THE EDGE OF THE TOKAIDO, NEAR HAMAMATSU
stakes, stood about the ground; but on coming nearer the mystery was explained: they were life-sized dolls’ heads of papier-maché, put out to dry in the sun before receiving their final coat of paint. The neighboring villages were peculiar; every cottage was protected from the winds by a high hedge of clipped yew, and the street seemed to pass between two green walls, over which the heavily thatched roofs just peeped. The openings gave a glimpse of court-yards and cottage fronts where women and men were hard at work, threshing their beans of many colors and spreading them on mats to dry, weaving blue cotton cloths, or winding off the skeins of shining yellow silk. The typhoon a fortnight earlier had strewn the Tokaido with pine-trees; a passage wide enough for a jinrikisha to pass had been sawn through some of the great prostrate trunks, and others were still supported by their mangled limbs, so that we could squeeze under them. They sadly impeded the work of a company of white-clad engineers, who, with all the latest military contrivances, were laying a field-telegraph along the road. What a contrast were these sons of change to the fishermen returning from their morning’s work with heavy loads of bonito, and to the peasants with their simple and primitive implements, all working and living as they have done for centuries past! Politics and changes of government matter very little to them; the rice crop and the take of fish are affairs of much more importance; they are the real life of a country, preserving its habits, costumes, and traditions, and staving off for a time the influences of railroads and steamships, which threaten to reduce man’s condition throughout the world to one dull level of uniformity.
Fortunately they form a solid majority in every land, a mass not easily moved, and even in progressive Japan it will be a long time before ill-cut trousers and steam-ploughs replace the kimono and the spade. The Tokaido Railway takes you in twelve hours from Hamamatsu to Kōbe, and while waiting till a new passport came from Tōkyō I had time to see a little more of the beautiful country around that hospitable port. The shores near Suma and Maiko, a little to the westward, are picturesque, and close by is the Strait of Akashi, through which a constant stream of traffic passes, ships of all kinds and sizes, from the little fishing-boats towed from the beach, to the big steamers from Europe and America. The island of Awaji lies across the entrance to the Inland Sea, leaving a narrow passage at each end; but the tide rushes so violently through the Naruta Channel to
THE ISLAND OF AWAJI, FROM MAIKO
the south, between Awaji and Shikoku, that it is often unnavigable, and most of the shipping comes this way. There are the remains of a Daimio’s castle at Akashi; the main building is gone, and the plateau on which it stood is now a garden with tea-booths, but the foundation walls, the corner turrets, and the moat show what an important stronghold it must have been; and the view from it, down the Inland Sea to the west, over to the Shikoku Mountains on the south, and eastward to Osaka Bay and the hills of Yamato, is extensive and very fine in its outlines. At Maiko