CHAPTER XIII
THE SUBURBS OF TOKIO
The suburbs of Tokio are full of holiday resorts for the people and the beautiful villas of nobles. To the north-east, in Oji, are the Government chemical works and paper mills, where rough bits of mulberry-wood are turned into papers of a dozen kinds, the silkiest tissue-paper, smooth, creamy writing-paper, thick parchment, bristol-board, and the thin paper for artists and etchers. On a sheet of the heaviest parchment paper I once stood and was lifted from the floor, the fabric showing no mark of rent or strain, and it is wellnigh impossible to tear even a transparent Oji letter sheet. The Oji tea-house has a famous garden, and in autumn Oji’s hill-sides blaze with colored maples, and then the holiday makers mark the place for their own.
Waseda, the northern suburb, contains an old temple, a vast, gloomy bamboo-grove, and the villa of Countess Okuma, to whose genius for landscape-gardening is also due the French Legation’s paradise of a garden, in the heart of the city, that place having been Count Okuma’s town residence before he sold it to the French Government. From Waseda’s rice fields a greater marvel grew.
Meguro, south of Tokio, is a place of sentimental pilgrimage to the lovers of Gompachi and Komurasaki, the Abelard and Heloise of the East, around whose tomb the trees flutter with paper poems, and prayers. In the temple grounds are falling streams of water, beneath which, summer and winter, praying pilgrims stand, to be thus pumped on for their sins. Similar penitents may be seen at a little temple niched in the bluff of Mississippi Bay. Meguro has an annual azalea fête and a celebration of the maple-leaf, and its resident nobles, among whom is General Saigo, give feasts in honor of the season’s blooms.
The Sengakuji temple, near Shinagawa, is a sacred spot and shrine of chivalry, the burial-place of the Forty-seven Ronins; and here come pious pilgrims to say a prayer and leave a stick of burning incense, and view the images and relics in the little temple.
Near Omori, half-way between Yokohama and Tokio, Professor Morse discovered the shell-heaps of prehistoric man. The neighborhood is made beautiful by old groves, old temples and shrines, tiny villages, picturesque farm-houses, and hedge-lined roads, while Ikegami’s temples shine upon the hill that stands an evergreen island in the lake of greener rice fields or golden stubble. Here died Nichiren, founder of the Buddhist sect bearing his name. For six centuries these splendid temples have resounded with the chantings of his priesthood, who still expound his teachings to the letter. The Nichiren sect is the largest, richest, most influential, and aggressive in Japan. They are the Protestants and Presbyterians of the Buddhist religion; firm, hard, and unrelenting in their faith, rejecting all other creeds as false, and zealously proselyting. Nichiren was a great scholar, who, poring over Chinese and Sanscrit sutras, believed himself to have discovered the true and hidden meaning of the sacred books. His labors were colossal, and though exiled, imprisoned, tortured, and condemned to death, he lived to see his followers increasing to a great body of true believers, and himself established as high-priest over the temples of Ikegami. In the popular play “Nichiren,” one has thrilling evidence of what the pious founder and his disciples endured.
On the twelfth and thirteenth of each October special services are held in memory of Nichiren, which thousands of people attend. On the first day of this matsuri the railway is crowded with passengers. Bonfires and strings of lanterns mark the Omori station by night, and by day the neighboring matsuri is announced by tall bamboo poles, from which spring whorls of reeds covered with huge paper flowers. These giant flower-stalks are the conventional sign for festivities, and when a row of them is planted by the road-side, or paraded up and down with an accompaniment of gongs, the holiday spirit responds at once. The quiet country road is blockaded with hundreds of jinrikishas going to and returning from Ikegami’s terraced gate-ways. Men, women, and children, priests, beggars, and peddlers pack the highway. The crowd is amazing—as though these thousands of people had been suddenly conjured from the ground, or grown from some magician’s powder—for nothing could be quieter than Omori lanes on all the other days of the year.
Along the foot-paths of the fields women in tightly-wrapped kimonos with big umbrellas over their beautifully-dressed heads; young girls with the scarlet petticoats and gay hair-pins indicative of maidenhood; little girls and boys with smaller brothers and sisters strapped on their backs, trudge along in single files, high above the stubble patches, to the great matsuri. In farm-house yards persimmon-trees hang full of mellow, golden fruit, and the road is literally lined with these apples of the Hesperides. Peddlers sit on their heels behind their heaped persimmons and busily tie straw to the short stems of the fruit, that the buyer may carry his purchase like a bunch of giant golden grapes. Fries, stews, bakes, and grills scent the air with savors, and all sorts of little balls and cubes, pats and cakes, lumps and rolls of eatables are set out along the country road. A queer sort of sea-weed scales, stained bright red, is the chewing-gum of the East, and finds a ready market.