Jinrikisha Days in Japan/Chapter 22
CHAPTER XXII
LAKE BIWA AND KIOTO
After the pace of the jinrikisha the slow train from Nagoya to Nagahama, on Lake Biwa, seemed to attain a dizzy speed. Rising continually, we reached a hilly region where the road-bed crossed a chain of tiny valleys, penetrated mountain-tunnels, and cut through pine forests and bamboo groves.
At Nagahama we rested in a lake-side tateba, content with the glorious view, and in no way eager to search for its famous kabe crapes. Lake Biwa, with long, wooded slopes running down to the shore, and mountains barring all the horizon, with smooth water and a blue sky, offers sixty miles of charming sail. Little thatched-roof villages, and the wide sweeping gables of temples show here and there in the solitude of pines, and the crest of one high promontory is girt with the white walls of Hikone castle. Many legends belong to this mediæval fortress, the scene of so many famous events, whose last daimio was murdered in Tokio by disaffected followers, soon after he negotiated, as prime-minister, the treaties of 1858.
At Otsu, at the lower end of the lake, the splendid old temple of Miidera and its monastery on the heights command the town and lake, and the soldiers’ memorial column overlooks the eight great sights of Lake Biwa which are painted on half the fans, kakemonos, and screens of Japan. One of these eight wonders is Miidera, with its long and lofty avenues, the green twilight of its primeval groves, its yellow, moated walls and frowning gate-ways that hide in the enchanted forest; its ancient shrines, its terraces, and lichen-covered bell-tower, home of the legend of Benkei and his bell. Benkei was a muscular priest who lived on Mount Hiyeizan overlooking the lake. The other priests coveted the splendid bell of Miidera, which had been presented by the ruler of the kingdom of women living at the bottom of Lake Biwa to Hidesato for valiantly slaying a giant centipede that had frightened these ladies of the lake by its forays. The priests induced Benkei to steal the bell by promising him as much soup as he could eat, and he threw it over his shoulder and carried it to the top of the mountain. But its silvery tongue kept crying “I want to return,” and the priests threw it down the mountain-side, over which it rolled, receiving many dents and scratches, to its old bell-tower. Near by it is the giant soup-kettle, in which the priests cooked Benkei’s mess of pottage, and touching both relics of course verifies the legends. At the end of the monastery groves are large barracks, and troops of the chubby-faced, boyish-looking soldiers are always strolling through the arching avenues of the still old forest.
The greatest sight of Biwa, and one of the wonders of Japan, is the old pine-tree of Karasaki, which has stood for three hundred years on a little headland a couple of miles above Otsu, with a tiny village and a Shinto temple all its own. Its trunk is over four feet in diameter, and, at a height of fifteen feet, its boughs are trained laterally and supported by posts, so that it looks like a banyan-tree. The branches, twisted, bent, and looped like writhing dragons, cover more than an acre of ground with their canopy. The tips of the boughs reach far out over the water, and the sensitive Japanese hear a peculiar music in the sifting of the rain-drops through the foliage into the lake. High up in the tree is a tiny shrine, and the pilgrims clap, their hands and stand with clasped palms, turning their faces upward as they pray. A heavy stone wall protects this sylvan patriarch from the washing of storms and floods.
Under the branches a legion of small villagers, intimating by pantomime their desire to dive for pennies, untied their belts and dropped their solitary cotton garments as unconcernedly as one might take off hat or gloves. They frolicked and capered in the water as much at home as fishes and as loath to leave it. Fleeing from this body of too attached followers, we were whirled down the road to Otsu to eat the famous Biwa trout, passing on the way a woman, who sat at ease in her bath-tub by her own door-step, calmly scrubbing herself with a bag of rice bran, and contemplating her neighbors, the road, and the lake scenery the while.
On Mount Hiyeizan, by the ruined Buddhist temples and monasteries, the American missionaries of different denominations have a long-established summer camp, where they enjoy a sort of Japanese Chautauqua circle, their tents and buildings the only signs of habitation where once stood hundreds of temples with their thousands of priests.
THE GREAT PINE-TREE AT KARASAKI
From Otsu over to the Kioto side of the mountains we went by train, rushing down the long grade and through tunnels to the great plain, where sits the sacred city, the capital and heart of old Japan, incomparable Kioto, Saikio, or Miako. We saw it in the sunset light, the western hills throwing purple shadows on their own slopes, and the long stretch of wheat fields at their base turned to a lake of pure gold. The white walls of the Shogun's castle, the broad roof of the old palace, and the ridges of temples rose above the low, gray plain of house roofs and held the sun’s last level beams.
After the imitations and tawdriness of modern Tokio, the unchanged aspect of the old capital is full of dignity. After many long stays in spring-time, midsummer, and midwinter, Kioto has always remained to me foremost of Japanese cities. Yaamis, the foreigner’s Kioto home, with its steep terraced garden, its dwarf-pine and blooming monkey-tree, its many buildings at different levels, its flitting figures on the outer galleries, is like no other hostlery. Yaami, proprietor of this picturesque hotel, is a personage indeed. He and his brother were professional guides until they made their fortunes. Their shrewd eyes saw further fortunes in a Kioto inn, where foreigners might find beds, chairs, tables, knives, forks, and foreign food, and they secured the old Ichiriki tea-house, midway on the slope of Maruyama, the mountain walling in Kioto on the east. The Ichiriki tea-house was the place where Oishi Kura no Suke, the leader of the Forty-seven Ronins, played the drunkard during the two years that he lived near Kioto, before he avenged the death of his lord. With it was bought an adjoining monastery, belonging to one of the temples on Mount Hiyeizan, and these two original buildings have expanded and risen story upon story, with detached wings here and there, until the group of tall white buildings, with the white flag floating high up in the midst of Maruyama’s foliage, is quite castle-like. While the obnoxious foreign treaties are in force, no foreigners except those in Japanese employ are allowed to live in Kioto, or even to visit it without a passport, and this secures Yaami in his monopoly. As a matter of fact, Yaami is not the family name of the two pleasant and prosperous-looking men who walk about in silk kimonos, with heavy gold watch-chains wound about their broad silk belts, and who have the innocent faces of young children, save for the shrewdness of their eyes. Yaami is the corruption of Yama Amida (Hill of Buddha), which is the name of the hotel, and the two men belong to the Inowye family, a clan not less numerous in Japan than the Smiths of English-speaking countries. In parts of the house one finds relics of monastery days in dim old screens of fine workmanship, and there is a stone-floored kitchen, vast as a temple, with cooks serious as priests, wielding strange sacrificial knives, and who, in midsummer, wear an apron only, apparently as a professional badge rather than as a garment. The momban, or gate-keeper, sits, spider-like, in a web of his own, a mere doll’s house by the gate-way. In olden times, and even to-day, in large establishments, the momban announces an arrival with strokes upon his gong, but this particular functionary corresponds more nearly to the Parisian octroi. All who enter the gates answer for themselves and pay tribute, or they are forever barred out. Even coolies disgorge their black-mail to the colony of fleet-footed brethren who hold a valuable monopoly at Yaami’s gate, and in guilds and labor organizations the Orient is ages older and wiser than the Occident.
All of Maruyama’s slope is holy ground and pleasure-ground. Tea-houses and bath-houses are scattered in between the great temples, and prayer-gongs and pious hand-clapping are heard in unison with samisens and revellers’ songs. Praying and pleasuring go together, and the court-yard of the Gion temple at the foot of the hill is lined with monkey-shows and archery ranges, and in the riding-schools the adventurous may, for a few coppers, mount a jerky horse and be jolted around a shady ring. There, too, are many rows of images of fierce, red-cloaked Daruma, the Buddhist saint, who sailed across from Korea on a rush-leaf. He sat facing a wall for nine years, and wore off his lower limbs, and now his image, weighted with lead, is the target for merry ball-throwers, and is seen in every quarter of the empire.
From the airy galleries on Maruyama the city lies below one like a relief map. The river, the Kamogawa, crossed at intervals by long bridges, cuts the city in two. From each bridge a street runs straight on to the westward. By day these thoroughfares look like furrows ploughed through the solid plain of gray-tiled roofs; but at night they shine with thousands of lamps and lanterns, and their narrow, wavering lines of fire look like so many torchlight processions, and the river is one broad belt of light.
I first saw Kioto on the last day of the Gion matsuri, a festival which lasts for a month and brings all the population out-of-doors into one quarter during the evening. By dusk a babel of music and voices had arisen, which finally drew us down the steep and shady road, and through the great stone torii, to the Gion’s precincts. The court-yard was almost deserted, and looking through the great gate way to Shijo Street the view was dazzling and the shouts and chatter deafening. The narrow street was lined with rows of large white paper lanterns hanging above the house doors, and rows hanging from the eaves. Lanterned booths lined the curb, while humbler venders spread their wares on the ground in the light of flaring torches. Crowds surged up and down, every man carrying a paper lantern on the end of a short bamboo stick—the literal lamp for the feet—women bearing smaller lanterns, and children delighting themselves with gayly-colored paper shells for tiny candles. Boys marched and ran in long single files, shouting a measured chant as they cut their way through the crowd and whirled giant lanterns and blazing torches at the end of long poles.
From Gion gate to Shijo bridge the street was one wavering, glittering line of light, and crowded solidly with people. Where the street narrows near the bridge there is a region of theatres and side-shows, and there banners and pictures, drums and shouting ticket-sellers, and a denser crowd of people gathered. A loud shout and a measured chorus heralded a group of men carrying a Brobdingnagian torch, a giant bamboo pole blazing fiercely at its lofty tip. The crowd surged back to the walls as the torch-bearers ran by and on to the middle of Shijo bridge, where they waved the burning wand in fiery signals to the other bridges that the real procession was starting. More torches and lanterns, lines of priests in garments of silk and gauze, wearing strange hats, beating and blowing strange instruments; and a sacred red chair, reason for all this ceremony, was borne on from the Gion to a distant Shinto sanctuary to remain until the matsuri of the following year.
From Shijo bridge to Sanjo bridge Kioto’s river-bed is like a scene from fairy-land throughout the summer, and during the Gion matsuri the vision is enhanced. The tea-houses that line the river-bank with picturesquely galleried fronts set out acres of low platform tables in the clear, shallow stream. The water ripples pleasantly around them, giving a grateful sense of coolness to these resthetic Japanese, who sit in groups on the open platforms, smoking their pipes and feasting under the light of their rows of lanterns. All the broad river-bed is ablaze with lights and torches, and on the dry, gravelly stretches a multitude of small peddlers, venders, and showmen set up their attractive tents and add to the general glitter and illumination. Hundreds linger and stroll on the bridges to admire the gay sight, for as only this people could have conjured up so brilliant a spectacle out of such simple and every-day means, so only they can fully enjoy its beauty and charm. All the children wear their gayest holiday clothes on such a great matsuri night, and the graceful women of the old capital, bare-headed, rustling in silk and gauze, their night-black hair spread in fantastic loops and caught with beautiful hair-pins, are worthy of their surroundings.
We left the bridge and wandered over the loose gravel and rocks of the river-beds, crossing by many planks and tiny bridges from one small island of shingle to another. There were countless fruit-stands, with their ingenious little water-fountains spraying melons and peaches to a dewy coolness and freshness, hair-pin stands glittering with silver flowers, and fan and toy and flower booths, and all the while we wandered there the people watched and followed with a respectful curiosity that amused but could not annoy. Attracted by the beautiful face of a young girl just within the curtained door of a side-show, we paid the one cent entrance fee to see the conjurers. The tent was empty when we entered, but such a stream of natives poured in after us as to delight the proprietor and encourage the musicians to pound out more violent airs. A few miserable poodles were made to walk on two legs and otherwise discomfort themselves at the bidding of the beautiful girl, whose strange soft eyes and lovely face were set off by an elaborate coiffure, a coronet of silvery hair-pins, and a kimono of gray silk shot with many tinsel threads. We foreigners found the faces and holiday garb of the people more interesting than the performance, and the natives in turn seemed equally absorbed in watching us. Horse-shows, where daring but terrified Japanese bestrode steeds and ambled three times around the ring for a penny, puppet-show's, juggler-shows, and peep-shows drew us in turn from one end of the river-bed fair to the other, and when too weary to walk we remounted to the bridge to admire afresh this feast of lanterns, until at midnight we sought the groves of Maruyama.