Chapter VI: Part 6

A little way below, the mist sank suddenly beneath our feet, and we were walking in the yellow sunlight--walking down a cinder slope that shone jet-black against a pale blue sky, while all around and all beneath, and surging up against the cinder slope, floated a wild wide sea of dead white clouds--a dead, still sea, with its waves stiffened into frozen snow. Tossing, it lay beneath the clear blue sky, and the pale sun glinted on its snow-white crests, glinted on the still gigantic billows that stretched from cinder pathway to the far blue sky. It lay a silent sea of milk-white frozen waves that was such stuff as dreams are made of.

* * * * *

And we went on, down. As the gods of old along a sloping bridge that crossed the clouds and stretched from the blue heaven to the hidden earth beneath, like Izanagi and Izanami, as they crossed the rainbow bridge from the High Plain of Heaven and stirred the floating brine with their jewelled spear--stirred till it went “_koro, koro_”--till it went “curdle, curdle,” as the old chronicle says, and the drops that dripping fell from the celestial spear piled up into the firstborn of the islands of Japan.

A sudden peal of echoing thunder shook our cinder bridge, and we turned abruptly. Somewhere on the other side of the topmost edge of cinder rose up a huge column of thick smoke. The wickedest dead-white smoke, which, slowly curling over at the tips like ostrich feathers, showed shadows of deep mauve and dull blue-purple, while from below the heavy pouring of great stones drove up and up. Asama rumbled, rumbled in her depths. Half an hour sooner we should have been up there still. Had we gone on to the crater we should have been on the very edge. The memory of the sharp-edged clattering stones, red-hot and big as fists, came back to us. We looked at one another silently, and went on, downwards.

Slowly the gigantic plumes of thick curdled smoke drifted up into the blue, and they were very beautiful. It was as though Asama wore a sweeping white _panache_ in her coal-black helmet. But the thundering roar of the eruption had torn our sea of frozen snow, to pieces. The blank white mist shut swiftly down, and hid the mountain and the smoke, the cinders and the sky; only the wide black bridge was left sloping straight downwards.

* * * * *

We reached our horses drenched, to sit on high-peaked saddles and journey back through dank dripping trees, over rutty roads, across thick green commons heavy with mist, back cold, wet and hungry to Karuizawa again.

But we kept our stone, and though we had not seen into the crater, we had perhaps come nearer to that mysterious force, itself unseen, unknown, which dwells beneath the lava and the ash, and terrorises life.

VI

CAMELLIAS

Blue bay below as far as eye can reach. Blue sky above, blue to the edge of the horizon. And in between a steep cliff of green: dark fir, pale bamboo, and that impenetrable undergrowth for which alone a botanist has a name--or names.

The time of the plum blossom has been, is gone, and the world is drowsing in the dream of summer. Up here in the green the quick sappy life is stirring, I can hear it plainly; for in all the world there is no other sound.

The trodden green path runs up, from blue to blue. Midway between the two I stop. And the green world closes in around me, shutting out the blue I came from and the blue to which I go.

The tall dark firs sway slowly. The pale bamboos wave slim fingers, green as March lime leaves in the sun, their golden stems are elusive and bewitching, sunned dryads of the East.

The green world has me in its hold. I forget the steep path to the blue above. It is warm and still, and the bamboos beckon as they sway.

How green it is! All the greens a painter ever dreamt of ... and the graceful bamboos beckon Eastern Vivians to bewitch.

I stay to look and look--never trees so graceful nor the green world so fair. A step. I have left the pathway,--and then--I stop. Beyond the pale bamboos and above them, its dark green branches rising upwards to the blue, is a camellia tree. Each glossy handful of leaves holds a single blood-red flower. And the tree stands there beyond, above the swaying, beckoning bamboos, stern, severe.

“And the Wages of Sin is Death.”

* * * * *

I turn back to the path. The blue below spreads out as far as eye can reach, the blue above lies shining at the end of the pathway. The green world between is still.

But the path is very steep.

VII

RAIN

The world is wet as when first parted from the waters; and the firmament above, uncertain in its new position, seems slipping bodily down to join the waters below. The sound of falling rain, unformed, continuous, seems to have come from the time before Time was; while the tiny squelch of liquid mud oozing up between the bare toes of the _kurumaya_ alone marks the present.

It is dark. The paper lantern, swinging at the end of the shaft, lights up the pools of the roadway with a transient gleam. For the rest, alone in my miniature hansom, with the apron up to my eyes, and the roof down to my eyebrows, the world, with the rushing swish of falling rain, seems dissolving slowly into the waters, and the history of creation marching backwards.

A splash of wheels behind me, and the black mushroom hat of my _kurumaya_ bobs up above the apron, for the hill is steep. A shout, and the _’ricksha_ behind me stops. My _kurumaya_ stands still, holding the thin lacquered shafts in his hands and shouts back. Then he drags me to the roadside, and, putting the shafts on the ground, steps over them and disappears with his lantern. Balancing in my _kuruma_ like the monks on the miserere seats I am left all alone.

What is the matter?

A splash of wheels, the heavy panting of two men. They are pulling the other _kuruma_ up the steep hill, and will come back for me. So I wait, rigid; for the hill is steep, the mud slippery and the angle of the seat precarious. I strain my eyes to see--a corner of muddy road, half the blurred outline of a hedge. And not all the light in all the world could show me more, for the roof above my head is as a hand on my eyelids pressing them downwards.

The wheels have splashed their way up the hill, and I can hear them no longer. Only the sound of the falling rain, driven momentarily away by the sharper splash of the moving wheels, comes back, slowly, steadily, irresistibly, submerging the world and me.

I am all alone, a stranger in a strange land, behind me an unknown road, in front--I strain my eyes to see. Even the hedge has grown unfamiliar. It is no hedge, nothing but impenetrable undergrowth. I am on the edge of a forest.

And the road?

For the first time I notice how strange even the mud of a road can be. This is trodden all over with the prints of naked human feet, and the endless knife cuts of the _gheta_.

The loneliness is wrapping itself around me as a pall.

The dull swish of the rushing raindrops goes on and on. How long have they left me in a dissolving world alone. No sound above, no sound below. And the rush of the falling rain is drumming in my ears.

A hideous nightmare possesses me. Surely the trickling pools are carrying away the mud from under my wheels. I shall slip down, down into nothingness with the falling rain.

I dare not move. My eyes are fixed on the narrow strip of muddy road in front of me. The shafts are surely slipping----

Then the rush of the falling raindrops drowns the world.

VIII

THE BLACK CANAL

The handle of the Japanese guitar, from which Lake Biwa takes its name, is at Otsu, six miles from Kyoto and three hundred feet above it. Between stands all the thickness of Kyoto’s girdle of mountains. Built in the flat bottom of an immense bowl, dark green with pine-clad hills, Kyoto, the ancient capital, is still the artistic centre of Japan. It is a city of 350,000 inhabitants, and many manufactories, but with little water or water transit, while only six miles away, beyond the mountains and above the town, Lake Biwa stretches a long arm from the ports of the west coast towards the city.

It was in 1890 that Tanabe Sakuro, piercing the heart of the mountains, brought the waters of Lake Biwa, running swiftly under the hills, into Kyoto. And the Black Canal begins at Otsu.

Deep down in the last of the rampart of locks which shuts out the lake lies the long narrow _sampan_, a white gondola, carpeted and cushioned, a large torch flames on either side, and the boatman stands ready behind. We sit on the cushions on the carpet, for the canal is but just the height of a man, and but just the width of two _sampan_. The cement sides of the lock rise up like walls; in front is the black arch of a tunnel, cut like a tiny doorway in the base of the great green mountain. A moment, and we are inside, in the pitch blackness; rushing swiftly, silently along in the freshness of a subterranean night. The two huge torches that we carry show the darkness falling like a thick curtain before, behind us; and the silence is the silence of infinite ages asleep.

The rhythm of the rushing water passes like a breath through the darkness, but the speed is unfelt. Move your hand beyond the side of the boat, and the contact of the wall will tear all the skin from the knuckles in one swift scrape. For the water rushes, rushes silent in the darkness, not a current but a force.

Suddenly in the blackness there is a light; three nude figures poised, their muscles strained, human strength pitted against the water’s force. Their boat moves but slowly, we are by in a flash. The naked orange figures form but one picture, one posture against the blackness, a living red group from the black urns of Greece; seen, gone; and the darkness drops down in thick curtains all around.

Swiftly the water rushes, silent, the rhythmic breathing of black night. The darkness deepens, deepens; then cracks. A thin, thin slit parts black from black, and slowly grows a narrow streak of faintest grey.

It is light; light like the thinnest edge of a sword set in the far distance. But the crack broadens, widens, rounds, and grows by imperceptible degrees into an open archway, showing the bright water and the green hills beyond. And swiftly we rush towards the light, while the little picture no bigger than the reflection on a camera grows curves and outlines, swells here, retreats there, and passes from a flat reflection into a rounded reality.

The tunnel itself is no longer black. The walls, the rounded roof, lie like shadows, deep brown, growing quickly greyer. And above, on either side, the bats are clinging thickly, in long rows.

We shoot into the light and see that walls and boat are covered with a fluttering half-dead mass of ghost-grey moths. They coat the tunnel from wall to roof, they lie in struggling heaps on boat and carpet, our clothes are full of them.

With one last swift glide we are out of the grey shadow, out under the blue sky. The green hills rise on either side, the water dimples in the sun. Slowly the grey moths flutter back to the darkness. For through the heart of the mountain Lake Biwa has come to Kyoto.

IX

THE INLAND SEA

The little steamer lay tilted up against the end of the pier, for all the waters of the ocean were rushing madly through the Straits of Shimonoseki into the Inland Sea. The waters lay encircled as a lake, for the space between the inner and the outer strait is narrow, but they ran swift as a mountain river. The square-sailed junks, all sails set, were racing down the stream in the very eye of the wind, while those coming up with a strong breeze behind them hardly seemed to stir. And the little steamer at the end of the pier tilted herself up higher and higher.

She was a foreign-built boat, though only about the size of a launch, but she looked like a Moorish house afloat, for all the boat was cabin, and all the deck was roof, whitewashed, ribbed roof, with a striped awning. As we left the pier and struck the full force of the current, the striped awning and the uneven deck dipped down and down until the Moorish roof turned Gothic. We were in the full force of the current now, and tearing down the stream with, as somebody said, “all our engines going the wrong way.” Up the side of the boat the water climbed, pulling it down with long strong hands, until the flat deck was turned to a gable roof.

For five breathless minutes we balanced between air and water, and then we were through the inner strait which turns the waters of the Inland Sea between Moji and Shimonoseki into one big lake, and the coast of the South Island began to fall away. The tide was running less swiftly now, the ridge of our gable roof sank slowly into the water, and the little steamer floated a white, flat-roofed, Moorish house once more.

“There is nothing,” said the steward, “for the _Ijin San_ to eat.”

He had been standing behind us, balancing himself on the steep gable roof, for some while, but the current and the laws of gravitation had been absorbing all our attention, and like a true Japanese he was much too polite to interrupt.

“There is nothing, nothing,” said he, “to eat.”

For the rare missionary, or the rarer tourist, who patronises the coasting steamer of the Inland Sea comes provided as for an Arctic expedition.

“But we shall eat Japanese food,” we explained.

He bowed, a low, polite bow, but I do not think he believed us. Then he went away, and returned bearing foreign cups with saucers, full of a hot brown liquor called, he told us triumphantly, “coffee.” It was of the kind bought ready mixed in cakes, and made with hot water. We were pleased to know it _was_ coffee, and the attention touched us, still, Japanese tea would have tasted better. We thought the pinky-brown soup flavoured with orange peel, the fried fish with chestnut preserve, the custard stuffed with shrimps, and the bowls of rice eaten with salted plums and spiced roots off which we dined infinitely preferable; and the steward who fanned us with one hand, and served us with the other, saw that there was “something for us to eat.”

It was eight o’clock when we climbed the steep ladder which led to our Moorish roof, eight o’clock on a July evening, and already the tall, deep-dented mountains of Kyushu lay dark and indistinct. They lay cut sharp against a twilight sky as though they had no thickness. And slowly the coast-line fell away grey into the sea. Kyushu was dying as the ship and sun moved on, Shikoku was but a blur upon the ocean, and between them the open sea made a pathway to the sky, all silver-grey and trembling, a road of light to that sunken light beyond.

The sun had set, and the fleeting twilight of the East was night already. Japan’s green hills were turning grey. Night held sky and islands fast, but the pathway shone and trembled until it died in the last long streaks of light on the edge of the horizon. Night was come.

* * * * *

From Kobé to Shimonoseki stretch the two hundred and forty miles of the Inland Sea; and in it are gathered together most of the islands of Japan. Continuous as a mainland the coast of the big island runs down, while on the other side Kyushu and Shikoku with ancient Awaji, the firstborn of the Gods, dip their high green mountains in the sea; between, in lines and clusters, lie thousands upon thousands of baby islands; some large enough to hold a village, others too small for a single house; some green with trees and rice-fields, others a mere speck of rock reaching up out of the water. From morning until night we sat under the striped awning of our roof top, and watched as they glided past, green islands on the blue water; and always on our left hand the tall, deep-dented mountains of the mainland ran on and on.

In the morning sunlight Miyajima’s granite _torī_ stood knee-deep in the pale blue waves. Its temple roofs were brown against the dark, green pines, and the sacred island, where neither Birth nor Death may come, slept blue-black with shadows in the dawn.

And still they glided by, the green islands on the blue water. The sun travelled up the sky; it grew hot--hotter.

At mid-day we had reached the narrow channel, where mainland and island are so close that the sea is but a canal between the houses; and the children of the two villages throw stones across the stream. Here, at the end of the passage, a great stone lantern stands deep in the idle water. Then, abruptly, as we turned, the canal was gone; and the wide, blue sea lay shimmering among the green islands in the summer sun.

Under the striped awning of our roof-top it was cool, but outside the sun was smiting sea and land, until sea and islands quivered, quivered, losing themselves, colour and outline, in one mist of shimmering, shadowy blue. And the ship and the sun travelled on.

* * * * *

Five sturdy naval cadets shared our luncheon with us, and knew the number and the tonnage of England’s smallest gunboats, and for all their blue uniform and “foreign” dirk, their _Sayonara_ as they left us were courteous with an old-time courtesy.

And the sun grew hot and hotter. The light like a mist wrapt sea and islands round. The continuous quivering hurt. On the other side the deep-dented mountains of the mainland, grown bare and scraped now, caught the sunshine on their rocky patches, and sent it in glittering arrows of light across the still air. And yet in the brown villages, at the mountains’ feet, the blue-tuniced, brown-legged peasants were working in the sun; and at each stopping-place the bareheaded men and women came off in boats to offer their fruit and _saké_ in long-handled fishing-nets, scent-bottles full of _saké_ flavoured with plum-blossom, _saké_ flavoured with chrysanthemum or peach-blossom, white rice, “woman’s” _saké_, _saké_ to ward off old age, or all and any of the nine different kinds of _saké_ for which Tomotsu is famous, and all in scent-bottles, artistically tied up and labelled, and costing, bottle and all, _is-sen_. One old lady was highly indignant when after much excitement we had contrived to haul up in the fishing-net the exact scent-bottle we coveted, and had sent her down one sen in return, for the patois of the district makes _is-sen_ of _jis-sen_ (10 sen = 2½_d._), to the unaccustomed ear.

And the ship and the sun travelled on.

* * * * *

As the shadows grew the quivering ceased, the light no longer like a veil of darkness hid the land and sea. The islands grew a gradual green, as they drowsed on the clear blue water. And slowly the still sea opened wider; the islands passed more slowly until they ceased to pass at all; and then on the blue water there grew that indefinite look of ocean space. The Inland Sea was ending. Away on the still sweep of waters lay Awaji, the First-born of the Gods, the Eden of Japan.

“And when,” says the legend, “the first man and the first woman met after they had journeyed round a pillar set upon the land the woman cried, ‘How joyful a thing it is to meet a lovely man!’ Whereupon the man, displeased that language had been invented by a woman, required the circuit to be made again, that he might speak first. So again they journeyed round the pillar, and again they met, and loudly the man cried out, ‘How joyful a thing it is to meet a lovely woman!’ And thus,” says the chronicle, “was Speech invented, and the Art of Love and the human race begun.”

Dim grey on a grey sea lay Awaji; before us stretched the broad sweep of the landless ocean; the Inland Sea, dreaming among its islands, lay behind.

THE LAND OF THE GODS

“That which I saw seemed to me a smile of the Universe.”
“Paradiso,” canto xxvii.

I

ACROSS THE LAGOON

We sat still on the deck, with our backs propped against portions of the ship’s cargo, and watched.

It was necessary to sit still, for a rise of only a few inches would have sent the awning over our heads into the blue waters of the lagoon; and each newcomer, as he stepped from the wharf on to this Kensington Garden craft, doubled himself in two and stayed so. First-class passengers lay flat, for a square hole in the side of the boat opened into a three-feet-high saloon elegantly carpeted; we had matting. When the first half of the passenger was inside, a big-headed boy removed his _gheta_ and piled them up on the deck, reshoeing him in the same way when he emerged. The difficulty of extracting foreign boots in this manner would alone have deterred us from using our first-class tickets; and then the deck passengers under the awning had at least six inches more room, besides ventilation. So we sat on the matting and watched.

Anything out of a toy-shop so tiny as this absurd little steamer was never seen. She might with generosity have been fifteen feet long; yet she carried some twenty passengers besides cargo down the lagoon and up the river, from Matsué to Shobara, with safety and Oriental speed; and did it twice a day too.

The carpeted saloon was reasonably filled with half a dozen passengers; the deck overflowed with the rest. The brown-skinned, bullet-headed, ugly, good-natured Japanese peasant, sitting on his heels with his dark blue _kimono_ tucked up above his brown legs, and his fan in his hand; or his little wife, wrinkled and meek, her white cotton towel, with its bamboo design in blue, folded round her head and tucked up under her hair behind in something between a night-cap and a sun-bonnet; quiet and sweet, but never abject, and always respected. Here and there a shopkeeper or a clerk, or some one from the town in a grey _kimono_, with a face pale yellow against the other’s brown. We all sat bare-footed on the matting to keep it clean, with our _gheta_ in our hands, fanning ourselves with rice-paper fans decorated with storks flying across the moon, or sprays of plum-blossom or pine-trees, each man of us showing his well-turned leg and thigh, with all the muscles brought into strong relief by the weight of the body on the toes. All polite, all amused, all conversational.

After a great deal of snorting on the part of our very small steamer, we casually left the wharf and shot into the lagoon. Matsué, hidden by the sunlight, disappeared; and even the wide sweep of waters wavered indistinct beneath the hard glitter of the morning light. It was not yet nine o’clock, and already the distant blue shore was blurred with the shimmering heat, and the near green one fitful with the scissor-grinding of the _semmi_. The heat was dropping down on the world with the swiftness of a tropical night and the glitter of it hurt.

Away over the surface of the waters a red-brown head floated, lazy, the nimbus of straw hat against the light glowing yellow as a halo. Slowly, idly, the head moved over the water, suspended between blue and blue. Too hot to doubt or question or deny, I accepted the head and shut my eyes, only to find on opening them again two, three, a dozen heads strolling slowly over the lagoon.

“Honourably please to understand, dredging for mussels,” said a voice at my elbow. And the passengers repeated the information in a sort of Greek chorus with many bows.

Matsué’s only representative of the vast world of the _Ijin San_ is one missionary; but these peasants, with the refinement of true breeding, accepted our outlandish dress and faces, our boots on their matting too, without a stare of curiosity, although when our attention was apparently absorbed elsewhere, the whiteness of our skins, the aristocratic bridge of our noses (it is only the _noblesse_ in Japan, and not all of them, who possess an aquiline nose), were commented on with interest and admiration.

* * * * *

The near green shore ran in and out, and in and out, wooded thick with the slim green fingers of the bamboo, until it opened into a tiny green bay, with a thin bamboo landing-stage running out into the silent water. Here we stopped with such an amount of “ay-aying” on the part of the captain--a short man in a grey _kimono_, who sat in a hole in the deck the other side of the funnel reading Chinese poetry--and the crew, a tall youth in “foreign” trousers, who greased wheels, that we might have been an Atlantic liner approaching an unknown shore. There were no passengers for the invisible village behind the landing-stage but the captain, who climbed over the side of the boat up on to the landing-stage, and disappeared.

By-and-by from out of the green there came a charming little figure in a sea-blue _kimono_, lined with lacquer-red, followed by a maid bearing neatly matted parcels. The crew wiped its hands and moved forward, while the sea-blue _kimono_, kneeling on the landing-stage, handed down the parcels on to the boat for safe carriage to Shobara. They seemed to require quantities of explanation those parcels, accompanied by irrepressible giggles, principal giggles on the part of the mistress, and secondary giggles on the part of the maid; while the crew listened, replied, grew eloquent. It was one of the most effective flirtations I ever saw, but alas! conducted in that Izumo dialect so hard for the Tokyo-taught foreigner to understand. And it went on like the hum of the _semmi_, while the water, the world, and the boat drowsed in the heat.

* * * * *

Suddenly, from out of the nowhere, appeared our captain, who swung himself down from the landing-stage on to the boat as imperturbably as a stone Buddha. The sea-blue _kimono_, still on its knees at the edge of the water, swayed in one last enchanting giggle that showed all the lacquer-red linings in a quiver of flame, while the supplementary giggles of the stout little maid followed us regretfully out of the bay.

With more “ay-aying” we shot back into the hard glitter of the lagoon. The captain retired to his hole and his Chinese poetry, the crew had completely disappeared, but the big-headed boy, emerging from some unknown region behind the captain, carried out a _hibachi_ and a kettle. He set the kettle on the brass tripod over the _hibachi_ and blew up the charcoal fire with a large fan; and we all watched him with interest as he made Japanese tea in a green china teapot, rather larger than the kettle, with a black handle and with dividing lines of black separating the green into leaf-like petals. At this we all sat up, thirstier with anticipation, and the little china bowls filled from the green kettle-teapot vanished from the tray. Then the big-headed boy handed round _manju_ cakes (like boiled chestnuts in a white coat of sweet rice-paste), and collected payment, one _sen_ (a farthing). We all promptly demanded more tea, and the little bowls were filled and refilled until the green kettle-teapot ran dry; and we all subsided again. Only the _tink, tink_, of the metal pipes, knocking out the glowing wad of tobacco on to the deck in order to light a fresh pipeful from the burning remains of the old one, broke the drowsy silence. Three little whiffs and the acorn bowl of a Japanese pipe is empty, so the _tink, tink_, of the metal on the deck was rhythmic as the _vee-um_ of the _semmi_. They were all smoking, men and women, and the scent of the bright brown tobacco, fine-cut as hair, lay under the awning.

* * * * *

The near green shore ran in and out, and in and out, until all the wide sheet of glittering light, spread over the blue waters, lay behind us; in front a bright green bank of rushes hemmed in the light. The lagoon was ended, and still we went on, seemingly with the intention of stranding ourselves among the bulrushes. But the bulrushes stood back as we came on, and ranging themselves on either hand, left a water pathway down which we went, until the bank of rushes following the lagoon lay far behind, and we found ourselves in a narrow river that seemed half natural stream and half artificial canal.

Our unnautical captain, who, ever since we had entered the rushes, had been intoning directions to the invisible crew as though he were reading poetry aloud, got up out of his hole. The _tink, tink_, of the metal pipes on the wooden deck died gradually away as each smoker knocked out his last wad of tobacco and put away his pipe. Then with a sudden and terrific snort the absurd little steamer, an end in either bank, stood still. The big-headed boy, hanging over the side of the boat, kicked violently with his heels, while the unexpected apparition of the crew’s head rose up at our feet. The head took a look round and sank again, and the engines rattled. Still with an end in either bank, and with the big-headed boy clasping the gunwale in his arms, we proceeded to turn slowly round, and then, assisted by several ropes and several haulers, to back majestically into the main street of Shobara.

Our journey was ended. The big-headed boy, leaving the gunwale, rushed to reshoe the first-class passengers as they wriggled from the saloon on to the roadway. The bullet-headed peasants and their little brown wives bowing low bows to each other, the captain and to the _Ijin San_, took up their bundles and trudged off, while we, like a Royal arrival, were received by the authorities of Shobara, in the person of a fierce little policeman in a new white suit, and duly escorted the three-and-a-half paces from the ship’s side to the tea-house door in a procession, the people lining up the way.

And the last we saw of that absurd little steamer, as we turned into the tea-house, was a glimpse of the crew looking down the funnel, while the big-headed boy, standing amidships, handed out the cargo to its owners on either bank.

II

TO KIZUKI

The green earth lay burning in the sun, wrapt round and round with heat. Between the tall blue lines of hills it stretched, the flat green floor of a deep blue cavern, whose roof-top was the sky. And through the green the long white road ran out of sight. The only living thing that moved was the running _kurumaya_, all else lay sleeping in the bright night-time of heat, a heavy drugged sleep that neither rested nor refreshed.

Inert the green earth stretched between the blue hills, weighed down with heat; a palpable heat through which we moved as a fish moves through water; a visible heat which was lying there heavy on the land, floating round the blue hills, quivering against the white sky, humming in the still air, rolling in great drops down the bronzed back of the _kurumaya_, drowsing me to sleep as with the soft waving of a heated fan, a heavy, encompassing heat that stunned.

And always the white road ran on through the green earth, and the long, straight lines of hills on either side shut off the sky.

Between the fields of rice, here and there among the green, a brown-thatched house like an open shed rose up, its roof supported on the square pillars of the four corner posts, its walls rolled out of sight. And on the matted floor the women and children lay sleeping, their necks supported on a narrow stool; the men stretched on their backs, or lying prone, their heads between their arms.

Not a living thing in house or field, in land or road, was moving save the running _kurumaya_. Heat had slain the world and life itself was senseless.

* * * * *

On either side the straight blue hills stretched out of sight, the green earth lay like a narrow passage-way between; and on and on we ran, until the green floor contracted, and the white road became a broad still street, where brown houses shut out the hills.

A rapid spurt through the empty village, for a _kurumaya_ never stops except at the top of his speed, and we arrive at the tea-house. Dazed, weary, and stiff with two hours of continuous running, we struggle from under the shawls and wraps that keep out the sun, and sink on to the matting; while the crowd which has grown no man knoweth how, from out of an empty village, stands silently, staring. With equal suddenness a small policeman starts up in front. He inquires our names, ages, residence and destination; orders back the crowd with one wave of his arm, commands that we be taken into an inner apartment, remote from public gaze; and, in short, declares we may repose on him.

We are taken into an inner apartment, a room that is almost cool, while the crowd drifts patiently round the house trying to look in. One little wide-eyed _nēsan_ brings us tea, and then house and world sink back into slumber again.

The _nēsan_, reluctant, but at last dismissed, lies down on the matting, beyond the courtyard, and falls asleep. Her neck rests on a narrow wooden pillow that has the curves of a _torī_; she lies like a long-stalked flower on the ground, rigid, quite graceful. Every fold of her _kimono_, every twist of her hair, is in place. She is fast asleep, unconscious, perfectly tidy, with a neatness that has passed into its essence, grace, and is natural as the feathers to a bird.

We cannot sleep, the mere transition from the greater heat outside to the cooler heat of this open matted space makes us wakeful. It is cooler here actually, in degree, and imaginatively, from the green palms of the baby garden. The garden of a doll’s house, which any moderate-sized bath-towel would have roofed, yet with a forest of dwarf palm-trees in one corner, a winding pool in another, the cool grey outlines of a stone lantern to hold the eyes, and a sense of still greenness, of limpid freshness, which not rivers of water or forests of giant trees could more distinctly convey. To look at that garden was to take a mental bath and drown out the sense of heat. But the heat itself remained, intense and stagnant, a heavy presence in the house that permeated all things.

Out in the courtyard one shaft of burning light shone down, turning the cotton towel on its bamboo line to a white-hot banner, the polished passage to a molten pool, while the water in the big stone font was warm as condensed steam. Like the flaming sword of the Archangel Michael, the shaft of burning light cut the passage-way in two, and the sharp white-heat of it seemed to cut. It was absolutely still, only the heat moved awake in a house and a world asleep.

* * * * *

Very slowly the little _nēsan_ sat up; some one had called her. A moment, and she was on her feet, neat as a growing flower.

“The _kurumaya_ awaits,” she said, kneeling on the matting, “when it honourably pleases the august ones to come.”

Then she touched her forehead to the floor and waited for what it honourably pleased the august ones to do.

They came, down the polished passage, under the flaming sword of light, out into the open space before the tea-house, where the little policeman waited to command them to be packed into their _kuruma_, to deliver stringent orders for their safe conduct to the _kurumaya_, to authoritatively bid them the politest of _sayonara_.

The crowd had disappeared, harangued out of existence; the village street was empty as a desert, the houses dead; and then the steep line of blue hills grew up on either side, shutting in the sky, and the long white road stretched away through the green earth.

Palpable, visible, the heat lay over the land, quivering against the white sky, floating round the blue hills, humming in the still air, drowsing me into a somnambulant life that was neither sleep nor waking.

Between the green earth and the white sky the telegraph wires cut a bronze line against the quivering blue; and the rows of little birds, all sitting with their tails to the road, hung drowsily there, rows on rows of them. And still the long white road ran on and on.

Beneath the short thick hair of the _kurumaya_ the heat gathered in wet patches on the white scalp, rolled in big drops over the black head, trickled down the bronze neck, and was wiped off with one rapid movement of the blue cotton towel, as the running _kurumaya_ sped swiftly on; gathered again, rolled again, trickled again, was wiped dry again; gathered, rolled, trickled, until the automatic movements, repeated and repeated, grew part of Time itself. They were Time.

* * * * *

Then I awoke. It was as if some one had slid a thin lining of fresh air along the tops of the blue hills, beneath the burning sky. A thin, thin sheet of fresh air, but the green earth gave a great sigh, the _kurumaya_ a little shake, and I awoke.

The peasants in their brown thatched houses, open as a shed, were stirring, the naked red figures in their white cloths were moving down the road.

In the fields the long bamboo poles that shot up out of the green earth like masts were dipping up and down, drawing water for the thirsty rice.

The little birds on the telegraph wires were chirping sleepily, flying off in twos and threes, and settling down again, audibly fussing over the laziness of their friends and relations.

The bright night-time of heat was over and gone.

I sat up in my _kuruma_ and looked. We were running through green rice-fields, under a blue sky. And it was a hot summer’s afternoon.

III

IZUMO’S GREAT TEMPLE

“So they made fast the temple pillars on the nethermost rock-bottom, and they made high the cross-beams to the plain of high heaven;” and the god Onamuji, the “Master of the Great Land,” King of Izumo, in accordance with his compact with high heaven, entered into that temple and dwelt there.

So the province of Izumo and the kingdom of Western Japan passed under the rule of the great Sun-Goddess whose descendants endure to this day. But the Master of the Great Land, the god Onamuji, is worshipped from end to end of the Emperor’s dominions, and his temple and his priests are sacred as the mirror of the Sun-Goddess in their eyes.

All through the year, the pilgrims in thousands journey into Izumo to remote Kizuki, whose name to their ears is still resonant with the beating (_tsuku_) of the pestles (_ki_) which made the foundations of that first great temple firm and everlasting, while in the month of October the immortal gods themselves, from every shrine throughout the land, come to visit Onamuji, and that desolate month known in Japan as _kami-na-zuki_ (month without gods) is called in Izumo alone _kami-ari-zuki_ (the month with gods).

At the foot of the everlasting hills the temple stands, and the far-off ripple of the Western Sea, half a memory, half a dream, wanders through its sunlit courts, a sound to listening ears.

The long dark avenue of twisted trees, so old that many are almost limbless, the three giant _torī_, hewn in solid granite, lie behind us; we have reached the white sunlight of the outer temple space, and the scattered buildings of the shrine are in front. Our landlord, in his Sunday-best _kimono_ of silver-grey, leads the way. He has walked, since we left the inn, exactly three paces behind us, while three paces behind him came our _kurumaya_. In Kizuki it has not been considered consonant with our dignity to allow us to move anywhere without them.

Our landlord, with the profoundest bow, moves on in front. He has a letter to deliver on our behalf, so that when we reach the long, low building at the end of the first enclosure, an authoritative young priest in long white robes is there to greet us. He wears a wonderful head-dress of black lacquer, the model of a meat-cover, tied on under the chin, with two red cords in the manner of a doll’s bonnet; but his chin is human, not inflexible, so I watch to see the meat-cover tumble. It never does, not even when with a low bow he invites us up the steep polished steps into the room above. We take off our shoes and climb.

The room is long and low, with a “foreign” table covered with a green baize cloth. There are bright blue velvet chairs, an inkstand, pens; just a second-hand committee-room greatly the worse for wear, which impresses our landlord, so that his strangled h’s of admiration sound like paroxysms of coughing. We sit on the velvet chairs and wait. Our landlord, the letter and the priest have disappeared into an inner apartment. And the sound of much discussion comes to our ears. “How far are we to be allowed to go?” And then the terms “learned _Ijin San_,” and “august sage” reach us. At last they are all agreed. The “learned _Ijin San_,” the “honourable teacher,” the “august sage” shall be permitted to enter the very Holy of Holies; but the “honourable interior,” being a woman, must not cross the sacred threshold. Then there is a long pause before the authoritative young priest comes out and explains the position to us. We bow the profoundest thanks and follow him down the steps, and the reason for the pause is evident. He has changed his clothes, and is now in the fullest and most resplendent of sacerdotal robes.

* * * * *

Under the shadow of the gate of the _ita-gaki_, the second enclosing fence, stands the High Priest himself, whose fathers for two thousand years have led the temple rites. He is the eighty-second descendant of the mythic Susa-no-wo, and is still termed by many _Iki-gami_, which is the “Living God.” An old, old man, whose face is almost white, a mystic sacred face, quiet as the eternal smile of the Eternal Buddha. He wears a lacquered head-dress, the most imposing of meat-covers, and his robes are of white and purple adorned with gold.

We pass within the _ita-gaki_, and the landlord, the _kurumaya_, the crowd of other worshippers are left behind. Before us rises the low fence of the “jewelled hedge,” which encloses the sacred shrine itself. Again before the gateway there is a pause. The minor priests, even our authoritative young friend, do not enter here. It is explained to us that the “honourable interior” must not pass within the temple. She is a woman, but it is permitted to her, as the wife of the most “honourable one,” to look into the shrine from a room above the gateway. The High Priest removes his sandals, we our shoes, and over the rounded, water-washed, grey pebbles, hot as burning plough-shares, we enter the holy court.

A long, low wooden building is the temple, primæval in its form, the broad ends of its roof-tree sticking up like pointed anchors through the roof. Six feet around it on every side the pebbles stop, and the space is filled with the whitest, smoothest sand. All those who go up to the god leave the mark of their feet behind.

Within the temple there is nothing; bare space, dim, obscure; but the High Priest, reverently kneeling on the matting, creates the god. And into that narrow empty space the shadow of the Eternal Presence comes.

Slowly the splash of the breaking waves drifts into the stillness, faint as the whisper of God in the heart of man, a still, small voice. Over the temple there is peace, the peace of two thousand years, unbroken, sacred. And the dreamy ripple grows a sound in the silence. Faint, faint, faint, is it the song of the limitless sea, the voice of the peace and the stillness, or a broken murmur of the beyond that the listening pilgrim hears? Half a memory, half a dream, it dies at the gate of the shrine, where the stir of the world grows loud; yet the soul has heard, has believed.

* * * * *

Out in the sunlit court beyond the “jewelled hedge” the little group of priests still wait. And as we come slowly over the hot round stones, our shoes once more upon our feet, they greet us with an added respect. Even the “honourable interior,” whose sacredness is but indirect, transmitted through a space of court and two open _shōji_, has become a personage.

The old, old priest, with the face of a Chinese sage, goes on in front. We cross the second court obliquely over the stone-grey pebbles, each rounded with the rubbing of running water, and enter another building, the treasure-house of the temple. Here in a shaded upper chamber, where the white sunlight filters through the yellow matting, a long low shelf runs round, and on it lie the temple’s treasures--relics of dead heroes and of living legend. One by one the High Priest points them out, and in the thin frail voice of age tells their story: A _biwa_, a sword, some pieces of tattered brocade, the old, old relics of Old Japan. The tales are long, as the old man tells them with the slow-moving utterance of one who has had eighty years in which to speak. But there is a personal vibration in his voice that brings back the long two thousand years of service that he and his have given to the temple, recalls the eighty-two High Priests, his fathers, who join the living man before us to the god Susa-no-wo, from whom the Great Master, Onamuji himself, descended.

All this time, the authoritative young priest has been respectfully but quite obviously waiting to show us something. At last he draws us across the room to where a life-sized plaster statue stands, the Sun-Goddess herself in the flowing robes of Old Japan, a figure full of majesty and power, with round her neck a string of those prehistoric jewels of which the _Kojiki_ is full, comma-shaped polished jewels of jade and crystal, threaded on a scarlet string. And in the loose sleeves of the plaster figure and about the folds at the neck are touches of brightest red. A modern plaster statue of a figure old to unbelief.

And the young man tells the story. He is so eager, so proud to relate what has indeed become the great central fact of the story, that who or what the statue is, or how or why it came there we never hear; but--it had gained a prize at the Chicago Exhibition!

And all the rest of the clergy intone a little chorus of triumph and delight. Even the High Priest himself seems pleased, and a faint smile passes over his face as he bids us examine the ticket.

It is quite true. From the out-stretched wrist of the Sun-Goddess hangs a much-worn ticket, stating in printed Roman capitals that “This Exhibit has won a Prize at the World’s Fair of Chicago.” And the figure stands there, in the long low treasure-house of Izumo’s Great Temple, while the white sunlight, filtering through the yellow matting, falls on the white-robed priests who serve a temple worshipped through two thousand years, falls on the old High Priest with the mystic sacred face, whose fathers stretch back into the mists of Time, and falling, trembles on the faded ticket on the arm of the Sun-Goddess:

WORLD’S FAIR, CHICAGO.

This is to certify----

“If the august sage will honourably please to descend.”

And we descended.

In the hot still court the High Priest takes his leave, with long polite phrases of strictest ceremony. The authoritative young priest who escorts us back through the _ita-gaki_ into the outer court is equally ceremonious, and our polite Japanese is heavily taxed to keep up with him. At the outer court he bids us _sayonara_, and our landlord and our _kurumaya_, who have been respectfully waiting, form into procession again. We have become great personages in their eyes, very great personages indeed; and the pilgrims, kneeling before the shrine in the outer court, look at us with reverence. We have entered the Holy of Holies, we have visited the god Onamuji in his shrine.

It is with the lowest of bows that our landlord leads us out of the side of the temple court, westward, to where the tall dark trees of the mountain have grown down into the plain. Here, set in the silence of the cryptomerias at the foot of the everlasting hills, is the home of the High Priest. So still, so ordered, so spotless, the house and garden lie like a snowdrop in a forest. And the sound of the sea drifts in as we stand.

* * * * *

Then for the last time we cross the courtyard where the pilgrims are praying in the sunshine, and the temple dancing girls, dim figures in the distance, glide round and round in the long slow circles of the sacred _kagura_. Court and temple are burning in the sunlight. Beyond the “hedge” and the “jewelled hedge” the great beam-ends of the roof-tree rise out through the temple’s thatch. Within the shrine hangs the mirror of the great Sun-Goddess. For the heart of man, says the Shintō faith, is good and pure. And even as this mirror, when undimmed, reflects the sun, so in the tranquil soul God’s self is imaged.

Over temple and courtyard there is peace; the peace of long centuries dead; the peace of enduring belief. Down from the mists of the past the teaching comes: “Know thyself; in the stillness of peace, know but thyself, and thou shalt see God.”

IV

KIZUKI’S BAY

The Sea of Japan, as it wandered down the western coast, took a sudden and unexpected bite out of the land of Izumo; and that bite is the bay of Kizuki. It is the tiniest of bays, with but half a mile of sandy shore between the two steep lines of hills that run straight out to sea: green hills that stretch so far, the green has time to grow a misty blue before they curve toward the water in a deep blurred line. Landwards a length of sandy dune shuts out the village street; and the little bay, set between the hills, and cut off from the sea, lies like an ebbing lake.

On the sandy shore it is still and cool; and from the dozens of Japanese families comes only the high pitched laughter of the playing children. Kizuki is the Margate of the West, and the pilgrims who journey to its shrine stay to breathe its sea air, and combine a religious pilgrimage with a summer holiday in a manner so usual in Japan.

The big hotel under the great north wall of green, with its ground floor, and, wonder of wonders, two, yes--two storeys, is full. So full that the landlord was forced to tuck away his distinguished guests in a back room of the old inn up the village street. The square two-storied house, with all its _shōji_ pushed back and the contents and occupants of every room exposed to public view, looks for all the world like a big doll’s house with the door gone. And its inhabitants eat, drink, play, laugh, sing with the natural unconcern which we could only reach secure behind brick walls, curtained windows, and venetian blinds. The unconcern is so simple, so unaffected, that the Yokohama foreigner, feeling dimly that his own behaviour could never be so natural under such conditions, suspects “play acting,” and will sometimes speak of a “nation of mountebanks” with the scorn of a man among monkeys.