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. The obedience of the children is
instantaneous. Their parents are more demonstrative in their
affection than the Japanese are, caressing them a good deal, and
two of the men are devoted to children who are not their own.
These little ones are as grave and dignified as Japanese children,
and are very gentle.
I went out soon after five, when the dew was glittering in the
sunshine, and the mountain hollow in which Biratori stands was
looking its very best, and the silence of the place, even though
the people were all astir, was as impressive as that of the night
before. What a strange life! knowing nothing, hoping nothing,
fearing a little, the need for clothes and food the one motive
principle, sake in abundance the one good! How very few points of
contact it is possible to have! I was just thinking so when
Shinondi met me, and took me to his house to see if I could do
anything for a child sorely afflicted with skin disease, and his
extreme tenderness for this very loathsome object made me feel that
human affections were the same among them as with us. He had
carried it on his back from a village, five miles distant, that
morning, in the hope that it might be cured. As soon as I entered
he laid a fine mat on the floor, and covered the guest-seat with a
bearskin. After breakfast he took me to the lodge of the sub-
chief, the largest in the village, 45 feet square, and into about
twenty others all constructed in the same way, but some of them
were not more than 20 feet square. In all I was received with the
same courtesy, but a few of the people asked Shinondi not to take
me into their houses, as they did not want me to see how poor they
are. In every house there was the low shelf with more or fewer
curios upon it, but, besides these, none but the barest necessaries
of life, though the skins which they sell or barter every year
would enable them to surround themselves with comforts, were it not
that their gains represent to them sake, and nothing else. They
are not nomads. On the contrary, they cling tenaciously to the
sites on which their fathers have lived and died. But anything
more deplorable than the attempts at cultivation which surround
their lodges could not be seen. The soil is little better than
white sand, on which without manure they attempt to grow millet,
which is to them in the place of rice, pumpkins, onions, and
tobacco; but the look of their plots is as if they had been
cultivated ten years ago, and some chance-sown grain and vegetables
had come up among the weeds. When nothing more will grow, they
partially clear another bit of forest, and exhaust that in its
turn.
In every house the same honour was paid to a guest.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 83 of 112
Words from 84205 to 85208
of 115002
