Summer does not greatly disturb the life of society. Tennis, riding, boating, and bathing are in form, while balls and small dances occur even in July and August. At many places in the mountains and along the coast one may find a cooler air, with good hotels and tea-houses. Some families rent country temples near Yokohama for summer occupation, and enjoy something between the habitual Japanese life and Adirondack camping. The sacred emblems and temple accessories are put in the central shrine room, screens are drawn, and the sanctuary becomes a spacious house, open to the air on all sides, and capable of being divided into as many separate rooms as the family may require. Often the priests set the images and altar-pieces on a high shelf concealed by a curtain, and give up the whole place to the heretical tenants. In one instance the broad altar-shelf became a recessed sideboard, whereon the gilded Buddhas and Kwannons were succeeded by bottles, decanters, and glasses. At another temple it was stipulated that the tenants should give up the room in front of the altar on a certain anniversary day, to allow the worshippers to come and pray.
CHAPTER IV
THE ENVIRONS OF YOKOHAMA
The environs of Yokohama are more interesting and beautiful than those of any other foreign settlement, affording an inexhaustible variety of tramps, rides, drives, railroad excursions, and sampan trips.
At Kanagawa proper the Tokaido comes to the bay’s edge, which it follows for some distance through double rows of houses and splendid old shade-trees. Back of Kanagawa’s bluff lie the old and half-deserted Bukenji temples, crowded on rare fête days with worshippers, merrymakers, and keepers of booths, and at quieter times serving as favorite picnic grounds for foreigners.
On the Tokaido, just beyond Kanagawa, is the grave of Richardson, who was killed by the train of the Prince of Satsuma, September 14, 1862. Although foreigners had been warned to keep off the Tokaido on that day, the foolhardy Briton and his friends deliberately rode into the daimio’s train, an affront for which they were attacked by his retainers and severely wounded, Richardson himself being left for dead on the road-side, while the rest escaped. When the train had passed by, a young girl ran out from one of the houses and covered the body with a piece of matting, moving it in the night to her house, and keeping it concealed until his friends claimed it. A memorial stone, inscribed with Japanese characters, marks the spot where Richardson fell. Since that time the kindly black-eyed Susan’s tea-house has been the favorite resort for foreigners on their afternoon rides and drives. Susan is a tall woman, with round eyes, aquiline nose, and a Roman countenance—quite fit for a heroine. Riders call at her tea-house for tea, rice, and eels, prawns, clams, pea-nuts, sponge-cake, or beer, and insist upon seeing her. This Richardson affair cost the Japanese the bombardment of Kagoshima, and an indemnity of £125,000; but Susan did not share in the division of that sum.
According to one version Susan’s strand is the spot where Taro of Urashima, the Rip Van Winkle of Japan, left his boat and nets, and, mounting a tortoise, rode away to the home of the sea-king, returning by the same tortoise to the same spot. On its sands he opened the box the sea-king had given him, and found himself veiled in a thin smoke, out of which he stepped an old, old man, whose parents had been dead a hundred years. The fishermen listened to his strange tale, and carried him to their daimio, and on fans, boxes, plates, vases, and fukusas Taro sits relating his wonderful tale to this day.
Ten miles inland from Bukenji’s temples is the little village of Kawawa, whose headman has a famous collection of chrysanthemums, the goal of many autumnal pilgrimages. This Kawawa collection has enjoyed its fame for many years, the owner devoting himself to it heart and soul, and knowing no cooling of ardor nor change of fancy. His great thatched house in a court-yard is reached through a black gate-way at the top of a little hill, and the group of buildings within his black walls gives the place quite a feudal air. Facing the front of the house are rows of mat sheds, covering the precious flowers that stand in files as evenly as soldiers, the tops soft masses of great frowsy, curly-petalled, wide-spreading blooms, shading to every tint of lilac, pink, rose, russet, brown, gold, orange, pale yellow, and snow white. It was there that we ate a salad made of yellow chrysanthemum petals, most æsthetic of dishes. The trays of golden leaves in the kitchen of the house indicated that the master enjoyed this ambrosial feast habitually, and perhaps dropped the yellow shreds in his saké cup to prolong his life and avert calamities, as they are warranted to do. Beyond Kawawa lies a rich silk district, and all the region is marked by thrift and comfort, signs of the prosperity that attends silk-raising communities.
AT KAWAWA