Newfoundland to Cochin China
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It is amusing the next morning to dress with the wall of the room thrown back, and to hear the constant shuffle of sandals, or the clatter of the clogs as these little men and women in their flapping draperies cross the yard; and this courtyard is so characteristic. It is but a few square feet in dimensions, yet there is a dragon-shaped fir-tree in the centre, whose outstretched arms are supported by bamboo poles, which form a little arbour with a seat in it; then there is a stone lantern and a bronze stork, a lamp-post and a wandering paved pathway, that gives a great idea of distance.
We go directly after breakfast to the Temples to see the tombs of the Shoguns. They are three hundred years old, and as beautiful as carving, colour and design can make them. We ascend up a winding flight of stone steps through the gloom of a magnificent avenue of cryptomerias. They are tremendously tall, impressive trees, with their moss-grown trunks and stems, and these steps wind through their midst, a fit leading up to the great mausoleums. Passing the courts of a monastery, we are first shown a Buddhist temple where, hidden behind the silk-bound bamboo blinds, there are three colossal gold Buddhas seated cross-legged on lotus leaves. In the mysterious gloom, they look solemnly and indifferently into space. On the platform by this temple there is suspended a big bronze bell, which is sounded by a pole propelled against the side. As we stand there it gives forth its sonorous musical toll, and at every hour of the day its sweet and solemn note echoes over the valley. Then, seated in a semicircle, the priests of Buddha begin to chant the morning orisons, droning in a nasal tone, and with the accompanying tom-tom of a drum. We leave them to pass on to the tomb of the great warrior Shogun, Yeyásu.
The wide road, bordered by those walls of mortarless blocks of stone, leads up to the flight of steps and an elaborate Sammon or gateway, the entrance to the first temple. There are a number of wooden tablets outside, on which are inscribed the names of the subscribers to the fabric of the temple. The inner court is full of interest, for you must imagine that all the buildings it contains are covered with decorations and paintings. One of the storehouses where pictures, furniture, and other articles belonging to Yeyásu are kept, has carvings in relief of elephants, in which the joints of the hind legs are turned in the wrong direction. There is the tree which the Shogun carried about in his palanquin with him when it was still small enough to travel in a flowerpot, and the stable for the sacred white pony, kept for the use of the god; over which is a very clever group of three monkeys, representing the three countries of India, China, and Japan. One monkey shows he is blind by covering his eyes with his hand, another deaf by stopping his ears, and a third dumb by closing his mouth. The one signifies that you must see no evil; the other that you must hear no evil; the last that you must speak no evil.
The water cistern, hung round as is usual in these temples with coloured rags, is formed of a single block of granite, so evenly cut that the water flowing over it is a glassy, imperceptible surface. Next to it is a library, where through the grating we see a revolving book-case made of lacquer with gilt columns, containing a complete collection of the Buddhist scriptures.
And now we come to the exquisitely beautiful gate of the Yomeimon, with its graceful arabesques founded upon the peony pattern, its niches and columns, its golden clawed dragons and groups of Chinese sages, which leads into the inner court of the temple. Surrounded by open trellis-work screens, we pass up several flights of steps, and take off our boots by the huge bronze money-box waiting for offerings. The interior is filled with a dim light, but you are in the midst of a place so rich in subdued soft colour, so embroidered in elaborate designs and harmonizing tones, that it is some minutes before you can at all appreciate the full beauty. The ceiling is formed of squares divided by ribs of black lacquer and enamelled in peacock blue and green; there are gilt carved screens, where perch birds of paradise, doves, parrots, ducks, peacocks; others where the asarum or peony, the royal flower, the lily, and the lotus, are carved in high relief. And the ante-chambers on either side are equally perfect; in one there is a carved and painted ceiling with an angel surrounded by a chrysanthemum, and some boldly executed eagles; in another, pictures of unicorns on a gold ground, and some phœnixes.
In an adjoining temple a woman in scarlet and white draperies performed a sacred dance. It is a slow and graceful movement; the bells in her hand keep rhythmical time, while she amuses and charms away the evil spirit from the dead Shogun. We have now a long pilgrimage to perform, up to the platform on high, where rests the body of Yeyásu. The ancient stone stairs, the balustrade and columns, are clothed in the most vivid green moss, whilst the cryptomerias form a dark archway above. There is complete silence around. The place is damp and deserted. We might, from their moss-grown appearance, be the first to tread these steps for a thousand years, and slowly mounting them, we feel we are breaking the spell that has hung over them, as we find ourselves on the stone terrace at the top. Here there is a praying temple, and we pass round to the tomb at the back. It is a simple bronze urn, shaped like a small pagoda, with a stone table in front, on which is placed a bronze stork with a candle in its mouth, an incense burner, and a vase of artificial lotus flowers. Such is the end of all greatness.
Returning home, we took jinrikishas for the mountain expedition to Lake Chữzenji. For some miles we travel by the side of the river's bed and between the mountains, meeting many pack-ponies laden with merchandise, shod like the men with straw sandals. It looks rainy, and the men have donned their waterproof coats, and these consist of a straw mantle formed like a thatch; when you see a fisherman standing in the water with his legs immersed, and only this thatch above, it produces the most comical effect of a floating haystack. As we begin climbing the mountain road, we see many strange and beautiful new shrubs, flowers, and trailing creepers growing amongst the rocks. Soon a tea-house comes in sight, with the front entirely open, and pretty sliding screens of blue paper. Cushions are placed on the floor and tea brought by a welcome-smiling damsel. It is pale, straw-coloured tea made from the young undried shoot of the tea-plant, and it is not allowed to infuse, but is poured straight into the tiny handleless cups, with two or three leaves at the bottom, and served on a lacquer tray with pink and white sweetmeats. But how artistic is the design on the common bronze kettle hanging over the open fire in the centre of the room, and kept always boiling for tea to be quickly made; how delicate the pale blue colour of the thin eggshell cups, with the spray of cherry blossom. It is one of the many charms of Japan, that art is brought to use in all the appurtenances of daily life.
The ascent to Chữzenji, right into the heart of the mountains, is perfectly lovely. I have never seen grander or more charming scenery. When we rest for a minute at one of the many tea-houses, there is such a splendid view of two cascades flowing down a rocky precipice. It is the meeting-place of several valleys, and the joining of several mountain spurs, and there is an open park-like space, which looks so green and smiling amid these rugged fastnesses. There is a movement in those bushes in the valley! It is a troop of monkeys jumping from branch to branch; for Japan is a strange mixture of tropical and hardy growths. You find the flowers and plants of north latitudes growing beside the palms and fruits of the tropics. The ascent becomes more and more trying, though this good, new road was hurried over, to be finished for the visit of the Czarewitch last year, which never took place, owing to his attempted assassination by a fanatic near Kyoto.
Clouds came down as we reached the pretty fall at the summit, so we only heard its roar, dulled by the thick mist; but they cleared away again, as we came to the shores of the lake, 4375 feet above the sea. The deserted houses in the village are used by the pilgrims who come here in August. We rested on the balcony of a tea-house overhanging the lake, and then the descent was accomplished in one unbroken run, one coolie acting as a drag behind, whilst the other in the shafts steadied the jinrikisha round the sharp curves.
September 28th.—We spent a long morning amongst the Tombs again, and we shall carry away with us such a vision of picturesquely pointed black roofs, outlined in gold and red, and graceful bamboo groves, of moss-grown flights of steps under the shadow of stately avenues of cryptomerias, of ancient stone walls with a vista leading to massive torii. We shall dream of the many solemn rows of stone lanterns, of gateways bright with rainbow hues and guarded by dragon monsters, of the bronze urns hidden away up on those quiet nooks in the mountains, and above all of the enchanted atmosphere, the deep stillness, the solemn peace that rests over these shrines of the dead.
We waited on the steps of the temple to hear the big bronze bell slowly send out its voice once more at midday across the valley, and then came home.
On our return journey to Tokio in the afternoon we took jinrikishas to Imaicho, the station beyond Nikko, so as to drive five miles through the magnificent cryptomeria grove that runs parallel with the railway. The avenue extends for fifty miles, and was used by the envoy of the Mikado when he sent to offer presents at the tomb of Yeyásu. These cryptomerias are grand trees, with their stately trunks shooting up in regular lines, whilst their long branches only grow from their summits, and intertwining make a dim twilight below.
On arriving at Tokio, we had a drive through the fairyland of its glimmering streets.
CHAPTER VI.
NEW NIPPON
We were up early to get a glimpse of the Mikado as he passes to open some new barracks. His route is lined with policemen, pigmy but efficient guardians of the peace, with their white duck uniforms and large swords. The morning mists are floating off the grey green moats, as we pass into quite a new quarter of Tokio, where the noblemen have their palaces, amid gardens green with willows and acacias. We drive past the red brick buildings of the Peeress' School, the New Police Buildings, and the Dowager Empress' Palace, guarded by sentries, until we come out on the exercising ground before the barracks.
Scattered about this plain are companies of infantry and cavalry, mounted on small black ponies, whilst a band is being marched inside the barrack square, where are anxious-looking groups of officers in gala dress, ablaze with decorations of the Order of the Chrysanthemum and Rising Sun, awaiting their sovereign's arrival. It is an apathetic crowd, which shows no excitement as the advance guard with an outrider in green and gold livery appears, quickly followed by two closed barouches, the first of which is surrounded by a company of Lancers with flying pennons. We just catch a passing glimpse of a dark man with a beard, rather stout, and looking more than his age of forty. The band plays the National Anthem and the gates close on the procession.
And this is the 121st Sovereign of Japan, the first commencing his reign in 660 b.c., as the preamble to the Constitution runs: "Having by virtue of the glories of our ancestor ascended the throne of a lineal succession unbroken for ages eternal." In connection with the ancestor-worship, which is the only form of worship performed by the upper classes, the Emperor's oath on his accession is interesting. "We, the successor to the prosperous throne of our Predecessors, do humbly and solemnly swear to the Imperial Founder of our House, and to our other Imperial Ancestors, that in pursuance of a great policy, co-extensive with the Heaven and with the Earth, we shall maintain, and secure from decline, the ancient form of government.
"That we have been so fortunate in our reign in keeping with the tendency of the times as to accomplish this work, we owe to the glorious spirits of the Imperial Founder of our House and our other Imperial Founders. We now reverently make prayer to them and to our Illustrious Father and implore help of their sacred spirits, and make to them solemn oath, never at this time, nor in the future, to fail to be an example to our subjects in the observance of the Law."
At eleven o'clock, Mr. Nagasaki, Master of the Ceremonies in the Imperial Household, calls for us in a royal carriage to show us the country Palace of Sheba, whose gardens lie by the sea-shore. Side by side in the grounds, which are approached by a very unpretentious drive and entrance, stand the European Palace, furnished, and the Japanese one of paper screens and matting covered floor, though we are shown here into a carpeted room, with heliotrope satin covered chairs and sofa. It is the custom now in Japanese houses of the upper ten, to have one European furnished room, which is only used for the reception of foreigners. As we take tea out of the little eggshell cups, we do not think the garden looks large, but by the time we have followed the blue uniformed janitor, with the eternal chrysanthemum on his cap, in his up and down wanderings, we feel as if we had walked miles.
The Japanese ideal of landscape gardening is to have a different view from every point, and to this end they make a miniature park. These knolls, mounted by wooden steps on one side and descended on the other, represent hills; the pond crossed by a stone bridge made out of two stones, is a lake; the island in its midst is formed of a rock and one tree; the timber is represented by some dwarfed and distorted fir trees, for the smaller and more spreading, the more valuable they become. The Japanese take great pains with these deformed trees, pruning them back, and picking out the fir needles one by one. They give large sums of money for an old tree, and we were shown a tiny fir in a pot over eighty years old. And yet these Japanese gardens, twisted and deformed as they are, with no open green lawns or bright flower-beds, are very quaint and attractive in their own way. Then we drove on to the Euryo-kwan, another Imperial Palace, where the Emperor and Empress hold their annual cherry blossom party in April, and when the arched avenue we are standing under, is a mass of pink and white bloom. The chrysanthemum garden party at the Palace is in November, and very beautiful, from all accounts it must be, the plants trained into every shape and device, of ships, pagodas, and umbrellas.
Mr. Nagasaki told us a great deal of the bitterness of the struggle of old Japan against the sudden inroad of European custom, a struggle that is apparent everywhere, but more especially in the capital at Tokio. The next generation will be altogether European. The Court is modelled on the etiquette of our English Court, and the Emperor has the same court officials as the Queen, whilst the Empress holds Drawing Rooms, and has her ladies in waiting, everyone wearing European and low evening dresses. We found that all gentlemen wear European clothes, whilst their wives yet cling to the far more comfortable and graceful kimono. English is taught in all the upper-class, schools, and spoken very generally in shops, where the names are also written up in English, though there are only 3000 Europeans altogether resident in Japan. The Mikado has a son of twelve, and two little girls, and the former is soon to have an English tutor.
We drove to Ueno Park, to a luncheon given in our honour by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Viscount Enomotto. This restaurant is the "Berkeley" of Tokio, and it was a most elaborate repast, though we could have wished that it had been in a Japanese house. However, Viscount Enomotto, Viscount Okabé, Mr. Nagasaki, and M. Haryashi Tadasu, had brought their wives, Viscountess Okabé being a charming bride who spoke English. These ladies wore kimonos in pale blue, fawn and grey, and their costly embroidered obis were clasped round with a single jewel. They had diamond rings and brooches, and their glossy hair arranged in wonderfully glossy coques with tortoiseshell combs; and such sweet gracious ladies as they were, shyly putting out their hands, and bowing so low and gracefully, and speaking in such soft, caressing tones. Even here, though, European influences were at work, for I saw a pair of high-heeled French shoes, and even a pair of carpet slippers peeping out from under the kimonos.
The room had such beautiful vases of flowers, arranged as only Japanese can, not put together, but as if growing in natural sprays. After much drinking of healths and ceremonious compliments, we adjourned to the neighbouring Technical School of Art, where we saw specimens of lacquer work, and some of the thirty-five processes through which it passes before completion. The natural taste for art in the nation comes out in the work of these 190 students, who pay ten yen a year for their instruction, for their wood carvings and drawings from life are of extraordinary excellence, and executed too with the roughest tools.
The same evening we visited the Maple Leaf Club, to see a performance of "geisha" or dancing girls.
This fashionable club was founded by the Nobles, for the preservation of Japanese customs, and as a protest against the general use of European ones. Thirty dancing girls are maintained, educated and kept in strict discipline from the age of fourteen, in the premises of the club. We are ushered through numerous dimly-lighted corridors, on our stockinged feet, into a large matted room, bare of furniture, where we squat on cushions on the floor. A Japanese dinner is served, course after course being brought in lacquer bowls. A row of maidens, with their almond eyes dancing with laughter, squat before us and smile gleefully as we vainly struggle with our chopsticks, and try with frantic efforts to swallow the recherché dinner, for as Murray truly says: "Europeans cannot eat Japanese food." And this was the ménu. Sweet cakes of rice and sugar, served on plates with the monogram of a maple leaf; soup, a brown liquid with floating lumps of fish; an omelette (of ancient eggs) with fish sauce; a hot trout with upturned tail, with grated cheese coloured pink, a stewed fig, and a finger-like radish that tasted like ginger; more fish with a nasty sauce and stewed seaweed. As will be seen, fish formed a large item of the dinner, for the Japanese eat all that comes out of the sea. Saké is served from the long-necked blue and white bottles into tiny cups. Despair was gaining upon us at the ceaseless arrival of more lacquer bowls, when the work of the evening commenced.
Three demure damsels, in quiet kimonos, with their samisens or guitars, enter, and begin to play and sing. From behind a screen, their faces hidden by their fans, steal in three geishas, dressed in the loveliest grey and pink kimonos, embroidered with the crimson leaf of the maple. Slowly they girate, their clinging garments trailing around their turned-in toes. Deliberate and graceful are their slow motions, and the three figures act as one piece, and not only do their arms move in unison, but their faces do so too, and they elevate the eyebrows and close the eyes with the rise and fall of the body. In pretty imagery they tell the pathetic little story of the maple leaf: its birth and growth, its mature glory, and its death, the dance ending by the fans being thrown upon the floor, even as it falls to the ground and dies. A second performance is a clever mimicry, by the aid of masks, of an old man, his wife and daughter; and the last dance, with the floating gauze streamers that wave rhythmically with the music, is most elegant. These geishas are the favourite form of amusement, and in all villages you pass houses with mysterious gratings, enclosing a floor, where nightly the gentle wail of the samisen is heard and the graceful performance of the geishas is seen.
October 1st.—We have had a terrible experience of a typhoon. It began with a thunder-storm last night, accompanied by violent showers of tropical rain, the drops being as large as small marbles, whilst the thunder claps crackled and boomed overhead, and the dazzling lightning was blinding. The air was full of electricity, and a feeling of restless foreboding took possession of all. This morning the air was so damp and close that you felt scarcely able to breathe. Violent gusts of wind, increasing in succession, alternate with strange pauses of breathless stillness. There is no twitter of bird or hum of beautiful dragon fly, for they are forewarned by these signals of danger, and have crept into safety. The force of the wind increases, and it is blowing a hurricane, as in our ignorance of these dreadful phenomena of typhoons (a word formed from the Japanese meaning "great wind,") we leave the Imperial Hotel at Tokio, on our return journey to Yokohama, just as it reaches its height.
Trying to walk to the station, I was blown away at the first corner, and then two men with a jinrikisha began a hand-to-hand struggle with the wind, making scarcely any progress, and across the open spaces being literally blown backwards, and only able to steady the jinrikisha from going bodily over. How we reached the Shimbashi station I never understood, but I know that we arrived breathless, blinded, and soaked through with the rain, with dishevelled hair and battered hats, thankful only for the shelter of the station; and just as we seated ourselves in the carriage, a lady was brought in very much bruised and hurt by the overturning of her jinrikisha, which had been blown away over an embankment into the canal. You may read descriptions of typhoons, but until you have seen one, I defy anyone to have the smallest idea of its awful power.
The fury of the wind was terrible. The train stood quite still at times, unable to steam, however slowly, against the wind, whilst the carriages trembled and rocked on the narrow gauge with every blast of wind, and we thought more than once that it must be blown over. The sea was carried in long spindrifts or lashed into brown whirlpools; an awfully angry sea, boiling and hungry, lashing up in mist and spray against the breakwater we were on. And here are several heartrending sights, for one sampan has been washed up and completely broken on the breakwater, whilst others are being wrecked against its sides, and we can see the horror-stricken faces of the men clinging in agony to it; whilst other sampans are fast drifting on to it, and we watch with awful fear their frantic efforts to save themselves. Houses are unroofed or blown down, trees bent double or uprooted as we look, hedges collapse, crops are laid low, and we in this little carriage are out in its midst, with nothing to break the full fury of the elements. But even as we begin to wonder what to do on our arrival at Yokohama, we see that the crisis is past and the gale subsiding. At Yokohama the streets are strewn with the débris of the typhoon, and all vessels in the harbour still have their steam up, should their anchors drag. In two hours the most extraordinary change had taken place. The waters of the harbour had become blue, and tranquilly lapped the shore, the sun shone out, the wind died to a breeze. It was a perfect summer's afternoon. The wind when we left Tokio was blowing at 76·8 miles an hour; four hours afterwards it had fallen to 40, and soon after died away.
We spend a happy afternoon in the curio shops, at Messrs. Kühn and Messrs. Welsh, whom we consider have the best things, and then visit, with Mr. Hall, a nursery garden on the Bluff, for we think of having one of those prim little Japanese gardens at home.
The next morning we leave Yokohama, and make an expedition to Kamakura, a pretty seaside village, to see the great Diabutsu. The approach to the Buddha is through a gateway which bears the following beautiful inscription,—
Kotoku Monastery: "Stranger, whosoever thou art, and whatsoever be thy creed, when thou enterest this sanctuary, remember thou treadest upon ground hallowed by the worship of ages.
"This is the Temple of Buddha, and the gate of the Eternal, and should therefore be entered with reverence.—By order of the Prior."
And with this grand exhortation in our ears we pass into the quiet garden, with its avenue of cherry and plum trees, lying under the hills in the sunshine, a perfect stillness all around, and where we see the half-opened eyes of the colossal Buddha bent forward, as if in passive contemplation of this quiet scene. There under the stars, amid storm and wind, mist or tropical sun, he has sat for ages, apathetic, but not unconscious. The hands lie on his crossed knees, the thumbs meeting at the finger-tips, and forming two complete circles.