Part 17

Splashing through mire and water we found that the people of Tubiné wished to detain us, saying that all the ferries were stopped in consequence of the rise in the rivers; but I had been so often misled by false reports that I took fresh horses and went on by a track along a very pretty hillside, overlooking the Yonetsurugawa, a large and swollen river, which nearer the sea had spread itself over the whole country. Torrents of rain were still falling, and all out-of-doors industries were suspended. Straw rain-cloaks hanging to dry dripped under all the eaves, our paper cloaks were sodden, our dripping horses steamed, and thus we slid down a steep descent into the hamlet of Kiriishi, thirty-one houses clustered under persimmon trees under a wooded hillside, all standing in a quagmire, and so abject and filthy that one could not ask for five minutes’ shelter in any one of them. Sure enough, on the bank of the river, which was fully 400 yards wide, and swirling like a mill-stream with a suppressed roar, there was an official order prohibiting the crossing of man or beast, and before I had time to think the _mago_ had deposited the baggage on an islet in the mire and was over the crest of the hill. I wished that the Government was a little less paternal.

Just in the nick of time we discerned a punt drifting down the river on the opposite side, where it brought up, and landed a man, and Ito and two others yelled, howled, and waved so lustily as to attract its notice, and to my joy an answering yell came across the roar and rush of the river. The torrent was so strong that the boatmen had to pole up on that side for half a mile, and in about three-quarters of an hour they reached our side. They were returning to Kotsunagi—the very place I wished to reach—but, though only 2½ miles off, the distance took nearly four hours of the hardest work I ever saw done by men. Every moment I expected to see them rupture blood-vessels or tendons. All their muscles quivered. It is a mighty river, and was from eight to twelve feet deep, and whirling down in muddy eddies; and often with their utmost efforts in poling, when it seemed as if poles or backs must break, the boat hung trembling and stationary for three or four minutes at a time. After the slow and eventless tramp of the last few days this was an exciting transit. Higher up there was a flooded wood, and, getting into this, the men aided themselves considerably by hauling by the trees; but when we got out of this, another river joined the Yonetsurugawa, which with added strength rushed and roared more wildly.

I had long been watching a large house-boat far above us on the other side, which was being poled by desperate efforts by ten men. At that point she must have been half a mile off, when the stream overpowered the crew and in no time she swung round and came drifting wildly down and across the river, broadside on to us. We could not stir against the current, and had large trees on our immediate left, and for a moment it was a question whether she would not smash us to atoms. Ito was livid with fear; his white, appalled face struck me as ludicrous, for I had no other thought than the imminent peril of the large boat with her freight of helpless families, when, just as she was within two feet of us, she struck a stem and glanced off. Then her crew grappled a headless trunk and got their hawser round it, and eight of them, one behind the other, hung on to it, when it suddenly snapped, seven fell backwards, and the forward one went overboard to be no more seen. Some house that night was desolate. Reeling downwards, the big mast and spar of the ungainly craft caught in a tree, giving her such a check that they were able to make her fast. It was a saddening incident. I asked Ito what he felt when we seemed in peril, and he replied, “I thought I’d been good to my mother, and honest, and I hoped I should go to a good place.”

The fashion of boats varies much on different rivers. On this one there are two sizes. Ours was a small one, flat-bottomed, 25 feet long by 2½ broad, drawing 6 inches, very low in the water, and with sides slightly curved inwards. The prow forms a gradual long curve from the body of the boat, and is very high.

The mists rolled away as dusk came on, and revealed a lovely country with much picturesqueness of form, and near Kotsunagi the river disappears into a narrow gorge with steep, sentinel hills, dark with pine and cryptomeria. To cross the river we had to go fully a mile above the point aimed at, and then a few minutes of express speed brought us to a landing in a deep, tough quagmire in a dark wood, through which we groped our lamentable way to the _yadoya_. A heavy mist came on, and the rain returned in torrents; the _doma_ was ankle deep in black slush. The _daidokoro_ was open to the roof, roof and rafters were black with smoke, and a great fire of damp wood was smoking lustily. Round some live embers in the _irori_ fifteen men, women, and children were lying, doing nothing, by the dim light of an _andon_. It was picturesque decidedly, and I was well disposed to be content when the production of some handsome _fusuma_ created _daimiyô’s_ rooms out of the farthest part of the dim and wandering space, opening upon a damp garden, into which the rain splashed all night.

The solitary spoil of the day’s journey was a glorious lily, which I presented to the house-master, and in the morning it was blooming on the _kami-dana_ in a small vase of priceless old Satsuma china. I was awoke out of a sound sleep by Ito coming in with a rumour, brought by some travellers, that the Prime Minister had been assassinated, and fifty policemen killed! [This was probably a distorted version of the partial mutiny of the Imperial Guard, which I learned on landing in Yezo.] Very wild political rumours are in the air in these outlandish regions, and it is not very wonderful that the peasantry lack confidence in the existing order of things after the changes of the last ten years, and the recent assassination of the Home Minister. I did not believe the rumour, for fanaticism, even in its wildest moods, usually owes some allegiance to common sense; but it was disturbing, as I have naturally come to feel a deep interest in Japanese affairs. A few hours later Ito again presented himself with a bleeding cut on his temple. In lighting his pipe—an odious nocturnal practice of the Japanese—he had fallen over the edge of the fire-pot. I always sleep in a Japanese _kimona_ to be ready for emergencies, and soon bound up his head, and slept again, to be awoke early by another deluge.

We made an early start, but got over very little ground, owing to bad roads and long delays. All day the rain came down in even torrents, the tracks were nearly impassable, my horse fell five times, I suffered severely from pain and exhaustion, and almost fell into despair about ever reaching the sea. In these wild regions there are no _kago_ or _norimons_ to be had, and a pack-horse is the only conveyance, and yesterday, having abandoned my own saddle, I had the bad luck to get a pack-saddle with specially angular and uncompromising peaks, with a soaked and extremely unwashed _futon_ on the top, spars, tackle, ridges, and furrows of the most exasperating description, and two nooses of rope to hold on by as the animal slid down hill on his haunches, or let me almost slide over his tail as he scrambled and plunged up hill.

It was pretty country, even in the downpour, when white mists parted and fir-crowned heights looked out for a moment, or we slid down into a deep glen with mossy boulders, lichen-covered stumps, ferny carpet, and damp, balsamy smell of pyramidal cryptomeria, and a tawny torrent dashing through it in gusts of passion. Then there were low hills, much scrub, immense rice-fields, and violent inundations. But it is not pleasant, even in the prettiest country, to cling on to a pack-saddle with a saturated quilt below you and the water slowly soaking down through your wet clothes into your boots, knowing all the time that when you halt you must sleep on a wet bed, and change into damp clothes, and put on the wet ones again the next morning. The villages were poor, and most of the houses were of boards rudely nailed together for ends, and for sides straw rudely tied on; they had no windows, and smoke came out of every crack. They were as unlike the houses which travellers see in southern Japan as a “black hut” in Uist is like a cottage in a trim village in Kent. These peasant proprietors have much to learn of the art of living. At Tsuguriko, the next stage, where the Transport Office was so dirty that I was obliged to sit in the street in the rain, they told us that we could only get on a _ri_ farther, because the bridges were all carried away and the fords were impassable; but I engaged horses, and, by dint of British doggedness and the willingness of the _mago_, I got the horses singly and without their loads in small punts across the swollen waters of the Hayakuchi, the Yuwasé, and the Mochida, and finally forded three branches of my old friend the Yonetsurugawa, with the foam of its hurrying waters whitening the men’s shoulders and the horses’ packs, and with a hundred Japanese looking on at the “folly” of the foreigner.

I like to tell you of kind people everywhere, and the two _mago_ were specially so, for, when they found that I was pushing on to Yezo for fear of being laid up in the interior wilds, they did all they could to help me; lifted me gently from the horse, made steps of their backs for me to mount, and gathered for me handfuls of red berries, which I ate out of politeness, though they tasted of some nauseous drug. They suggested that I should stay at the picturesquely-situated old village of Kawaguchi, but everything about it was mildewed and green with damp, and the stench from the green and black ditches with which it abounded was so overpowering, even in passing through, that I was obliged to ride on to Odaté, a crowded, forlorn, half-tumbling-to-pieces town of 8000 people, with bark roofs held down by stones.

The _yadoyas_ are crowded with storm-staid travellers, and I had a weary tramp from one to another, almost sinking from pain, pressed upon by an immense crowd, and frequently bothered by a policeman, who followed me from one place to the other, making wholly unrighteous demands for my passport at that most inopportune time. After a long search I could get nothing better than this room, with _fusuma_ of tissue paper, in the centre of the din of the house, close to the _doma_ and _daidokoro_. Fifty travellers, nearly all men, are here, mostly speaking at the top of their voices, and in a provincial jargon which exasperates Ito. Cooking, bathing, eating, and, worst of all, perpetual drawing water from a well with a creaking hoisting apparatus, are going on from 4.30 in the morning till 11.30 at night, and on both evenings noisy mirth, of alcoholic inspiration, and dissonant performances by _geishas_ have added to the din.

In all places lately _Hai_, “yes,” has been pronounced _Hé_, _Chi_, _Na_, _Né_, to Ito’s great contempt. It sounds like an expletive or interjection rather than a response, and seems used often as a sign of respect or attention only. Often it is loud and shrill, then guttural, at times little more than a sigh. In these _yadoyas_ every sound is audible, and I hear low rumbling of mingled voices, and above all the sharp _Hai_, _Hai_ of the tea-house girls in full chorus from every quarter of the house. The habit of saying it is so strong that a man roused out of sleep jumps up with _Hai_, _Hai_, and often, when I speak to Ito in English, a stupid Hebe sitting by answers _Hai_.

I don’t want to convey a false impression of the noise here. It would be at least three times as great were I in equally close proximity to a large hotel kitchen in England, with fifty Britons only separated from me by paper partitions. I had not been long in bed on Saturday night when I was awoke by Ito bringing in an old hen which he said he could stew till it was tender, and I fell asleep again with its dying squeak in my ears, to be awoke a second time by two policemen wanting for some occult reason to see my passport, and a third time by two men with lanterns scrambling and fumbling about the room for the strings of a mosquito net, which they wanted for another traveller. These are among the ludicrous incidents of Japanese travelling. About five Ito woke me by saying he was quite sure that the _moxa_ would be the thing to cure my spine, and, as we were going to stay all day, he would go and fetch an operator; but I rejected this as emphatically as the services of the blind man! Yesterday a man came and pasted slips of paper over all the “peep holes” in the _shôji_, and I have been very little annoyed, even though the _yadoya_ is so crowded.

The rain continues to come down in torrents, and rumours are hourly arriving of disasters to roads and bridges on the northern route.

I. L. B.

LETTER XXVII.

Good-tempered Intoxication—The Effect of Sunshine—A tedious Altercation—Evening Occupations—Noisy Talk—Social Gathering—Unfair Comparisons.

SHIRASAWA, _July_ 29.

EARLY this morning the rain-clouds rolled themselves up and disappeared, and the bright blue sky looked as if it had been well washed. I had to wait till noon before the rivers became fordable, and my day’s journey is only seven miles, as it is not possible to go farther till more of the water runs off. We had very limp, melancholy horses, and my _mago_ was half-tipsy, and sang, talked, and jumped the whole way. _Saké_ is frequently taken warm, and in that state produces a very noisy but good-tempered intoxication. I have seen a good many intoxicated persons, but never one in the least degree quarrelsome; and the effect very soon passes off, leaving, however, an unpleasant nausea for two or three days as a warning against excess. The abominable concoctions known under the names of beer, wine, and brandy, produce a bad-tempered and prolonged intoxication, and _delirium tremens_, rarely known as a result of _saké_ drinking, is being introduced under their baleful influence.

The sun shone gloriously and brightened the hill-girdled valley in which Odaté stands into positive beauty, with the narrow river flinging its bright waters over green and red shingle, lighting it up in glints among the conical hills, some richly wooded with _coniferæ_, and others merely covered with scrub, which were tumbled about in picturesque confusion. When Japan gets the sunshine, its forest-covered hills and garden-like valleys are turned into paradise. In a journey of 600 miles there has hardly been a patch of country which would not have been beautiful in sunlight.

We crossed five severe fords with the water half-way up the horses’ bodies, in one of which the strong current carried my _mago_ off his feet, and the horse towed him ashore, singing and capering, his drunken glee nothing abated by his cold bath. Everything is in a state of wreck. Several river channels have been formed in places where there was only one; there is not a trace of the road for a considerable distance, not a bridge exists for ten miles, and a great tract of country is covered with boulders, uprooted trees, and logs floated from the mountain sides. Already, however, these industrious peasants are driving piles, carrying soil for embankments in creels on horses’ backs, and making ropes of stones to prevent a recurrence of the calamity. About here the female peasants wear for field-work a dress which pleases me much by its suitability—light blue trousers, with a loose sack over them, confined at the waist by a girdle.

On arriving here in much pain, and knowing that the road was not open any farther, I was annoyed by a long and angry conversation between the house-master and Ito, during which the horses were not unloaded, and the upshot of it was that the man declined to give me shelter, saying that the police had been round the week before giving notice that no foreigner was to be received without first communicating with the nearest police station, which, in this instance, is three hours off. I said that the authorities of Akita _ken_ could not by any local regulations override the Imperial edict under which passports are issued; but he said he should be liable to a fine and the withdrawal of his license if he violated the rule. No foreigner, he said, had ever lodged in Shirasawa, and I have no doubt that he added that he hoped no foreigner would ever seek lodgings again. My passport was copied and sent off by special runner, as I should have deeply regretted bringing trouble on the poor man by insisting on my rights, and in much trepidation he gave me a room open on one side to the village, and on another to a pond, over which, as if to court mosquitoes, it is partially built. I cannot think how the Japanese can regard a hole full of dirty water as an ornamental appendage to a house.

My hotel expenses (including Ito’s) are less than 3s. a-day, and in nearly every place there has been a cordial desire that I should be comfortable, and, considering that I have often put up in small, rough hamlets off the great routes even of Japanese travel, the accommodation, _minus_ the fleas and the odours, has been surprisingly excellent, not to be equalled, I should think, in equally remote regions in any country in the world.

This evening, here, as in thousands of other villages, the men came home from their work, ate their food, took their smoke, enjoyed their children, carried them about, watched their games, twisted straw ropes, made straw sandals, split bamboo, wove straw rain-coats, and spent the time universally in those little economical ingenuities and skilful adaptations which our people (the worse for them) practise perhaps less than any other. There was no assembling at the _saké_ shop. Poor though the homes are, the men enjoy them; the children are an attraction at any rate, and the brawling and disobedience which often turn our working-class homes into bear-gardens are unknown here, where docility and obedience are inculcated from the cradle as a matter of course. The signs of religion become fewer as I travel north, and it appears that the little faith which exists consists mainly in a belief in certain charms and superstitions, which the priests industriously foster.

A low voice is not regarded as “a most excellent thing,” in man at least, among the lower classes in Japan. The people speak at the top of their voices, and, though most words and syllables end in vowels, the general effect of a conversation is like the discordant gabble of a farm-yard. The next room to mine is full of storm-bound travellers, and they and the house-master kept up what I thought was a most important argument for four hours at the top of their voices. I supposed it must be on the new and important ordinance granting local elective assemblies, of which I heard at Odaté, but on inquiry found that it was possible to spend four mortal hours in discussing whether the day’s journey from Odaté to Noshiro could be made best by road or river.

Japanese women have their own gatherings, where gossip and chit-chat, marked by a truly Oriental indecorum of speech, are the staple of talk. I think that in many things, specially in some which lie on the surface, the Japanese are greatly our superiors, but that in many others they are immeasurably behind us. In living altogether among this courteous, industrious, and civilised people, one comes to forget that one is doing them a gross injustice in comparing their manners and ways with those of a people moulded by many centuries of Christianity. Would to God that we were so Christianised that the comparison might always be favourable to us, which it is not!

_July_ 30.—In the room on the other side of mine were two men with severe eye-disease, with shaven heads and long and curious rosaries, who beat small drums as they walked, and were on pilgrimage to the shrine of Fudo at Megura, near Yedo, a seated, flame-surrounded idol, with a naked sword in one hand and a coil of rope in the other, who has the reputation of giving sight to the blind. At five this morning they began their devotions, which consisted in repeating with great rapidity, and in a high monotonous key for two hours, the invocation of the Nichiren sect of Buddhists, _Namu miyô hô ren ge Kiyô_, which certainly no Japanese understands, and on the meaning of which even the best scholars are divided; one having given me, “Glory to the salvation-bringing Scriptures;” another, “Hail, precious law and gospel of the lotus flower;” and a third, “Heaven and earth! The teachings of the wonderful lotus flower sect.” _Namu amidu Butsu_ occurred at intervals, and two drums were beaten the whole time!

The rain, which began again at eleven last night, fell from five till eight this morning, not in drops, but in streams, and in the middle of it a heavy pall of blackness (said to be a total eclipse) enfolded all things in a lurid gloom. Any detention is exasperating within one day of my journey’s end, and I hear without equanimity that there are great difficulties ahead, and that our getting through in three or even four days is doubtful. I hope you will not be tired of the monotony of my letters. Such as they are, they represent the scenes which a traveller would see throughout much of northern Japan, and whatever interest they have consists in the fact that they are a faithful representation, made upon the spot, of what a foreigner sees and hears in travelling through a large but unfrequented region.

I. L. B.

LETTER XXVIII.

Torrents of Rain—An unpleasant Detention—Devastations produced by Floods—The Yadate Pass—The Force of Water—Difficulties thicken—A Primitive Yadoya—The Water rises.

IKARIGASEKI, AOMORI KEN, _August_ 2.