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

by Lucian Swift Kirtland

It was at the moment of this decision that the demon bicycle collapsed utterly. If it had acquiesced to the change of route it would have had to submit to being carried on the back of a coolie. I have not dared to record all the subtle ingenuities of that mechanical contrivance which it had concocted from time to time to achieve its ends. Its soul had been factoried under a star hostile to human dignity. It could bring about a loss of face to the most innocent who crossed its path. It had the pride of never having been successfully outwitted, and its soul was as proud as the soul of Lucifer. It had no intention of submitting to the indignity of being packed on a coolie nor to have the world see it with its wheels wobbling idly in the air. In desperate determination it committed hara-kiri. Its suicide was heroically completed. As I recorded in the chapter when the bicycle was introduced, Hori gave a shining piece of silver to the coolie to see that the remains had suitable interment. Peace be to those twisted spokes and to that jerry-contraptioned frame!

About noon we found a man with a horse. The man hired himself out to run along behind and Hori mounted the animal. The summit between us and Fuji was only about three thousand feet above our heads but as we continually had to go down into deep valleys and come up again our gross climbing took many steps. The thatched villages were very primitive, and the people were very nude. The homes which clung desperately to the edges of the cliffs must have had to breed a special race of children to survive tumbles, just as in the villages underneath on the shores of the small lakes, they must have had to breed an instinctive knowledge of floating. The houses of those peasants were as much a part of nature as are birds’ nests, and they so welded themselves into the unity of the view from the ridges that we did not even think to call them picturesque.

Poor Hori had not a moment when he could sit perpendicularly on his steed. The road was either a scramble or a slide. Finally he dismissed the coolies and the horse. We were at the beginning of a path which was built in sharp zigzags up the side of the mountain. A half-dozen coolie girls with huge chests strapped on their shoulders stopped at a spring and sat down for a moment to fan their flushed, pretty faces. They told us that this was the last climb but they were indefinite about the remaining distance or the time that it would take. It had been our plan to get to the top in time for the sunset view of Fuji and the lakes. Perhaps the demon bicycle had been granted one last diabolical wish. We were within a few feet of the summit, the air was seemingly clear, when down came a thick, wet cloud from nowhere at all, and our expectation for the crowning glory of the day vanished.

All the way down the other side of the mountain the fog hung over us but it lifted when we reached the shore of Lake Shoji. A village straggled along the water edge. We knew that across the lake was a foreign hotel, but if we had not known it we should nevertheless have had some such suspicion. From the attitude of the villagers it was evident that we had traversed again into tourist territory. The mild, jocular incivility of the natives of any tourist resort any place in the world, except when there is some restraint under the immediacy of employment, is innate and needs no aggravation for its flowering. We were tourists, therefore we must be imbecilic. Derisive hooting followed our ears when we started walking around the lake instead of conventionally taking a boat. Between the fog on the mountain top and our reception in the village we were somewhat out of sympathy with the last hour of the day, and we were even less happy when we reached the hotel, and it was brought to our attention that we had failed to remember that foreign prices prevail at foreign hotels. True, there were excellent reasons why the charges should be higher than at the native inns. The foreign supplies had to be brought long distances on coolie back. This knowledge, however, did not increase the number of yen in our pockets. We were in a fitting mood for turning away and pushing on to some isolated village. Such a mood can drive a good bargain and the end was that we were given a room with three iron cots at a minimum charge. I must pay this tribute to that iron cot: I relaxed on its springs in an abandonment to sleep which I shall never forget. But there were other things foreign which were not so pleasant. To have to wait until eight o’clock for a formal dinner when we were accustomed to having meals served at the clapping of our hands, and to have to thump over rough board floors after we had known the refinement of soft matting, and to have to endure all the other half-achieved attempts at foreign service—well, “going native,” as the Britishers say in final judgment, “had been the ruining of us.”

Waiting until the late foreign breakfast hour in the morning almost numbed the cheerfulness that had risen in me from the exhilarating sleep on the luxurious bed of springs, but the day was shining in such perfection when we found an unfrequented trail north of the chain of lakes, and Fuji-san was resting so clearly in the crystal air across the pine tree plain, that we quickly dumped into a maw of forgetfulness any remembrance of such mundane annoyances as foreign hotels. It may have been that volcanic gases were breaking through the clefts in the rocks and that the fumes inspired us with a Delphic madness; our mood became ecstatic. We unburdened ourselves of wild and soaring theories of art and religion, of love and life—and there were theories that came forth which we had never dreamed existed in cosmos. We scattered these inspired words in wanton waste as if we were on a journey to some world where such wealth would be dross.

The town which we found for the night was on what is called “the Shoji route around Fuji.” We avoided the semi-foreign hotel but that did not save us from being tourists. The native inn had ready for us in the morning a bill almost twice as large as it should have been. In consequence we added no “tea-money.” If we had, we should have gone from the village penniless. In all our wandering this was the first deliberate overcharge, and in one way it may have been justified in the opinion of the mistress. She had probably learned from the semi-foreign hotel across the street that foreigners know not the custom of tea-money and ignorantly pay only the bill that is presented without adding a suitable and proportionate present.

Truly we were now in the domain not only of the foreign tourist but of the native pilgrim as well. All day we walked through the towns which serve as starting points for the different routes of ascent for Fuji. It was the height of the season for the sacred climb and the towns, purveying every imaginable necessity and souvenir, had mushroomed into crowded camps. We were unworthy guests. As far as our purchasing ability was concerned, a postcard was an outside luxury. When we reached Gotemba we sat down for a conference, following the rule of “when in doubt drink a pot of tea.”

By rail to Yokohama was fifty-one miles. We had leisurely covered about twenty-five miles that day. Even if we should make ten or fifteen miles more before night, there would be a sufficiently long, scorching, penniless day to come. The country was not new to us as we had both tramped through the exploited Miyanoshita and Kamakura districts. “Since these things are so,” I made argument, “let’s use our remaining coppers to buy tickets on the express to Yokohama.” As no one’s pride sufficiently demanded that we had to take the fifty-one miles on foot, this plan was our final agreement.

Our linen suits were perhaps not as freshly laundered as those of the other haughty seiyo-jins who were riding on the first and second-class cars of the train, but otherwise our poverty did not particularly proclaim itself. We walked to our hotel in Yokohama and took rooms, relying that future funds would come out of the letter which was supposedly waiting at the bank for me. In the meantime in the bag which had been forwarded from Nagoya I found a two-dollar American bill. This gift we cashed into yen and sat through the evening on a terrace over the bund along the water front, sipping forgotten coffee and ordering long, iced, fresh lemon drinks. A steamer had landed that day and at the next table to ours was a charming group of American girls. They were filled with enthusiasm for the exotic. The soft, evening air, the passing life along the street, and the gay tables carried me back to my own first night in Japan, which had been spent eleven years before on that very terrace.

The hoped-for letter was waiting for me at the bank. The amount above the exact sum necessary for my steamship ticket had been intended for insurance against extras. It was now necessary for mere existence. We entered into an infinite calculation of finance down to the ultimate sen. Yokohama was no place for economy and we shook off its dust for that of Tokyo and were happy again in a native inn. With our linen suits laundered, we called on old friends and shopped betimes on credit. It was a rather queer sensation to be bargaining for luxuries when a mere bona fide payment of a ’ricksha charge meant a most delicate readjustment of our entire capital. Dealers were quite willing to forward boxes to America with hardly more guarantee than our promise to pay sometime. I felt that if we were to ask them suddenly for ten yen in cash our credit would have crashed to earth. Nevertheless we were confident of our dole outlasting our needs. We lived our moments gaily. We saved yen to pay the inn bill, and our boat was scheduled to sail on a certain day.