Upon another visit to Nikko and Chiuzenji in late October there was a more splendid autumnal pageant than the most gorgeous hill-sides of America had ever shown me. Frost had done its most wonderful work, and the air was exhilarating to intoxication. The clear and brilliant weather moved the coolies to frisk, play, and chant like children—even that dignified little man, Ito, relaxing his gravity to frolic like a boy, and to pry bowlders over the edges of precipices to hear them crash and fall far below. Chiuzenji looked a vast, flawless sapphire, and Nantaisan was a mosaic of richest Byzantine coloring. Kegon-no-taki, the fall of three hundred feet by which the waters of Chiuzenji drop to the valley in their race to the Daiyagawa, seemed a column of snow in its little amphitheatre hung with autumn vines and branches. But we dared not remain, for already Yumoto was closed and boarded up for the season, and on any day the first of the blockading snows of winter might shut the door of the one tea-house left open at Chiuzenji, and end the travel from the Ashiwo copper-mines.
CHAPTER XVII
THE ASCENT OF FUJIYAMA
It was in the third week of July that we made our long-talked-of ascent of Fujiyama. There were nine of us, all told, four stalwart men, three valiant women, and two incomparable Japanese boys, or valets. For forty miles we steamed down the old line of the Tokaido, drawing nearer to the sea in its deep indentation of Odawara Bay, and to the blue bar of the Hakone range that fronts the ocean. At Kodzu we took wagonettes and rattled over the plain and up a valley along the Tokaido, children being snatched from under the heels of the horses, and coolies, with poles and baskets over their shoulders, getting entangled with the wheels all the way. A Japanese driver is a most reckless Jehu, and the change to jinrikishas, after the wild ten-mile charge up the valley, was beatific. Ascending a narrow cañon, and rounding curve after curve, we saw at last the many lights of Miyanoshita twinkling against the sky.
Miyanoshita, the great summer resort, is the delight alike of Japanese and foreigner. It has excellent hotels kept in western fashion, clear mountain air, mineral springs and beautiful scenery, and it is the very centre of a most interesting region. All the year round its hotels are well patronized, the midwinter climate being a specific for the malarial poison of the ports of southern China. Famous, too, is the wooden-ware of Miyanoshita, where every house is a shop for the sale of Japanese games, household utensils, toys and trifles, all made of the beautifully-grained native woods, polished on a wheel with vegetable wax. Exquisite mosaics of a hundred broken patterns amaze one with their nicety of finish and cheapness, and no one escapes from the village without buying.
Guides and coolies had been engaged for us at Miyanoshita, and at six o’clock, on the morning after our arrival, the three kagos of the ladies were carried out, and the four cavaliers, the two boys, and six baggage coolies followed. The broad path zigzagged upward to the narrow, knife-edge ride of the mountain range known as the O Tomi Toge pass. From its summit we looked back along the checkered green valley to Miyanoshita and Hakone Lake, with the Emperor’s island palace. Looking forward across a checkered plain, we saw Fujiyama rise straight before us, its obstinate head still hidden in clouds. Dropping quickly to the level of the plain, we reached Gotemba, and, changing to jinrikishas, were whirled away to Subashiri, six miles distant.
Trains of descending pilgrims and farmers, perched high on the backs of pack-horses, smiled cheerfully at the procession of foreigners bound for Fuji, and at each rest-house on the way women and children, petrified with astonishment, stood staring at us. Black cinders and blocks of lava announced the nearness of the volcano, and the road became an inky trail of coal-dust through green fields. Banks of scoriæ, like the heaps of coal-dust around collieries, cropped out by the road-side, and the wheels ground noisily through the loose, coarse slag. The whole of Subashiri, crowding the picturesque street of a typical Japanese village, welcomed us. In the stream of running water, on either side of the broad highway danced, whirled, and spouted a legion of mechanical toys, some for the children’s pleasure, and others turning the fly-brushes hung over counters of cakes and sweetmeats. The place looks in perpetual fête, with the hundreds of pilgrim flags and towels fluttering from each tea-house, and at the end of the street is a torii, leading to an ancient temple in a grove, where all Fuji pilgrims pray before beginning the ascent of the mountain. In the light of the afternoon, the double row of thatched houses and the street full of bareheaded villagers looked like a well-painted stage scene. Meanwhile the sun sank, and in the last crimson glow of its fading the clouds rolled away, and Fuji’s stately cone stood over us, its dark slopes turning to rose and violet in the changing light.
We rose with the sun at four o’clock, looked at Fuji, all pink and lilac in the exquisite atmosphere of the morning, snatched a hasty breakfast and set off, the women in their kagos and the men on mettlesome steeds that soon took them out of sight along the broad cindery avenue leading to the base of the slanting mountain. In that clear light Fuji looked twice its twelve thousand feet above the sea, and the thought of toiling on foot up the great slope was depressing. Instead of a fifteen-mile walk, it looked fifty miles at least. All along the forest avenue moss-grown stone posts mark the distance, and at one place are the remains of a stone wall and lantern-guarded gate-way setting the limit of the mountain’s holy ground. From that point the soil is sacred, although horses and kagos are allowed to go a mile farther to a mat-shed station, known as Umagayeshi (Turn Back Horse). Thence the great Fuji sweeps continuously upward, and a tall torii at the head of the stone staircase marks the beginning of the actual ascent, the holy ground on which only sandaled feet may tread.
In the mat-shed the kagos were stored for a two days’ rest, luggage was divided and tied on the backs of the coolies, who were as gayly fringed as Indians on the war-path, with the many pairs of straw sandals tied at their waists and hanging from their packs. The coarse cinders cut through boot-soles so quickly that foreigners tie on these waraji to protect their shoes, allowing eight pairs of the queer galoshes for the ascent and descent of Fuji. From Umagayeshi, the path goes up through woods and stunted underbrush and on over bare cinder and lava, pursuing the even slope of the mountain without dip or zigzag to break the steady climb. Three small Shinto temples in the woods invite pilgrims to pray, pay tribute, and have their staff and garments marked with a sacred seal. Beyond these temples, ten rest-houses, or stations, stand at even distances along the path, the first, or number one, at the edge of the woods, and the tenth at the summit. Priests and station-keepers open their season late in June, before the snow is gone, and close in September. In the midsummer weeks the whole mountain-side is musical with the tinkling bells and staffs of lines of white-clad pilgrims. Notwithstanding their picturesqueness, these devotees are objectionable companions, as they fill tea-houses and mountain stations, devour everything eatable, like swarms of locusts, and bear about with them certain smaller pilgrims that make life a burden to him who follows after. Nearly thirty thousand pilgrims annually ascend Fujiyama. These pious palmers are chiefly from the agricultural class, and they form mutual pilgrimage associations, paying small annual dues, from the sum of which each member in turn has his expenses defrayed. They travel in groups, each man furnished with his bit of straw matting for bed, rain-coat, or shelter. They carry, also, cotton towels marked with the crest of their pilgrim society, to be hung, after using, at temple water-tanks, or as advertisements of their presence at the tea-houses which they patronize. At each new shrine they visit the priests stamp their white clothing with the red seal of the temple.
Fujiyama is invested with legends, which these pilgrims unquestioningly accept. It is said to have risen up in a single night two thousand years ago, when a great depression appeared to the southward, which the waters of Lake Biwa immediately filled. For a thousand years pilgrims have toiled up the weary path to pray at the highest shrine and to supplicate the sun at dawn. Fuji-san, the goddess of the mountain, hated, it is said, her own sex, and stories of devils, who seize women and fly off into the air with them, still deter all but the most emancipated Japanese women from making the ascent. It was after Fuji-san had quarrelled with all the other gods that she set up this lofty mountain of her own, where she might live alone and in peace. No horse’s foot is allowed to fall on the steep approaches to her cloudy throne, and even the sand and cinders are so sacred, that whatever dust is carried down on the pilgrims’ feet by day is miraculously returned by night. Even to dream of the peerless mountain is a promise of good-fortune, and Fuji, with the circling storks and the ascending dragon, symbolizes success in life and triumph over obstacles.