Notes of a Trip to Izumo

I.

MATSUÉ, June 28.

I FELT curious in advance as to the nature of the impressions I was going to receive on revisiting, after years of absence, a place known only in the time when I imagined that all Japan was like Izumo. For, as a general rule, impressions of the novel belong as much to illusion as to actuality: and this not only because the receptivity of the senses is seldom perfect (as shown by the fact that it is never quite the same in any two human beings), but much more because the quality of any fresh impression is apt to depend upon the individual mood of the moment. Inexperience

— except when guided by pure instinct

— is usually dull. A landscape, a street, a house, even a face, when once familiar, takes aspects totally invisible at the time when it was first seen. So I kept asking myself : “ What will the old town now look like ? Will it still seem to me beautiful ? Will the queer, queer charm of other days return ? ”

Well, some of the charm returned, and keenly, as if reinforced by absence. As a tiny steamer bore me back to the quaint town, —up the long glassy waterways between leagues of rice-lands, and under just such alternations of sunshine and sudden shower as used to mark the gusty summer of Izumo, — sensations of my first sojourn thronged out to meet me at the sight of well-known peaks, in the scent of blue wood-smoke from the hamlets, in the familiar clayey odors of the fields. Above me, as of yore, circled the kites with their melancholy piyorō-yorō ; voices of wild doves and of vguisu purled from wooded hills; and brown fishermen, in boats shaped like new moons, were singing the same song to which I had so often listened at night, in my chamber over the lake, the Izumo-Bushi: —

Then as we glided up to the well-remembered bridge, the long Ōhashi, — past temple gate and torii and whitewalled kura and balconied houses of many stories rising straight from the flood, and between ranks of high-pooped junks and shoals of boats of all shapes and sizes,—nothing seemed to have been changed. All the junks I thought I knew by sight: they were moored in the same old places, every one of them, — as if they had been waiting for me to come back. The white bridge had turned, I fancied, somewhat gray. that was the only difference I could find to assure me that I had really been years away, that I had not been dreaming.

Entering the streets, however, I was almost startled to find them very much narrower and smaller than they had seemed in memory. Their pleasing queerness was the same ; but why did they appear to have shrunk ? Probably because I had become accustomed to the larger vistas of larger cities, Ōsaka, Kyōto, Kobé.

But this impression of smallness proved only temporary. It passed ; and every thing began to look as in former days, yet with a new character toning the familiar aspect. The peculiarly Western style of the buildings, the singular forms of objects in the shops, though clearly remembered, began to interest me in a novel way. All I saw seemed more odd, more extraordinary, than ever before: and this seeming was not fanciful, for Izumo still not only makes things in her own old way, but obliges the manufacturers of Ōsaka and other centres of supply to consult provincial tastes. Even the fans displayed were unlike those seen elsewhere in Japan : they were made beautiful with old-time designs, — such, for example, as a blue-and-white mackerel sky, semi on a plum branch, silkworms feeding and spinning, waves and crabs on a beach. Presently I found myself also able to distinguish the purely local character of costumes, coiffures, songs of the street, samisen rhythms, etc. Izumo having been the first part of Japan in which I made a long sojourn, I had not before perceived that nearly all things there —the bronzes, the porcelains, the domestic utensils, the woodwork, the agricultural and fishing implements, the amusements, the holidays, the rites and ceremonies — were as special to the province as was its own antique dialect.

II.

MATSUÉ, June 30.

I wandered yesterday morning about the town.

Everywhere I found the sunlight and the colors of seven years before ; the same-seeming shadows trembling to the same lake wind, the same flower-odors wafted from yellow-walled gardens of old samurai yashiki, — magical gardens that no Western eye will see before brute commerce buys them up to destroy them. I went to my former home, tenanted now by its owner, where I was welcomed as a friend, and allowed to look at the lotospond, the chrysanthemums, and the little shirine of Inari under the dove-haunted hill. Then I crossed the moat bridge to the old castle, and found that the citizens had liberally subscribed to repair the tower : all the tiling was new and blue ; all the worm-eaten beams had been replaced or reinforced. But I regretted that certain fish-shaped gable-ornaments had disappeared ; and the raw tints of clean roof and renovated wall-surface were not beautiful, as had been the colors of decay. The lookout chamber of the turret had been decorated with photographs and drawings of scenes of the war in China, and part of a lower room had been converted into a military museum. It contained Chinese cannon, rifles, swords, flags, accoutrements of all sorts captured by Izumo troops. Above this curious display was hung a terrestrial globe, on which perched a prodigious dragon-fly, — the symbol of Japan,²— a dragon-fly perhaps five feet long, with wings of tinted gauze. From the castle I went to Gesshōji, to revisit the wonderful cemetery of the Izumo daimyō, — still, in my humble opinion, the most romantic family cemetery in Japan, — and I grieved that the people had not been more zealous to preserve it. It had been sadly neglected, — probably because of want of means to cover the expense of keeping it in good order, — and a silk-factory, built too near the weirdly carven gate, was pouring volumes of coal-smoke from an ugly brick chimney, and blackening the green neighborhood with cinder-heaps. But this was almost the only sad thing I saw. I went to the middle school ; and a new director took me to the rooms in which I used to teach, and new classes of students stood up to salute me after the manner of other times. Presently I was introduced to another visitor, a Japanese naval lieutenant in full uniform. He had been one of the earliest pupils of the school, and was now one of the heroes of the battle of the Yalu. During the war he had served on the Naniwa Kan, the cruiser which struck the first blow at China by sinking the transport Kowshing. The students assembled in the big lecture-hall to greet him. He made them an address ; first speaking of his own student days in the school, then telling the story of the destruction of the Chinese fleet in a simple, direct, soldierly way that delighted everybody.

By invitation I went in the evening to a charming little banquet, at which I met some dear old friends. There were recitations of poems by guests, and there were dances by dancing-girls. One of the latter, whom I remembered having seen when a very small child-maiko, during an official dinner given at the governor’s house in the twenty - third year of Meiji, had grown up into a tall and graceful woman. She attired herself like a young warrior of old time, — a two-sworded bushi, with white cloth tied round her head, sleeves bound back, and skirts tucked up, — to sing a national song of the war, now all the rage. This was for me one of the most interesting incidents of the entertainment. The song is not one of loud triumph, like our Western war-songs ; but the melody expresses a peculiar something in Japanese national character that the Occident knows yet very little about. The air is excessively simple, and must be sung in a low, slow way; but every tone in it is a tone of penetrating irony, —the tone of one expressing amused contempt for an enemy, yet careful not to seem boastful. Now, it is just this vocal irony which takes a Japanese audience by storm, — provoking wild shouts, old samurai battle-cries, as it did on this occasion even before the girl had finished the first four lines: —

Her performance was indeed like a new interpretation. But I think that any man perfectly understanding the inner spirit of the Japanese — their contempt of brag, their measure of strength by modesty, their ideas of decorous reserve in the relating of success — could scarcely hear that song well sung anywhere without feeling stirred to the marrow of his bones. The words are nothing ! The stir in the blood is made only by the singer’s art in suggesting the suppression by will of the true and natural feeling,— the soldier’s scornful pride, his exultation, his sense of glory.

Then, at my request, the girl danced the dance of Urashima. I asked her because I had seen her dance it when she was a child. This time she danced it using a mask, — the mask of old age, — deftly slipped on at the moment when Urashima looks into the box which he was told never to open. Afterwards she brought me the mask to look at. I thought that its pasteboard features had a faint mocking resemblance to my own ; and I suppose that I must have fallen into a little reverie, for a friend laughingly handed me a wine-cup, with the wise remark, “ To-night we must think only of happy things.” As a matter of fact I ought to have been very happy.

But, after all, nobody can revisit with absolute impunity a place once loved and deserted. Something had vanished, something immaterial, of which the absence made a vague sadness within me. I tried to think what it could be. Old friends had entertained me. The city had remained beautiful for me in the light of fairest summer days. The queer street vistas, the familiar shops, the quaint temples, the silent yashiki with their fairy gardens, were unchanged. The landscape looked as it used to look; the songs of birds from the holy groves, the shrilling of the cicadæe, the blossom-scents of the lanes, the many-tinted beauty of wood and vale, were just the same. Was not the lost charm something that had evaporated out of my own life, — something belonging to the first irrevocable illusion of Japan ?

I was not sure. But presently I found myself wondering whether most human happiness does not depend upon not seeing things as they are, upon not penetrating surfaces, upon psychical myopia, — or, in other words, upon ignorance of the sharply real; and there recurred to me with fresh meaning a singular Japanese proverb, “ Shiranu ga Hotoké” (Not to know is to become a Buddha).

III.

MATSUÉ, July 3.

It is the Japanese custom to take an afternoon nap during the heated term ; and yesterday, not being inclined either to sleep or to remain within doors, I decided, while my human friends were reposing, to visit certain of my superhuman friends who are not supposed to sleep at all. So I went out alone to the Street of the Temples. I entered all the remembered courts, and saw the children playing there as they used to play, and visited some graves, and observed the offerings laid before the statues of Jizō. I was glad to find no change. Both the Hotoké and the Kami appeared to enjoy the same love and reverence as of yore, and their gardens and dwelling-places remained beautiful and well kept. Here and there, before the Shintō shrines, were relics of the recent war, brought from China by victorious soldiers and seamen, — spolia opima.

Indeed, the influences of the nineteenth century have little affected the real spirit of Shintō, if they can be said to have done so at all, in any part of Japan. The faith remains not less earnest, though its manifestations often assume a character peculiar to the Meiji era. The offerings to the gods are as numerous as ever, but many of them are strictly modern, and some quite Occidental. At the great shrine of Kompira, for instance, you will find a curiously modern ex-voto, —a life-preserver, bearing in English letters the name of the ship, Tosa, to which it belonged ; and you may notice there, also, among old-fashioned ex-voto pictures of junks saved from wreck by divine power, new pictures of steamers and modern schooners similarly rescued by the god. At nearly all of the greater temples, and at many of the smaller ones, you can see spoils of the war with China. Among these are Gatling and Armstrong guns, canistershot and 32-centimetre shells, Mannlicher and Martini rifles, Colt revolvers and Winchester repeaters, not to speak of Chinese banners, uniforms, and lances, — a vast part of the captured armament having been thus disposed of.³ The soldier of Meiji indeed salutes the gods as he salutes his commanders, and the officer, unsheathing his sword, presents arms before the Shintō shrine in Western military fashion ; but the reverence expressed is the reverence unchanged of a thousand years ago. The festival for the military dead is celebrated now with horse-races and with modern gymnastic games ; but the old belief in the real presence of hero-souls makes the same appeal as in other days to the heart of camps. How little, also, the influence of Buddhism has been weakened even in the military world may be divined from the fact of the great festival held in 1896 on behalf of the spirits of the cavalry horses that perished in the war.

Then I found my way beyond the streets, and took a familiar road that winds along the base of a range of hills overlooking a rice-plain. The rice-fields, extending to another line of hills several miles away, presented one unbroken warm green surface, rippling under a west wind almost like a lake. Over those green ripplings fishing-boats were sailing, or at least appeared to be sailing, — some of them so near that I could see the faces of men and boys on board. From the level of the road one could see nothing of the canals along which they really were moving, the water being hidden by the rice-grass : one saw only the hulls and the sails — white in the sun like snow — gliding over those bright green undulations. Many times in other years I had watched the same odd spectacle : it still makes one of the particular charms of an Izumo landscape.

From the other side of the road, at long intervals, narrow steep flights of stone steps lead up under trees to the places of old shrines upon the heights. But for the torii prefacing them, one might easily pass without noticing their existence ; so disjointed and worn and mossed they have become as to seem to the careless eye no more than a suggestion of steps, — a mere succession of irregularities, uniform in tone with the green and gray of the hillside. Should you climb one of these flights of steps, you would find at the top another torii flanked by stone lamps and lions, and see a shrine beyond, shadowed by great trees having ropes of straw tied round them in token of their sacredness.

Ascending to one of these holy places to look for a certain stone bearing a curious inscription, I saw a young man, in the common dress of a farmer, praying earnestly before the shrine, and clapping his hands at regular intervals, in the Western Shintō manner. There was no other person in the court. I wandered about, but could not find the stone. It occurred to me to ask the young man at prayer. He answered kindly : “ I have been away with the army, and have only now returned, so I am not quite sure. But I think you will find that stone at the east end of the grove, behind the two ichō-trees.” I thanked him, and left him to his prayers. The stone I found in the spot to which he had directed me. I wondered how often to the memory of that young peasant soldier — in reveries of sentry solitude in the snows of Manchuria, or in dreams of the night before a battle — the vision of his own parish temple had returned, vividly as I saw it then. Doubtless he had played as a child before the same gray shrine. Descending the hill,

I took the path to the shrine of O-Kyaku-San ; but all the way I kept thinking of that solitary praying figure in the gold-flecked twilight of the holy grove.

The little temple of O-Kyaku-San stands outside the village called Sugatamura, on the slope of a ridge overlooking leagues of rice-fields. It is a very simple Shintō miya, with a thatched roof, but there is a handsome granite torii at the entrance to its court. To this torii are fastened tresses of human hair as votive offerings,— long hair of women and children. There are stone lamps and stone lions in the court, and a dancing-platform protected by a straw roof. Children sometimes dance sacred dances there to please the divinity. The shrine itself is nearly black with age. To its gratings, also, are tied offerings of hair, together with strands of hemp dyed so as to look like real hair. And on its walls, especially under the broad eaves and on either side of the gratings, are pasted cheap colored prints of the kind called Edo-yé, or Yedopictures, — views of Tōkyō, landscapes, heads of pretty singing-girls, and, curiously enough, scenes of the late war with China. The shrine is elevated about two feet above the ground, and the vacant space under its floor is almost filled with smooth, round stones, apparently gathered from some rivercourse.

There is nothing extraordinary in the appearance of the shrine or in the general character of its ex-votos; offerings of hair and pictures and heapings of little stones may be seen at hundreds of other yashiro. But the story of the temple and the character of the worship paid to its divinity are both peculiar and interesting.

Prayers for handsome hair are made to O-Kyaku-San. Perhaps the visitor will notice that some of the offerings of real hair are not black, but brown. Girls who have brown or wavy hair pray O-KyakuSan to make it black and straight. Mothers visit the temple to pray that the hair of their children may be beautiful. Each petitioner selects a stone from the pile under the shrine and takes it home, and every day strokes with it her own hair or the hair of her child, with a prayer to O-Kyaku-San. After the prayer has been granted, the stone must be returned to its place under the shrine. (Such prayers would seem often to have been heard, for although many Japanese children are born with brown hair, the hair darkens as they grow up.) Nearly all the stones which I saw at the shrine had become quite polished on one side; very probably they had been pressed upon many generations of young heads.

Who is, or rather, who was O-KyakuSan ? The appellation is a singular one ; it means “The honorable Lady-Guest.” I can only answer by repeating the story told at Sugata-mura.

The term “ honorable Lady-Guest ” was once a respectful designation for the favorite — not the wife — of a prince or grandee. Tradition says that the O-Kyaku-San of Sugata-mura occupied such a place hundreds of years ago in the court of a daimyō. She had great beauty, and the prince loved her, but she had many jealous enemies who intrigued against her. These discovered that her hair was not perfectly black, and they reproached her so persistently and so maliciously with this defect that she became tired of living, and killed herself. But her fate evoked much sympathy and sorrow, and a temple was built for her spirit by way of atonement. And the peasant women pray to her for beautiful hair, and they buy Yedo-pictures for her, because it is still remembered that she used to be very fond of such pictures.⁴

On the way back I stopped at the bridge called Baba-bashi to look for the curious divinity who had given her own name to the bridge,— Seki-Baba, the Old Woman of Coughs and Colds. Formerly, her little stone image, sheltered by a wooden shrine, used to occupy a corner on one of the abutments of the bridge, and daily incense was burned in front of it, and special offerings of sprigs of nanten (Nandina domestica) were set before it in bamboo cups. Judging from the statue only, one would have supposed Seki-Baba to be a popular form of some Buddhist personage, but she had nothing to do with Buddhism. She belonged to the same curious human family of gods as O-Kyaku-San. Tradition says that Seki-Baba was a woman who suffered so much from a cough that she ended her pain by throwing herself from the bridge subsequently called Baba-bashi. After her death the people set up on the stonework of the bridge a little shrine for her spirit, and placed in it a statue to represent her, and all who suffered from bad coughs would go to the bridge to pray to her to cure them, so that she became a kind of special deity of coughs and colds.⁵ Nearly every pious person who had to pass over that bridge would say a prayer to Seki-Baba, and set a rod of incense smouldering before the statue.

I was sorry to find that Seki-Baba had disappeared. Upon inquiry, I learned that a few years previously the bridge had been repaired, and that during the work of reconstruction the little shrine and statue had been removed and lost. No effort had been made to replace them.

Gods in the agricultural districts survive all disasters and social changes. But when, in this tumultuous era of Meiji and in the heart of a city, any very small local god is displaced and forgotten even for one year, the chances are that such a god will never again be seen or heard of in this world. Seki-Baba was gone, probably to the cemetery of dead mythologies; but I found another not less curious old acquaintance, Shiroko Jizō, in the grounds of a mouldering Buddhist temple on the outskirts of the city. This figure of Shiroko Jizō, or White-Faced Jizō, is cut in relief upon a granite block, and the head is whitened with toilet powder such as women use for their necks and faces. Girls who believe themselves too swarthy touch the powdered surface of the image, and then their own faces, so as to transfer some of the powder on the statue to their skin ; praying the while for a fairer complexion. For generations this has been done, with the result that the original features of Jizō have been completely worn away merely by the touch of women’s fingers. There is no face, — nothing but a round, smooth boss of stone representing the head.

IV.

KABANA, August 22.

Gardens excepted, there are no outward manifestations of the old poetry of Japanese life so remarkable as those summer-houses occupying all the picturesque sites of the country. Wherever there is a view worth going to see, you will almost certainly find a summerhouse built to command it, no matter how wild or poor the district. You will find summer-houses clinging to sea-cliffs over the thunder of breakers; nestling in shadows of gorges over the roaring of rapids; strutted out from precipicefronts under the rainbows of cascades; perched, like eagles’ nests, at the verge of dead craters. For in Japan there will always be summer guests wherever there is summer beauty, —travelers happy to please their eyes and to rest their feet, and to leave some coppers in payment for the privilege of the vision and the repose.

The summer-house at which I am now staying is typical of the class: a skeleton structure of two stories, simply and strongly built after the manner of peasants’ dwellings, and at a cost of perhaps sixty dollars. Timber is cheap here ; on the other side of Japan such a building could not be put up for three hundred dollars. It stands on the edge of a lofty cliff, and overlooks a little bay near ancient Mionoseki. From groundfloor to roof it is open on three sides ; and on the seaward side shelter from sun and wind is given by trees rooted in the cliff below, but towering far above the eaves, — enormous pines, with branches many feet in girth. Between the zigzags of those mighty limbs there are glimpses of sea, and fishing-sails (canvas or straw) flitting like white or yellow butterflies, and the far pale threadline of the Hōld coast, and Daisen’s cone thrusting into the clear sky like some prodigious blue crystal. Or, looking directly down over the needle foliage of younger pines, you see the wimpling of the bay, and bathers laughing among the rocks, and children playing with seaweed and shells. You view the world as a fish-hawk views it, — though I presume with vastly different sensations. After a swim, it is delightful to sleep here, with a wooden pillow under your neck, and the sharp sweet sea wind in your hair. You are furnished with a bathing-dress, sandals, a big straw hat of curious shape to keep off the sun, barley tea and cakes, a smoking-box, and a pillow ; and the price per day of this entertainment is — three cents ! Of course the guest is expected to bring his own food with him, and to provide himself with towels.

These summer-houses are manifestations of something higher than the mere sense of beauty : they teach us also how fully Old Japan understood that the secret of happiness was to be found in content, — content with the sober necessaries of life, content with the simple pleasures that nature offers equally to all, content with what every - day humanity can give of unselfish companionship. Something of the old idyllic condition still lingers in Japan, despite the changes of the years of Meiji; and to one who has dwelt in it even but a little while, our trained Western notions about the “ battle for existence,” the “ duty of struggle,” the “obligation” of triumphing over our weaker brethren in the miserable striving for wealth and position, seem the doctrines of a monstrous social condition. Ages and ages ago the Japanese discovered that the sole requirements for unselfish happiness were health, ability to earn a bare livelihood, and the natural cultivation of those moral and æsthetic sentiments possessed by every well-balanced mind. All else that made life worth living nature alone could furnish, — joy, beauty, love, rest.

Very little indeed would be needed for happiness, according to the old Japanese ideal ; and sometimes I am inclined to think that ideal the best imaginable. For what does a man really want beyond the common necessaries of life ? Clothing? — enough only for warmth and neatness. Furniture ? — in Japan not more than three dollars can buy. Books ? — well, for one who knows how to read (I did not learn how to read until I began to get old) twenty volumes might be sufficient. By preference I should live in the old Japanese fashion, did I not lack the indispensable requisite of a Japanese constitution.

There are certain small conventions which the visitor to these places should be able to observe in order to enjoy the whole Japanese quality of the experience. The general signification of these is only that you take your part in contributing to the general happiness, — not a difficult matter among the politest people in the world. What you can do will of course depend somewhat upon the character of the resort. At summering-places near the great cities of the east coast, where life is becoming unamiably modernized, the rule, for reasons obvious, is caution. It is in the far-away country districts, where the old manners still prevail, that the social charm is greatest and the customs are free from reserve. There you can safely afford to be as good-natured as you can. You have only to accept and to return little courtesies, and never to take offense at any curious interest shown in your own foreign personality ; for the apparent inquisitiveness is nearly always kindly. The simpler the people, the more fraternal you should be with them. If the place be frequented chiefly by the more refined classes, there will be some preliminary exclusiveness, and friendships will be formed more slowly. But once formed, they are likely to prove as lasting as they are delicious ; for there are beautiful surprises of human nature to be found in Old Japan, true realizations of Buddhist ideals. Yet how speak of them ? How describe a charactercharm unfamiliar as the scent of some exotic blossom still unknown to the West ?

Some of the friendships to which I refer are brought about by children. I have noted the story of such an evolution, exemplifying many. Two little boys, strangers to each other, begin to play together. The elder, seven years old, is from Tōkyō ; the younger is the son of an Izumo school-teacher. The Tōkyō boy’s parents are rich : he has many pretty things, — toys of the latest fashion, nice clothes, a naval uniform, and a marvelous cap of white and red cloth, so made that the flat top of it represents the national flag, — a blood-red sun sending out broadening rays like spokes. This he permits the Izumo boy to wear. Day by day, as the friendship grows, the Tōkyō boy gives presents to his new playfellow : gives him toy after toy, gives him picture-books, gives him at last even the wonderful white and red cap, — the Manzai-boshi,⁶ as he calls it. When he has nothing more to give away, his sister, a sweet girl of eleven, comes to the rescue with a supply of pretty trifles from her own belongings. The Izumo boy, however, cannot give much in return ; and his parents protest in vain, for the Tōkyō people are too wise to restrain in their children those affectionate impulses which the world will wither up all too soon. But the respective fathers and mothers have to talk over the matter, and so become loving friends, and pass a good deal of time together. The parting day comes ; the Tōkyō folk must begin their long journey home. Early after sunrise the kuruma come. The farewells are antiquely graceful, antiquely formal : everything nice is done or said according to rule ; but there is no rule for the tears in everybody’s eyes. The Izumo boy has to be forcibly taken out of sight and hearing by his nurse; his grief is a little too passionate. But he is only four years old! The Tōkyō children turn away their faces and look brave: they have already been trained to self-control. Although the difference in the social position of the two families is great, the bond of love now made between them will probably never be broken. Very happy things may come of it at some far-off day.

V.

HIROSHIMA, August 29.

At Kabé, while waiting with my kurumaya, to cross the river by the ferry, I was joined by a number of other travelers, chiefly peasant women. The ferry-boat was a large, solid construction, built to bear loaded wains, and made only a fixed number of trips per hour. Just as we were pushing off, a belated little pilgrim came running, and leaped in lightly, — a boy of perhaps thirteen. He was all in white from head to foot, after the fashion of summer pilgrims, — broad shadowing white hat, white upper dress (oidzura), white leggings, white tabi, — and looked fresh as one who had never trodden the path of hardship. Everybody’s gaze was at once turned upon him, and there remained; for a more attractive boy it would have been hard to find, comely and graceful. He seemed accustomed to being looked at, and returned our silent interest with a smile, showing teeth like porcelain. Then I observed those hard - working peasant women, one after the other, pull out their wretched little purses to give him alms. And they gave generously. He had not asked them ; he had not even made a gesture: I could only surmise that his smile had touched their Buddhist hearts, or had made them think, perhaps, about boys of their own. One asked him whither he was going; and he answered, in a musical contralto, that he was on the great pilgrimage to the Eighty-eight Temples of Kōbōdaishi (a pilgrimage requiring years to complete). He said no more about himself, and no other questions were asked of him. As we touched the further shore I put into his hand a small coin : he did not look at it, but looked into my face to smile his thanks; and I wondered at the beauty of his eyes. Meeting their laughing liquid gaze under the shadow of the pilgrim hat, I was aware of a thrill of sudden love and pity and admiration in my innermost self, and I understood better why those poor women had so freely opened their purses. As we prepared to go our several ways the lad saluted us, and then resumed his journey, — following the river toward a blue mystery of peaks that thronged into the horizon, range beyond range. Still for a while I watched the slender figure, butterfly-white against the green of the river-shore ; then, as my kurumaya made a quick turn that ended the vision, I felt sad, — because the sunshine of those eyes had entered my heart and stayed there. (They are smiling at me now.)

And my heart followed the pilgrim’s feet through the golden day, northwest, till the blue of the peaks turned green ; and up winding paths where shadows shake to the torrent roar of gorges ; and higher than heights of pine to luminous breezy sites of temples above the clouds; and down again to moist, dim, quaggy valleys, full of creeping water and bubbling of frogs; and upward again to vaster altitudes of azure and wind and sun; while shapes of Arhat and Rishi and Bodhisattva, and the heroes of old, and the gods of the ancient days, ever kept us good ghostly company, and entered with us to rest at pilgrim-inns, and made wonderful the thoughts of our sleep.

Probably on my way to Tōkyō comes the very last apparition of Old Japan, — the charming Old Japan that must remain eternally young in the story of human faith and art, like our own Hellas of the West; Old Japan joying in the daily beauty of the world, satisfied with nature’s perpetual poem, and filled with perfect trust in the Buddhist gospel of love ! For me the New Japan is waiting ; the great capital, so long dreaded, draws me to her vortex at last. And the question I now keep asking myself is whether in that New Japan I can be fortunate enough at happy moments to meet with something of the Old.

Lafcadio Hearn.