In The One Room A
Group Of Women And Children Sat Round The Fire, And The Agent Sat
As Usual With A Number Of Ledgers At A Table A Foot High, On Which
His Grandchild Was Lying On A Cushion.
Here Ito dined on seven
dishes of horrors, and they brought me sake, tea, rice, and black
beans.
The last are very good. We had some talk about the
country, and the man asked me to write his name in English
characters, and to write my own in a book. Meanwhile a crowd
assembled, and the front row sat on the ground that the others
might see over their heads. They were dirty and pressed very
close, and when the women of the house saw that I felt the heat
they gracefully produced fans and fanned me for a whole hour. On
asking the charge they refused to make any, and would not receive
anything. They had not seen a foreigner before, they said, they
would despise themselves for taking anything, they had my
"honourable name" in their book. Not only that, but they put up a
parcel of sweetmeats, and the man wrote his name on a fan and
insisted on my accepting it. I was grieved to have nothing to give
them but some English pins, but they had never seen such before,
and soon circulated them among the crowd. I told them truly that I
should remember them as long as I remember Japan, and went on, much
touched by their kindness.
The lofty pass of Utsu, which is ascended and descended by a number
of stone slabs, is the last of the passes of these choked-up
ranges. From its summit in the welcome sunlight I joyfully looked
down upon the noble plain of Yonezawa, about 30 miles long and from
10 to 18 broad, one of the gardens of Japan, wooded and watered,
covered with prosperous towns and villages, surrounded by
magnificent mountains not altogether timbered, and bounded at its
southern extremity by ranges white with snow even in the middle of
July.
In the long street of the farming village of Matsuhara a man amazed
me by running in front of me and speaking to me, and on Ito coming
up, he assailed him vociferously, and it turned out that he took me
for an Aino, one of the subjugated aborigines of Yezo. I have
before now been taken for a Chinese!
Throughout the province of Echigo I have occasionally seen a piece
of cotton cloth suspended by its four corners from four bamboo
poles just above a quiet stream. Behind it there is usually a long
narrow tablet, notched at the top, similar to those seen in
cemeteries, with characters upon it. Sometimes bouquets of flowers
are placed in the hollow top of each bamboo, and usually there are
characters on the cloth itself. Within it always lies a wooden
dipper. In coming down from Tenoko I passed one of these close to
the road, and a Buddhist priest was at the time pouring a dipper
full of water into it, which strained slowly through. As he was
going our way we joined him, and he explained its meaning.
According to him the tablet bears on it the kaimiyo, or posthumous
name of a woman. The flowers have the same significance as those
which loving hands place on the graves of kindred. If there are
characters on the cloth, they represent the well-known invocation
of the Nichiren sect, Namu mio ho ren ge kio. The pouring of the
water into the cloth, often accompanied by telling the beads on a
rosary, is a prayer. The whole is called "The Flowing Invocation."
I have seldom seen anything more plaintively affecting, for it
denotes that a mother in the first joy of maternity has passed away
to suffer (according to popular belief) in the Lake of Blood, one
of the Buddhist hells, for a sin committed in a former state of
being, and it appeals to every passer-by to shorten the penalties
of a woman in anguish, for in that lake she must remain until the
cloth is so utterly worn out that the water falls through it at
once.
Where the mountains come down upon the plain of Yonezawa there are
several raised banks, and you can take one step from the hillside
to a dead level. The soil is dry and gravelly at the junction,
ridges of pines appeared, and the look of the houses suggested
increased cleanliness and comfort. A walk of six miles took us
from Tenoko to Komatsu, a beautifully situated town of 3000 people,
with a large trade in cotton goods, silk, and sake.
As I entered Komatsu the first man whom I met turned back hastily,
called into the first house the words which mean "Quick, here's a
foreigner;" the three carpenters who were at work there flung down
their tools and, without waiting to put on their kimonos, sped down
the street calling out the news, so that by the time I reached the
yadoya a large crowd was pressing upon me. The front was mean and
unpromising-looking, but, on reaching the back by a stone bridge
over a stream which ran through the house, I found a room 40 feet
long by 15 high, entirely open along one side to a garden with a
large fish-pond with goldfish, a pagoda, dwarf trees, and all the
usual miniature adornments. Fusuma of wrinkled blue paper splashed
with gold turned this "gallery" into two rooms; but there was no
privacy, for the crowds climbed upon the roofs at the back, and sat
there patiently until night.
These were daimiyo's rooms. The posts and ceilings were ebony and
gold, the mats very fine, the polished alcoves decorated with
inlaid writing-tables and sword-racks; spears nine feet long, with
handles of lacquer inlaid with Venus' ear, hung in the verandah,
the washing bowl was fine inlaid black lacquer, and the rice-bowls
and their covers were gold lacquer.
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