Samurai Trails: A Chronicle of Wanderings on the Japanese High Road

by Lucian Swift Kirtland

Japanese architecture is said to be in direct line of descent from the nomadic tent of Central Asia. Just as the roof and the four corner posts are the essentials of the tent, in the building of a Japanese house, the corner posts are first set up and the roof is built next. Our inn might have served this theory of descent as an admirable example. The roof was the chief reason for its existence. There were no wings. The stairway was on the outside, coming up through the balconies which ran completely around the two upper floors. In winter days when wooden shutters enclose and darken the rooms the bare simplicity may grow dreary. The wind is then the father of shivering draughts which creep over the floor, but for the days of summer, when the green valley of Fujimi lies in the shelter of the great granite ranges, the memory of the stifling cave-like rooms of our Western architecture seemed barbarous and of dull imagination in comparison. The philosophy of Japan’s housebuilding appears to be that it is better fully to live with nature in nature’s season of wakefulness than to invent a compromise shelter equally reserved against nature through the revolution of the year.

O-Owre-san had gone exploring to find the bath. A few minutes later our host excitedly came up the stairs to warn us that the bearded foreigner was tempting destruction. Rumour that foreigners have experimented with cold baths and have discovered reactions within themselves to endure such rigour had not reached Fujimi. When the impatient foreigner had learned that the hot bath was not ready, he filled the tub with the icy water that came spouting through a bamboo pipe. In the midst of our efforts to calm our host, O-Owre-san, himself, appeared, red and beaming. Nevertheless, neither his rosiness nor his exhilaration could allure Hori and me into following his recommendation to go and do likewise. We decided, instead, to take the host’s advice. He sent us to the public baths. Armed with towels, and in borrowed kimonos and borrowed wooden geta, we set forth. My kimono came to my knees, no lower, and it was restricted in other dimensions. For the women and children sitting in the doorways our progress through the street may have brought some interest into a rainy and perhaps otherwise dull afternoon.

The baths, housed in a low, small, ramshackle building, were famous for leagues about. The keeper of the baths was a “herbist.” He went out into the mountains—on stealthy and secret excursions which the cleverest tracker had never followed—and brought back sweet-scented hay which his wife sewed into bags and threw into the hot water. Everything about the discovery, she said, was their own secret. Whatever was the secret of the herbs, the natural, delicate perfume was pleasing. The two tubs for the men were fairly large tanks. They had been freshly filled with heated spring water just before we entered. It was not yet the men’s hour, but a half-dozen women were in their half of the building, either busily pouring water over themselves on the scrubbing platform or sitting placidly up to their chins in the hot water. The mistress was most energetic. She had a pair of large scrubbing brushes which she was applying to their backs. Back scrubbing in Japan is an ancient institution and the practice may have some real physiological merit. At least the vigorous scrubbing up and down the vertebrae produces a soothing and restful reaction.

A phrase that I had come across in my dictionary had stuck in my memory. Translated, it was: “Will you kindly honour me by scrubbing my back?” I asked Hori whether my remembrance and pronunciation of the Japanese words were correct.

“Pretty good,” said he, and then I saw a slumbering twinkle in his black eyes. “But why do you practise on me? Why don’t you say it to the mistress to see whether she will understand?”

“Stop!” I spluttered. But it was too late. He had called out to the busy mistress to ask the foreigner to ask to have his back scrubbed. Until that moment we had been inconspicuous in our dark end of the room, but now everybody looked up and edged along for the entertainment of hearing a foreigner speak Japanese. I was responding, but my phrases were directed at Hori and had nothing to do with back scrubbing.

There are exigencies of fate which come down upon one like an avalanche. The revenue to the busy mistress from the use of her scrubbing brush was three sen from each person, which was a full sen more than for the bath itself, and thus business was business and a serious matter with her. She descended upon me with her three-legged stool and scrubbing brushes and proceeded to earn the extra sen. I was completely cowed by her determination.

We sat parboiling ourselves in the tub for some time. All the customers had now either been scrubbed or had not asked to be scrubbed, and the mistress could sit down for a moment to rest and to talk. Particularly did she talk. She talked on and on, exploiting the merits of the local advantages of Fujimi. Ah, where could one go to find Fujimi’s equal? Such views! And we must promise to visit the tea-house. It was unfair to refuse that to Fujimi. The maids, it was true, were not geishas, but they were every whit as talented as any geisha of Tokyo, and sang and played and danced far better than provincial geishas.

Back in our inn the extra twenty sen apiece above the minimum rate had wrought marvels in the kitchen. We were hungry. We were always hungry. And we had learned always to expect the inn dinners to satisfy our demands. That night we truly had marvellous dishes. The bamboo shoots were as tender as bamboo shoots can be. Whether supreme genius or chance was responsible for the sauce for the chicken, the result was perfection. Dinner was very early. After the meal I found a longer kimono and, as the rain had stopped for an interval, Hori and I walked to a hill to see the sunset. On our way back we passed the tea-house which had been so enthusiastically recommended by the mistress of the baths. We went in. Green peaches were brought to us to nibble at, and tea and warm beer to sip.

The house was indeed gorgeous with its gold screens and polished wood. The decorations almost kept within traditional taste, and simplicity had not been too grievously erred against; but the atmosphere of proportion and rhythm had been missed by that narrow margin which perversely is more irritating inversely to the width of the escape. We may possibly have had the added impulse to this critical judgment by the insidious predilection of the mosquitoes for us rather than for the two maids who were paring the peaches. One of them explained that the mosquitoes of Fujimi are famous for preferring outsiders.