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I
found nothing that I could eat except black beans and boiled
cucumbers.
The room was dark, dirty, vile, noisy, and poisoned by
sewage
odours, as rooms unfortunately are very apt to be. At the
end
of the rice planting there is a holiday for two days, when many
offerings
are made to Inari, the god of rice farmers; and the
holiday-makers
kept up their revel all night, and drums, stationary
and
peripatetic, were constantly beaten in such a way as to prevent
sleep.
A
little boy, the house-master's son, was suffering from a very bad
cough,
and a few drops of chlorodyne which I gave him allayed it so
completely
that the cure was noised abroad in the earliest hours of
the
next morning, and by five o'clock nearly the whole population
was
assembled outside my room, with much whispering and shuffling
of
shoeless feet, and applications of eyes to the many holes in the
paper
windows. When I drew aside the shoji I was disconcerted by
the
painful sight which presented itself, for the people were
pressing
one upon another, fathers and mothers holding naked
children
covered with skin-disease, or with scald-head, or
ringworm,
daughters leading mothers nearly blind, men exhibiting
painful
sores, children blinking with eyes infested by flies and
nearly
closed with ophthalmia; and all, sick and well, in truly
"vile
raiment," lamentably dirty and swarming with vermin, the sick
asking
for medicine, and the well either bringing the sick or
gratifying
an apathetic curiosity. Sadly I told them that I did
not
understand their manifold "diseases and torments," and that, if
I
did, I had no stock of medicines, and that in my own country the
constant
washing of clothes, and the constant application of water
to
the skin, accompanied by friction with clean cloths, would be
much
relied upon by doctors for the cure and prevention of similar
cutaneous
diseases. To pacify them I made some ointment of animal
fat
and flowers of sulphur, extracted with difficulty from some
man's
hoard, and told them how to apply it to some of the worst
cases.
The horse, being unused to a girth, became fidgety as it
was
being saddled, creating a STAMPEDE among the crowd, and the
mago
would not touch it again. They are as much afraid of their
gentle
mares as if they were panthers. All the children followed
me
for a considerable distance, and a good many of the adults made
an
excuse for going in the same direction.
These
people wear no linen, and their clothes, which are seldom
washed,
are constantly worn, night and day, as long as they will
hold
together. They seal up their houses as hermetically as they
can
at night, and herd together in numbers in one sleeping-room,
with
its atmosphere vitiated, to begin with, by charcoal and
tobacco
fumes, huddled up in their dirty garments in wadded quilts,
which
are kept during the day in close cupboards, and are seldom
washed
from one year's end to another. The tatami, beneath a
tolerably
fair exterior, swarm with insect life, and are
receptacles
of dust, organic matters, etc. The hair, which is
loaded
with oil and bandoline, is dressed once a week, or less
often
in these districts, and it is unnecessary to enter into any
details
regarding the distressing results, and much besides may be
left
to the imagination. The persons of the people, especially of
the
children, are infested with vermin, and one fruitful source of
skin
sores is the irritation arising from this cause. The floors
of
houses, being concealed by mats, are laid down carelessly with
gaps
between the boards, and, as the damp earth is only 18 inches
or
2 feet below, emanations of all kinds enter the mats and pass
into
the rooms.
The
houses in this region (and I believe everywhere) are
hermetically
sealed at night, both in summer and winter, the amado,
which
are made without ventilators, literally boxing them in, so
that,
unless they are falling to pieces, which is rarely the case,
none
of the air vitiated by the breathing of many persons, by the
emanations
from their bodies and clothing, by the miasmata produced
by
defective domestic arrangements, and by the fumes from charcoal
hibachi,
can ever be renewed. Exercise is seldom taken from
choice,
and, unless the women work in the fields, they hang over
charcoal
fumes the whole day for five months of the year, engaged
in
interminable processes of cooking, or in the attempt to get
warm.
Much of the food of the peasantry is raw or half-raw salt
fish,
and vegetables rendered indigestible by being coarsely
pickled,
all bolted with the most marvellous rapidity, as if the
one
object of life were to rush through a meal in the shortest
possible
time. The married women look as if they had never known
youth,
and their skin is apt to be like tanned leather. At
Kayashima
I asked the house-master's wife, who looked about fifty,
how
old she was (a polite question in Japan), and she replied
twenty-two--one
of many similar surprises. Her boy was five years
old,
and was still unweaned.
This
digression disposes of one aspect of the population. {11}
LETTER
XII--(Concluded)
A
Japanese Ferry--A Corrugated Road--The Pass of Sanno--Various
Vegetation--An
Unattractive Undergrowth--Preponderance of Men.
We
changed horses at Tajima, formerly a daimiyo's residence, and,
for
a Japanese town, rather picturesque. It makes and exports
clogs,
coarse pottery, coarse lacquer, and coarse baskets.
After
travelling through rice-fields varying from thirty yards
square
to a quarter of an acre, with the tops of the dykes utilised
by
planting dwarf beans along them, we came to a large river, the
Arakai,
along whose affluents we had been tramping for two days,
and,
after passing through several filthy villages, thronged with
filthy
and industrious inhabitants, crossed it in a scow. High
forks
planted securely in the bank on either side sustained a rope
formed
of several strands of the wistaria knotted together. One
man
hauled on this hand over hand, another poled at the stern, and
the
rapid current did the rest. In this fashion we have crossed
many
rivers subsequently. Tariffs of charges are posted at all
ferries,
as well as at all bridges where charges are made, and a
man
sits in an office to receive the money.
The
country was really very beautiful. The views were wider and
finer
than on the previous days, taking in great sweeps of peaked
mountains,
wooded to their summits, and from the top of the Pass of
Sanno
the clustered peaks were glorified into unearthly beauty in a
golden
mist of evening sunshine. I slept at a house combining silk
farm,
post office, express office, and daimiyo's rooms, at the
hamlet
of Ouchi, prettily situated in a valley with mountainous
surroundings,
and, leaving early on the following morning, had a
very
grand ride, passing in a crateriform cavity the pretty little
lake
of Oyake, and then ascending the magnificent pass of Ichikawa.
We
turned off what, by ironical courtesy, is called the main road,
upon
a villainous track, consisting of a series of lateral
corrugations,
about a foot broad, with depressions between them
more
than a foot deep, formed by the invariable treading of the
pack-horses
in each other's footsteps. Each hole was a quagmire of
tenacious
mud, the ascent of 2400 feet was very steep, and the mago
adjured
the animals the whole time with Hai! Hai! Hai! which is
supposed
to suggest to them that extreme caution is requisite.
Their
shoes were always coming untied, and they wore out two sets
in
four miles. The top of the pass, like that of a great many
others,
is a narrow ridge, on the farther side of which the track
dips
abruptly into a tremendous ravine, along whose side we
descended
for a mile or so in company with a river whose
reverberating
thunder drowned all attempts at speech. A glorious
view
it was, looking down between the wooded precipices to a
rolling
wooded plain, lying in depths of indigo shadow, bounded by
ranges
of wooded mountains, and overtopped by heights heavily
splotched
with snow! The vegetation was significant of a milder
climate.
The magnolia and bamboo re-appeared, and tropical ferns
mingled
with the beautiful blue hydrangea, the yellow Japan lily,
and
the great blue campanula. There was an ocean of trees
entangled
with a beautiful trailer (Actinidia polygama) with a
profusion
of white leaves, which, at a distance, look like great
clusters
of white blossoms. But the rank undergrowth of the
forests
of this region is not attractive. Many of its component
parts
deserve the name of weeds, being gawky, ragged umbels, coarse
docks,
rank nettles, and many other things which I don't know, and
never
wish to see again. Near the end of this descent my mare took
the
bit between her teeth and carried me at an ungainly gallop into
the
beautifully situated, precipitous village of Ichikawa, which is
absolutely
saturated with moisture by the spray of a fine waterfall
which
tumbles through the middle of it, and its trees and road-side
are
green with the Protococcus viridis. The Transport Agent there
was
a woman. Women keep yadoyas and shops, and cultivate farms as
freely
as men. Boards giving the number of inhabitants, male and
female,
and the number of horses and bullocks, are put up in each
village,
and I noticed in Ichikawa, as everywhere hitherto, that
men
preponderate. {12} I. L. B.
LETTER
XIII
The
Plain of Wakamatsu--Light Costume--The Takata Crowd--A Congress
of
Schoolmasters--Timidity of a Crowd--Bad Roads--Vicious Horses--
Mountain
Scenery--A Picturesque Inn--Swallowing a Fish-bone--
Poverty
and Suicide--An Inn-kitchen--England Unknown!--My Breakfast
Disappears.
KURUMATOGE,
June 30.
A
short ride took us from Ichikawa to a plain about eleven miles
broad
by eighteen long. The large town of Wakamatsu stands near
its
southern end, and it is sprinkled with towns and villages. The
great
lake of Iniwashiro is not far off. The plain is rich and
fertile.
In the distance the steep roofs of its villages, with
their
groves, look very picturesque. As usual not a fence or gate
is
to be seen, or any other hedge than the tall one used as a
screen
for the dwellings of the richer farmers.
Bad
roads and bad horses detracted from my enjoyment. One hour of
a
good horse would have carried me across the plain; as it was,
seven
weary hours were expended upon it. The day degenerated, and
closed
in still, hot rain; the air was stifling and electric, the
saddle
slipped constantly from being too big, the shoes were more
than
usually troublesome, the horseflies tormented, and the men and
horses
crawled. The rice-fields were undergoing a second process
of
puddling, and many of the men engaged in it wore only a hat, and
a
fan attached to the girdle.
An
avenue of cryptomeria and two handsome and somewhat gilded
Buddhist
temples denoted the approach to a place of some
importance,
and such Takata is, as being a large town with a
considerable
trade in silk, rope, and minjin, and the residence of
one
of the higher officials of the ken or prefecture. The street
is
a mile long, and every house is a shop. The general aspect is
mean
and forlorn. In these little-travelled districts, as soon as
one
reaches the margin of a town, the first man one meets turns and
flies
down the street, calling out the Japanese equivalent of
"Here's
a foreigner!" and soon blind and seeing, old and young,
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