Rare days in Japan

by George Trumbull Ladd

But quite apart from any curiosity to see the village where dwelt the hero who won by his courage and benevolence the name of Daimyojin, or the “divinely great and bright” (it is not true, as Lafcadio Hearn affirms in his semi-fairy tale, that a shrine was built to Gōryo during his life-time by the villagers), I had other important reasons for visiting Hiro-mura. A former pupil of mine, Mr. Takarayama, was principal of a flourishing school which has been established and patronised generously by the Hamaguchi family. An invitation from the head-master and the patrons of this school, and their representations as to what it would mean for the cause of education in the whole district, combined with descriptions of the beauty of its scenery and the as yet unsophisticated nature of the country people, were quite sufficient to make us eager to be the first of foreigners to see and describe this wholly unfamiliar part of Japan. In all these respects, as well as others, our experiences left us emphatic in the conclusion that we had seldom, or never, in any part of the world had a more rewarding three days of travel and of sight-seeing than those spent in this trip through Kishu.

In order that we might reach our destination by a single day’s travel in jinrikishas—for the village is some twenty-five miles from the nearest railway station—we went from Kyoto to Osaka on the evening of the day before and took the early morning train for the interesting and beautiful town of Wakayama. At the station in Osaka we found the reserved carriage which the Governor of Wakayama had requested to have ready for us. As the manager of the railway acknowledged “the honour which we were doing his road by condescending to travel over it,” I think we felt somewhat as the daimyo of Kishu must have felt when he granted “permission” to Hamaguchi Gōryo to pay for the dyke which the latter’s enterprise and industry had succeeded in building.

The ride between the great manufacturing and modernised city and the ancient town, with its well-preserved feudal castle, is entertaining throughout; the part along the sea is especially picturesque. On the platform of the station at Wakayama stood the Mayor, the heads of various educational associations, and others, ready to welcome the arriving guests in the customary formal but friendly fashion of “Old Japan,”—adapted, however, to modern conditions of travel and clothing. Four jinrikishas, with three runners for each, were in waiting. After a short interval of discussion as to certain details, all were arranged in proper order;—our escort from the city leading the way, then the lady and the gentleman who were guests (a reversal of the ancient order of the precedence of the sexes), with Mr. Takarayama bringing up the rear. The cavalcade started off at a brisk trot which was broken only once during the first six miles; and this was in order to pass a loaded cart where the road along the cliff was somewhat narrow and rough. In this way we reached the village of Kuroé in time for luncheon. A turn aside from the main street, a somewhat steep climb by a branch road and then by a path through the fields to the hill-side above the village, brought us to the beautiful home of our mid-day host.

Mr. Kimura, who entertained us at luncheon that day, is a younger brother of Mr. K. Hamaguchi, who, as so often happens in Japan, has been adopted into another family and in this manner changed his family name. Over the gateway to his private grounds were hung the flags of Japan and of the United States; and the family, which still retains something of its patriarchal constitution in the country places of Japan, including a number of the principal servants, were all in waiting to welcome the foreign guests. Mr. Kimura’s residence is charmingly situated; the house, which is purely Japanese, although a part of the structure is more than two hundred years old, is still in excellent repair; in sunny and fairly warm weather it has the beauty which is peculiar to the best Japanese dwellings when set in one of those picturesque landscapes that abound here as nowhere else. In the room where we were received were a few treasures of art, which had been brought from the go-down for the occasion, such as a princess might covet; some rare old kakemonos, a piece or two of the finest lacquer, and one of the most interesting and artistic of bronze vases for flowers which I have ever seen. The base of this vase represented, or rather suggested in barest outline, the surf of the sea, with sea-birds flying here and there above the curling waves.

This entire district is an interesting example of the persistence in modern times of artisan and artist work, as done in humble houses by private individuals and families, with a certain independence and pride of craft, and on their own account as it were. In and about this small and obscure village of Kuroé there are as many as one thousand houses in which work in lacquer is going on. Most of this work is, of course, of cheap and ordinary character; although some of the older forms of cheap utensils of lacquer have a certain artistic beauty. Other specimens of the work done to-day in these houses of the village and the adjoining fields may, however, well lay claim to a rather high order of merit. For if there is not much initiative or originality shown by the peasant workers, the designs of the celebrated Korin, made a century and a half ago, are still being faithfully and skilfully copied by them. But there surely was not much work done, whether in fields, shops, or houses, during the hours of our stay. For the people, of all sorts, ages, and sizes, were gathered in groups, with that mild-mannered and unabashed curiosity which characterises the old-fashioned country folk of Japan, to watch the doings of the strangers who had so suddenly and unexpectedly appeared within their borders.

If further experience had been needed—as, indeed it was not—to convince me of the ease with which one, properly introduced and conducted, can make acquaintances among the good people of Japan, our short stay with Mr. Kimura and his family would furnish it. We met at noon as strangers; we parted at two in the afternoon of the same day as friends. As a souvenir of this friendship both host and guests cherish a photograph in which four generations of this Japanese family, and its trusted and aged head-steward, are grouped around the foreign visitors.

From the village of Kuroé to Hiro-mura the jinrikisha ride is one of almost unexampled charm. Indeed the landscapes through which we were passing combined the three qualities of such charm—beauty of form, beauty of colour, and human interest—in a higher degree, I think, than does either the drive around the Bay of Naples or along the Bosphorus. The day was superb—bright with the light of the sky and the sparkling of the sea, and just cool enough for comfortable travelling. We had changed runners and vehicles at Kuroé and so our men were fresh and ambitious to show how well they could do. The first part of the course took us over the tops and along the sides of the cliffs above the Bay of Shimidzu, or “Clear Water.” Here the landscape had its beauty of form contributed by the very configuration of the coast-line and, as well, of the mountain’s slopes and crests. But the curious and graceful curves of the terraces, both above and below the road as it wound along the bay, and up and down, were added features of delight to the eye that appreciates this kind of beauty. The reddish brown of the rock, where it shone through the sombre green of the lichens, emphasised by the light green and fawn colour of the dried grasses, or the dark and almost blackish green of the pines; the reaches up Between the cliffs, with the variegated colours of the vegetable gardens, the ooze of the as yet unplanted rice-fields, the shiny foliage of the orange groves, with the various shades of yellow fruit showing in places through the leaves; the limpid blue waters of the Inland Sea and of the Italian sky, which combined to reveal all the many hues of shell, and pebble, and seaweed, and reflected rock and tree and shrub,—all this made an unsurpassed beauty of colouring to give warmth and feeling to the beauty of form.

“[PEASANTS WERE GOING TO AND FROM THEIR WORK]”

And then there was that indescribable picturesqueness of human interest which belongs to the country places where most of the life of “The Old Japan” is lingering still. In the succession of villages through which we were passing, the houses, boats, costumes, means of carriage, forms of labour, and modes of social intercourse, were little changed from one and two centuries ago. The highway was by no means solitary at any point of the twenty-five miles between Wakayama and Hiro-mura. Indeed the absence of steam-cars and of trolley made all the more necessary an active life on the road in order to do the necessary business for this busy and not unprosperous district. All along its course men were trudging with baskets and buckets and immense packages slung on poles over their shoulders. [Peasants were going to and from their work] in the fields with old-fashioned mattocks and rakes in hand or over the shoulder. Men and boys were pushing up, or holding back, along all the slopes of the hills, the long dray-like carts, loaded with boxes of oranges, or with bales of raw cotton to be spun, or of cotton yarn or cotton cloth already prepared for the market. For just as a thousand houses in the district nearer Wakayama are making things of lacquer, so a thousand houses in this district are spinning cotton yarn or weaving cotton cloth. We can hear the cheerful rattle of the looms as we approach the way-side cottages—a noise which is suspended as the cavalcade of curiously loaded jinrikishas draws near; only to be resumed again when the workers have seen the foreigners pass by. Indeed, a considerable percentage of the products of the Fuji Cotton-Spinning Company, of which our host at Hiro-mura is the president, is manufactured in the homes of the villagers and farmers of this district. May a kindly Providence prevent this sort of domestic industry from being displaced by smoky mills, in crowded centres, under conspiracies of monopolies and trusts!