The cliffs here are all limestony and sandy, and seem rather recent and unfossiliferous.
THE COAST ROAD ALONG WHICH WE WALKED ROUND BOSHU
I walked partly by road, partly along the shore about 14 miles, a short distance, but the way was very heavy and the day hot. About half-way were some lovely pine woods with mossy floor and May-flowers, and I lay there for lunch. Violets of many kinds had been the chief, almost I might say the only, wild flower we had noted hitherto, but here were several others. Daisies, like our home ones, only bigger and purple; a lovely intense blue sedum, and a small shrub, with crimson flowers, the Japonica, were the most striking and beautiful of those I noticed.
The last 4 or 5 miles lay along a curious shore. A greater contrast to that of my last night’s lodging could not be imagined. The whole coast was flat for several miles inland, and the beach was a great stretch of dark grey sand with the small beginnings of dunes here and there, and must have been more than a mile in width. Along its desolate extent were dotted little houses, grey as the sand, and built with their roofs touching the ground on two sides!—these sides presumably being those of the prevailing winds. They looked as though the full tide should sweep over them, the beach behind them appeared so unreclaimed, but they seem to have stood there for long, some were almost buried under the piled-up sand. I can give no idea of the vastness and the desolation of this view. The houses seemed mere hummocks in the wilderness, for under the eaves a man can hardly stand upright, and the boats look almost as big as the houses. There is absolutely no vegetation near them, only, at the edge of the dunes, a few small pine trees venture farther out than anything, but the little ones run grave risks of being buried. I had intended to spend the night at Jehinomiya, but found it lies a mile from the coast, so when I found groves of pine trees, a broad river, with a tiny village and a lot of country houses of the summer-house type, I put up at the inn, which is not bad. The hamlet is called Sendocre, and the inn looks out over a broad river and into deep groves of pine. The frogs are all making as much noise as they can with their watchman’s rattle-like voices, but otherwise there is perfect peace; everything is in complete contrast to last night’s cliff-perched, spray-splashed, storm-tossed house.
April 7.—What a day of sights and impressions! I cannot tell a quarter of them, or to-day’s experiences would fill this volume.
The mile to Jehinomiya lay along the river by a narrow foot-path, with pine plantations near at hand. From thence to the next town (Mobara) was 10 miles of road, at first between villages and large farm-houses. The rice fields lying on each side of the road were the scene of the country people’s labours, men and women working together up to their knees in the soft black squelchy mud. They were dressed quite alike, with dark-blue cotton clothes, very tight-fitting trousers down to the ankle, and long tunics with a blue-and-white towel tied over their heads. Some of them burrowed in the mud for roots of weeds, some used a heavy fork to bring the soil into ridges, and in one field I saw a wooden plough dragged by a dejected-looking horse. The chickens, everywhere abundant, seem a particularly large and healthy type, and they too worked in the rice fields, hopping from ridge to ridge after the workers had turned it over and revealed small grains and worms, which they captured. As in Boshu, so in this province, cows are remarkably plentiful and good-looking. The clusters of cottages with their grey thatched roofs made a series of lovely pictures, beside each was one or more glowing bush of apricot or peach, and the white feathery branches of cherry flower, soft, rich, and with a feeling like whipped-cream when you kissed them, floated over the rest like white clouds. For 3 or 4 miles the road lay through pine woods, real pine woods, with a soft mossy floor and violets, not the high, coarse bamboo usual in Japan, that makes it impossible to pass. At the edge of the road were many low shrubs with thick masses of the terra-cotta-coloured flowers, like Japonica, so that a line glowed on either side of the sandy track. There were also purple pansies and pale violets, and the world seemed a very fair place.
At Mobara I passed a school just coming out, and very few of the little boys even troubled to follow me; none called out any remarks. My knapsack is carried in somewhat the native fashion for slinging bundles, and even though I wear skirts, they think I am a man—their men wear skirts too, and a plain panama sun hat very like mine. Thank heaven my hair isn’t red. A few discover I am a woman, but the fact excites little interest.
A less beautiful 5 miles took me to Chōnan, and from there 2½ more to the place where I branched off across the rice fields to see a famous temple of great age. The last mile of the road was splendidly hilly and well wooded, and on the banks were huge blue forget-me-nots. The road passed under one of the hills by a bent tunnel, pitch dark, and very weirdly echoing. I could not see where my feet were going, and wondered if any local bandits made it their headquarters; they could not have found a more excellent place. Slightly disappointing, was it not, that I went through that cavernous tunnel alone and without any incident? To reach the temple I had then to follow narrow paths across the rice fields, and was not surprised to learn from the people at a tea-house at the foot of the temple hill that they had never seen a foreign lady before. The hill on which the Buddhist temple of Kasamori is built is magnificently wooded; on the summit stands a high isolated pyramid of rock, and on the top of this the temple is built. This main building dates from 1028, extremely old for Japan, where the original buildings of the oldest temples have usually been destroyed by fire and rebuilt again and again.
The view from the temple itself was superb. One stood on a level with the topmost branches of the giant trees, and looking through them saw all round stretch after stretch of green valleys, and crest after crest of darkly wooded hills. The trunks of the trees near by were covered with epiphytes and creepers, and in the valleys grew ferns and violets.