TAGO-NO-URA
behind it, the mountain road through forests with new trees and plants at every turn, the gaudy butterflies, the long zigzag descent by the pine-clad spur which brought us to the Suzukawa Valley, and the gorgeous sunset as we whirled down the rapids to Shimoyama. There are five lakes in the chain, Motosu, Shoji, Nemba, Kawaguchi, and Yamanaka, and they descend in level from Motosu on the west to Yamanaka on the east. Nemba lies in a hollow of wooded hills, with a couple of partially drowned villages on its shore, in which the cottage roofs are strangely constructed, and the people wear long knickerbockers of blue striped cotton. Kawaguchi is the most beautiful of them all; its waters have only risen a foot or two, so that no damage has been done except the submersion of a few fields, and Funatsu and Kodachi, with picturesque old temples and cottages shaded with gourds, like Jonah’s, are thriving towns compared with the other lake-side hamlets.
COTTAGES AT NEMBA
I was staying at Yoshida, within easy walking distance of Funatsu, in the early part of September, when all the countryside was keeping the Bon festival in memory of the dead—a sort of Japanese All-Souls day which lasts for a week. Fires were lighted at night on all the hill-sides; the path leading up to every little temple could be traced by a line of blazing spots, and the great lonely slope of Fuji was dotted with them here and there, marking the positions of the rest-houses and the few scattered huts of grass-cutters and charcoal-burners. I have seen the same thing in Switzerland, near Martigny, where on the eve of St. John’s day every cattle-tender far up the mountains greeted his distant neighbors with a bonfire. This part of the ceremony is called, in Japanese, hi-matsuri (fire festival). Other observances are placing offerings of food before the family graves, which in Yoshida were generally at the end of the back garden, and erecting a little altar in the house, on which dishes of rice, fruit, and sweetmeats are laid, and before which prayers are said.
We had a typhoon on the 4th of September, with such torrents of rain and gusts of wind that the houses had to be enclosed with their wooden shutters, and there was nothing to be done but lie on the floor in the darkness and listen to the turmoil of the elements outside. Suddenly, above all the other noises, I heard a monotonous chant, and, opening a crack in my shutters, I saw a procession of men, dressed only in “kasa” and straw rain-coats passing down the village street. Some of them carried big drums slung to poles, on which the others banged, while all of them groaned in unison a sentence which I could not catch. It was a long time before I could induce Matsuba to tell me what it all meant; but at last he confessed that it was done to drive away the storm-demon; he was evidently ashamed of this method of praying for fair weather, and explained that it was only in these out-of-the-way places his countrymen were so superstitious. Anyhow, it was efficacious, for the typhoon blew itself out during the night. There was more or less rain for some days after, but we had nothing again like that day’s downpour, and I started in more promising weather for a walk over the hills to Kofu. From Funatsu I crossed a corner of Kawaguchi, and took a steep mountain road on the other side; some kind of matsuri was going on there too, and the lake was dotted with boatfuls of people beating drums and singing. The road we took is said in the guide-books to be practicable for jinrikishas, but the typhoon had completed the work of destruction which the heavy rains in July had begun, and there were very few yards of it left over which a wheeled vehicle could travel. On the other side of the pass, Misaka-toge, where I stayed to lunch and admire the view of Fuji, and to collect seeds of a grand red lychnis which grew there abundantly, we went through a village, Nakagawa, that had been almost destroyed by a torrent. The street and the gardens were filled with bowlders and gravel and fallen tree trunks, and the roofs only were visible above the mass of wreckage. The well-fitted timbers of a Japanese roof, especially when there is a heavy thatch over them, make it the least destructible part of the house; the lower part may collapse in a typhoon or earthquake, but the roof settles down over the ruins practically uninjured. I saw one near the Tokaido which had been taken off bodily by the wind and deposited in a field the other side of the road without losing its shape. I looked for the river which had done all this damage to Nakagawa, and found only a little, innocent, prattling brook about a yard wide.
Kofu is a busy place in the centre of a large silk-growing district. All the hill-sides around are covered with scrubby-looking mulberry bushes, and in the villages almost every cottage had its pile of golden cocoons, which the women were winding off into skeins as they sat and chattered by their doorways. As you pass Japanese houses in fine weather you see almost everything that is going on inside; they are set down close to the road, and the sliding-screens allow you to look right through to the garden at the back. When it is cold or wet all the wooden shutters are closed, and they have then a very sad and deserted appearance. I went to a very good theatre in Kofu, and afterwards to what might be called a wax-work show, but that the figures were
