Part 6

Straight down below, 13,000 feet away, it lay. All the long line of the river Fujikawa, gleaming blue-black as rough-cast iron, among the orange sand-flats of its mouth. And the soft curves of the Yokohama peninsula, a smaller but more graceful Italy, floating, floating, on the water, purple-blue on azure blue.

And all beyond was the blue intensity of the infinite sea.

So near it looked, so clear that the steely line of the Fujikawa seemed a sword-blade one could stoop and reach. And leaning we looked from Fuji’s top as from a tower; but Fuji’s self we could not see. His cinder-slopes had vanished.

Straight down below there was the world, and we above it hung suspended 13,000 feet above the earth. Beyond, above, outside of it. Dear Earth, how still it lay, how beautiful!

And into my mind there floated the old, old words: “And He divided the land from the waters, and the dry land He called Earth.... And God looked and saw that it was good.”

Above the world, beyond it, we too could look and see, and we too “saw that it was good.”

* * * * *

Then the little wandering track, beaten firm by the feet of the pilgrims, led on, up and down, among the cinders of Fuji’s sides, and round to that great crack in the cup’s rim where the pathway from Gotemba reached the summit.

Here were crowds of people, all the pilgrims on Fuji San, pouring through the white-wood wicket, or buying draughts of the sacred “Golden Water” which is born in the depths of the crater.

As we stood drinking our little bowlful of the ice-cold water, the low boom of a Japanese temple bell came swaying through the air, and each jagged peak round the crater’s rim added its muffled echo to the bell’s deep boom.

The level space which formed the floor to this big crack was full of pilgrims old and young, men, women and little children, and they were all pressing forward between the tall poles, where the long banners tied top and bottom were stirring in the wind, to the little temple lying under the very edge of Fuji, as a nest beneath the eaves. The temple seemed full already, but the crowd, courteous for all their zeal, pressed forward gently, content, if they could not enter, to stay outside.

Again the low liquid boom came swaying through the air, prolonged by the muffled echoes of the jagged peaks. And we too walked towards the temple. But the patient crowd without reached already to the pathway, and must press back against the cinder sides as the long procession of black-robed priests, with copes and stoles and vestments of rich brocade, swept into the temple.

Then the liquid booming bell swayed out again--and was still; and the muffled echoes of the peaks, subdued and faint, lingered in the intense silence.

The priests had passed within.

* * * * *

The ash on the floor of the crater was soft and very thick. It lay in thin round flakes that broke between the fingers, and the feet sank into it, drawn under as on sand that is half-quick. It was like walking on piles of those sunlit flecks that carpet a beech-wood; but the light had gone out of these and left them pale and grey.

All around the black walls of the crater rose up into the sky, five hundred feet of sheer height. Shut into the crater pit with the dead ash sucking our feet we seemed to have come to the region where death lies behind--and birth is yet to come. We stood in the Place of Pause, in that Between which is Nothingness.

Smooth as the sand of the shore the ash stretched along. Loose and thick the flakes were piled, and the feet, drawn under, grew heavy.

What was beneath? Nothingness?

And a strange fear of falling through the loose ash into that Nothingness grew with each empty moment.

Faintly, far away, the stir of Life’s Birth reached into the void. It came from below, deep through the ash where a little clear trickle of water sang in the silence. Distinct, but so soft that the senses must needs strain to hear. Through the ash, beneath the ash, the water trickled, faint as a new-born breath. And its name it was Golden.

* * * * *

The hut when we reached it was empty, and it lay facing the lava-wall, the last of the row, and all of them were open in front, like cages at the Zoo.

The square pit with its charcoal fire was in front here, and we had to pass behind it to reach the unoccupied space at the back. As we crawled over the matting darkened by our own shadows, for the only light came through the open front, we almost stumbled over some one rolled up in a bundle of _futon_. It was the old, old woman of the morning. She was asleep, in the deep, dull sleep of utter exhaustion, and her wrinkled chin, dropped down, trembled, as she slept.

It was very cold in the hut, and we too were glad of _futon_ and egg-bowls of hot tea, glad to eat our tinned tongue and slices of dry bread, and gladder still just to stay wrapt in the _futon_, and sleepily rest.

The landlord, like an image, sat on his heels in the well and never stirred. From time to time he put fresh pieces of charcoal on the fire with a pair of brass chopsticks; then the smoke, sweeping in dense waves through the room, would make us all cough abruptly, till it melted slowly away and the room was still.

Beyond the lava-wall the grey-white clouds lay herded as a fold of sheep, and we watched them mounting up and up, rolling against the wall, rising above it, sending thin wreaths and wisps of mists across the pathway, which stayed like ribbons in the air, and then sinking, dropped down again. Often they came up, and always rolled back beaten. Fuji’s summit is above the clouds, they could not scale it.

In twos and threes and little groups, the white-robed pilgrims stopped to sit on the edge of the matting and drink tea, and eat innumerable balls of rice rolled in a soft grated substance that looked to be, but was not, cheese--a thing unknown in this milkless land. So the pilgrims sat on the matting and ate their rice-balls, which the landlord, without moving his body a hair’s-breadth, produced and rolled, and sprinkled, and handed. And the acrid smoke from the charcoal fire drifted across the room, filling it.

* * * * *

Quite suddenly I awoke out of my sleep, to find some one on the floor beside me waking the old, old woman. It took her a long time to struggle out of that dense, deep sleep into a state of even drowsy consciousness. She sat up, bewildered, and when they told her she must go, get up, climb all that weary way down again, the old face seemed to shrink together in hopeless despair. There was a long dreary pause. Then the old, old woman bowed, the smile of courtesy upon her worn old face.

“_Yoroshū gozaimas_” (“As it honourably pleases you”), she said. And rising, she tottered out.

This flesh was more than weak, but the spirit was the spirit of her race--it sacrificed all things.

* * * * *

We were to sleep in Yoshida that night, and for us too it was time to go. So leaving our money on the edge of the fire-pit we crawled out of the hut. The image sitting on its heels never stirred; with one swift glance beneath the eyelids, he had reckoned the money to the last _sen_, but whether more or less than he expected, he remained immovable, magnificently unconscious, occupied solely in bowing us out. Had it been less than the proper charge we certainly should have heard of it through the guide, but as tea is never charged for, each visitor pays for it according to his rank, exigencies, generosity, and the status of the tea-house. In reality, of course, it is payment for attendance as well as tea.

The Japanese hold that no service performed can ever have a money equivalent. In their economy, money was never a real asset, as courage, knowledge or art, and they ignored it, when they did not despise it. So in the old days, those trades which had most to do with money, whose aim seemed to be the getting of money, were looked down on. Shopkeepers and merchants ranked below swordsmiths, peasants and artisans. Only the ignoble would choose such as a life’s work, and if to-day this idea has hindered commerce, if it has produced the low standard of some business men, and consequently the foreigner’s bad opinion of them, it has, on the other hand, lifted the nation out of the rut of sordid greed, made it seek after, and lay fast hold of, that which seems to it true--made of its people a race of men, of gentlemen, honourable, high-principled, and capable of indomitable devotion to their ideal.

* * * * *

We stepped off the summit of Fuji San into a wet white cloud, which was the sky of the earth below. For the first two stages the way down was the same as the way up, but at No. 8 the paths divided, the one to Yoshida leading away to the left.

After we had made a sort of semi-tour of the mountain we climbed over a lava-ridge and found ourselves in the centre of a black scoop in Fuji’s side that, coming from above, stretched interminably downwards. And the whole of the huge groove was a mass of the loosest, most shifting cinder. There was no path. One went down. At each step all the cinders on that part of Fuji slid bodily, tumbling over each other in their haste. You slid too, until the cinders, piling themselves up and up, reached the knee, and abruptly you stopped, only to pull out that leg and begin to slide again with the other. The rate at which one shot down was prodigious, and the method alarming. Each step seemed to start half the mountain rolling, rolling, for ever downwards, and there seemed no particular reason why the other half with you on it should not roll away too. Positively, as the torrent of cinders rolled and rolled and rolled, the conviction that Fujiyama must look smaller next morning grew upon me. Until with a flash of understanding I remembered the legend of the dust brought down by the pilgrims’ feet flying each night back to the mountain. And it seemed a very necessary explanation, and quite convincing too, when I looked at the tons and tons of cinders which my feet alone were sending down Fuji’s side.

After awhile the slope grew even steeper, and the cinders from black became a deep dull red. And still one shot downwards. Small patches of powdery, grey snow sprinkled with tiny round spots were tucked away here between the red cinders, and the whole slope was covered with the straw sandals of former pilgrims. They were scattered over the red cinders like a new kind of vegetation hardier than the rest, and there were thousands on thousands of them.

And still we shot downwards. At too steep an angle now to be brought up merely by the weight of the cinders, so that we were obliged to invent brakes with our more or less free foot, our extended arms, or the angle of our bodies; and we were very glad indeed of our staves to put any sort of term to the long uncomfortable slide.

It was a long while before we passed out of the zone of the _waraji_, and saw real little green things growing between the cinders. They looked utterly miserable and degenerate, but they did make the ballast solider, and the sliding easier.

It was a gigantic slide, but we brought up at last on a ridge of grey rock, over which we had to climb carefully, for it was full of holes. On the other side of this ridge the degenerate green weeds had grown into degenerate green plants; and after a few more slides and climbs the plants became bushes, stunted and miserable, but bushes, and we came out on to a sort of natural grass platform, before the rest-house of No. 4, Yoshida side. It was dirty, the first dirty house I had ever seen in Japan. Below us, as though stopped short by a word of command, “Thus far and no further,” were the trees; the tops of the nearest were on a level with the platform, but not one grew upon it.

With the cinder-slope behind us we stepped off the grass platform straight into the forest. It was a beautiful forest. First firs, and then, as we went downwards, green trees, small oaks and cryptomerias of all kinds.

To feet weary of ballast-heaps, the forest footpath was a rest refreshing, and the delight of growing trees and green fresh leaves after _waraji_ and cinders, an enchantment. But Fuji had not finished his surprises or his trials. Soon the pathway disappeared from under our feet, and only the roots of the trees remained. On these we had to walk, and they were slippery, knotted, and far apart, and full of tangled holes that caught and tripped the feet.

A polite Japanese student came and walked with us a little way “to improve his English,” but his feet in their _waraji_ stepped over the tree-roots faster than ours in our boots, and we were soon left alone again.

Gradually, as we went downwards, the forest altered from the austere wood of the mountain to the rich luxuriant wood of the plains, green with moss, covered with creepers, dripping with big juicy drops of water as though rich sap were oozing from every vein.

All through the wood there were tiny tea-houses, set under a tree and lost among the branches. We passed No. 1 at least seven times, each time certain that it really must be the real original No. 1, and that the “horse-turn-back” station, where we could get a _basha_ to carry us to Yoshida, was necessarily “the next.” After the weary sliding down that abrupt slope, the muscles of one’s legs were all trembling with the strain, and the tree-roots, slippery and uncertain, became doubly difficult. We were still going down so steeply that the hollow of the pathway lay like a green chimney below us. Slowly up through this living funnel came the pilgrim’s chant.

“We are going,” and the little bells clashed out triumphant--“we are going to the top.”

Then the deep sing-song of the chorus, coming nearer with each syllable, grew louder:

“Top ... the top ... to the top.”

We waited while the chant coming up from the green depths below came nearer, came past us, went on.

From the green heights above it sounded down.

“We are going,” and the tiny cymbals clashed--“we are going to the top.”

And faintly echoing from above came the answer: “To the top ... the top ... top.”

* * * * *

And still the first stations succeeded one another, and the tired feet and the aching muscles grew more weary. The wood was dense as ever, but less steep, and at last there came earth as well as tree-roots for a pathway.

We passed through another station, half tea-house, half temple, where a man sat behind a tray of thin irons stamped with the temple’s crest, and where gods and tea-bowls filled the shelves. The path went through it and out again, under the trees, a path of good stamped earth. Then twisting suddenly it ended in four smooth green steps that led down into a natural amphitheatre, with tea-houses on each side. This was the _Mma gaeshi_--“horse-turn-back” station--Yoshida side. Away to the left were several square boxes on wheels, otherwise the stage was empty. It was, indeed, exactly like a “set” in an opera.

We hobbled, it was so difficult to walk on _flat_ earth, to a tea-house and sat down demanding _basha_. Slowly a man entered right front, and crossing left centre tipped up a square box and waited. Then another man, entering left front, harnessed a horse to it. This took them half an hour, because they wanted four times too much for the drive to Yoshida, and at each refusal, at each expostulation, at each rebate, the one man dropped the square box down on the ground and the other gave up harnessing the horse. Meanwhile we drank tea and monotonously repeated our price. After half an hour the _basha_ was finally harnessed, and crossing left front we got in.

This _basha_ was simply a square box without a lid, mounted on wheels. You sat on a piece of matting spread at the bottom, leant against the wooden back and clutched hard at the sides to keep yourself in. The driver sat on the shaft and used his feet as a brake. The reins consisted of one length of straw rope attached to the left side of the horse’s head.

For the first half-hour the relief of stretching out one’s miserable, trembling legs was pure bliss, after that, _basha_-driving was pleasant but jolty, and after that it became renewed torture to endure the jolting, and the aches in one’s back and arms were vigorous and persistent. Road there was none, only two large ruts, in, over and among which we wandered.

The trees stopped as abruptly above the natural amphitheatre of _Mma gaeshi_ as they had begun below the platform of No. 4. And for the whole two hours of our journey to Yoshida we travelled over an immense far-reaching common, one of the soft ripples at Fuji’s base. There was not a house or a village to be seen, nothing but the wide stretch of green common.

It was half-past five when the _basha_ started out among the ruts, and the clear, colourless light of a northern evening--we were 3000 feet up--which is not cold, yet is so colourless, enclosed the earth. The sky was as bare of clouds as the common of landmarks; the one lay palely blue above, the other stretched subduedly green below. Here and there the green was crossed by long flushes of colour, with the red of tiny tiger-lilies, and the pale yellow of the evening primrose. Behind, Lord Fuji rose majestic. At first a line of fleecy cloud had lain above the deep green of the forest, and Fuji’s head was lost in mist, but at the sunset the clouds fell away lower and lower, until the whole long sweep of Fuji rose up triumphant into the blue.

It was but slowly that the _basha_ jolted among the deep-cut ruts of the common, and but slowly that we travelled on, downwards.

Looking out across the wide flat land we saw that the whole world was slightly rounded, slightly tilted. It was like journeying over a large green apple. The globe in fact palpable, visibly rounded. Away on the left the sun was setting in straight streamers of pale red edged with shining gold. And the green common, with its pools of little red lilies, and its bands of pale yellow primroses, grew greyer and greyer.

Fuji San, perfect in long smooth curves, stood purple-blue behind. Clear-cut as a jewel in a setting he rose up, rose up, until the rounded strength of his summit lay bright sapphire on the azure sky.

* * * * *

Over the ruts the _basha_ stumbled, endlessly jolting.

The sun set slowly, and slowly the colours died. Grey lay the common in front of us, on each side. Lord Fuji was but a dark, still shadow. And over the ruts the _basha_ stumbled in long, slow jolts.

We were very tired, our backs ached with the jolting, and our arms were numb with pain. All around us the grey spaces of the common stretched uninterruptedly, without house or village. Where was Yoshida?

Still the _basha_ lumbered and stumbled, and we looked for lights and houses.

Nothing. Only in front of us the grey level of the common grew tall and black.... In a few more jolts the deep black had engulfed us, grey common and all, and we were wandering among dark shadows that were trees.

In the very pitch of the blackness the cart suddenly stopped. We were asked to get out. The _basha_ went no further.

“But Yoshida?”

“_Yoshida yoroshī!_--all right,” replied the man, unconcerned, as though every traveller to every town arrived in a dark wood without sight or sound of houses; and he drove off.

Our guide picked up the luggage, and we followed stumbling, straining our eyes to tell the deeper shadows that were trees from the paler dark that meant pathway.

Slowly the deeper shadows receded, and in their place came the dim forms of houses. Then a sharp turn and we were walking along a real road with the familiar knitting-needles of the Japanese tramway shining in the twilight. After a while the houses grew denser, and some of them had lights; but the contrast only made the pale dark of the open roadway seem still blacker.

Large trucks, like kitchen-tables with their legs cut short, came sliding past us as we stumbled on, gliding slowly down the road alone and unattached.

Parties of pilgrims in white, with white staves in their hands, came unexpectedly out of the darkness, and the lighted paper lanterns in their hands warmed their white clothes into a rich cream-yellow, precipitating them into solid bodies from the waist downward, while their heads and shoulders drifted slowly on through the pale night like impalpable ghosts.

We had reached the top of the hill, and the road, in a sudden turn, ran sharply away from us. The houses were on both sides now in one continuous line, and the shock of meeting trucks jarred through the street. There was a flare of orange light where the knitting-needles became a shunting-yard.

This was Yoshida.

Our landlady was aristocratic to her finger-tips. She had the long slim neck, the long thin face, with its pure outlines, the long narrow eyes, the long graceful body, and the delicate poise which is the ideal type of the aristocrat--and rare even among them. When she knelt on the matting to receive us, she did it with the distinction of a queen, and all her movements showed that clean-cut grace, that courtesy without effort, that refinement of pose and gesture which only the continued culture of long generations can produce, and which is to mere politeness or mere beauty as the subtle music of the poet to Monsieur Jourdain’s prose. Her husband was a bullet-headed man of the people, stubby and plebeian. His manners, like his Japanese, were polite of course, but undistinguished, while our hostess spoke a language as courtly as her ways. When she glided over the matting, her long sleeves swaying, or stretched out her thin slim-fingered hand to take our tea-cups, we felt like beings of a lower evolution, and this higher product, evolved by centuries of self-control and a living love of beauty, was the human form made perfect, to which we might, perhaps, one day attain.