Chapter VII: I Travel Into the North

We took the train out of Tokyo one morning and started for the big northern island of Yezo, or Hokkaido. My wife and little boy went only as far as Nikko, because traveling in Yezo is not very comfortable. Nikko is one of the sacred cities of Japan, and a very beautiful place besides. It is among high hills, about five hours by train from Tokyo, and is surrounded by evergreen forests. Some of the trees are hundreds of years old, and those called the cryptomeria are enormous, reminding one of our California redwoods. There is an old road leading to Nikko that runs for twenty miles between rows of these great trees. Their branches, arching high above it, make it seem like the aisle of a cathedral.

About three hundred years ago Nikko was chosen as the burial place of the warrior who founded the Tokugawa dynasty. The Japanese, who consider him one of their greatest heroes, have made a god of him. About his tomb have been built many splendid temples, to which thousands of pilgrims come every year. The temples are set back against the wooded hills across a little river from the town of Nikko. A red lacquered bridge crosses this river, but no one except the Mikado is allowed to use it. For ordinary people there is a simpler bridge. Hundreds of stone steps lead up to the temples, which are on different levels, so that at the topmost a person is high above the town. The temples are made of wood, with tile roofs, but are so wonderfully carved and painted that it is hard to believe the materials are so simple.

This sacred red lacquered bridge across the small stream between the
town of Nikko and the temple and monastery grounds to which
thousands of Japanese pilgrims come every year, is opened only for
the emperor or Mikado, an ordinary bridge for ordinary people being
available near by.
]

All sorts of strange Japanese gods, of wood and stone and bronze, gaze placidly at the pilgrims who come to pray and the tourists who come to see the wonders of Nikko. One of the most famous things there is a frieze with three stone monkeys on it. One has its hands over its eyes, another over its ears, and the third over its mouth. They point a moral, which is, “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.” That, of course, would be a good motto for any people. The Japanese hold these temples and tombs in such reverence that, though the public is allowed to go anywhere in them, not a thing has been stolen or even damaged in hundreds of years.

On the Way to Hokkaido

The scenery of Japan is beautiful almost everywhere, and the ride from Nikko to the northern end of the largest island is through very attractive country. On the way I stopped to visit Matsushima, as most travelers do and should. _Matsu_ means “pine trees” and _shima_ means “islands.” The journey by small boat among the scores of little islands covered with evergreens will be remembered all one’s life. The Japanese call Matsushima one of the four scenic wonders of their country.

When we found this ugly stone man of long ago in Nikko, my naughty son
called him “Dada”—though how much he resembles me you can easily
guess.
]

A Shinto priest in full regalia before one of the great temples of
Nikko.
]

But because I like best to see places that few other people have seen, I was very much on the alert when, next morning, a not very comfortable Japanese steamer carried me across Volcano Bay to the big northern island. Not one in a hundred foreign travelers in Japan ever sees it. As I could see three volcanoes smoking, it was easy to understand why the Japanese had given this bay its name. Hakodate, where we landed, was similar to other Japanese cities, but the train soon carried me away into a country that was quite different from the older and better known parts of Japan. Here it was still cold at the end of May, though most of the Empire was having summer weather. Instead of the rice fields the traveler sees everywhere on the main and southern islands, Hokkaido grows corn and potatoes. I saw corn shocks like those of the United States still standing in the fields. In some places spring plowing had already begun, and shaggy little horses were doing the work—a contrast to the little rice fields of the south, where men and women with hoes wade in mud up to their knees. Herds of cattle, hardly ever seen in the rest of Japan, gave the landscape still more the appearance of America.

A quiet corner among the temples of Nikko, sacred city north of Tokyo.
Here thousands come in pilgrimage every year, yet they never do the
buildings any harm, because they consider them holy.
]

Sometimes, however, the train went along the edge of the sea, and then I realized that I was still in Japan. The towns were crowded collections of small, poorly made huts, the kind of houses that might do well enough farther south, but too flimsy for the long, cold winters of the big northern island. The Japanese do not like very cold weather, any more than they do the tropics, so Hokkaido has not nearly so many inhabitants for its size as the old and more familiar part of Japan. The efforts of the government to persuade people to go to Hokkaido where land is plentiful have not entirely succeeded.

The poor villages along the seacoast could not only be seen but could be smelled from the train. For the inhabitants live almost entirely from fishing, and there were thousands upon thousands of herring, split in two and hung on lines to dry. But we were soon back in an American landscape again, sometimes with hills that reminded me of New England. Gradually, high mountains, their tops and sometimes their whole sides covered with snow, began to surround us. Some of these mountains were so high that their peaks were lost in the clouds, and there was one almost as symmetrical as Fujiyama, the famous “peerless mountain” of the main island of Japan. But while Fujiyama is known the whole world round, this close rival is unknown even to most Japanese, because no poets have sung about it and no steamship lines have advertised it.

A Western City in Japan

It was evening when I reached Sapporo, capital of the northern island. That city, too, reminded me of my own country, and I soon realized why. When the Japanese Government decided to induce people to migrate from the crowded part of the country to thinly populated Hokkaido, they employed American experts to help them. Some of these laid out the capital with streets that are wide and straight, with American street cars along them.

There are sidewalks, and rows of trees between them and the roadway, clapboard houses with shingled roofs, an agricultural college copied, even to its baseball field and cinder track, after that of Massachusetts, and many other reminders of our own land. Paper walls are not used. Instead of carrying their babies in a kind of hammock on their backs, most of the Japanese women of Sapporo use baby carriages. Many even do their hair almost in American fashion, instead of in the elaborate Japanese style, which costs so much in both time and money. American apples grow almost as well near Sapporo as at home, and that can hardly be said of any other place in the Orient.

To be sure, there are still many Japanese customs left in Sapporo. There are rickshaws, and two or three Shinto temples; and perhaps as many of the men still wear kimonos as have adopted Western clothing. One scene which I saw was very Japanese indeed. Several new buildings were being put up, and when the framework was finished each had to be blessed by Shinto priests, according to old custom, before the work could go on. The carpenters had erected a platform along the rafters, and had placed several flags and banners bearing Japanese text above and about them. A Shinto priest, with a shaven head and a garb that reminded me of a gaudy dressing gown, climbed up to this platform and held a kind of church service. The workmen helped him, like altar boys, and all the children and most of the grown people in the city formed a congregation down in the streets below.

The streets of Sapporo, capital of the northern island, Hokkaido, are
quite American, though the rickshaw and the native style of
street-sprinkler, and Japanese shops, are still in vogue there.
]

Sweets for the Boys and Girls

There was good reason for the children being there, I soon found. For when the more solemn part of the ceremony was over and the priest had climbed down to go to another building ready to be blessed, the men left on the platform opened sacks of Japanese candy and began throwing it in handfuls to the crowd below. There must have been at least two bushels of sweets thrown down upon us. The throwers seemed to want everyone to have a share, for when I let the children near me catch all the pieces that came our way, two of the workmen began throwing at me alone until I had caught and eaten some. Evidently they wanted everyone present to feel grateful so that all would wish the building and its owner good luck. Besides the candy for everyone, there was one valuable present for whoever in the crowd was most agile and lucky. It was a silk kimono, but as that could not be thrown to us like the candy without being torn to bits, a wooden ticket with a Japanese character written on it was used instead. The owner of the building himself threw this, after smilingly making a speech to the applauding throng below; and the scramble for it in the dusty street was very much like what a football game would be if all the spectators should come down from the stands and take part.

Long Distances in a Small Country

Small as Japan seems on the map of the world, I rode another whole day by train northward from Sapporo without coming to the end of the island. Farther north still there are smaller and smaller islands. Some of the smallest of these islands are not inhabited at all, and the others have only little villages of fishermen.

Since Japan’s war with Russia, the Japanese have also owned the southern half of the slender island of Sakhalin, long considered a part of Siberia. There are many minerals in it, as well as plenty of farming land, and the Russian Government seems willing to lease the rest of the island to the Japanese. But if the Japanese dislike cold weather so much that they have left even Hokkaido as thinly settled as our western prairies, it is easy to see why only a few fishermen and miners, with the shopkeepers and others who cater to them, have left the comfortable if crowded part of Japan for this still colder island. Hokkaido is no farther north than Maine or Minnesota, but Sakhalin is as snowbound during the long winters as northern Canada.