Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan Volume II Part 15

I watched the loading and unloading, and listened to the song of the boy with the red voice, until sunset, when all quit work; and after that I watched the Nagasaki steamer. She had made her way to our wharf as the other vessels moved out, and lay directly under the balcony. The captain and crew did not appear to be in a hurry about anything. They all squatted down together on the foredeck, where a feast was spread for them by lantern-light. Dancing-girls climbed on board and feasted with them, and sang to the sound of the samisen, and played with them the game of ken. Late into the night the feasting and the fun continued; and although an alarming quant.i.ty of sake was consumed, there was no roughness or boisterousness. But sake is the most soporific of wines; and by midnight only three of the men remained on deck. One of these had not taken any sake at all, but still desired to eat. Happily for him there climbed on board a night-walking mochiya with a box of mochi, which are cakes of rice-flour sweetened with native sugar. The hungry one bought all, and reproached the mochiya because there were no more, and offered, nevertheless, to share the mochi with his comrades.

Whereupon the first to whom the offer was made answered somewhat after this manner:

'I-your-servant mochi-for this-world-in no-use-have. Sake alone this- life-in if-there-be, nothing-beside-desirable-is.

'For me-your-servant,' spake the other, 'Woman this-fleeting-life-in the-supreme-thing is; mochi-or-sake-for earthly-use have-I-none.'

But, having made all the mochi to disappear, he that had been hungry turned himself to the mochiya, and said:--'O Mochiya San, I-your-servant Woman-or-sake-for earthly-requirement have-none. Mochi-than things better this-life-of-sorrow-in existence-have-not !'

Sec. 4

Early in the morning we were notified that the Oki-Saigo would start at precisely eight o'clock, and that we had better secure our tickets at once. The hotel-servant, according to j.a.panese custom, relieved us of all anxiety about baggage, etc., and bought our tickets: first-cla.s.s fare, eighty sen. And after a hasty breakfast the hotel boat came under the window to take us away.

Warned by experience of the discomforts of European dress on Shimane steamers, I adopted j.a.panese costume and exchanged my shoes for sandals.

Our boatmen sculled swiftly through the confusion of shipping and junkery; and as we cleared it I saw, far out in midstream, the joki waiting for us. Joki is a j.a.panese name for steam-vessel. The word had not yet impressed me as being capable of a sinister interpretation.

She seemed nearly as long as a harbour tug, though much more squabby; and she otherwise so much resembled the Lilliputian steamers of Lake Shinji, that I felt somewhat afraid of her, even for a trip of one hundred miles. But exterior inspection afforded no clue to the mystery of her inside. We reached her and climbed into her starboard through a small square hole. At once I found myself cramped in a heavily-roofed gangway, four feet high and two feet wide, and in the thick of a frightful squeeze--pa.s.sengers stifling in the effort to pull baggage three feet in diameter through the two-foot orifice. It was impossible to advance or retreat; and behind me the engine-room gratings were pouring wonderful heat into this infernal corridor. I had to wait with the back of my head pressed against the roof until, in some unimaginable way, all baggage and pa.s.sengers had squashed and squeezed through. Then, reaching a doorway, I fell over a heap of sandals and geta, into the first-cla.s.s cabin. It was pretty, with its polished woodwork and mirrors; it was surrounded by divans five inches wide; and in the centre it was nearly six feet high. Such alt.i.tude would have been a cause for comparative happiness, but that from various polished bars of bra.s.s extended across the ceiling all kinds of small baggage, including two cages of singing-crickets (chongisu), had been carefully suspended.

Furthermore the cabin was already extremely occupied: everybody, of course, on the floor, and nearly everybody lying at extreme length; and the heat struck me as being supernatural. Now they that go down to the sea in ships, out of Izumo and such places, for the purpose of doing business in great waters, are never supposed to stand up, but to squat in the ancient patient manner; and coast, or lake steamers are constructed with a view to render this att.i.tude only possible. Observing an open door in the port side of the cabin, I picked my way over a tangle of bodies and limbs--among them a pair of fairy legs belonging to a dancing-girl--and found myself presently in another gangway, also roofed, and choked up to the roof with baskets of squirming eels. Exit there was none: so I climbed back over all the legs and tried the starboard gangway a second time. Even during that short interval, it had been half filled with baskets of unhappy chickens. But I made a reckless dash over them, in spite of frantic cacklings which hurt my soul, and succeeded in finding a way to the cabin-roof. It was entirely occupied by water-melons, except one corner, where there was a big coil of rope.

I put melons inside of the rope, and sat upon them in the sun. It was not comfortable; but I thought that there I might have some chance for my life in case of a catastrophe, and I was sure that even the G.o.ds could give no help to those below. During the squeeze I had got separated from my companion, but I was afraid to make any attempt to find him. Forward I saw the roof of the second cabin crowded with third- cla.s.s pa.s.sengers squatting round a hibachi. To pa.s.s through them did not seem possible, and to retire would have involved the murder of either eels or chickens. Wherefore I sat upon the melons.

And the boat started, with a stunning scream. In another moment her funnel began to rain soot upon me--for the so-called first-cla.s.s cabin was well astern--and then came small cinders mixed with the soot, and the cinders were occasionally red-hot. But I sat burning upon the water- melons for some time longer, trying to imagine a way of changing my position without committing another a.s.sault upon the chickens. Finally, I made a desperate endeavour to get to leeward of the volcano, and it was then for the first time that I began to learn the peculiarities of the joki. What I tried to sit on turned upside down, and what I tried to hold by instantly gave way, and always in the direction of overboard.

Things clamped or rigidly braced to outward seeming proved, upon cautious examination, to be dangerously mobile; and things that, according to Occidental ideas, ought to have been movable, were fixed like the roots of the perpetual hills. In whatever direction a rope or stay could possibly have been stretched so as to make somebody unhappy, it was there. In the midst of these trials the frightful little craft began to swing, and the water-melons began to rush heavily to and fro, and I came to the conclusion that this joki had been planned and constructed by demons.

Which I stated to my friend. He had not only rejoined me quite unexpectedly, but had brought along with him one of the ship's boys to spread an awning above ourselves and the watermelons, so as to exclude cinders and sun.

'Oh, no!' he answered reproachfully 'She was designed and built at Hyogo, and really she might have been made much worse. . . ' 'I beg your pardon,' I interrupted; 'I don't agree with you at all.'

'Well, you will see for yourself,' he persisted. 'Her hull is good steel, and her little engine is wonderful; she can make her hundred miles in five hours. She is not very comfortable, but she is very swift and strong.'

'I would rather be in a sampan,' I protested, 'if there were rough weather.'

'But she never goes to sea in rough weather. If it only looks as if there might possibly be some rough weather, she stays in port. Sometimes she waits a whole month. She never runs any risks.'

I could not feel sure of it. But I soon forgot all discomforts, even the discomfort of sitting upon water-melons, in the delight of the divine day and the magnificent view that opened wider and wider before us, as we rushed from the long frith into the Sea of j.a.pan, following the Izumo coast. There was no fleck in the soft blue vastness above, not one flutter on the metallic smoothness of the all-reflecting sea; if our little steamer rocked, it was doubtless because she had been overloaded.

To port, the Izumo hills were flying by, a long, wild procession of'

broken shapes, sombre green, separating at intervals to form mysterious little bays, with fishing hamlets hiding in them. Leagues away to starboard, the Hoki sh.o.r.e receded into the naked white horizon, an ever- diminishing streak of warm blue edged with a thread-line of white, the gleam of a sand beach; and beyond it, in the centre, a vast shadowy pyramid loomed up into heaven--the ghostly peak of Daisen.

My companion touched my arm to call my attention to a group of pine- trees on the summit of a peak to port, and laughed and sang a j.a.panese song. How swiftly we had been travelling I then for the first time understood, for I recognised the four famous pines of Mionoseki, on the windy heights above the shrine of Koto-shiro-nushi-no-Kami. There used to be five trees: one was uprooted by a storm, and some Izumo poet wrote about the remaining four the words which my friend had sung:

Seki no gohon matsu Ippun kirya, shihon; Ato wa kirarenu Miyoto matsu.

Which means: 'Of the five pines of Seki one has been cut, and four remain; and of these no one must now be cut--they are wedded pairs.' And in Mionoseki there are sold beautiful little sake cups and sake bottles, upon which are pictures of the four pines, and above the pictures, in spidery text of gold, the verses, 'Seki no gohon matsu.' These are for keepsakes, and there are many other curious and pretty souvenirs to buy in those pretty shops; porcelains bearing the picture of the Mionoseki temple, and metal clasps for tobacco pouches representing Koto-shiro- nushi-no-Kami trying to put a big tai-fish into a basket too small for it, and funny masks of glazed earthenware representing the laughing face of the G.o.d. For a jovial G.o.d is this Ebisu, or Koto-shiro-nushi-no-Kami, patron of honest labour and especially of fishers, though less of a laughter-lover than his father, the Great Deity of Kitzuki, about whom 'tis said: 'Whenever the happy laugh, the G.o.d rejoices.'

We pa.s.sed the Cape--the Miho of the Kojiki--and the harbour of Mionoseki opened before us, showing its islanded shrine of Benten in the midst, and the crescent of quaint houses with their feet in the water, and the great torii and granite lions of the far-famed temple. Immediately a number of pa.s.sengers rose to their feet, and, turning their faces toward the torii began to clap their hands in Shinto prayer.

I said to my friend: 'There are fifty baskets full of chickens in the gangway; and yet these people are praying to Koto-shiro-nushi-no-Kami that nothing horrible may happen to this boat.'

'More likely,' he answered, 'they are praying for good-fortune; though there is a saying: "The G.o.ds only laugh when men pray to them for wealth." But of the Great Deity of Mionoseki there is a good story told.

Once there was a very lazy man who went to Mionoseki and prayed to become rich. And the same night he saw the G.o.d in a dream; and the G.o.d laughed, and took off one of his own divine sandals, and told him to examine it. And the man saw that it was made of solid bra.s.s, but had a big hole worn through the sole of it. Then said the G.o.d: "You want to have money without working for it. I am a G.o.d; but I am never lazy.

See! my sandals are of bra.s.s: yet I have worked and walked so much that they are quite worn out."'

Sec. 5

The beautiful bay of Mionoseki opens between two headlands: Cape Mio (or Miho, according to the archaic spelling) and the Cape of Jizo (Jizo- zaki), now most inappropriately called by the people 'The Nose of Jizo'

(Jizo-no-hana). This Nose of Jizo is one of the most dangerous points of the coast in time of surf, and the great terror of small ships returning from Oki. There is nearly always a heavy swell there, even in fair weather. Yet as we pa.s.sed the ragged promontory I was surprised to see the water still as gla.s.s. I felt suspicious of that noiseless sea: its soundlessness recalled the beautiful treacherous sleep of waves and winds which precedes a tropical hurricane. But my friend said:

'It may remain like this for weeks. In the sixth month and in the beginning of the seventh, it is usually very quiet; it is not likely to become dangerous before the Bon. But there was a little squall last week at Mionoseki; and the people said that it was caused by the anger of the G.o.d.'

'Eggs?' I queried.

'No: a Kudan.'

'What is a Kudan?'

'Is it possible you never heard of the Kudan? The Kudan has the face of a man, and the body of a bull. Sometimes it is born of a cow, and that is a Sign-of-things-going-to-happen. And the Kudan always tells the truth. Therefore in j.a.panese letters and doc.u.ments it is customary to use the phrase, Kudanno-gotoshi--"like the Kudan"--or "on the truth of the Kudan."' [4]

'But why was the G.o.d of Mionoseki angry about the Kudan?'

'People said it was a stuffed Kudan. I did not see it, so I cannot tell you how it was made. There was some travelling showmen from Osaka at Sakai. They had a tiger and many curious animals and the stuffed Kudan; and they took the Izumo Maru for Mionoseki. As the steamer entered the port a sudden squall came; and the priests of the temple said the G.o.d was angry because things impure--bones and parts of dead animals--had been brought to the town. And the show people were not even allowed to land: they had to go back to Sakai on the same steamer. And as soon as they had gone away, the sky became clear again, and the wind stopped blowing: so that some people thought what the priests had said was true.'

Sec. 6

Evidently there was much more moisture in the atmosphere than I had supposed. On really clear days Daisen can be distinctly seen even from Oki; but we had scarcely pa.s.sed the Nose of Jizo when the huge peak began to wrap itself in vapour of the same colour as the horizon; and in a few minutes it vanished, as a spectre might vanish. The effect of this sudden disappearance was very extraordinary; for only the peak pa.s.sed from sight, and that which had veiled it could not be any way distinguished from horizon and sky.

Meanwhile the Oki-Saigo, having reached the farthest outlying point of the coast upon her route began to race in straight line across the j.a.panese Sea. The green hills of Izumi fled away and turned blue, and the spectral sh.o.r.es of Hoki began to melt into the horizon, like bands of cloud. Then was obliged to confess my surprise at the speed of the horrid little steamer. She moved, too, with scarcely any sound, smooth was the working of her wonderful little engine. But she began to swing heavily, with deep, slow swingings. To the eye, the sea looked level as oil; but there were long invisible swells--ocean-pulses--that made themselves felt beneath the surface. Hoki evaporated; the Izumo hills turned grey, a their grey steadily paled as I watched them. They grew more and more colourless--seemed to become transparent. And then they were not. Only blue sky and blue sea, welded together in the white horizon.

It was just as lonesome as if we had been a thousand leagues from land.

And in that weirdness we were told some very lonesome things by an ancient mariner who found leisure join us among the water-melons. He talked of the Hotoke-umi and the ill-luck of being at sea on the sixteenth day of the seventh month. He told us that even the great steamers never went to sea during the Bon: no crew would venture to take ship out then. And he related the following stories with such simple earnestness that I think he must have believed what said:

'The first time I was very young. From Hokkaido we had sailed, and the voyage was long, and the winds turned against us. And the night of the sixteenth day fell, as we were working on over this very sea.

'And all at once in the darkness we saw behind us a great junk--all white--that we had not noticed till she was quite close to us. It made us feel queer, because she seemed to have come from nowhere. She was so near us that we could hear voices; and her hull towered up high above us. She seemed to be sailing very fast; but she came no closer. We shouted to her; but we got no answer. And while we were watching her, all of us became afraid, because she did not move like a real ship. The sea was terrible, and we were lurching and plunging; but that great junk never rolled. Just at the same moment that we began to feel afraid she vanished so quickly that we could scarcely believe we had really seen her at all.

'That was the first time. But four years ago I saw something still more strange. We were bound for Oki, in a junk, and the wind again delayed us, so that we were at sea on the sixteenth day. It was in the morning, a little before midday; the sky was dark and the sea very ugly. All at once we saw a steamer running in our track, very quickly. She got so close to us that we could hear her engines--katakata katakata!--but we saw n.o.body on deck. Then she began to follow us, keeping exactly at the same distance, and whenever we tried to get out of her way she would turn after us and keep exactly in our wake. And then we suspected what she was. But we were not sure until she vanished. She vanished like a bubble, without making the least sound. None of us could say exactly when she disappeared. None of us saw her vanish. The strangest thing was that after she was gone we could still hear her engines working behind us--katakata, katakata, katakata!

'That is all I saw. But I know others, sailors like myself, who have seen more. Sometimes many ships will follow you--though never at the same time. One will come close and vanish, then another, and then another. As long as they come behind you, you need never be afraid. But if you see a ship of that sort running before you, against the wind, that is very bad! It means that all on board will be drowned.'

Sec. 7

The luminous blankness circling us continued to remain unflecked for less than an hour. Then out of the horizon toward which we steamed, a small grey vagueness began to grow. It lengthened fast, and seemed a cloud. And a cloud it proved; but slowly, beneath it, blue filmy shapes began to define against the whiteness, and sharpened into a chain of mountains. They grew taller and bluer--a little sierra, with one paler shape towering in the middle to thrice the height of the rest, and filleted with cloud--Takuhizan, the sacred mountain of Oki, in the island Nishinoshima.

Takuhizan has legends, which I learned from my friend. Upon its summit stands an ancient shrine of the deity Gongen-Sama. And it is said that upon the thirty-first night of the twelfth month three ghostly fires arise from the sea and ascend to the place of the shrine, and enter the stone lanterns which stand before it, and there remain, burning like lamps. These lights do not arise at once, but separately, from the sea, and rise to the top of the peak one by one. The people go out in boats to see the lights mount from the water. But only those whose hearts are pure can see them; those who have evil thoughts or desires look for the holy fires in vain.

Before us, as we steamed on, the sea-surface appeared to become suddenly speckled with queer craft previously invisible--light, long fishing- boats, with immense square sails of a beautiful yellow colour. I could not help remarking to my comrade how pretty those sails were; he laughed, and told me they were made of old tatami. [5] I examined them through a telescope, and found that they were exactly what he had said-- woven straw coverings of old floor-mats. Nevertheless, that first tender yellow sprinkling of old sails over the soft blue water was a charming sight.

They fleeted by, like a pa.s.sing of yellow b.u.t.terflies, and the sea was void again. Gradually, a little to port, a point in the approaching line of blue cliffs shaped itself and changed colour--dull green above, reddish grey below; it defined into a huge rock, with a dark patch on its face, but the rest of the land remained blue. The dark patch blackened as we came nearer--a great gap full of shadow. Then the blue cliffs beyond also turned green, and their bases reddish grey. We pa.s.sed to the right of the huge rock, which proved to be a detached and uninhabited islet, Hakashima; and in another moment we were steaming into the archipelago of Oki, between the lofty islands Chiburishima and Nakashima.

Sec. 8