September 6.—Another present! The Inspector of Mines “fears I shall not be able to get good food when I leave Sapporo” and brings me a dozen tins of the best meats! chicken, beef, and all kinds of things. I often wonder why people say that the Japanese are not sincere in their kindness.
I saw a most interesting method of laying a foundation of a native building—two dozen women pulling on a fan of ropes, and singing in a weird way, half drawing and twisting between each pull. A couple of men directed the heavy pounder which they raised in this way, and let it fall with a crash to stamp down the earth.
In the afternoon I paid two official and one delightful call, and saw the beginning of the “Opening of the University” decorations. The College attains the dignity of a University on September 11. They are still actively building new departments and have unlimited ground for more; the whole temple of learning is most pleasing, extensive, and picturesque.
September 7.—I left early for Shiroi, a small village which is largely pure Aino. A contingent saw me off at Sapporo, and I was extremely sorry to say farewell to some of them; but to be alone once more is a real pleasure. At Shiroi I saw all there was to be seen; the little straw homes and boats (it is a fishing village) of the Aino are very different from those of the Japanese.
Some of the Aino are extremely picturesque and dignified-looking, their long, thick, black hair standing out all round their patriarchal heads. They are not all small; most of the men I have seen are taller than I am, and very thick-set. The women are terribly disfigured by green tattoo marks on their faces, the most essential of which is the one across the lips, which has the appearance of a moustache. One or two of the young women who have not been tattooed are very handsome. They are a fundamentally different race from the Japanese, and there is very good evidence that they are actually descended from the stone-tool using people, who once covered all the Japanese islands.
I came on to Noboribetsu to spend the night. It is about ten miles from the station, and to it runs the first road I have yet seen outside a village. Such a road! It is a marvel to me how we ever got out of its swamps and ruts, and how the wheels could all be at such extremely various and varying angles without coming off. Half-way there it got dark, and the rest of the journey we went tearing down little slopes or crashing and jolting over the ruts, when there was only a margin of about a foot between us and a ravine. Yet nothing happened.
September 8.—I spent last night in the crater of a semi-active volcano! Yet it was not so thrilling as it sounds. The crater is nearly a mile across, and much of it is just like a deep-wooded circular valley, in which are a little hotel and one or two houses. Only a couple of hundred yards or so away from the hotel the active part remains, however, and there are vents and small cones, bubbling streams of boiling water, and piles of sulphur in any quantity. Some of the boiling basins are black and solid-looking, and some frisky with little geysers—most of them tame enough for close acquaintance, but a few dangerous and impossible to approach. As I look out on the hotel garden the steam rises in thick clouds from the boiling stream bubbling through it, which is utilised for baths. The Guide-book naively says: “The only drawback to a visit to the springs of Noboribetsu is the chance of meeting naked bathers.” I would say “certainty of meeting.” But I got off quite alone and went up through the woods, following a track of course—it would be mad to leave it here—and saw three snakes in an hour, one nearly 4 feet long hardly moved from the path. I met an Aino, tattooing and all, and we exchanged a few courtesies in bad Japanese. Aino itself is a curiously hard language, nearly all k’s.
September 9.—A wet drizzling day, which blurs all the landscape, so that trees, sky, rain and sulphurous clouds all merge into one another. The air is heavy, and full of the odour of rotten eggs. I am the only European here, and am living absolutely à la Japonaise. The place is entirely untouched by our civilisation, and my room is a gem of native art: the delicate wooden trellis-work and bands of black lacquer on the paper doors and windows, the beautiful heavy metal fire-pot and embossed kettle are real Japanese of good quality. I sincerely wish I could bring such a room to London, it would delight those followers of the art nouveau who have retained some of their original conceptions of the beauty of simplicity. I was rather glad to leave the hot choking fumes, however, and reach Mororan at night. It is a pretty little port, in a beautiful bay forming a splendid natural harbour. I went on board at 9 o’clock at night.
September 10.—We should have arrived at 10 or 11 o’clock this morning at Aomori (on the main island), but there was a storm, the tail of one of the typhoons which are abounding this year, and we did not get in until after 4 in the afternoon. While waiting three hours to catch the train I saw a little of the town, and spent some time soothing a distracted missionary and his wife, recently from America, and not yet accustomed to waiting, and trusting large sums of money to Japanese porters with no guarantee that they would get the tickets they wanted. Japan takes some learning, and a highly-strung American accustomed to New York bustle must find it a peculiarly hard lesson.
September 11.—I arrived at Matsushima station at 5 o’clock this morning and took a kuruma[2] to the place itself, on the way stopping to climb a small hill which overlooks the wonderful archipelago—one of the three greatest sights of Japan. As I sat there the sun rose, and lit up the gleaming water and the thousand pine-decked islands, whose shapes are so fantastic that one can only imagine them to be the work of the drollest of trolls, who with his drollery had a soul that was rare enough to combine nobility of beauty with fantastic form.