The Nijo Palace is surrounded by a moat and pagoda-guarded wall of Cyclopean masonry. It is undergoing repair, and we can therefore only see the handsome outer gateway formed of lacquer and beaten gold, and the beautifully worked gilt fastenings to the gates, but inside the descriptions read like a dream of beauty, which we should be most anxious to see, were it not for the experience we have just gone through at the other palace of Gosho.
Kioto has its Diabutsu, its big bronze bell, its pagodas, palaces, gardens and monasteries, but above all it has its temples—temples large and small, decorated and plain, dull and uninteresting. You might easily spend a week at Kioto seeing nothing save these, but of temples I confess we are by this time thoroughly sick and tired. The sight of a torii makes us turn wearily away, and from a sāmmon (or gateway) we hastily flee. Everyone who visits Japan ends by experiencing this satiety of temples, a feeling induced by their monotonous identity and entire want of originality. Still we feel that we must visit some of the sights, so somewhat half-heartedly we go forth towards the Show Temple of Nishi Hongwanji, the headquarters of the western branch of the Hongwanji Buddhist sect, a dark massive structure. In the courtyard is the large tree which, "by discharging showers of water," protects the temple from fire in the vicinity. We wander through the state rooms, the minor shrines, and the big temple; and in truth the decorations are marvellously beautiful, but I will not weary you with the detailed descriptions of lacquer-ribbed ceilings, golden pillars, of kakemonos (hanging scrolls) over 200 years old, of cornices wrought in coloured arabesques, and shrines painted and carved in floral designs. Again there are those most exquisitely painted scenes on the sliding screens, of peacocks and peahens seated on a peach tree with white blossoms; of wild geese on a dead-gold ground, of scroll patterns carved in the design of the peony or chrysanthemum leaf and flower, nor of the angels in full relief that gaze down upon us from the ceiling. But I must make especial mention of the gilt trellised folding-doors, opening back to disclose a wintry scene of life-sized bamboo and plum trees, and of pine with dark-spreading branches covered with snow.
We wander through the peaceful stillness of the monastery garden, where the jostle and noise of the thick crowding streets around comes over the wall in a dull hum, feed the gold fishes in a pond from the cool cloister, and climb up to a little tower—or pavilion of the flying clouds—where, on kneeling on the ground, we can trace a few pencil lines on a gold ground, supposed to be the work of the great artist, Kana Molonobii.
Then, passing the Hijashi Hongwangi, which, when finished, will be the largest Buddhist temple of Japan, we go on through a narrow street, under an archway, and pass into an enclosure, where booths of gay trifles line the road running to the Sanjūsangendo, or the temple of 33,333 images of Kwannon, the Goddess of Mercy, where a thousand gilt images of five feet rise in tiers above each other, the number being completed by the smaller effigies engraved on the face and hands of the larger ones. Near by the great Buddha, twin to the Kamakura one, is dwarfed into a building where his head touches the ceiling, and you can only gaze up from underneath at his colossal sleepy features. To the right, hung under a belfry, is one of the two largest bronze bells in the Island, and immediately under it is a little open temple, where five Buddhist priests, squatted in a semicircle, monotone the evensong. We return home with that comfortable feeling that comes of duty performed, and proceed to enjoy ourselves by a drive in the dusk through the fairy lighted streets.
Kioto is a fascinating place, but, as I have said, it is not the sights that make it so. The attraction partly lies, as it always does in Japan, in those wonderful little brown streets, with their wide eaved and diminutive two-storied dolls' houses, hung with original sign posts of fans, monster paper lanterns and gay flags, that stand out in sharp relief down a long vista, from the purple mountains. Kioto is on the plain surrounded by a circle of mountains, and at the end of all the streets, face which way you will, there is always this effective background to the toy town. If you mount a little way up them, you can look back and have a panoramic view over thousands of brown-roofed huts, presenting a perfectly level surface, except when a temple roof, square and dark, overshadows the others.
My carriage at Kioto.
We had thought Tokio the most fascinating imaginable place, but, except for its grass-grown moats, reflecting waters, and cawing rooks, Kioto is even more enticing. The streets are narrower and more untouched by that dreaded European taint, showing itself at Tokio in small drapers' shops, and cheap lamp and umbrella stores. Life is more primitive, the people are more unsophisticated, as we know by the little crowd, polite and interested, that attends us in our shoppings, and that makes the dusk in the shops darker, by the blackness of their gathering round. The gay china shops, the chemists, blacksmiths, booksellers, the fish and fruit stores cease not to interest us; the walking picture, coming to meet us of a Japanese lady with shapely, tightly-girt figure, with the baby on her inclined back, sheltered under a paper umbrella, charms us as much as ever. The wee children in their blue and white kimonos or wadded jackets, their heads shaved, with a bald circle on the crown, just like the Japanese doll of a toy shop; the little ten-year-old nurses with their brown babies asleep, and heads waddling from side to side as they shuffle along; the ladies, in handsome dress, taking an afternoon airing with their husbands in a double jinrikisha; the sellers crying their goods and attracting attention by the help of a bell, gong, drum, or whistle: all these things, though we seem to have been in their midst for so long, almost at times to have lived all our lives with them, are a never-ending source of interest. But a new charm has been added to these, one that exceeds them all, one that is all-absorbing. We throw temples, palaces, gardens, sight-seeing to the winds, and resolve to devote the few remaining hours of our stay in Japan, to shopping and the curio shops.