Part 18

THE prophecies concerning difficulties are fulfilled. For six days and five nights the rain has never ceased, except for a few hours at a time, and for the last thirteen hours, as during the eclipse at Shirasawa, it has been falling in such sheets as I have only seen for a few minutes at a time on the equator. I have been here storm-staid for two days, with damp bed, damp clothes, damp everything, and boots, bag, books, are all green with mildew. And still the rain falls, and roads, bridges, rice-fields, trees, and hillsides are being swept in a common ruin towards the Tsugaru Strait, so tantalisingly near; and the simple people are calling on the forgotten gods of the rivers and the hills, on the sun and moon, and all the host of heaven, to save them from this “plague of immoderate rain and waters.” For myself, to be able to lie down all day is something, and as “the mind, when in a healthy state, reposes as quietly before an insurmountable difficulty as before an ascertained truth,” so, as I cannot get on, I have ceased to chafe, and am rather inclined to magnify the advantages of the detention, a necessary process, as you would think if you saw my surroundings!

The day before yesterday, in spite of severe pain, was one of the most interesting of my journey. As I learned something of the force of fire in Hawaii, I am learning not a little of the force of water in Japan. We left Shirasawa at noon, as it looked likely to clear, taking two horses and three men. It is beautiful scenery—a wild valley, upon which a number of lateral ridges descend, rendered strikingly picturesque by the dark pyramidal cryptomeria, which are truly the glory of Japan. Five of the fords were deep and rapid, and the entrance on them difficult, as the sloping descents were all carried away, leaving steep banks, which had to be levelled by the mattocks of the _mago_. Then the fords themselves were gone; there were shallows where there had been depths, and depths where there had been shallows; new channels were carved, and great beds of shingle had been thrown up. Much wreckage lay about. The road and its small bridges were all gone, trees torn up by the roots or snapped short off by being struck by heavy logs were heaped together like barricades, leaves and even bark being in many cases stripped completely off; great logs floated down the river in such numbers and with such force that we had to wait half an hour in one place to secure a safe crossing; hollows were filled with liquid mud, boulders of great size were piled into embankments, causing perilous alterations in the course of the river; a fertile valley had been utterly destroyed, and the men said they could hardly find their way.

At the end of five miles it became impassable for horses, and, with two of the _mago_ carrying the baggage, we set off, wading through water and climbing along the side of a hill, up to our knees in soft wet soil. The hillside and the road were both gone, and there were heavy landslips along the whole valley. Happily there was not much of this exhausting work, for, just as higher and darker ranges, densely wooded with cryptomeria, began to close us in, we emerged upon a fine new road, broad enough for a carriage, which, after crossing two ravines on fine bridges, plunges into the depths of a magnificent forest, and then by a long series of fine zigzags of easy gradients ascends the pass of Yadate, on the top of which, in a deep sandstone cutting, is a handsome obelisk marking the boundary between Akita and Aomori _ken_. This is a marvellous road for Japan, it is so well graded and built up, and logs for travellers’ rests are placed at convenient distances. Some very heavy work in grading and blasting has been done upon it, but there are only four miles of it, with wretched bridle tracks at each end. I left the others behind, and strolled on alone over the top of the pass and down the other side, where the road is blasted out of rock of a vivid pink and green colour, looking brilliant under the trickle of water. I admire this pass more than anything I have seen in Japan; I even long to see it again, but under a bright blue sky. It reminds me much of the finest part of the Brunig Pass, and something of some of the passes in the Rocky Mountains, but the trees are far finer than in either. It was lonely, stately, dark, solemn; its huge cryptomeria, straight as masts, sent their tall spires far aloft in search of light; the ferns, which love damp and shady places, were the only undergrowth; the trees flung their balsamy, aromatic scent liberally upon the air, and, in the unlighted depths of many a ravine and hollow, clear bright torrents leapt and tumbled, drowning with their thundering bass the musical treble of the lighter streams. Not a traveller disturbed the solitude with his sandalled footfall; there was neither song of bird nor hum of insect.

In the midst of this sublime scenery, and at the very top of the pass, the rain, which had been light but steady during the whole day, began to come down in streams and then in sheets. I have been so rained upon for weeks that at first I took little notice of it, but very soon changes occurred before my eyes which concentrated my attention upon it. The rush of waters was heard everywhere, trees of great size slid down, breaking others in their fall; rocks were rent and carried away trees in their descent, the waters rose before our eyes; with a boom and roar as of an earthquake a hillside burst, and half the hill, with a noble forest of cryptomeria, was projected outwards, and the trees, with the land on which they grew, went down heads foremost, diverting a river from its course, and where the forest-covered hillside had been there was a great scar, out of which a torrent burst at high pressure, which in half an hour carved for itself a deep ravine, and carried into the valley below an avalanche of stones and sand. Another hillside descended less abruptly, and its noble groves found themselves at the bottom in a perpendicular position, and will doubtless survive their transplantation. Actually, before my eyes, this fine new road was torn away by hastily improvised torrents, or blocked by landslips in several places, and a little lower, in one moment, a hundred yards of it disappeared, and with them a fine bridge, which was deposited aslant across the torrent lower down.

On the descent, when things began to look very bad, and the mountain-sides had become cascades bringing trees, logs, and rocks down with them, we were fortunate enough to meet with two pack-horses whose leaders were ignorant of the impassability of the road to Odaté, and they and my coolies exchanged loads. These were strong horses, and the _mago_ were skilful and courageous. They said if we hurried we could just get to the hamlet they had left, they thought; but while they spoke the road and the bridge below were carried away. They insisted on lashing me to the pack-saddle. The great stream, whose beauty I had formerly admired, was now a thing of dread, and had to be forded four times without fords. It crashed and thundered, drowning the feeble sound of human voices, the torrents from the heavens hissed through the forest, trees and logs came crashing down the hillsides, a thousand cascades added to the din, and in the bewilderment produced by such an unusual concatenation of sights and sounds we stumbled through the river, the men up to their shoulders, the horses up to their backs. Again and again we crossed. The banks being carried away, it was very hard to get either into or out of the water; the horses had to scramble or jump up places as high as their shoulders, all slippery and crumbling, and twice the men cut steps for them with axes. The rush of the torrent at the last crossing taxed the strength of both men and horses, and, as I was helpless from being tied on, I confess that I shut my eyes! After getting through, we came upon the lands belonging to this village—rice-fields with the dykes burst, and all the beautiful ridge and furrow cultivation of the other crops carried away. The waters were rising fast, the men said we must hurry; they unbound me, so that I might ride more comfortably, spoke to the horses, and went on at a run. My horse, which had nearly worn out his shoes in the fords, stumbled at every step, the _mago_ gave me a noose of rope to clutch, the rain fell in such torrents that I speculated on the chance of being washed off my saddle, when suddenly I saw a shower of sparks; I felt unutterable things; I was choked, bruised, stifled, and presently found myself being hauled out of a ditch by three men, and realised that the horse had tumbled down in going down a steepish hill, and that I had gone over his head. To climb again on the soaked _futon_ was the work of a moment, and, with men running and horses stumbling and splashing, we crossed the Hirakawa by one fine bridge, and half a mile farther re-crossed it on another, wishing as we did so that all Japanese bridges were as substantial, for they were both 100 feet long, and had central piers.

We entered Ikarigaseki from the last bridge, a village of 800 people, on a narrow ledge between an abrupt hill and the Hirakawa, a most forlorn and tumble-down place, given up to felling timber and making shingles; and timber in all its forms—logs, planks, faggots, and shingles—is heaped and stalked about. It looks more like a lumberer’s encampment than a permanent village, but it is beautifully situated, and unlike any of the innumerable villages that I have ever seen.

The street is long and narrow, with streams in stone channels on either side; but these had overflowed, and men, women, and children were constructing square dams to keep the water, which had already reached the _doma_, from rising over the _tatami_. Hardly any house has paper windows, and in the few which have, they are so black with smoke as to look worse than none. The roofs are nearly flat, and are covered with shingles held on by laths and weighted with large stones. Nearly all the houses look like temporary sheds, and most are as black inside as a Barra hut. The walls of many are nothing but rough boards tied to the uprights by straw ropes.

In the drowning torrent, sitting in puddles of water, and drenched to the skin hours before, we reached this very primitive _yadoya_, the lower part of which is occupied by the _daidokoro_, a party of storm-bound students, horses, fowls, and dogs. My room is a wretched loft, reached by a ladder, with such a quagmire at its foot that I have to descend into it in Wellington boots. It was dismally grotesque at first. The torrent on the unceiled roof prevented Ito from hearing what I said, the bed was soaked, and the water, having got into my box, had dissolved the remains of the condensed milk, and had reduced clothes, books, and paper into a condition of universal stickiness. My kimono was less wet than anything else, and, borrowing a sheet of oiled paper, I lay down in it, till roused up in half an hour by Ito shrieking above the din on the roof that the people thought that the bridge by which we had just entered would give way; and, running to the river bank, we joined a large crowd, far too intensely occupied by the coming disaster to take any notice of the first foreign lady they had ever seen.

The Hirakawa, which an hour before was merely a clear, rapid mountain stream, about four feet deep, was then ten feet deep, they said, and tearing along, thick and muddy, and with a fearful roar,

“And each wave was crested with tawny foam, Like the mane of a chestnut steed.”

Immense logs of hewn timber, trees, roots, branches, and faggots, were coming down in numbers. The abutment on this side was much undermined, but, except that the central pier trembled whenever a log struck it, the bridge itself stood firm—so firm, indeed, that two men, anxious to save some property on the other side, crossed it after I arrived. Then logs of planed timber of large size, and joints, and much wreckage, came down—fully forty fine timbers, thirty feet long, for the fine bridge above had given way. Most of the harvest of logs cut on the Yadate Pass must have been lost, for over 300 were carried down in the short time in which I watched the river. This is a very heavy loss to this village, which lives by the timber trade. Efforts were made at a bank higher up to catch them as they drifted by, but they only saved about one in twenty. It was most exciting to see the grand way in which these timbers came down; and the moment in which they were to strike or not to strike the pier was one of intense suspense. After an hour of this two superb logs, fully thirty feet long, came down close together, and, striking the central pier nearly simultaneously, it shuddered horribly, the great bridge parted in the middle, gave an awful groan like a living thing, plunged into the torrent, and re-appeared in the foam below only as disjointed timbers hurrying to the sea. Not a vestige remained. The bridge below was carried away in the morning, so, till the river becomes fordable, this little place is completely isolated. On thirty miles of road, out of nineteen bridges only two remain, and the road itself is almost wholly carried away!

LETTER XXVIII.—(_Continued_.)

Scanty Resources—Japanese Children—Children’s Games—A Sagacious Example—A Kite Competition—Personal Privations.

IKARIGASEKI.

I HAVE well-nigh exhausted the resources of this place. They are to go out three times a day to see how much the river has fallen; to talk with the house-master and _Kôchô_; to watch the children’s games and the making of shingles; to buy toys and sweetmeats and give them away; to apply zinc lotion to a number of sore eyes three times daily, under which treatment, during three days, there has been a wonderful amendment; to watch the cooking, spinning, and other domestic processes in the _daidokoro_; to see the horses, which are also actually in it, making meals of green leaves of trees instead of hay; to see the lepers, who are here for some waters which are supposed to arrest, if not to cure, their terrible malady; to lie on my stretcher and sew, and read the papers of the Asiatic Society, and to go over all possible routes to Aomori. The people have become very friendly in consequence of the eye lotion, and bring many diseases for my inspection, most of which would never have arisen had cleanliness of clothing and person been attended to. The absence of soap, the infrequency with which clothing is washed, and the absence of linen next the skin, cause various cutaneous diseases, which are aggravated by the bites and stings of insects. Scald-head affects nearly half the children here.

I am very fond of Japanese children. I have never yet heard a baby cry, and I have never seen a child troublesome or disobedient. Filial piety is the leading virtue in Japan, and unquestioning obedience is the habit of centuries. The arts and threats by which English mothers cajole or frighten children into unwilling obedience appear unknown. I admire the way in which children are taught to be independent in their amusements. Part of the home education is the learning of the rules of the different games, which are absolute, and when there is a doubt, instead of a quarrelsome suspension of the game, the fiat of a senior child decides the matter. They play by themselves, and don’t bother adults at every turn. I usually carry sweeties with me, and give them to the children, but not one has ever received them without first obtaining permission from the father or mother. When that is gained they smile and bow profoundly, and hand the sweeties to those present before eating any themselves. They are gentle creatures, but too formal and precocious.

They have no special dress. This is so queer that I cannot repeat it too often. At three they put on the _kimono_ and girdle, which are as inconvenient to them as to their parents, and childish play in this garb is grotesque. I have, however, never seen what we call child’s play—that general abandonment to miscellaneous impulses, which consists in struggling, slapping, rolling, jumping, kicking, shouting, laughing, and quarrelling! Two fine boys are very clever in harnessing paper carts to the backs of beetles with gummed traces, so that eight of them draw a load of rice up an inclined plane. You can imagine what the fate of such a load and team would be at home among a number of snatching hands. Here a number of infants watch the performance with motionless interest, and never need the adjuration, “Don’t touch.” In most of the houses there are bamboo cages for “the shrill-voiced Katydid,” and the children amuse themselves with feeding these vociferous grasshoppers. The channels of swift water in the street turn a number of toy water-wheels, which set in motion most ingenious mechanical toys, of which a model of the automatic rice-husker is the commonest, and the boys spend much time in devising and watching these, which are really very fascinating. It is the holidays, but “holiday tasks” are given, and in the evenings you hear the hum of lessons all along the street for about an hour. The school examination is at the re-opening of the school after the holidays, instead of at the end of the session—an arrangement which shows an honest desire to discern the permanent gain made by the scholars.

This afternoon has been fine and windy, and the boys have been flying kites, made of tough paper on a bamboo frame, all of a rectangular shape, some of them five feet square, and nearly all decorated with huge faces of historical heroes. Some of them have a humming arrangement made of whale-bone. There was a very interesting contest between two great kites, and it brought out the whole population. The string of each kite, for 30 feet or more below the frame, was covered with pounded glass, made to adhere very closely by means of tenacious glue, and for two hours the kite-fighters tried to get their kites into a proper position for sawing the adversary’s string in two. At last one was successful, and the severed kite became his property, upon which victor and vanquished exchanged three low bows. Silently as the people watched and received the destruction of their bridge, so silently they watched this exciting contest. The boys also flew their kites while walking on stilts—a most dexterous performance, in which few were able to take part—and then a larger number gave a stilt race. The most striking out-of-door games are played at fixed seasons of the year, and are not to be seen now.

There are twelve children in this _yadoya_, and after dark they regularly play at a game which Ito says “is played in the winter in every house in Japan.” The children sit in a circle, and the adults look on eagerly, child-worship being more common in Japan than in America, and, to my thinking, the Japanese form is the best.

From proverbial philosophy to personal privation is rather a descent, but owing to the many detentions on the journey my small stock of foreign food is exhausted, and I have been living here on rice, cucumbers, and salt salmon—so salt that, after being boiled in two waters, it produces a most distressing thirst. Even this has failed to-day, as communication with the coast has been stopped for some time, and the village is suffering under the calamity of its stock of salt-fish being completely exhausted. There are no eggs, and rice and cucumbers are very like the “light food” which the Israelites “loathed.” I had an omelette one day, but it was much like musty leather. The Italian minister said to me in Tôkiyô, “No question in Japan is so solemn as that of food,” and many others echoed what I thought at the time a most unworthy sentiment. I recognised its truth to-day when I opened my last resort, a box of Brand’s meat lozenges, and found them a mass of mouldiness. One can only dry clothes here by hanging them in the wood smoke, so I prefer to let them mildew on the walls, and have bought a straw rain-coat, which is more reliable than the paper waterproofs. I hear the hum of the children at their lessons for the last time, for the waters are falling fast, and we shall leave in the morning.

I. L. B.

LETTER XXIX.

Hope deferred—Effects of the Flood—Activity of the Police—A Ramble in Disguise—The _Tanabata_ Festival—Mr. Satow’s Reputation.

KUROISHI, _August_ 5.

AFTER all the waters did not fall as was expected, and I had to spend a fourth day at Ikarigaseki. We left early on Saturday, as we had to travel fifteen miles without halting. The sun shone on all the beautiful country, and on all the wreck and devastation, as it often shines on the dimpling ocean the day after a storm. We took four men, crossed two severe fords where bridges had been carried away, and where I and the baggage got very wet; saw great devastations and much loss of crops and felled timber; passed under a cliff, which for 200 feet was composed of fine columnar basalt in six-sided prisms, and quite suddenly emerged on a great plain, on which green billows of rice were rolling sunlit before a fresh north wind. This plain is liberally sprinkled with wooded villages and surrounded by hills; one low range forming a curtain across the base of Iwakisan, a great snow-streaked dome, which rises to the west of the plain to a supposed height of 5000 feet. The water had risen in most of the villages to a height of four feet, and had washed the lower part of the mud walls away. The people were busy drying their _tatami_, _futons_, and clothing, reconstructing their dykes and small bridges, and fishing for the logs which were still coming down in large quantities.