Part 28 (1/2)

In the old days notable samurai, fugitives from Tokyo, had kept themselves secluded in the rooms we occupied at Yamaguchi. In s.h.i.+mane we had small plain low-ceiled rooms in which daimyos had been accommodated. Not here alone had I evidences of the simplicity of the life of Old j.a.pan.

I was wakened in the morning by the voice of a woman earnestly praying. She stood in the yard of the house opposite and faced first in one direction and then in another. A friend of mine once stayed overnight at an inn on the river at Kyoto. In the morning he saw several men and a considerable number of women praying by the waterside. They were the keepers and inmates of houses of ill-fame.

The old s.h.i.+nto idea was that prayers might be made anywhere at other times than festivals, for the G.o.d was at the shrine at festivals only.

Nowadays some old men go to the shrine every morning, just as many old women are seen at the Buddhist temples daily. Half the visitors to a s.h.i.+nto shrine, an educated man a.s.sured me, may pray, but in the case of the other half the ”wors.h.i.+p” is ”no more than a motion of respect.”

My friend told me that when he prayed at a shrine his prayer was for his children's or his parents' health.

At a county town I found a library of 4,000 volumes, largely an inheritance from the feudal regime. Wherever I went I could not but note the cl.u.s.ter of readers at the open fronts of bookshops.[187]

On our second day's journey in s.h.i.+mane I had a _kuruma_ with wooden wheels, and in the hills the day after we pa.s.sed a man kneeling in a _kago_, the old-fas.h.i.+oned litter. When we took to a _basha_ we discovered that, owing to the roughness of the road, we had a driver for each of our two horses. We had also an agile lad who hung on first to one part and then another of the vehicle and seemed to be essential in some way to its successful management. The head of the hatless chief driver was shaved absolutely smooth.

It was a rare thing for a foreigner to pa.s.s this way. My companion frequently told me that he had difficulty in understanding what people said.

We saw an extinct volcano called ”Green Field Mountain.” There was not a tree on it and it was said never to have possessed any. The whole surface was closely cut, the patches cut at different periods showing up in rectangular strips of varying shades. Wherever the hills were treeless and too steep for cultivation they were carefully cut for fodder. In cultivable places houses were standing on the minimum of ground. More than once we had a view of a characteristic piece of scenery, a das.h.i.+ng stream seen through a clump of bamboo.

When our basha stopped for the feeding of the horses, they had a tub of mixture composed of boiled naked barley, rice chaff, chopped straw and chopped green stuff. I noticed near the inn a doll in a tree. It had been put there by children who believe that they can secure by so doing a fine day for an outing. When we started again we met with a company of strolling players: a man, his wife and two girls, all with clever faces. We also saw several peasant anglers fis.h.i.+ng or going home with their catch. A licence available from July to December cost 50 sen.

At a shop I made a note of its signs, the usual strips of white wood about 8 ins. by 3, nailed up perpendicularly, with the inscriptions written in black. One sign was the announcement of the name and address of the householder, which must be shown on every j.a.panese house. A second stated that the place was licensed as a shop, a third that the householder's wife was licensed to keep an inn, a fourth that the householder was a coc.o.o.n merchant, a fifth that he was a member of the co-operative credit society, a sixth that he belonged to the Red Cross Society, a seventh that his wife was a member of the Patriotic Women's Society,[188] the eighth, ninth and tenth that the shopkeeper was an adherent of a certain s.h.i.+nto shrine, a member of a s.h.i.+nto organisation and had visited three shrines and made donations to them.

An eleventh board proclaimed that he was of the Zen sect of Buddhism.

Finally, there was a box in which was stored the charms from various shrines.

We pa.s.sed a company of villagers working on the road for the local authority. The labourers were chiefly old people and they were taking their task very easily. Farther along the road men and women were working singly. It seemed that the labourers belonged to families which, instead of paying rates, did a bit of roadmending. The work was done when they had time to spare.

For some time we had been in a part of the country in which the ridges of the houses were of tiles. At an earlier stage of our journey they had been either of straw or of earth with flowers or shrubs growing in it. The s.h.i.+ny, red-brown tiles give place elsewhere to a slate-coloured variety. The surface of all of these tiles is so smooth that they are unlikely to change their hard tint for years.

Meanwhile they give the villages a look of newness. Their use is spreading rapidly. s.h.i.+ny though the tiles may be, one cannot but admire the neat way in which they interlock. One day when I wondered about the cost involved in recovering roofs with these tiles, a woman worker who overheard me promptly said that, reckoning tiles and labour, the cost was 60 or 70 sen per 22 tiles. In the old days tiled porticoes were forbidden to the commonalty. They were allowed only to daimyos who also used exclusively the arm rests which every visitor to an inn may now command. Besides arm rests I have frequently had kneeling cus.h.i.+ons of the white brocade formerly used only for the _zabuton_ of Buddhist priests.

In the county through which we were pa.s.sing the fine water gra.s.s, called _i_, used for mat making, is grown on an area of about 78 _cho_. It is sown in seed beds like rice and is transplanted into inferior paddies in September. (The gra.s.s is better grown in Hiros.h.i.+ma and Okayama.)

I saw a beautiful tree in red blossom. The name given to it is ”monkey slip,” because of the smoothness of its skin, which recalled the name of that very different ornament of suburban gardens, ”monkey puzzle.”

During this journey we recovered something of the conditions of old-time travel. There were chats by the way and conferences at the inn in the evening and in the morning concerning distances, the kind of vehicles available, the character of their drivers, the charges, the condition of the road, the probable weather and the places at which satisfactory accommodation might be had. What was different from the old days was that at every stopping-place but one we had electric light. Part of our journey was done in a small motor bus lighted by electricity. Like the automobile we had hired a day or two before, it was driven--by two young men in blue cotton tights--at too high a speed considering the narrowness and curliness of the roads by which we crossed the pa.s.ses. The roads are kept in reasonably good condition, but they were made for hand cart and _kuruma_ traffic.

We pa.s.sed an island on which I was told there were a dozen houses.

When a death occurs a beacon fire is made and a priest on the mainland conducts a funeral ceremony. By the custom of the island it is forbidden to increase the number of the houses, so presumably several families live together. In the mountain communities of the mainland, where the number of houses is also restricted, it is usual for only the eldest brother to be allowed to marry. The children of younger brothers are brought up in the families of their mothers.

We pa.s.sed at one of the fis.h.i.+ng hamlets the wreck of a Russian cruiser which came ash.o.r.e after the battle of Tsus.h.i.+ma. Two boat derricks from the cruiser served as gate posts at the entrance of the school playground.

A familiar sight on a country road is the itinerant medicine vendor.

He or his employer believes in pus.h.i.+ng business by means of an impressive outfit. One typical cure-all seller, who had his medicines in a s.h.i.+ny bag slung over his shoulders, wore yellow shoes, cotton drawers, a frock coat, a peaked cap with three gold stripes, and a mysterious badge. On his hands he had white cotton gloves and as he walked he played a concertina. A common practice is to leave with housewives a bag of medicines without charge. Next year another call is made, when the pills and what not which have been used are paid for and a new bag is exchanged for the old one.

The use of dogs to help to draw _kuruma_ is forbidden in some prefectures, but in three stages of our journey in s.h.i.+mane we had the aid of robust dogs. During this period, however, I saw, attached to _kuruma_ we pa.s.sed, three dogs which did not seem up to their work.

Dogs suffer when used for draught purposes because their chests are not adapted for pulling and because the pads of their feet get tender.

The animals we had were treated well. Each _kuruma_ had a cord, with a hook at the end, attached to it; and this hook was slipped into a ring on the dog's harness. The dogs were released when we went downhill and usually on the level. Several times during each run, when we came to a stream or a pond or even a ditch, the dogs were released for a bathe.

They invariably leapt into the water, drank moderately, and then, if the water was too shallow for swimming, sat down in it and then lay down. Sometimes a dog temporarily at liberty would find on his own account a small water hole, and it was comical to see him taking a sitz bath in it. When the sun was hot a dog would sometimes be retained on his cord when not pulling in order that he might trot along in the shade below the _kuruma_. The dog of the _kuruma_ following mine usually managed when pulling to take advantage of the shade thrown by my vehicle. A _kurumaya_ told me that he had given 8 yen for his dog. Dogs were sometimes sold for from 10 to 15 yen. The difficulty was to get a dog that had good feet and would pull. The dogs I saw were all mongrels with sometimes a retriever, bloodhound or Great Dane strain.

I made enquiries about another county town library. There were 18,000 volumes of which 300 consisted of European books and 600 of bound magazines. The annual expenditure on books, and I presume magazines, was 600 yen.

We pa.s.sed a ”special tribe” hamlet. Here the Eta were devoting themselves to tanning and bamboo work. I was told of other ”peculiar people” called Hachia, also of a hawker-beggar cla.s.s which sells small things of bra.s.s or bamboo or travels with performing monkeys.