Rare days in Japan

by George Trumbull Ladd

But bye and bye we leave the cliffs along the shore of Shimidzu Bay and come to the Arida River. Here the scenery is still interesting and beautiful, but of quite different character. Our road lies, much of the way, along the dykes built to restrain the overflow of this stream, down which, at the present time, an almost unbroken succession of rafts of lumber is being driven by the lumbermen. Upon the banks of the river is an equally endless succession of orange groves; for we are now in the Florida of Japan. With as much propriety, we might call it, so far as orange culture goes, the California of Japan. In these groves, or rather yards,—since the fruit seems to be for the most part cultivated in small patches in the gardens of the cottagers,—are grown the small free-skinned and deliciously sweet oranges for which this region of Kishu is particularly celebrated. But here, too are the groves of Navel oranges, the trees for planting which were imported from California some eight or ten years ago. (I noticed, however, that this variety is deteriorating in Japan. The one small hard semblance of an orange which is at the navel of the California variety in this country, seems there to be multiplying itself three- and four-fold, until it threatens to occupy most of the inside of what from the outside appears to be a fine, large specimen of fruit.)

The quieter rural beauty, with its commerce along the river rather than along the shores of the sea, is satisfying enough, however, to prevent the fatigue of travel until we reach Yuasa, a village separated only by about one mile from Hiro-mura. At the outskirts of this place it is necessary to pass under an arch of “Welcome” which the townspeople have erected; and then between lines of school children, who, drawn up on either side to the number of three hundred, greet us with bows and waving of flags. A little further on, we are handed a large card which announces that twenty-five of the chief men of the village of Yuasa have also come out to welcome us. And there they are—friendly and yet dignified in their bearing—in a single row along one side of the highway. Evidently the demands of politeness cannot be satisfied in such a case by allowing one’s self to be drawn in one’s jinrikisha slowly by the line, with uncovered head and frequent exchange of bows. So the male of the two guests dismounts and on the common level of the highway exchanges salutations with the numerous representatives of the party of the host.

While passing through the streets of Yuasa we noticed entire blocks of houses which, sometimes on one side and sometimes on two or more sides, were railed off from the highway, at a short distance from their fronts, by a barrier of galvanised iron about two feet and a half high. At the time, this strange sight only aroused a momentary curiosity. It was not until we were about leaving Hir-omura that we learned the meaning of it all. In July of the previous Summer some boatmen from Osaka had landed in Yuasa and had brought to the villagers the dreadful bubonic plague. It had taken until the following December for the authorities to stamp out the scourge effectually. By this contrivance of an iron wall it was intended to trap the rats and prevent their carrying the infection from house to house and from street to street, before they could be killed. Aided by the barrier of the little river, although there were several hundred cases in this village, the other village, which was less than a mile away, wholly escaped. In general, it is only by the most untiring and intelligent diligence, extended into all the smaller places upon the coast and into the remotest country districts, that Japan prevents the plagues which are endemic in China, India, and Korea, from ravaging her own land.

On the other side of the Hiro,—the stream which gives its name to the village where Hamaguchi Gōryo lived, and across which he made his famous jump when closely pursued by the incoming wave, in 1855,—the “guests” were met by another “Welcome” arch, and another yet longer array of school-masters and school-children. Indeed, both villages, in the persons of as nearly all their inhabitants as could get about, were obviously playing the part of welcoming hosts. All doorways were crowded; all the streets along which the jinrikishas passed were lined with citizens curious to see the “first-arrived” foreigners in this part of Kishu.

On reaching his hospitable gateway we were met and welcomed by Mr. K. Hamaguchi and his entire family, and were ushered into a room which was such a surprise as can now be met by those who have access to the houses of the cultivated and wealthy, even in remote country districts of Japan. The floor of the large parlour or drawing-room was entirely covered by a beautiful Chinese rug, spread over the soft Japanese mats. In violation, to be sure, of the native custom, but presumably for the delectation of his guests, a temporary display of numerous art treasures had been arranged by our host. Kakemonos painted by Enshu and other celebrated native artists were hung upon the walls. Screens of the greatest artistic interest and of almost priceless value were to be admired on every hand. Nor were these art objects limited to the best specimens of Japanese, or Chinese, or other Oriental workmen. Mr. K. Hamaguchi in his travels around the world had made judicious selection of things of beauty from many places. It was his boast, for example, that he had collected flower-vases to represent the best work of a score of different foreign countries.

This room, with its shoji drawn aside, looked out upon one of those gardens which the Japanese are able, without exhausting a large space, to make so very exquisite. In a darkened cage, which hung in the verandah outside, a nightingale occasionally burst forth in song. And when, after a dinner cooked in foreign style by a cook imported from Osaka, the shoji were drawn and we were put to bed within a small space curtained-off, in a bedstead brought expressly for this purpose all the way from Tokyo, and covered with thickly wadded Japanese futons of the winter variety, our only wish was that we might have been allowed the much more comfortable but less dignified spread of the same futons upon the floor of the large room, with the sides still left open into the garden, so that we could breath its delicious air, and go to sleep to the murmur of the fountain and the song of the nightingale. But the return to the improved and more elegant use of the better points in the art of comfortable and healthful living, which were enforced before foreign customs were introduced into the “Old Japan,” will come through the growth of understanding and the added appreciation of a comfortable and healthful simplicity, in the “New Japan.” Meantime we hope that the genuine and delightful, if somewhat too elaborate, courtesies of host and guest will not be wholly changed.

The next day was the time of work, the day for which the other days of the rather lengthy but altogether delightful journey had been undertaken. Its experiences were calculated to strengthen the conclusions derived from all my other experiences during three different visits to Japan,—namely, that no other nation is now, in comparison with its resources, giving the same care to the intellectual and ethical education of the common people. For Hiro-mura, the reader will remember, is an obscure village, not even mentioned in the guidebooks, some twenty-five miles from the nearest railway station, and never, according to the testimony of their leading citizen, visited by foreigners before.

“[YOU CANNOT MOCK THE CONVICTION OF MILLIONS]”

But the day was also calculated to impress yet more deeply another characteristic of the social and public, as well as of the domestic, life of Japan. The spirit of Hamaguchi Gōryo was everywhere in the air. And here is where Mr. Hearn shows his insight into, and his appreciation of, a momentous truth. It is, indeed, a truth which cannot be argued with the Westerner,—easily or without embarrassment, for lack of a sufficient standing upon common ground. It is a truth which must be profoundly felt. Japan, perhaps more than any other civilised nation, is constantly under the prevailing influence of a belief in what Mr. Hearn is pleased—not altogether aptly—to call “ghosts.” These are the ghosts—I should rather say, the felt spiritual presences—“of great warriors and heroes and rulers and teachers, who lived and loved and died hundreds or thousands of years ago.” As he says truly: “[You cannot mock the conviction of forty (now more than fifty) millions] of people while that conviction thrills all about you like the air,—while conscious that it is pressing upon your psychical being just as the atmosphere presses upon your physical being.” Even to-day, in the school-rooms and university halls and public playgrounds of the children and youth of Japan, it is not the trophies of some individual player or team of athletes, but the mottoes and injunctions and other relics of the great and the good, not only of the present, but also and chiefly of the older, and the most ancient times, which excite their feelings of pride and emulation.