For weeks after we returned to the plain, the treacherous Fujiyama stood unusually clear and near at hand. “The summer Fuji,” its dark-brown slopes only touched with a fine line or two of snow, is less beautiful than “the winter Fuji,” with its glistening crown; and our Mount Rainier, whose snows are eternal, whose wooded slopes shadow the dark-green waters of Puget Sound, is lovelier still. But though we have the more glorious mountain, the snow, the rocks, the forest, we have not the people instinct with love of poetry and nature; we have not the race-refinement, and the race-traditions, that would make of it another Fuji, invested with the light of dream and legend, dear and near to every heart.
CHAPTER XIX
THE TOKAIDO—I
As the kago gave way to the jinrikisha, the jinrikisha disappears before the steam-engine, which reduces a ri to a cho, and extends the empire of the commonplace. The first railroads, built by English engineers and equipped with English rolling-stock, have been copied by the Japanese engineers, who have directed the later works. The Tokaido railway line, built from both ends, put Tokio and Kioto within twenty-four hours of each other. The forty miles of railroad between Yokohama and Kodzu were completed in 1887, bringing Miyanoshita, a long day’s journey distant, within three hours of the great seaport. The long tunnels and difficult country around Fujiyama, and the expensive engineering work at each river delayed the opening of the whole line until 1889. Before the iron horse had cleared all picturesqueness from the region three of us made the jinrikisha journey down the Tokaido.
The Tokaido having been the great post-road and highway of the empire for centuries, with daimios and their trains constantly travelling between the two capitals, its villages and towns were most important, and each supplied accommodations for every class of travellers. All the world knew the names of the fifty-three post stations on the route, and there is a common game, which consists in quickly repeating them in their order backward or forward. As the railroad touched or left them, some of the towns grew, others dwindled, and new places sprang up. Each village used to have its one special occupation, and to ride down the Tokaido was to behold in succession the various industries of the empire. In one place only silk cords were made, in another the finely-woven straw coverings of saké cups and lacquer bowls; a third produced basket-work of wistaria fibres, and a fourth shaped ink-stones for writing-boxes. Increased trade and steam communication have interfered with these local monopolies, and one town is fast becoming like another in its industrial displays.
May is one of the best months for such overland trips in Japan, as the weather is perfect, pilgrims and fleas are not yet on the road, and the rainy season is distant. The whole country is like a garden, with its fresh spring crops, and the long, shaded avenue of trees is everywhere touched with flaming azaleas and banks of snowy blackberry blossoms. The tea-house and the tateba everywhere invite one to rest and watch the unique processions of the highway, and away from foreign settlements much of the old Japan is left. Tea is everywhere in evidence in May. It is being picked in the fields, carted along the roads, sold, sorted, and packed in every town, while charming nesans with trays of tiny cups fairly line the road.
From Miyanoshita’s comfortable hotel the two foreign women and the Japanese guide started on the first stage of the Tokaido trip in pole-chairs, carried by four coolies each. The danna san, or master of the party, scorning such effeminate devices, strode ahead with an alpenstock, a pith helmet, and russet shoes, while the provision-box and general luggage, filling a kago, followed after us. We were soon up the hill in a bamboo-shaded lane, and then out over the grassy uplands to the lake of Hakone. The singing coolies strode along, keeping even step on the breathless ascents, past the sulphur baths of Ashinoyu and to the Hakone Buddha—a giant bass-relief of Amida sculptured on the face of a wall of rock niched among the hills. The lonely Buddha occupies a fit place for a contemplative deity—summer suns scorching and winter snows drifting over the stony face unhindered. A heap of pebbles in Buddha’s lap is the register of pilgrims’ prayers.
At Hakone village, a single street of thatched houses bordering the shore of Hakone lake, the narrow foot-path over the hills joins the true Tokaido, a stone-paved highway shaded by double rows of ancient trees, a forest aisle recalling, for a brief journey, the avenue to Nikko. The chrysanthemum-crested gates of the Emperor’s island palace were fast shut, and Fuji’s cone peeped over the shoulders of encircling mountains, and reflected its image in the almost bottomless lake—an ancient crater, whose fires are forever extinguished. Here we tied straw sandals over our shoes and tried to walk along the smooth flat stones of the Tokaido, but soon submitted to be carried again up the ascent to Hakone pass, which looks southward over a broad valley to the ocean. Pack-horses, with their clumsy feet tied in straw shoes, were led by blue-bloused peasants, their heads wrapped in the inevitable blue-and-white cotton towel, along the stony road, that has been worn smooth and slippery by the straw-covered feet of generations of men and horses.
From the Fuji no taira (terrace for viewing Fuji), in the village of Yamanaka, we looked sheer down to the plain of Mishima and saw, almost beneath us, the town that would mark the end of our day’s journey. The villages of Sasabara and Mitsuya have each a single row of houses on either side of the road replacing the shade-trees of the Tokaido, and, like all Japanese villages, they overflow with children, to whom Ijin san, the foreigner, is still a marvel.
Mishima is a busy, prosperous little town, with a gay main street and shops overflowing with straw hats, baskets, matting, rain-coats, umbrellas, tourist and pilgrim necessities. Shops for the sale of foreign goods are numerous, and besides the familiar cases of “Devoe’s Brilliant Oil for Japan, 150° test,” American trade is advertised by pictures of the Waterbury watch, and long hanging signs declaring the merits of the American time-keepers sold at three yen apiece. Even the chief of the jinrikisha men, who came to make the bargain for wheeling us down the Tokaido, pulled out such a watch to tell us the time of day.
Mishima’s best tea-house, where daimios rested in the olden time, is a most perfect specimen of Japanese architecture, full of darkly-shining woods, fantastic windows, and tiny courts. In one of our rooms the tokonoma held a kakemono, with a poem written on it in giant characters, and three tall pink peonies springing from an exquisite bronze vase. In another, smiled a wooden image of old Hokorokojin, one of the household gods of luck, and on a low lacquer table rested a large lacquer box containing a roll of writing-paper, the ink-box, and brushes. These, with the soft mats, a few silk cushions, a tea-tray, and tabako bon, were all that the rooms contained, until our incongruous bags and bundles marred their exquisite simplicity. The landlord, with many bows and embarrassed chucklings, greeted us there, and presented a most superb, long-stemmed Jacqueminot rose, whose fragrance soon filled the whole place.