger and handsomer and in all respects more modernised than Sakai; a city of long streets full of good shops; a city with excellent public buildings; a city of which the whole appearance indicated commercial prosperity. Most of the edifices were roomy two story dwellings of merchants, and everything had a bright, new look. The unpainted woodwork of the houses had not yet darkened into grey; the blue tints of the tiling were still fresh. I learned that this was because the town had been recently rebuilt, after a conflagration, and rebuilt upon a larger and handsomer plan.

Saigo seems still larger than it really is. There are about one thousand houses, which number in any part of Western Japan means a population of at least five thousand, but must mean considerably more in Saigo. These form three long streets--Nishimachi, Nakamachi, and Higashimachi (names respectively signifying the Western, Middle, and Eastern Streets), bisected by numerous cross-streets and alleys. What makes the place seem disproportionately large is the queer way the streets twist about, following the irregularities of the shore, and even doubling upon themselves, so as to create from certain points of view an impression of depth which has no existence. For Saigo is peculiarly, although admirably situated. It fringes both banks of a river, the Yabigawa, near its mouth, and likewise extends round a large point within the splendid bay, besides stretching itself out upon various tongues of land. But though smaller than it looks, to walk through all its serpentine streets is a good afternoon's work.

Besides being divided by the Yabigawa, the town is intersected by various water-ways, crossed by a number of bridges. On the hills behind it stand several large buildings, including a public school, with accommodation for three hundred students; a pretty Buddhist temple (quite new), the gift of a rich citizen; a prison; and a hospital, which deserves its reputation of being for its size the handsomest Japanese edifice not only in Oki, but in all Shimane-Ken; and there are several small but very pretty gardens.

As for the harbour, you can count more than three hundred ships riding there of a summer's day. Grumblers, especially of the kind who still use wooden anchors, complain of the depth; but the men-of-war do not.

Sec. 14

Never, in any part of Western Japan, have I been made more comfortable than at Saigo. My friend and myself were the only guests at the hotel to which we had been recommended. The broad and lofty rooms of the upper floor which we occupied overlooked the main street on one side, and on the other commanded a beautiful mountain landscape beyond the mouth of the Yabigawa, which flowed by our garden. The sea breeze never failed by day or by night, and rendered needless those pretty fans which it is the Japanese custom to present to guests during the hot season. The fare was astonishingly good and curiously varied; and I was told that I might order Seyoryori (Occidental cooking) if I wished--beefsteak with fried potatoes, roast chicken, and so forth. I did not avail myself of the offer, as I make it a rule while travelling to escape trouble by keeping to a purely Japanese diet; but it was no small surprise to be offered in Saigo what is almost impossible to obtain in any other Japanese town of five thousand inhabitants. From a romantic point of view, however, this discovery was a disappointment. Having made my way into the most primitive region of all Japan, I had imagined myself far beyond the range of all modernising influences; and the suggestion of beefsteak with fried potatoes was a disillusion. Nor was I entirely consoled by the subsequent discovery that there were no newspapers or telegraphs.

But there was one serious hindrance to the enjoyment of these comforts: an omnipresent, frightful, heavy, all-penetrating smell, the smell of decomposing fish, used as a fertiliser. Tons and tons of cuttlefish entrails are used upon the fields beyond the Yabigawa, and the never- sleeping sea wind blows the stench into every dwelling. Vainly do they keep incense burning in most of the houses during the heated term. After having remained three or four days constantly in the city you become better able to endure this odour; but if you should leave town even for a few hours only, you will be astonished on returning to discover how much your nose had been numbed by habit and refreshed by absence.

Sec. 15