Part 14

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.

The hotel is built just where the blue beyond of the Western Sea, glowing between the headlands, draws eye and mind away, adding the unbroken curve of Infinity to the quiet lake’s rounded life.

The sun has set; perhaps behind that great green wall he still drops swiftly to the horizon, but in Kizuki there is twilight, a luminous grey twilight that has no shadows, which, spreading, blots all colour from the world. Between wall and wall of hill the sky stretches clear and green. The bay is flooded with a golden light. And there, a black line from gold to green, its base in the yellow water, its crest on the sunset sky, stands Kizuki’s second wonder, the third beauty of Izumo--a tall pointed rock. For the Japanese, who seek much more for line than colour in their beauty, glory in its curves; and the little bay of Kizuki owes its visitors not to the purity of its air, its fishing, boating, bathing, or casino, but to the beauty of its solitary rock and the nearness of its sacred temple.

From shore to sky the luminous grey twilight climbs. The flood of golden light is dead. The great green walls that make the bay are dark. Only in the sky the faintest stain of colour lingers; and there the rock’s lone crest blots a black line upon the dying green.

My _kurumaya_, in his long parson’s coat and waistcoat, blanched the purest white, asks if I have ever seen a bay more beautiful. And all the dozens of Japanese families stand looking out to sea, for the cult of the stone is in their hearts.

Slowly the luminous twilight draws the world in Chinese ink. It climbs the sky, and the colour dies; only the sombre lines of rock are left.

The little bay is grown a mystic _kakemono_.

V

IN MATSUÉ

We had journeyed in trains and in steamers, in big boats and in little boats, in _kuruma_ and _sampan_, and had reached the Land of the Gods--and the inn at Matsué.

Not the least of our difficulties had been to find that inn, for our landlord at Kyoto, on hearing we were bound for Matsué, had offered to make all arrangements for us through a “friend in the Prefecture.” And the arrangements had been made, but when we asked for explanations, the address of the friend or the name of our inn, he only smiled, a polite unexplanatory smile, spread out his hands with ceremony, and bowed. All was “_yoroshī_.”

With this much information we had started, with this much and no more we had arrived. The baby steamer ran alongside the wharf at Matsué, her first-class passengers wriggled out of her cabin, her deck passengers crawled from under the awning; and we sat still, our luggage piled around us, wondering if, like the Peri at the Gates of Paradise, the Land of the Gods would admit us or not.

Just then, when the pause had become really embarrassing, a white-uniformed policeman boarded the steamer; with much ceremony he announced--under the circumstances he could hardly have inquired--that we were the _Ijin San_ from Kyoto. We assented, and he promptly led us outside, where a tall, loose-jointed Japanese, with a Red Indian face hatcheted out of iron wood and wearing “foreign” clothes, stood waiting. The white-uniformed policeman politely performed the ceremony of introduction, and stood aside. This was the friend from the Prefecture; and once we had thoroughly and properly and ceremoniously replied to this fact, which took time, our friend from the Prefecture, who had the smile and the teeth, and the difficulty in concealing them, of the famous Mr. Carker (only he was amiable), introduced our landlord, a little, bright, black squirrel of a man grasping an immense umbrella. More ceremony of course, while the crowd gathered round and the policeman patrolled the group. We were personages. One gesture from the amiable Carker of Matsué Prefecture and five _kurumaya_ burst through the crowd, while twice as many assistants rushed off to bring out our luggage under the eagle eye of the policeman; and with his personal assurances as to our safety and comfort in Matsué, we and our luggage were packed into three _kuruma_, the amiable Carker and the black squirrel of a landlord climbed into two more, and the procession started. The policeman saluted; the crowd, at the most respectful distance, silently stared; Matsué received her visitors as the most distinguished of strangers.

The _kurumaya_, uplifted with pride, tore along at the top of their speed in the exact centre of the road, and the traffic scattered before us. We did not run, we flew, over the stone bridge built just where the canal ends and the lagoon begins, up the long, long street parallel to the lagoon, then a dive to the left over a canal bridge, a dash through a green turning, another dive, another bridge over another canal, and with the most imposing clatter we tore into a gravel court in front of the inn, and pulled up short in the recess of the entrance. In an instant the _shōji_ slipped aside and three women in dark blue _kimono_ were bowing, knees and forehead, on the polished wood. We had reached the inn at Matsué.

The three figures got up, as we left our shoes on the long thick block of rough-hewn granite which forms the front door-step between the gravel and the house, and led us in a long procession to an open matted space in the garden. This was our room. It had but half a wall, where the _tokonoma_ stood; the other half was open _shōji_, leading to the house, and two square pillars at the corners supported the roof. Here we all subsided upon the kneeling-cushions in the strictest order of precedence, based on nearness to the _tokonoma_. Our black squirrel of a landlord and the amiable Carker of the Prefecture, who had also arrived, sat on their heels with great ceremony, though the “foreign” clothes of our friend from the Prefecture got sadly in his way, and then the interchange of polite phrases began. It was exhaustive, for they were, oh! so ceremonious, and although two little girls with goggle eyes fanned us vigorously, and the blue waters of the lagoon filled what should have been wall in front of us, we grew hotter and hotter.

Then the plain daughter of our comely landlady brought in an immense white meat-dish of railway-buffet thickness, and set it down with conscious pride before her mother. It contained piles of chipped ice, which the comely landlady shovelled into miniature tumblers, the size of dolls’ tooth-glasses, with an imposing iron ladle. She sifted over it white sugar from a pie-dish, and the plain daughter presented it to the company. The drink of the Gods themselves was never more divine! Though like Sam Weller’s orthography, which “varied according to the taste and fancy of the speller,” you can eat this drink or you can drink it. Either way is inelegant, but both are delicious.

It was only by relays of this amphibious refreshment, which went on as long as there was anything besides a large pool of water in the meat-dish, that the polite phrases flowed, on our part at least. At last etiquette, even Japanese etiquette, was satisfied, and our amiable friend from the Prefecture bowed himself away.

The plain daughter removed the meat-dish, not resisting to tell us it was “foreign” as she did so, and retired. And we lay out to cool upon the matting.

The lagoon, the garden and a green courtyard filled the three sides of the room where walls might have been. Even the _shōji_ here had been removed, for there were no houses visible; a high green hedge of thick bamboo bounded court and garden, beyond were the pale blue hills.

It was not a room, it was a nest, we lived as freely in the open air as the birds or the flowers; a brown roof hung like a sheltering leaf above our heads, a cool clean matting covered the ground beneath our feet, but the rustle of leaves and of rice-fields, the restless hum of insect life, the rippling rhythm of the wide lagoon, the whole stir of a growing world was ours. We did not peep at it through a window, we lay in it, we _were_ it; and it rippled and hummed and grew part of us, for Pan is not dead, in the Land of the Gods he is living still.

* * * * *

Then the comely landlady called us to our bath; “the honourable hot water was ready,” and the plain daughter assisted us out of our clothes into our _kimono_ with an attention which, to our sophisticated code, was embarrassing, and led us down a passage whose wooden wall opened into the bathroom. Here our landlady received us. She was just sliding down the wooden plank, which shut off the pipe filled with glowing charcoal from the rest of the bath-tub, and looking up she said the bath was “_yoroshī_.”

The water was positively bubbling, at that delicious temperature of 110 degrees which the Japanese love; but we were not yet used to literal boiling, so we demanded cold water. And the two little girls with goggle eyes ran away to fetch it in high wooden pails with stiff wooden handles. They ran out by the wooden _shōji_ on the opposite side, which opened straight on to the gravel courtyard of the entrance, and their dark-blue _kimono_ were tucked up into their _obi_, showing the bright red _kimono_ underneath. And they were laughing.

When we demanded still more cold water they laughed again. The _Ijin San_ had strange ideas of baths evidently. At last, in deference to their feelings, we desisted. The water was no longer bubbling, so we pronounced it “_yoroshī_,” and they all retired.

The bathroom had a grey stone floor and walls of wooden _shōji_; at one end stood the high barrel-bath, and wooden buckets, pails and dippers lay all around. A three-foot-high platform ran all down one side and adjoined the passage-way by which we had entered; from it one stepped into the bath, on it one washed and dried oneself. A bath in Japan, which is used by all the family or hotel in succession, is not intended for washing--that is done outside. The two _shōji_ walls, just sliding panels of wood, opened, one on to the passage-way, the other into the front court, and had no fastenings. The Japanese have attained to that sense of modesty which we still feel immodest. They say to bathe is necessary; you cannot take a bath with your clothes on; a necessary action is never immodest, neither has it any prurient attractions for healthy minds. But a Japanese cannot see the low-necked dresses of western women or the pictures of Modern France without a blush. To him a bathing woman is neither modest nor immodest, but simply indifferent; while exposure, merely to attract, is indecency itself. Obscenity exists in grosser minds as in every country in the world; but the people of Japan have a moral simplicity of thought and action that is at one with the conclusions of abstract ethical philosophy.

Like lobsters going to be cooked, we bathed, and got out swiftly but not silently. A yard of cotton towel, where a bank of purple iris grew out of a pale blue stream, was all the towel we had. It would have adequately dried our finger-nails, but the design was comforting if the towel was not. At last, in grey crêpe _kimono_ and straw sandals, clothes as naturally a growth of the climate and the country as its trees or people, we went back to our wall-less room and sat in peace.