This is the outline of the story. The lank, die-away lady we see trailing across the stage has retired to a wood, with a rill of crystal water, to live in a temple, there, to mourn the death of her father in a war. The young man who was (unknown to her) his murderer, passes casually along and she falls in love with him. This love-making, in the drawling nasal accents, and its tediously slow movements, is most unreal, and as they drink the loving cup of saké together, the father's disapproving spirit, in a rushing flame of fire, blazes up from the temple. Darkness drowns the applause, and warriors rush on the scene and begin to fight the maiden, who mesmerizes them, until one by one they fall at her feet.
The orchestra is represented by five musicians, perched up on a rock. I may say at once that, artistic as is the nature of the Japanese, their idea of music is absolutely nil. It consists of a series of grunts and groans, or of nasal notes in a bass key, or of falsetto in a high one.
But the interest lies to us in the audience, who, in the interval of twenty minutes, eat their evening meal. Some have brought their food with them, and nearly all their own china tea-pots, for a constant supply of tea. Others buy theirs, and are provided with a succession of little wooden bowls piled on each other, and for which they have to pay the usual theatre price of ten cents, or double the ordinary one. In each box there is a hibachi, or china bowl full of hot ashes, where they light their pipes, for men and women are continually smoking, and their pipes have the smallest bowl, the size of a thimble—two whiffs and it is empty again; but it is sufficient for their modest wants.
September 26th.—I am writing in the most delightful real Japanese house, far away in the midst of these beautiful mountains of Nikko.
The thin wooden frame of the house is covered with luminous parchment paper, and these are the walls that divide us from the outside world. They are not permanent ones, for they slide back one behind the other, a succession of paper screens, until the house is open to the street and there is only the shell of a habitation left in the roof, and one paper wall behind. The second-floor storey (if there is one) is marked by a long balcony running completely round, and here in cupboards at either end are kept the wooden shutters that slide into grooves and close in the balconies, in winter and at night, and give to all the houses the dull appearance of a blank wooden wall at sundown. Inside, the roof and floors are of white wood, and the latter is covered with spotless matting; but I am glad to say that there are European concessions here, in the shape of a table, chair, and washstand and bed, on which is laid a clean starched kimono to go to the bath in. In a Japanese house we should find no furniture at all. Their rooms are absolutely bare; they eat, sit and sleep on the floor, and from out of a cupboard in a recess will come the "futons," or thick wadded quilts, and the square piece of wood with a hollow for the neck, where a soft wad of paper is inserted, and which is used for a pillow by the ladies to save their elaborate headdress from getting deranged. As they cannot dress their hair themselves, it is only done occasionally, and must thus be considered even when sleeping.
The construction of these houses is so delightfully simple, for, excepting the polished ladder which leads upstairs, there is no plan of the rooms. They are made larger or smaller, more or less, according to the want of the hour, by means of those successions of sliding screens, and a little pushing and sliding will make the large room you are using, into five or six smaller ones in a second. These tea-houses are charming in their compact simplicity, their faultless cleanliness, and particular neatness.
It was at four o'clock this afternoon that we arrived at Nikko, and drove from the station through the end of the great cryptomeria avenue, past the village, until the jinrikisha was suddenly shot round a corner, down a narrow passage, and stopped at the courtyard step of the Suzuki Hotel. Here quite a little crowd of bowing attendants received us with many deep salaams, and sucking-in of breath; one relieved me of an umbrella, another of a cloak, and another of a book, and went before us, encouraging us with graceful gesticulations and faces wreathed in smiles to enter the house, impressing us in an indescribably charming manner that we were showing them but too much honour in doing so. Of course we drank tea—it is the first ceremony on entering any Japanese house; and then came the second one—the solemn ceremony of the bath.
Bathing is the passion and pastime of the Japanese, and they bathe as often as two or three times a day. In all towns there are public baths, where, in the evening, the population meet to gossip and take a bath for the modest price of two cents. Not long ago men and women in a state of nature bathed together, but Government has forbidden this now. However, we visited one where a wall separated the bath, but still left the entrance to both open to the public view. In villages there will be a tub or barrel outside every door, and one evening we saw a man preparing his bath, with a fire kindling under the zinc bottom of his tub. They take their baths as hot as 110° Fahrenheit, and for some unexplained reason foreigners find that cold or lukewarm baths are unsuited to the climate, and adopt the native temperature. The rule at hotels is that the first arrival is entitled to the first use of the bath.
To take up the thread of the story, we left Tokio at eleven this morning, the Foreign Office sending a carriage to take us to Ueno station.
Through groves of cryptomeria, maple, fir, willow, wild cherry and Spanish chestnuts we travel. Past great clumps of bamboo, which to see only is to be able to picture the mighty growth of their graceful, feathery foliage; by picturesque villages, with their angular brown thatched roofs crowding low down over their mud-wattled walls, nestling amongst banyon groves interspersed with persimmon trees, bare of leaves but laden with bunches of golden fruit. Then we emerge on to the open country, where the cultivation is so exquisitely neat that it resembles a succession of kitchen gardens. There are no hedges, and no grass, but the whole land is taken up by small patches of onions, turnips, maize, millet, sweet potatoes, and the broad caladium-like leaf of another species of potatoes, whose English equivalent to the Japanese name I failed to discover. These alternate with rice fields, where the bright yellow tells of the ripening and bursting of the grain. The soil is rich and black, and labour is done by hand-spade, but the absence of pasture strikes us. However, there are few cows or oxen, and no sheep, numberless experiments failing to rear them; and the ponies live on chopped straw, beans and the refuse of grain.