Far as the eye can reach the valley is levelled off in rice fields. Tea-bushes stripe the more rolling country with their regular lines of thick, dark foliage; bamboo groves add a softer, more delicate green, and deepest of all are the tones of the pines.
Near the base of the hill, but high enough to command a wide prospect, runs a narrow road lined with little tea-houses and toy-shops where souvenirs are sold. Nara is famous for its cutlery and its India ink, and swords, daggers, knives and scissors are sold by shopmen who perform extraordinary feats to test the temper of their blades. India ink pressed into fantastic shapes, and writing-brushes made of deer’s hair, are carefully tied up in the pilgrim’s wallets, with the famous little Nara ningio, or images carved in wood. The Nara ningios always represent the legendary priests and people who founded Nara, and in these carvings the rural artists display great talent, giving wonderful expression to the tiny faces that are left rough faceted as first chipped off with the knife.
These tea-houses and shops interpose a neutral and worldly barrier between the cluster of Buddhist establishments at the one side and the region of Shintoism beyond. From the tea-house gates the road makes a curve off into the wistaria-tangled forest to conduct jinrikishas to the lower level, but the pilgrims descend, instead, four long flights of rough stone steps, that are wonderfully picturesque with these quaint moving figures and the queer little shops that hang to the borders of the stairs, climbing up and down the hill with them.
At the foot of the steps the road reappears, crossing a narrow creek-bed on a high bridge that gives one beautiful views of a dark little ravine, across which the trees nearly meet and the ancient creepers are looped and knotted. A little red shrine and a path lined with stone lanterns mark the beginning of the temple enclosure, dense woods rising at one side of the stone lanterns lighting the path to the ancient Shinto sanctuary of Kasuga, and open glades stretching out at the other. A few shops and tea-booths break the line of lanterns on one side; the road is canopied with a great wistaria trellis, and a spring bubbles up in a stone basin in the midst of rock-work almost hidden in shade and moss. Weary pilgrims stop in this grateful shade to drink and to rest themselves at any hour of the day.
Passing the stall for the sacred white pony of the gods and some brightly-painted red wooden buildings, one enters a great court-yard with lanterns hanging from the eaves of the buildings and galleries surrounding its four sides, through whose doors are visible only a mirror and many-folded papers pendent from a straw rope. This symbolism suffices the believers, who kneel devoutly before it and toss in their coppers as a prelude to their prayers. Beside the shrine is the treasury of the temple, containing famous swords, the gold-mounted armor and helmets of great heroes, and lacquer-boxes holding precious writings and paintings. The queer saddles worn by the deer at the old matsuris are preserved, and yards of panoramic paintings on silk, depicting those splendid pageants of the old days, when the Emperor sent his representative down to witness the parade, and even the deer took part. The closed shrines, scattered through the forest, are quite as impressive as the holy of holies in this temple, and here the bareness and emptiness of Shinto worship strike the beholder. Each of the four little red chapels in a row has a fine bamboo curtain concealing the interior, and the middle chapel into which the pilgrims may look as they pay and pray, presents to their gaze only a screen painted with mythical beasts. A large covered pavilion in the court-yard was provided for the convenience of praying daimios in the time when piety was spectacular, and when the whole retinue of a great man assisted at his devotions. In another pavilion the townspeople burn beans and sow them abroad every winter to drive away evil spirits.
Every twentieth year the priests plant trees to furnish further timbers, but in Kasuga’s court are two famous old cryptomeria, now too sacred to be felled even for such purposes, and one, enmeshed in the coils of a wistaria, is a marvel even in Nara. Without the square, heavy-timbered, red gate-way of the court two avenues meet, both lined with rows and rows of tall stone lanterns covered with moss and overhung with the dense foliage of the meeting trees. One avenue leads to a smaller temple, and the other, dropping by a flight of stone steps, turns to the right and descends in a long slope, bordered with regiments of stone lanterns, to a large red torii. Thence it pursues its way, bordered still with massive lanterns, for three-quarters of a mile to the greater torii, marking the limit of the sacred grounds and the beginning of the village streets. Other lantern lines, paths, and staircases join it, and a bronze deer, sitting among rough, mossy bowlders under a dense canopy of trees and creepers, pours a stream of pure spring-water into a granite basin. There are more than three thousand of these stone lanterns along the Kasuga approaches, all of them gifts from daimios, nobles, and rich believers; and in days when the temples were rich and faith prosperous, they were lighted every night. At present it is only during great festivals that wicks and saucers of oil are set in all the lanterns, but some sixty points of flame flicker nightly in the dense shadows by the Kasuga gate, giving most weird effects.
From Kasuga gate the upper avenue of lanterns leads to the Wakamiya shrine, dedicated to the early gods of the Shinto religion. Here the old custom of the sacred dance is kept up, and a group of young priestesses is in waiting to repeat the measures danced by Suzume before the Sun Goddess’s cave in prehistoric times. The little ministrants are all between the ages of nine and twelve, timid, gentle, and harmless as the deer that often stray in and watch them. Their dress is the old costume of the imperial court—a picturesque lower garment or divided skirt of the brightest cardinal-red silk, and a white kimono, with square sleeves and pointed neck filled with alternate folds of red and white. When they dance they wear loose kimonos of white gauze, painted with the wistaria crest of the Kasuga temple, the front of the gauzy garment half covering the red skirt, and the back pieces trailing on the mats. Their faces are plastered so thickly with white paint that they lose all expression, and, following the old fashion, their eyebrows are shaved, and two tiny black dots high up in the middle of their foreheads take the place of them. With lips heavily rouged, the countenance is more a mask than a human face. The hair, gathered together at the back of the neck, is tied with loops of gold paper, and then, folded in soft white paper, allowed to hang down the back. Long hair-pins, with clusters of wistaria and red camellia, are thrust across the top of the head, and fastened so that they stand out like horns over the forehead. In detail the costume is not pretty, but in its general effect it is singularly bright and picturesque.
