In a tall sheathed bell-tower near the pagoda there is a most interesting shrine where parents hang the garments of sick and dying children. The whole interior is filled with little kimonos and bibs, and the long rope of the gong overhead is covered with them, while tearful women cluster round the priests in the small interior, and a continuous service seems to go on before the altar. In the court-yard a large stone water-tank, sunk a few steps and covered with a pavilion roof, contains a stone tortoise pouring a constant stream of water into the reservoir, on whose surface the faithful, buying wooden shavings or prayer-papers from the priests, cast these petitions and go away content.
Others fill little bottles with the water and carry it home as a specific against many ills. In a pond near by live hundreds of turtles. The kamé climb up on wooden platforms in the pond and sun themselves, but at the clap of the hand and the sight of popped beans floating about, the whole colony dive off and swim towards their benefactor.
All around Tennoji are the yellow walls of the monasteries, with miniature moats and heavy gate-ways, and this quarter is a religious city by itself, which was once a separate suburb with a population of 30,000.
CHAPTER XXXIV
KOBÉ AND ARIMA
Travellers had cause to rejoice when the Tokaido railroad made it a twenty-four hours’ journey on dry land from Tokio to Kobé, the foreign settlement adjoining the ancient town of Hiogo. It is almost always a miserable trip by water, notwithstanding the beauty of Fuji and the coast. Chopping seas, cross-currents, and unexpected pitchings and motions disturb the equilibrium even of an old sailor, and the trip to Kobé often lays him low, while smiling skies and seemingly smooth waters seem to make a mock of him. When typhoons sweep, the province of Kii is a magnet for them, and frightful seas rage around that point which guards the entrance to the Inland Sea.
Kobé, as the port of Osaka and Kioto, and the outlet of the great Yamashiro tea-district, is an important place commercially; its growth more than equalling Yokohama’s since the opening of the port. Beginning with less than 10,000 native inhabitants in the town of Hiogo in 1868, it had risen to more than 80,000 in 1887, and to 215,786 in 1900. The foreign trade of 1888 amounted to $42,971,976; in 1900 to $97,805,206, of which $60,144,764 were imports, and $37,660,442 were exports. Ships of all nations lie at anchor in its busy harbor, and the many American sailing vessels that come out loaded with kerosene return with cargoes of rags, camphor, and curios, by which general invoice name are included the cheaper porcelains, lacquers, fans, lanterns, toys, and trifles made for the foreign trade.
Kobé, lying at the head of the Inland Sea, sheltered from the ocean, and screened even from the land by the low range of mountains back of it, possesses the best and driest climate of any of the treaty ports now open for the residence of foreigners. The soil is sandy, and the site, facing southward, enjoys to the full the winter sun and summer winds. The town, beginning in lines of houses that run down from each velvet, green ravine in the abrupt hill-wall, slopes steeply to the water’s edge, and there spreads out in a long Bund, one part of which, lined with foreign residences, banks, and consulates, is the pride of Kobé. This foreign Bund is much less picturesque than the native or Hiogo Bund, off which lie hundreds of curious junks, that at night display constellations of softly glowing lanterns on their masts, while the whole harbor and hill-side twinkle with open lights, and the electric search-lights of the men-of-war flash broad rays over the scene.
At the end of the native Bund Government buildings close the street, and the railway wharf and sea-wall follow a long point of land that runs far out into the bay, and is capped by a fortress with a round stone tower and a light-house. A double line of ancient trees marks the course of the Minatogawa, which centuries ago was turned from its proper channel and made to run along this high embankment. A steep slope of forty feet in some places leads from the level of the Hiogo streets to the banks of this watercourse, which are turfed over, shaded with rows and groves of pines and enormous camphor-trees, and made gay with garden-plots and picturesque tea-houses. The dry river-bed is a play-ground for legions of children, and during matsuris it is crowded with booths and side-shows. Hiogo, meaning “arsenal,” figures prominently in ancient history, and here Kusunoki Masashige, that ideal hero and model of chivalric valor, fought the last battle of the War of the Chrysanthemums and established the sovereignty of the Emperor Go-Daigo in the fourteenth century. Kusunoki’s memory is worshipped everywhere, but the Nanko temple in Hiogo is dedicated to his memory, and on anniversary days its matsuris are brilliant and picturesque affairs. Besides this great Shinto temple, Hiogo has a Buddhist establishment of equal importance—the Shinkoji, outside whose sanctuary sits a colossal bronze Buddha of serene, majestic countenance, its granite pedestal rising as an island in the midst of a lotus pond.
Properly speaking, the Minatogawa lies in Hiogo, but where ancient Hiogo ends and modern Kobé begins no mortal can see. The Motomachi, the main street of Kobé, winds its narrow length from the banks of the Minatogawa to the Foreign Concession, beyond which warehouses, tea-firing godowns, and foreign residences stretch and spread in every way outside the narrow limits of the tract conceded to alien residents in the treaties. Kobé means “head,” or “gate of god,” probably in reference to its position at the entrance of the Inland Sea. While so picturesquely placed it is the model foreign settlement of the East, and the municipal council—a mixed board of consular and native officials—has never allowed its right to that fame to be questioned. A pretty park down in the heart of the Concession, shaded with ancient camphor-trees and ornamented by hedges, groups of palms, thatched summer-houses, and a bell-tower, was once the execution-ground of Hiogo. A small temple that stood near it has given way to a large tea-firing godown, and native children tumble and play where the headsman used to bind mutilated bodies or ghastly heads to high poles and set them up at the corners, after immemorial usage. The park, or recreation-grounds for the foreign colony, lies, beside the long embankment of another elevated river-bed on the opposite side from the Minatogawa.
Every gap in the Kobé hills leads to some lovely little valley, and orange groves dot the hill-sides. In one green ravine are the falls of Nunobiki, where a clear mountain stream takes two long plunges down sheer granite walls, drops in foaming cascades past old rice-mills, and courses on over the sloping plain to the sea. The Moon temple shines, a white spot, far up towards the summit of the steep, green mountain, and, with the more accessible falls, offers the two favorite points for visitors’ excursions. Farther along the brow of the hill stands the Gold Ball temple, a whitewashed structure, looking like an exaggerated country meeting-house, with its roof surmounted by a gilded sphere, and with nothing even suggesting Buddhism in its appearance. While it is an eye-sore to every one else, the natives, who contributed the money to build this monstrosity of what they consider foreign architecture, are delighted with its unique and bizarre appearance. Around it lies a populous graveyard, many of the stones gray with the mosses of centuries. Others, newly erected, are family memorials, bearing the names of those members already buried there written in black characters, and the names of the living in red. It is a curious custom; but to the Japanese, who even point with pride to the red letters of their own names on these family monuments, it is rational and right. Cremation is the funeral rite preferred, and up a narrow valley behind the temple is the crematory, much used both by rich and poor. The process is simple and inexpensive, and the visitor always encounters some funeral train accompanying a body to that little white temple of fire, or some family group bearing the ashes down to the cemetery for final rest.