It needed a very few hours on the road to teach me that Japan is the home of the ultra-curious. Compared with the rural Jap the Arab is as self-absorbed as a cross-legged statue of the Enlightened One. I had but to pass through a village to suspend every activity the place boasted. Workmen dropped their tools, children forgot their games, girls left their pitchers at the fountain, even gossips ceased their chatter; all to stare wide eyed if I passed on, to crowd round me if I paused. Wherever I halted for a drink of water the town rose en masse to witness my unprecedented action. My thirst quenched, the empty vessel passed from hand to hand amid such a chorus of gasps as rises from a group of lean-faced antiquarians examining a vase of ante-Christian date. To stop for a lunch was almost dangerous, for the mob that collected at the entrance to the shop threatened to do me to death under the trampling clogs. In the smaller villages the aggregate population, men, women, and children, followed me out along the highway, leaving the hamlet as deserted as though the dogs of war had been loosed upon it. Once I passed a school at the recess hour. Its two hundred children trailed behind me for a long mile, utterly ignoring the jangling bell and the shouts of their excited masters.
Well on in the afternoon I had taken refuge from the sun in a wayside clump, when a youthful Jap, of short but stocky build, hurrying along the white route, turned aside and gave me greeting. There was nothing unusual in that action; a dozen times during the day some garrulous native, often with a knowledge of English picked up during Californian residence, had tramped a mile or more beside me. But the stocky youth threw himself down on the grass with a sigh of relief. He was out of breath; the perspiration ran in streams along his brown cheeks; his nether garments were white with the dust of the highroad. Like most villagers of the district he wore a dark kimona, faintly figured, a dull brown straw hat resembling a Panama, thumbed socks, and grass sandals. Perhaps his haste to overtake me had been prompted merely by the desire to travel in my company; but there was about him an air of anxiety that awakened suspicion.
I set off again and he jogged along beside me, mopping his streaming face from time to time with a sleeve of his kimona. He was more supremely ignorant of English than I of Japanese, but we contrived to exchange a few confidences by grunts and gestures. He, too, had walked from Hiroshima. The statement surprised me, for the white stones at the wayside showed that city to be twenty-five miles distant. Enured to tramping by more than a year “on the road,” I had covered the distance with ease; but it was no pleasure stroll for an undersized Jap.
Once my companion pointed from his legs to my own, raised his eyebrows, and sighed wearily. I shook my head. He pointed away before us with inquiring gesture.
“Kobe,” I shouted.
“So am I,” he responded by repeating the name and thumping himself on the chest.
I knew he was lying. Kobe was more than a hundred miles away; third-class fare is barely a sen a mile in Japan; it is far cheaper to ride than to buy food sufficient to sustain life on such a journey. The fellow was no beggar, for we had already toasted each other in a glass of saki. Certainly he was not covetous of the yens in my pocket, for he was small and apparently unarmed, and there was nothing of the footpad in his face or manner. Yet he seemed fearful of losing sight of me. When I stopped, he stopped; if I strode rapidly forward, he struggled to keep the pace, passing a sleeve over his face at more frequent intervals.
Could it be that he was a “plain clothes cop” sent to shadow me? The suspicion grew with every mile; it was confirmed when we entered a long straggling village. My companion dropped back a bit and, as we passed a police station, I caught him waving a surreptitious greeting to four officers in uniform, who nodded approval.
A spy! What reason had the police of Japan to dog my footsteps? My anger rose at the implied insult. The fellow was urging me to stop for the night; instead I redoubled my pace. Not far beyond the route forked, and, turning a deaf ear to his protests, I chose the branch that led away over steep foothills. The short legs of the Jap were unequal to the occasion. He broke into a dog trot and puffed along behind me. His grass sandals wore through; he winced when a pebble rolled under his feet. Night came on, the moon rose; and still I marched with swinging stride, the little brown man panting at my heels.
Three hours after sunset, amid the barking of dogs and the shouting of humans, I stalked into the village of Hongo and sat down in the doorway of an open shop. A moment later the spy, reeling like an inebriate, his face drawn and haggard, dropped at full length on the matting beside me. His endurance was exhausted; and small wonder, for Hiroshima was forty-six miles away over the hills.