Rare days in Japan

by George Trumbull Ladd

Between a series of addresses which I had been giving in his church, in early July of 1892, in Tokyo, and the opening of work at the summer-school at Hakoné, Mr. T. Yokoi and I planned an excursion of a few days to the mountainous region in the interior northward of the Capital City. The addresses had been on topics in philosophy—chiefly the Philosophy of Religion. The weather proved as uncomfortable and debilitating as Japanese summer weather can easily be. In spite of this, however, about two hundred and fifty men, with few exceptions from the student classes, had been constant in attendance and interest to the very end; and I was asking myself where else in the world under similar discouraging circumstances, such an audience for such a subject could readily be secured.

The evening before we were to set out upon our trip, I was given a dinner in the apartments of one of the temples in the suburbs of Tokyo. The whole entertainment was characteristic of old-fashioned Japanese ideals of the most refined hospitality; a brief description of what took place may therefore help to correct any impression that the posturing of geisha girls and the drinking of quantities of hot saké is the only way in which the cultivated gentlemen of Japan know how to amuse themselves. As the principal feature of entertainment on this occasion, an artist of local reputation, who worked with water-colours, had been called to the assistance of the hosts; and we all spent a most pleasant and instructive hour or two, seated on the mats around him and watching the skill of his art in rapid designing and executing. The kakemonos thus produced were then presented to the principal guest as souvenirs of the occasion. The artistic skill of this old gentleman was not indeed equal to his enthusiasm. But on later visits to Japan I have enjoyed the benefits of both observation and possession, in instances where the art exhibited has been of a much higher order. For example, at a dinner given by my Japanese publishers to Mrs. Ladd and me, we witnessed what has since seemed to both of us a most astonishing feat of cultivated æsthetical dexterity. The son of one of the more celebrated artists of Japan at that time (1899), himself a workman of much more than local reputation, had after some hesitation been secured to give an exhibition of his skill at free-hand drawing in water-colours. When two or three designs of his own suggestion had been executed, in not more than ten minutes each, the artist asked to have the subjects for the other designs suggested for him. Among these suggestions, he was requested to paint a lotus; and this was his answer to the request. Selecting a brush somewhat more than two inches in width, he wet three sections of its edge with as many different colours, and then with one sweep of hand and wrist, and without removing the brush from the paper, he drew the complete cup of a large lotus—its curved outlines clearly defined and beautifully shaped, and the shading of the inside of the cup made faithful to nature by the unequal pressure of the brush as it glided over the surface of the paper.

After the dinner, which followed upon the display of the painter’s skill, and which was served by the temple servants, the entire party divided into groups or pairs and strolled in the moonlight through the gardens which lay behind the temple buildings. The topic of talk introduced by the Japanese friend with whom I was paired off carried our thought back to the quiet and peaceful life lived in this same garden by the monks in ancient days; and not by the monks only, but also by the daimyos and generals who were glad, after the fretful time of youth was over, to spend their later and latest days in leisurely contemplation. In general, in the “Old Japan,” the father of the family was tempted to exercise his right of retiring from active life before the age of fifty, and of laying off upon the eldest son the duty of supporting the family and even of paying the debts which the father might have contracted. But it was, and still is, a partial compensation for this custom of seeking early relief from service, that the Japanese, and the Oriental world generally, recognise and honour better than we are apt to do, the need of every human soul to a certain amount of rest, recreation, and time for meditation.

The entertainment over, and the uneaten portion of each guest’s food neatly boxed and placed under the seat of his jinrikisha for distribution among his servants on the home-coming, I was taken back to my lodgings through streets as brilliantly lighted as lanterns and coal-oil lamps can well do, and crowded with a populace of both sexes and all ages who were spending the greater part of the night in the celebration of a local religious festival. The necessity of sitting up still later in order to write letters for the mail which left by the steamer next day, and of rising at four o’clock in the morning, to take an early train from a distant station, did not afford the best physical preparation for the hardships which were to be endured during the two or three days following.

It was on applying for a ticket to Yokogawa, which was as far toward the foot of Asama-yama from Tokyo as the railway could take one in those days, that I experienced the only bit of annoying interference with my movements which I have ever met with, when travelling in Japan. But this was in the days of passports and strict governmental regulations for the conduct of foreigners and of natives in their treatment of foreigners. These regulations required that all tourists who wished to visit places beyond ten ri, or about twenty-four and a half miles, distant from some treaty-port, must obtain passports from the Japanese Government by application through the diplomatic representative of the country to which they belonged. The purpose of the proposed tour must be expressly stated; and it must be one of these two purposes,—either “for scientific information” or “for the benefit of the health.” The exact route over which it was proposed to travel must also be stated, and the length of time for which the permission was desired. Applications for more than three months were likely to be refused. It was, further, the duty of every keeper of an inn or tea-house where a foreign traveller wished to pass the night, to take up the passport and hand it over to the local police for inspection and for safe keeping until the departure of his guest. The strictness of the compliance with these regulations, however, differed in different places; and nowhere did they serve to destroy or greatly to restrict the kindness and hospitable feelings of the common people. For example, I recall the pathetic story of a missionary, who had lost his way, and having become so exhausted that he felt he could not take another step, applied for shelter during the night in the hut of a peasant family. The man did not dare to break the law which forbade him to harbour the foreign stranger; but he offered, and actually undertook to carry on his back the tired missionary, to the nearest place where he could obtain legal entertainment!

Some weeks before, after a visit in company with a missionary friend and his family to the Shintō temples at Ise, we had all turned aside for a night of rest at the charming sea-side resort of Futami. The other members of the family felt quite at their ease, for they were armed with their passports for the summer vacation; not so, however, the gentleman who was the family’s head and guardian and my interpreter. For he was without the necessary legal permission to pass the night away from home; while the day’s journey of thirty miles in a basha without springs made the prospect of a return journey that same night anything but desirable to contemplate. But the issue was happy; for the large number of passports furnished by the entire party and duly made over to the police by our host seemed to prove a sufficient covering for us all. And we had come off victorious in another battle with legal restrictions,—a battle royal between the maids, who at the risk of suffocation to human beings, insisted on obeying the law by shutting tight the amado, or wooden sliding doors which formed the outside of our sleeping apartments, and the human beings, who rather than be suffocated, were willing to break the law; since, at best, a modicum of uneasy sleep was to be obtained only in this way. But such petty annoyances are now forgotten; and nowhere else in the world is travel freer and more of kindly pains taken by all classes to make it comfortable and interesting, than in the Japan of the present day.

The policeman at the station being in time satisfied with the legitimacy of the foreigner’s purpose to get where he could ascend Asama-yama, both for purposes of scientific information and for his health, my friend and I took the train for Yokogawa. The railway journey was without incident or special interest. At that date there was a break of about seven miles in the Nakasendō, or “Central Mountain Road,”—the grading and tunnelling being far from complete between Yokohawa and Karuizawa, from which point we intended to make the ascent of the mountain. Although the Nakasendō seems to have been originally constructed early in the eighth century, since it traverses mountainous and sparsely cultivated districts, remote from populous centres, good accommodations for travellers were at that time (1892) not to be had. At present, Karuizawa is one of the principal summer resorts of all this part of Japan; and several thousands of visitors congregate there annually. Travel by jinrikisha up this mountain pass was then difficult and expensive, and we wished to save both strength and time for our walk of the following day. We had, therefore, only the tram as a remaining choice. In the nearly twelve miles of tram-way there were scarcely twenty rods of straight track; and the ascent to be made amounted to some 2,000 feet in all. Yet the miserable horses which drew the small car were whipped into a run almost the entire way. The car itself resembled a diminutive den for wild beasts, such as menageries use in their street parades, although far less commodious or elegant. It was designed to hold twelve passengers; but this complement could possibly be got in, only if the passengers were uniformly of small size and submitted to the tightest kind of packing. By sitting up as straight as I could, and sandwiching my legs in between the legs of the Japanese fellow-traveller on the opposite side, it was barely possible to bring my thigh bones within the limits of the width allowed by the car. Plainly this vehicle was not planned to accommodate the man of foreign dimensions. As we swayed around the perpetually recurring curves of the narrow track, it was rather difficult to avoid slight feelings of nervousness; and these were not completely allayed by being assured that accidents did not happen so very often; nor, more especially, by the sight of a horse and cart which had plunged off the roadway to the valley forty or more feet below, where the animal lay dying and surrounded by a little crowd of those calm and inactive spectators who, in Japan, are so accustomed to regard all similar events as shikata-ga-nai (or things which cannot be helped). We arrived, however, at Shin (or New) Karuizawa, somewhat jumbled and bruised, but in safety; and here we at once took jinrikishas for the older place of the same name.

“[THE VILLAGES HAVE NEVER BEEN REBUILT]”

Asama-yama is the largest now continuously active volcano in Japan. Its last great and very destructive eruption was in the summer of 1783, when a vast stream of lava destroyed a considerable extent of primeval forest and buried several villages, especially on the north side of the mountain. Over most of this area the [villages have never been rebuilt]. Even the plain across which we rode between the two Karuizawas, and which lies to the southeast, is composed of volcanic ash and scoriæ; and since 1892, stones of considerable size have often been thrown into the yards of the villas inhabited by the summer visitors in this region. Yet more recently, there have been exhibitions of the tremendous destructive forces which are only biding their time within the concealed depths of this most strenuous of Japan’s volcanos. On the south side of the mountain rise two steep rocky walls, some distance apart, the outer one being lower and partly covered with vegetation. It is thought by geologists that these are the remains of two successive concentric craters; and therefore that the present cone is the third of Asama-yama’s vent-holes for its ever-active inner forces.