Part 23 (1/2)
One cannot go anywhere in j.a.pan without receiving a visit from the people, who, being of a thrifty turn, seize the occasion of a stranger's presence to drive a little trade. The skill of the j.a.panese is quite marvellous in certain directions: They make everything _in petto_, in miniature--the smallest earthenware; the tiniest cups and saucers. In these mountain villages they work, like the Swiss, in wooden-ware, and make exquisite and dainty little boxes and bureaus, as if for dolls, yet with complete sets of drawers, which could not but take the fancy of one who had little people at home waiting for presents. Besides the temptation of such trinkets, who could resist the insinuating manner of the women who brought them? The j.a.panese women are not pretty. They might be, were it not for their odious fas.h.i.+ons. We have seen faces that would be quite handsome if left in their native, unadorned beauty. But fas.h.i.+on rules the world in j.a.pan as in Paris. As soon as a woman is married her eyebrows are shaved off, and her teeth blackened, so that she cannot open her mouth without showing a row of ebony instead of ivory, which disfigures faces that would be otherwise quite winning. It says a good deal for their address, that with such a feature to repel, they can still be attractive. This is owing wholly to their manners. The j.a.panese men and women are a light-hearted race, and captivate by their gayety and friendliness. The women were always in a merry mood. As soon as they entered the room, before even a word was spoken, they began to giggle, as if our appearance were very funny, or as if this were the quickest way to be on good terms with us. The effect was irresistible. I defy the soberest man to resist it, for as soon as your visitor laughs, you begin to laugh from sympathy; and when you have got into a hearty laugh together, you are already acquainted, and in friendly relations, and the work of buying and selling goes on easily. They took us captive in a few minutes. We purchased sparingly, thinking of our long journey; but our English friends bought right and left, till the next day they had to load two pack-horses with boxes to be carried over the mountains to Yokohama.
The next day was to bring the consummation of our journey, for then we were to go up into a mountain and see the glory of the Lord. A few miles distant is the summit of Otometoge, from which one obtains a view of Fusiyama, looking full in his awful face. We started with misgivings, for it had been raining, and the clouds still hung low upon the mountains. Our way led through hamlets cl.u.s.tered together in a narrow pa.s.s, like Alpine villages. As we wound up the ascent, we often stopped to look back at the valley below, from which rose the murmur of rus.h.i.+ng waters, while the sides of the mountains were clothed with forests. These rich landscapes gave such enchantment to the scene as repaid us for all our weariness. At two o'clock we reached the top, and rushed to the brow to catch the vision of Fusiyama, but only to be disappointed. The mountain was there, but clouds covered his h.o.a.ry head. In vain we watched and waited; still the monarch hid his face. Clouds were round about the throne. The lower ranges stood in full outline, but the heaven-piercing dome, or pyramid of snow, was wrapped in its misty shroud. That for which we had travelled seventy miles, we could not see at last.
Is it not often so in life? The moments that we have looked forward to with highest expectations, are disappointing when they come. We cross the seas, and journey far, to reach some mount of vision, when lo! the sight that was to reward us is hidden from our eyes; while our highest raptures come to us unsought, perhaps in visions of the night.
But our toilsome climb was not unrewarded. Below us lay a broad, deep valley, to which the rice fields gave a vivid green, dotted with houses and villages, which were scattered over the middle distance, and even around the base of Fusiyama himself. Drinking in the full loveliness of the scene, we turned to descend, and after a three hours' march, footsore and weary, entered our Alpine village of Miya-no-s.h.i.+ta.
The next morning we set out to return. Had the day shone bright and clear, we should have been tempted to renew our ascent of the day before. But as the clouds were still over the sky, we reluctantly turned away. Taking another route from that by which we came, we descended a deep valley, and winding around the heights which we had crossed before, at eleven o'clock reentered Odawara.
And now we had done with our marching and our kagos, and once more took to our chariots, which drew up to the door--the men not exactly saddled and bridled, but stripped for the race, with no burden added to the burden of the flesh which they had to carry. A crowd collected to see us depart, and looked on admiringly as we went das.h.i.+ng through the long street of Odawara, and out upon the Tokaido. Our way, as before, led by the sea, which was in no tempestuous mood, but calm and tranquil, as if conscious that the summer was born. The day was not too warm, for the clouds that were flying over the sky s.h.i.+elded us from the direct rays of the sun; yet as we looked out now and then, the giant trees cast their shadows across our path. An American poet sings:
”What is so rare as a day in June?”
Surely nothing could be _more_ rare or fair; but even the sky and the soft Summer air seemed more full of exquisite sensations to the strangers who were that day rolling along the sh.o.r.es of the Pacific, under the mighty cedars of the Tokaido.
Once more I was surprised and delighted at the agility and swiftness of the men who drew our _jin-riki-shas_. As we had but twenty-three miles to go in the afternoon, we took it easily, and gave them first only a gentle trot of five miles to get their limbs a little supple, and then stopped for tiffin. Some of the men had on a loose jacket when we started, besides the girdle about the loins. This they took off and wrung out, for they were dripping with sweat, and wiped their brawny chests and limbs, and then took their chopsticks and applied themselves to their rice, while we went upstairs in the tea-house, and had our soup and other dishes served to us, sitting on the floor like Turks, and then stretched ourselves on the mats, weary with our morning's walk, and even with the motion of riding. While we were trying to get a little rest our men talked and laughed in the court below as if it were child's play to take us over the road. As we resumed our places and turned out of the yard, I had the curiosity to ”time” their speed. I had a couple of athletic fellows, who thought me a mere feather in weight, and made me spin like a top as they bowled along. They started off at an easy trot, which they kept up, without breaking, mile after mile. I did not need to crack the whip, but at the word, away they flew through villages and over the open country, never stopping, but when they came to slightly rising ground, rus.h.i.+ng up like mettlesome horses, and down at full speed. Thus they kept on, and never drew rein till they came to the bank of a river, which had to be crossed in a boat. I took out my watch. It was an hour and a quarter, and they had come seven miles and a half! This was doing pretty well. Of course they could not keep this up all day; yet they will go thirty miles from sunrise to sunset, and even forty, if spurred to it by a little extra pay. Sometimes, indeed, they go even at a still greater speed for a short distance. The first evening, as we came into Fujisawa, I do not doubt that the last fifteen minutes they were going at a speed of ten miles an hour, for they came in on a run. This is magnificent, but I cannot think it very healthful exercise. As gymnasts and prize-fighters grow old and die before their time, so with these human racehorses. Dr. Hepburn says it exhausts them very early; that they break down with disease of the heart or lungs. They are very liable to rheumatism. This is partly owing to their carelessness. They get heated, and then expose their naked bodies to drafts of cold air, which of course stiffens their limbs, so that an old runner becomes like a foundered horse. But even with all care, the fatigue is very exhausting, and often brings on diseases which take them off in their prime. Yet you cannot restrain their speed, any more than that of colts that have never been broken. I often tried to check them, but they ”champed at the bit,” and after a few vain remonstrances I had to give it up, and ”let them slide.”
We did not stop at Fujisawa, where we had slept before, for it is a large and noisy town, but pushed on three miles farther, across a sandy beach to Enos.h.i.+ma, a little fis.h.i.+ng village, which stands on a point of land jutting out into the sea, so that at high tide it is an island, and at low tide a peninsula. Indeed, it is not much more than a projecting rock of a few hundred acres, rising high out of the waters, and covered thickly with groves of trees, among which are several Buddhist temples. As we strolled along the top of the cliffs at sunset, there were a dozen points of view where we could sit under the shade of trees a hundred feet above the waves, as on the cliffs of the Isle of Wight, saying with Tennyson:
”Break, break, break, At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!”
The next morning we rambled over the hills again, for it was a spot where one could but linger. The bay was alive with boats, as
”The fishers went sailing out into the West.”
On the sh.o.r.e were divers, who plunged from the rocks into deep water, to bring up sh.e.l.ls and coral for us, and a sort of sponge peculiar to this country, with spicules like threads of spun gla.s.s. Under the cliff is a long cave, hollowed out by the waves, with an arch overhead like a vaulted roof. Thus under ground or above ground we wandered hour after hour.
But all things pleasant must have an end. The week was gone; it was Sat.u.r.day noon: and so reluctantly leaving both the mountains and the sea, and taking to our chariots once more, we struck into the Tokaido, and in four hours were rolling along the Bund at Yokohama.
Three days after we made a second visit to Yedo, to visit an American gentleman who held a position in the Foreign Office, and spent a night at his pretty j.a.panese house in the Government grounds. Here being, as it were, in the interior of the State Department, we got some European news; among which was the startling intelligence of a revolution in Turkey, and that Abdul Aziz had been deposed!
In our second excursion about the city, as we had long distances to traverse, we took two prancing bucks to each jinrikisha, who ran us such a rig through the streets of Yedo as made us think of John Gilpin when he rode to London town. The fellows were like wild colts, so full of life that they had to kick it off at the heels. Sometimes one pulled in front while the other pushed behind, but more often they went tandem, the one in advance drawing by a cord over his shoulder.
The leader was so full of spring that he fairly bounded over the ground, and if we came to a little elevation, or arched bridge, he sprang into the air like a catamount, while his fellow behind, though a little more stiff, as a ”wheel horse” ought to be, bore himself proudly, tossing up his head, and throwing out his chest, and never lagged for an instant. C---- was delighted, nothing could go too fast for her; but whether it was fear for my character or for my head, I had serious apprehension that I should be ”smashed” like Chinese crockery, and poked my steeds in the rear with my umbrella to signify that I was entirely satisfied with their performances, and that they need not go any faster!
While in Yedo we attended a meeting of missionaries, English, Scotch, and American, in a distant part of the city, and in the evening paid a visit to Prof. Verbeck, who has been here so long that he is an authority on all j.a.panese matters. It was eight o'clock when we set out to return to our friends in the Foreign Office, and we bade our men take us through the main streets, that we might have a view of Yedo by night. The distance was some three miles, the greater part through the princ.i.p.al street. It was near the time of the full moon, but fortunately she was hidden to-night by clouds, for even her soft radiance could not give such animation and picturesqueness to the scene as the lights of the city itself. The broad street for two miles was in a flare of gas-light, like one of the great streets of Paris.
The shops were open and lighted; added to which were hundreds (perhaps thousands) of _jin-riki-shas_, each with its Chinese lantern, glancing two and fro, like so many fireflies on a summer night, making a scene such as one reads of in the Arabian Nights, but as I had never witnessed before.
But that which is of most interest to a stranger in j.a.pan, is not Yedo or Fusiyama, but the sudden revolution which has taken place in its relations with other countries, and in its internal condition. This is one of the most remarkable events in history, which, in a few years, has changed a whole nation, so that from being the most isolated, the most exclusive, and the most rigidly conservative, even in Asia, it has become the most active and enterprising; the most open to foreign influences; the most hospitable to foreign ideas, and the most ready to introduce foreign improvements. This change has taken j.a.pan out of the ranks of the non-progressive nations, to place it, if not in the van of modern improvement, at least not very far in the rear. It has taken it out of the stagnant life of Asia, to infuse into its veins the life of Europe and America. In a word, it has, as it were, unmoored j.a.pan from the coast of Asia, and towed it across the Pacific, to place it alongside of the New World, to have the same course of life and progress.
It is a singular fact, which, as it has united our two nations in the past, ought to unite us in the future, that the opening of j.a.pan came from America. It would have come in time from the natural growth of the commerce of the world, but the immediate occasion was the settlement of California. The first emigration, consequent on the discovery of gold, was in 1849; the treaty with j.a.pan in 1854. As soon as there sprang up an American Empire on our Western coast, there sprang up also an American commerce on the Pacific. Up to that time, except the whalers from New Bedford that went round Cape Horn, to cast their harpoons in the North Pacific, or an occasional vessel to the Sandwich Islands, or that brought a cargo of tea from China, there were few American s.h.i.+ps in the Pacific. But now it was ploughed by fleets of s.h.i.+ps, and by great lines of steamers. The Western coast of America faced the Eastern coast of Asia, and there must be commerce between them. j.a.pan lay in the path to China, and it was inevitable that there must be peaceful intercourse, or there would be armed collision. The time had come when the policy of rigid exclusion could not be permitted any longer. Of course j.a.pan had the right which belongs to any independent power, to regulate its commerce with foreign nations. But there were certain rights which belonged to all nations, and which might be claimed in the interest of humanity. If an American s.h.i.+p, in crossing the Pacific on its way to China, were s.h.i.+pwrecked on the sh.o.r.es of j.a.pan, the sailors who escaped the perils of the sea had the right to food and shelter--not to be regarded as trespa.s.sers or held as prisoners. Yet there had been instances in which such crews had been treated as captives, and shut up in prison.