Shinondi Conversed With
Ito For Some Time In A Low Musical Voice, Having Previously Asked
If It Would Keep Me From Sleeping.
No Japanese ever intermitted
his ceaseless chatter at any hour of the night for a similar
reason.
Later, the chief's principal wife, Noma, stuck a triply-
cleft stick in the fire-hole, put a potsherd with a wick and some
fish-oil upon it, and by the dim light of this rude lamp sewed
until midnight at a garment of bark cloth which she was ornamenting
for her lord with strips of blue cloth, and when I opened my eyes
the next morning she was at the window sewing by the earliest
daylight. She is the most intelligent-looking of all the women,
but looks sad and almost stern, and speaks seldom. Although she is
the principal wife of the chief she is not happy, for she is
childless, and I thought that her sad look darkened into something
evil as the other wife caressed a fine baby boy. Benri seems to me
something of a brute, and the mother-in-law obviously holds the
reins of government pretty tight. After sewing till midnight she
swept the mats with a bunch of twigs, and then crept into her bed
behind a hanging mat. For a moment in the stillness I felt a
feeling of panic, as if I were incurring a risk by being alone
among savages, but I conquered it, and, after watching the fire
till it went out, fell asleep till I was awoke by the severe cold
of the next day's dawn.
LETTER XXXVI - (Continued)
A Supposed Act of Worship - Parental Tenderness - Morning Visits -
Wretched Cultivation - Honesty and Generosity - A "Dug-out" - Female
Occupations - The Ancient Fate - A New Arrival - A Perilous
Prescription - The Shrine of Yoshitsune - The Chief's Return.
When I crept from under my net much benumbed with cold, there were
about eleven people in the room, who all made their graceful
salutation. It did not seem as if they had ever heard of washing,
for, when water was asked for, Shinondi brought a little in a
lacquer bowl, and held it while I bathed my face and hands,
supposing the performance to be an act of worship! I was about to
throw some cold tea out of the window by my bed when he arrested me
with an anxious face, and I saw, what I had not observed before,
that there was a god at that window - a stick with festoons of
shavings hanging from it, and beside it a dead bird. The Ainos
have two meals a day, and their breakfast was a repetition of the
previous night's supper. We all ate together, and I gave the
children the remains of my rice, and it was most amusing to see
little creatures of three, four, and five years old, with no other
clothing than a piece of pewter hanging round their necks, first
formally asking leave of the parents before taking the rice, and
then waving their hands.
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