Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (26 page)

Regret for a single individual smile is something common to normal human
nature; but regret for the smile of a population, for a smile considered
as an abstract quality, is certainly a rare sensation, and one to be
obtained, I fancy, only in this Orient land whose people smile for ever
like their own gods of stone. And this precious experience is already
mine; I am regretting the smile of Kaka.

Simultaneously there comes the recollection of a strangely grim Buddhist
legend. Once the Buddha smiled; and by the wondrous radiance of that
smile were countless worlds illuminated. But there came a Voice, saying:
'It is not real! It cannot last!' And the light passed.

Seki wa yoi toko,
Asahi wo ukete;
O-Yama arashiga
Soyo-soyoto!
(SONG OF MIONOSEKI.)

(Seki is a goodly place, facing the morning sun. There, from the holy
mountains, the winds blow softly, softly—soyosoyoto.)

THE God of Mionoseki hates eggs, hen's eggs. Likewise he hates hens and
chickens, and abhors the Cock above all living creatures. And in
Mionoseki there are no cocks or hens or chickens or eggs. You could not
buy a hen's egg in that place even for twenty times its weight in gold.

And no boat or junk or steamer could be hired to convey to Mionoseki so
much as the feather of a chicken, much less an egg. Indeed, it is even
held that if you have eaten eggs in the morning you must not dare to
visit Mionoseki until the following day. For the great deity of
Mionoseki is the patron of mariners and the ruler of storms; and woe
unto the vessel which bears unto his shrine even the odour of an egg.

Once the tiny steamer which runs daily from Matsue to Mionoseki
encountered some unexpectedly terrible weather on her outward journey,
just after reaching the open sea. The crew insisted that something
displeasing to Koto-shiro-nushi-no-Kami must have been surreptitiously
brought on board. All the passengers were questioned in vain. Suddenly
the captain discerned upon the stem of a little brass pipe which one of
the men was smoking, smoking in the face of death, like a true Japanese,
the figure of a crowing cock! Needless to say, that pipe was thrown
overboard. Then the angry sea began to grow calm; and the little vessel
safely steamed into the holy port, and cast anchor before the great
torii of the shrine of the god!

Concerning the reason why the Cock is thus detested by the Great Deity
of Mionoseki, and banished from his domain, divers legends are told; but
the substance of all of them is about as follows: As we read in the
Kojiki, Koto-shiro-nushi-no-Kami, Son of the Great Deity of Kitsuki, was
wont to go to Cape Miho,
[66]
'to pursue birds and catch fish.' And for
other reasons also he used to absent himself from home at night, but had
always to return before dawn. Now, in those days the Cock was his
trusted servant, charged with the duty of crowing lustily when it was
time for the god to return. But one morning the bird failed in its duty;
and the god, hurrying back in his boat, lost his oars, and had to paddle
with his hands; and his hands were bitten by the wicked fishes.

Now the people of Yasugi, a pretty little town on the lagoon of Naka-
umi, through which we pass upon our way to Mionoseki, most devoutly
worship the same Koto-shiro-nushi-no-Kami; and nevertheless in Yasugi
there are multitudes of cocks and hens and chickens; and the eggs of
Yasugi cannot be excelled for size and quality. And the people of Yasugi
aver that one may better serve the deity by eating eggs than by doing as
the people of Mionoseki do; for whenever one eats a chicken or devours
an egg, one destroys an enemy of Koto-shiro-nushi-no-Kami.

From Matsue to Mionoseki by steamer is a charming journey in fair
weather. After emerging from the beautiful lagoon of Naka-umi into the
open sea, the little packet follows the long coast of Izumo to the left.
Very lofty this coast is, all cliffs and hills rising from the sea,
mostly green to their summits, and many cultivated in terraces, so as to
look like green pyramids of steps. The bases of the cliffs are very
rocky; and the curious wrinklings and corrugations of the coast suggest
the work of ancient volcanic forces. Far away to the right, over blue
still leagues of sea, appears the long low shore of Hoki, faint as a
mirage, with its far beach like an endless white streak edging the blue
level, and beyond it vapoury lines of woods and cloudy hills, and over
everything, looming into the high sky, the magnificent ghostly shape of
Daisen, snow-streaked at its summit.

So for perhaps an hour we steam on, between Hoki and Izumo; the rugged
and broken green coast on our left occasionally revealing some miniature
hamlet sheltered in a wrinkle between two hills; the phantom coast on
the right always unchanged. Then suddenly the little packet whistles,
heads for a grim promontory to port, glides by its rocky foot, and
enters one of the prettiest little bays imaginable, previously concealed
from view. A shell-shaped gap in the coast—a semicircular basin of
clear deep water, framed in by high corrugated green hills, all wood-
clad. Around the edge of the bay the quaintest of little Japanese
cities, Mionoseki.

There is no beach, only a semicircle of stone wharves, and above these
the houses, and above these the beautiful green of the sacred hills,
with a temple roof or two showing an angle through the foliage. From the
rear of each house steps descend to deep water; and boats are moored at
all the back-doors. We moor in front of the great temple, the Miojinja.
Its great paved avenue slopes to the water's edge, where boats are also
moored at steps of stone; and looking up the broad approach, one sees a
grand stone torii, and colossal stone lanterns, and two magnificent
sculptured lions, karashishi, seated upon lofty pedestals, and looking
down upon the people from a height of fifteen feet or more. Beyond all
this the walls and gate of the outer temple court appear, and beyond
them, the roofs of the great haiden, and the pierced projecting cross-
beams of the loftier Go-Miojin, the holy shrine itself, relieved against
the green of the wooded hills. Picturesque junks are lying in ranks at
anchor; there are two deep-sea vessels likewise, of modern build, ships
from Osaka. And there is a most romantic little breakwater built of hewn
stone, with a stone lantern perched at the end of it; and there is a
pretty humped bridge connecting it with a tiny island on which I see a
shrine of Benten, the Goddess of Waters.

I wonder if I shall be able to get any eggs!

Unto the pretty waiting maiden of the inn Shimaya I put this scandalous
question, with an innocent face but a remorseful heart:

'Ano ne! tamago wa arimasenka?'

With the smile of a Kwannon she makes reply:-'He! Ahiru-no tamago-ga
sukoshi gozarimasu.'

Delicious surprise!

There augustly exist eggs—of ducks!

But there exist no ducks. For ducks could not find life worth living in
a city where there is only deep-sea water. And all the ducks' eggs come
from Sakai.

This pretty little hotel, whose upper chambers overlook the water, is
situated at one end, or nearly at one end, of the crescent of Mionoseki,
and the Miojinja almost at the other, so that one must walk through the
whole town to visit the temple, or else cross the harbour by boat. But
the whole town is well worth seeing. It is so tightly pressed between
the sea and the bases of the hills that there is only room for one real
street; and this is so narrow that a man could anywhere jump from the
second story of a house upon the water-side into the second story of the
opposite house upon the land-side. And it is as picturesque as it is
narrow, with its awnings and polished balconies and fluttering figured
draperies. From this main street several little ruelles slope to the
water's edge, where they terminate in steps; and in all these miniature
alleys long boats are lying, with their prows projecting over the edge
of the wharves, as if eager to plunge in. The temptation to take to the
water I find to be irresistible: before visiting the Miojinja I jump
from the rear of our hotel into twelve feet of limpid sea, and cool
myself by a swim across the harbour.

On the way to Miojinja, I notice, in multitudes of little shops,
fascinating displays of baskets and utensils made of woven bamboo. Fine
bamboo-ware is indeed the meibutsu, the special product of Mionoseki;
and almost every visitor buys some nice little specimen to carry home
with him.

The Miojinja is not in its architecture more remarkable than ordinary
Shinto temples in Izumo; nor are its interior decorations worth
describing in detail. Only the approach to it over the broad sloping
space of level pavement, under the granite torii, and between the great
lions and lamps of stone, is noble. Within the courts proper there is
not much to be seen except a magnificent tank of solid bronze, weighing
tons, which must have cost many thousands of yen. It is a votive
offering. Of more humble ex-votos, there is a queer collection in the
shamusho or business building on the right of the haiden: a series of
quaintly designed and quaintly coloured pictures, representing ships in
great storms, being guided or aided to port by the power of Koto-shiro-
nushi-no-Kami. These are gifts from ships.

The ofuda are not so curious as those of other famous Izumo temples; but
they are most eagerly sought for. Those strips of white paper, bearing
the deity's name, and a few words of promise, which are sold for a few
rin, are tied to rods of bamboo, and planted in all the fields of the
country roundabout. The most curious things sold are tiny packages of
rice-seeds. It is alleged that whatever you desire will grow from these
rice-seeds, if you plant them uttering a prayer. If you desire bamboos,
cotton-plants, peas, lotus-plants, or watermelons, it matters not; only
plant the seed and believe, and the desired crop will arise.

Much more interesting to me than the ofuda of the Miojinja are the
yoraku, the pendent ex-votos in the Hojinji, a temple of the Zen sect
which stands on the summit of the beautiful hill above the great Shinto
shrine. Before an altar on which are ranged the images of the Thirty-
three Kwannons, the thirty-three forms of that Goddess of Mercy who
represents the ideal of all that is sweet and pure in the Japanese
maiden, a strange, brightly coloured mass of curious things may be seen,
suspended from the carven ceiling. There are hundreds of balls of
worsted and balls of cotton thread of all colours; there are skeins of
silk and patterns of silk weaving and of cotton weaving; there are
broidered purses in the shape of sparrows and other living creatures;
there are samples of bamboo plaiting and countless specimens of
needlework. All these are the votive offerings of school children,
little girls only, to the Maid-mother of all grace and sweetness and
pity. So soon as a baby girl learns something in the way of woman 's
work—sewing, or weaving, or knitting, or broidering, she brings her
first successful effort to the temple as an offering to the gentle
divinity, 'whose eyes are beautiful,' she 'who looketh down above the
sound of prayer.' Even the infants of the Japanese kindergarten bring
their first work here—pretty paper-cuttings, scissored out and plaited
into divers patterns by their own tiny flower-soft hands.

Very sleepy and quiet by day is Mionoseki: only at long intervals one
hears laughter of children, or the chant of oarsmen rowing the most
extraordinary boats I ever saw outside of the tropics; boats heavy as
barges, which require ten men to move them. These stand naked to the
work, wielding oars with cross-handles (imagine a letter T with the
lower end lengthened out into an oar-blade). And at every pull they push
their feet against the gunwales to give more force to the stroke;
intoning in every pause a strange refrain of which the soft melancholy
calls back to me certain old Spanish Creole melodies heard in West
Indian waters:

A-ra-ho-no-san-no-sa,
Iya-ho-en-ya!
Ghi!
Ghi!

The chant begins with a long high note, and descends by fractional tones
with almost every syllable, and faints away a last into an almost
indistinguishable hum. Then comes the stroke, 'Ghi!—ghi!'

But at night Mionoseki is one of the noisiest and merriest little havens
of Western Japan. From one horn of its crescent to the other the fires
of the shokudai, which are the tall light of banquets, mirror themselves
in the water; and the whole air palpitates with sounds of revelry.
Everywhere one hears the booming of the tsudzumi, the little hand-drums
of the geisha, and sweet plaintive chants of girls, and tinkling of
samisen, and the measured clapping of hands in the dance, and the wild
cries and laughter of the players at ken. And all these are but echoes
of the diversions of sailors. Verily, the nature of sailors differs but
little the world over. Every good ship which visits Mionoseki leaves
there, so I am assured, from three hundred to five hundred yen for sake
and for dancing-girls. Much do these mariners pray the Great Deity who
hates eggs to make calm the waters and favourable the winds, so that
Mionoseki may be reached in good time without harm. But having come
hither over an unruffled sea with fair soft breezes all the way, small
indeed is the gift which they give to the temple of the god, and
marvellously large the sums which they pay unto geisha and keepers of
taverns. But the god is patient and longsuffering—except in the matter
of eggs.

However, these Japanese seamen are very gentle compared with our own
Jack Tars, and not without a certain refinement and politeness of their
own. I see them sitting naked to the waist at their banquets; for it is
very hot, but they use their chopsticks as daintily and pledge each
other in sake almost as graciously as men of a better class. Likewise
they seem to treat their girls very kindly. It is quite pleasant to
watch them feasting across the street. Perhaps their laughter is
somewhat more boisterous and their gesticulation a little more vehement
than those of the common citizens; but there is nothing resembling real
roughness—much less rudeness. All become motionless and silent as
statues—fifteen fine bronzes ranged along the wall of the zashiki,
[67]
-when some pretty geisha begins one of those histrionic dances which,
to the Western stranger, seem at first mysterious as a performance of
witchcraft—but which really are charming translations of legend and
story into the language of living grace and the poetry of woman's smile.
And as the wine flows, the more urbane becomes the merriment—until
there falls upon all that pleasant sleepiness which sake brings, and the
guests, one by one, smilingly depart. Nothing could be happier or
gentler than their evening's joviality—yet sailors are considered in
Japan an especially rough class. What would be thought of our own roughs
in such a country?