We Entered Ikarigaseki From The Last Bridge, A Village Of 800
People, On A Narrow Ledge Between An Abrupt Hill
And the Hirakawa,
a most forlorn and tumble-down place, given up to felling timber
and making shingles; and timber
In all its forms - logs, planks,
faggots, and shingles - is heaped and stalked about. It looks more
like a lumberer's encampment than a permanent village, but it is
beautifully situated, and unlike any of the innumerable villages
that I have ever seen.
The street is long and narrow, with streams in stone channels on
either side; but these had overflowed, and men, women, and children
were constructing square dams to keep the water, which had already
reached the doma, from rising over the tatami. Hardly any house
has paper windows, and in the few which have, they are so black
with smoke as to look worse than none. The roofs are nearly flat,
and are covered with shingles held on by laths and weighted with
large stones. Nearly all the houses look like temporary sheds, and
most are as black inside as a Barra hut. The walls of many are
nothing but rough boards tied to the uprights by straw ropes.
In the drowning torrent, sitting in puddles of water, and drenched
to the skin hours before, we reached this very primitive yadoya,
the lower part of which is occupied by the daidokoro, a party of
storm-bound students, horses, fowls, and dogs. My room is a
wretched loft, reached by a ladder, with such a quagmire at its
foot that I have to descend into it in Wellington boots.
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