Roving East and Roving West Part 4

"Shoulder to shoulder, Joe, my boy, into the crowd like a wedge!

Out with the hangers, messmates, but do not strike with the edge!"

Cries Charnock, "Scatter the f.a.ggots! Double that Brahmin in two!

The tall pale widow is mine, Joe, the little brown girl for you."

Young Joe (you're nearing sixty), why is your hide so dark?

Katie had fair soft blue eyes--who blackened yours? Why, hark!

The morning gun! Ho, steady! The arquebuses to me; I've sounded the Dutch High Admiral's heart as my lead doth sound the sea.

Sounding, sounding the Ganges--floating down with the tide, Moor me close by Charnock, next to my nut-brown bride.

My blessing to Katie at Fairlight--Howell, my thanks to you-- Steady!--We steer for Heaven through scud drifts cold and blue.

EXIT

I arrived in Bombay on the last day of 1919 and embarked at Calcutta for j.a.pan on the evening of February 17th, seven weeks later. But to embark at Calcutta is not to leave it, for we merely dropped down the river a short distance that night, and for the next day and a half we were in the Hooghli, sounding all the way. It is a difficult river to emerge from; nor do I recommend any one else to travel, as I did, on a boat with a forward deck cargo of two or three hundred goats on the starboard side and half as many monkeys on the port, with a small elephant tethered between and a cage of leopards adjacent. These, the property of an American dealer in wild animals, were intended for sale in the States; all but one of the leopards, which, being lame, he had decided to kill, to provide a "robe" for his wife. Nothing could be more different than the careless aimless activities of the monkeys I had seen among the trees between Agra and Delhi and scampering over the parapets of Benares, all thieves and libertines with a charter, and the restriction of these poor cowering mannikins, overcrowded in their cages, with an abysmal sorrow in their eyes. Many died on the voyage, and I think the Indian Government should look into the question of their export very narrowly.

j.a.pAN

INTRODUCTORY

I ought not to write about j.a.pan at all, for I was there but three short weeks, and rain or snow fell almost all the time, and I sailed for America on the very day that the cherry blossom festivities began.

But--well, there is only one Fujiyama, and it is surpa.s.singly beautiful and satisfying--the perfect mountain--and I should feel contemptible if I did not add my eulogy of it--my grat.i.tude--to all the others.

Since, then, I am to say something of Fuji, let the way be paved.

THE LITTLE LAND

One is immediately struck, on landing at Kobe--and continually after--by the littleness of j.a.pan. The little flimsy houses, the little flimsy shops, the small men, the toylike women, the tiny children, as numerous and like unto each other as the pebbles on the sh.o.r.e--these are everywhere. But although small of stature the j.a.panese men are often very powerfully built and many of them suggest great strength. They are taking to games, too. While I was in the country baseball was a craze, and boys were practising pitching and catching everywhere, even in the streets of the cities.

Littleness--with which is a.s.sociated the most delicate detail and elaborate finish--is the mark also of modern j.a.panese art. In the curiosity shops whatever was ma.s.sive or largely simple was Chinese. Even the royal palaces at Kyoto are small, the rooms, exquisite as they are, with perfect joinery and ancient paintings, being seldom more than a few feet square, with very low ceilings. I went over two of these palaces, falling into the hands, at each, of English-speaking officials whose ciceronage was touched with a kind of rapture. At the Nijo, especially, was my guide an enthusiast, becoming lyrical over the famous cartoons of the "Wet Heron" and the "Sleeping Sparrows."

In India I had grown accustomed to removing my shoes at the threshold of mosques. There it was out of deference to Allah, but in j.a.pan the concession is demanded solely in the interests of floor polish, and you take your shoes off not only in palaces and houses but in some of the shops. It gave one an odd burglarious feeling to be creeping noiselessly from room to room of the Nijo; but there was nothing to steal. The place was empty, save for decoration.

There is a certain amplitude in some of the larger Kyoto temples, with their long galleries and ma.s.sive gateways, but these only serve to accentuate the littleness elsewhere. In the princ.i.p.al Kyoto temple I had for guide a minute j.a.panese with the ecstatic pa.s.sion for trifles that seems to mark his race. A picture representing the miracle of the "Fly-away Sparrows," as he called them, was the treasure on which he concentrated, and next to that he drew my attention to the boards of the gangway uniting two buildings, which, as one stepped on them, emitted a sound that the j.a.panese believe to resemble the song of Philomela. To me it brought no such memory, and the fact that this effect, common in j.a.pan, is technically known as "a nightingale squeak," perhaps supports my insensitiveness.

If old j.a.pan is to be found anywhere it is in Kyoto--in spite of its huge factory chimneys. In Tokio, complete European dress is common in the streets, but in Kyoto it is the exception. Tokio also wears boots, but Kyoto is noisy with pattens night and day. Not only are there countless shops in Kyoto given up to porcelain, carvings, screens, bronzes, old armour, and so forth, but no matter how trumpery the normal stock in trade of the other shops, a number of them have a little gla.s.s case--a shop within a shop, as it were--in which a few rare and ancient articles of beauty are kept. A great deal of j.a.pan is expressed in this pretty custom.

THE RICE FIELDS

My first experience of j.a.panese scenery of any wildness was gained while shooting the rapids of the Katsuragava, an exciting voyage among boulders in a shallow and often very turbulent stream in a steep and craggy valley a few miles from Kyoto. Previous to this expedition I had seen, from the train, only the trim rice fields,--each a tiny parallelogram with its irrigation channels as a boundary, so carefully tended that there is not a weed in the whole country. j.a.pan is cut up into these absurd little squares, of which twenty and more would go into an ordinary English field. Often the terminal posts are painted a bright red; often a little row of family tombs is there too. The watermill is a common object of the country. But birds are few and animals one sees never. Indeed in all my three weeks I saw no four-footed animals, except a dead rat, two pigs and one cat. I am excluding of course beasts of draught--horses and bullocks--which are everywhere. Not a cow, not a sheep, not a dog! but that there are cattle is proved by the proverbial excellence of Kobe steaks, which I tested and can swear to. In all my three weeks, both in cities and the country, I saw only one crying child. Of children there were millions, mostly boys, but only one was unhappy.

SURFACE MATERIALISM

In spite of Kyoto's eight hundred temples I could not get any but a materialistic concept of its inhabitants; and elsewhere this impression was emphasised. A stranger cannot, of course, know; he can but record his feelings, without claiming any authority for them. But I am sure I was never in a country where I perceived fewer indications of any spiritual life. Every one is busy; every one seems to be happy or at any rate not discontented; every one chatters and laughs and is, one feels, a fatalist. Sufficient unto the day! After all, it is the women of a nation that chiefly keep burning the sacred flame and pa.s.s it on; but in j.a.pan, I understand, the women are far too busy in pleasing the men to have time for such duties; j.a.pan is run by men for men. It is an unwritten law that a woman must never be anything but gay in her lord's presence, must never for a moment claim the privilege of peevishness.

As an instance of the j.a.panese woman's indifference to fate and readiness to oblige, I may say that we had on our ship two or three hundred girls in charge of a duenna or so, who were bound for Honolulu to be married to j.a.panese settlers there, to whom their photographs had been forwarded. These girls are known as "Picture Brides." At Honolulu their new proprietors awaited them, and I suppose identified and appropriated them, although to the European eye one face differed no whit from another.

The j.a.panese have the practical qualities that consort with materialism.

They are quick to supply creature comforts; their hotels are well-managed; their cooks are excellent; their sign-posts are numerous and, I believe, very circ.u.mstantial; at the railway stations are lists of the show places in the neighbourhood; the telephone is general. But there are strange failings. The roads, for example, are often very bad, although so many motor-cars exist. Even in Tokio the puddles and mud are abominable. There is no fixed rule to force rickshaw men to carry bells.

There is no rule of the road at all, so that the driver of a vehicle must be doubly alert, having to make up his mind not only as to what he is going to do himself, but also what the approaching driver is probably going to do. From time to time, I believe, a rule of the road has been tried, but it has always broken down.

The rickshaw bells are the more important, because the j.a.panese are not observant. They may see Fuji and stand for hours worshipping a spray of cherry blossom, but they do not see what is coming. Normally they look down.

The rickshaw is comfortable and speedy; but to be drawn about by a fellow-creature is a humiliating experience and I never ceased to feel too conspicuous and ashamed. I discovered also how easy it is to lose one's temper with these men. I used to sit and wonder if there had ever been a runaway, and I never hired a rickshaw without thinking of Mr.

Anstey's story of the talking horse.

FIRST GLIMPSE OF FUJI

I left Kyoto for Yokohama on Wednesday night, March 17, 1920, at eleven, and Thursday, March 18, 1920, thus remains with me as a red-letter day, for it was then, at about half-past seven in the morning, that, lifting the blind of my sleeping compartment, I saw--almost within reach, as it seemed, dazzlingly white under its snow against a clear blue sky, with the sun flooding it with glory--Fujiyama. I was to see it again several times--for I went to Myanos.h.i.ta for that purpose--but never again so startlingly and wonderfully as this.

When I am asked to name in a word the most beautiful thing I saw on my travels I mention Fujiyama instantly. There is nothing else to challenge it. Perhaps had I seen Everest from Darjeeling I might have a different story to tell; but I missed it. The Taj? Yes, the Taj is a divine work of man; but it has not the serene lofty isolation of this sublime mountain, rising from the plain alone and immense with almost perfect symmetry.

I was not to see Fujiyama again for a week or so, but in the meanwhile I saw the Daibutsu, the giant figure of Buddha, at Kamakura, in all its bland placidity. These were the only big things I found in j.a.pan.

TWO FUNERALS

Yokohama is industrial and dirty everywhere but on the drive beside the harbour, and on the Bluff, where the rich foreigners live. I visited one house on this pleasant eminence and there was nothing in it to suggest that it was in j.a.pan any more than in, say, Cheltenham. The form was English, the furniture was English, the pictures and books were English; photographs of school and college cricket elevens gave it the final home touch. Only in the garden were there exotic indications. The English certainly have the knack of carrying their atmosphere with them. I had noticed that often in India; but this Yokohama villa was the completest exemplification.

Wandering about the city I came one morning on a funeral procession that ought to have pleased Henry Ward Beecher, who, on the only occasion on which I heard him, when he was very old and I was very young, urged upon his hearers the importance of bright colours and flowers instead of the ordinary habiliments and accoutrements of woe. For when a soul is on its way to paradise, he said, we should be glad. The Yokohama cortege was headed by men bearing banners; then came girls all in white, riding in rickshaws; then the gaudy hea.r.s.e; then priests in rickshaws; and finally the relations and friends. The effect conveyed was not one of melancholy; but even if every one had been in black, impressiveness would have been wanting, for no one can look dignified in a rickshaw.

Compared, however, with a funeral which I saw in Hong-Kong, the Yokohama ceremony was solemnity in essence. The Hong-Kong obsequies were those of a tobacco-magnate's wife and the widower had determined to spare no expense on their thoroughness. He had even offered, but without success, to compensate the tramway company for a suspension of the service, the result of his failure being that every few minutes the procession was held up to permit the cars to go by; which meant that instead of taking only two hours to pa.s.s any given point, it took three. The estimated cost of the funeral was one hundred thousand dollars and all Hong-Kong was there to see.