Ikao was in truth a microcosm of Japanese society. Representatives of nearly every class came and bathed and went their way refreshed in spirit, if not cured in body, by the restful babbling water. One day an ex-daimyō, who had held high office in a recent Cabinet, arrived with a small retinue of relations and dependants. Quiet and dignified, he was only to be distinguished by a greater sobriety of manner from less aristocratic neighbours. Occasionally odd instances of polygamous experiment attracted general remark. A Tōkyō merchant came accompanied by an elderly wife, a blind baby, and two mistresses who had formerly been geisha. The three women were on excellent terms, and disputed only the privilege of spoiling the thrice-mothered child. Every evening for them was a “musical evening,” as the man had a good voice and the geisha were expert samisen players. Nitobe San described the ménage as “a little barbarous.” But, whether his opinion was shared by many or few, it made no difference in the reception of the new-comers, who were treated with the same frank courtesy as less numerously married folk. Indeed, frankness and propriety were marked characteristics of this hydropathic paradise. If the bathers imitated Adam and Eve in simplicity of tenue, their behaviour, too, like that of our first parents before the Fall, was faultless. Conversation was entirely unembarrassed and perfectly decorous. The very publicity of this hotel life was a guarantee of morality. And, in fact, one could see that beneath extreme freedom of intercourse careful etiquette was observed. Neither young girl nor married woman ever went out alone: the tea-party never became a tête-à-tête. The shōji of the apartments were generally half open; the amusements were such as to assemble and introduce the visitors to one another. Dancing and flirting, as practised in English watering-place or French casino, were unknown. If the men desired other female society than that of their own class, they could seek the geisha-ya or jōro-ya. If many of the diversions were childish, those of Brighton or Trouville cannot rank as intellectual exercises. It was a lazy, healthy, happy sort of paradise, and I did not live in it long enough to discover the serpent.
II
On the seventh day of the seventh moon I bade farewell to Ikao, and, loaded with little presents, descended slowly to Takasaki. Regret at leaving that delightful haven was soon lost in conjecturing the solution of an astronomic mystery. Village after village flaunted a galaxy of paper stars, which flecked the green background of interminable trees with dancing flakes of red, white, and blue. At every door stood a bamboo-stem crowned with a cluster of five-rayed stars, each ray being made of paper of a different colour. From this astral chaplet long streamers floated in the breeze, like the gohei, or cut paper inscribed with prayers, before a Shintō shrine. At Takasaki station I met Nitobe San’s sister-in-law, O Sen San, who was returning to her husband’s house at Tōkyō, while the student himself had gone to the more efficacious hot springs of Kusatsu. Being fellow-travellers as far as Akabane Junction, I begged her to reveal en route the meaning of those starry signals which continued to flutter gaily in every district we passed, as though our train were freighted with royal passengers. Then I learned that all pious folk were celebrating that day the festival of Tanabata. The white streamers corresponded in number with the children in each household, and on every one was written a poem desiring happiness, especially good fortune in love, for the child whose name was appended. More than this she did not know, but a handsome young priest, who had remarked my zeal for knowledge, kindly volunteered the following legend:
The Herdsman and the Weaver.
“Long ago, as Chinese sages tell us, there dwelt in Heaven a herdsman and a weaver on opposite sides of the celestial river. All day the herdsman tended his cattle, and was far too busily occupied to think of taking a wife. All day the weaver sat at her loom, making clothes for the Emperor, and this labour took up so much of her thoughts that she even neglected to adorn her person. Then the Emperor, remarking her diligence and pitying her loneliness, sent for the herdsman and said: ‘Inasmuch as ye are both so devoted to my service, I will that ye shall henceforth be devoted to one another. I give thee this woman in marriage.’ So the girl crossed the river, and no married couple ever lived more happily together. But after a time the Emperor perceived that the marriage, though it might be a good thing for them, was an evil thing for him, since the weaver began to neglect her work, and his clothes, which had formerly won the admiration of his courtiers, showed signs of hasty and careless weaving. At this the Emperor grew very angry, and sent for the weaver and said: ‘Inasmuch as this marriage has been a joyful thing for thee and for thy husband, but a woeful thing for the Emperor of Heaven, I bid thee recross the river and return to thine old home. Once a year, on the seventh day of the seventh month, the herdsman may pay thee a visit, but on every other day in the year let him see to his herding and thou to thy weaving.’ So the girl returned to her old home, and the river flowed once more between herdsman and weaver; but every year, when the feast of Tanabata comes round, husband and wife are happy together. Therefore, all who desire their children to be fortunate in their love ask fortunate stars to shine upon them. Now, the Emperor of heaven is God; the celestial river is the Milky Way; the herdsman is a star in Aquila, and the weaver is no other than Vega, brightest and luckiest of stars.”
I thanked the priest for his pretty legend, and cautiously approached the subject of religion, asking if he had studied Christianity, and to what cause he attributed its slow progress among his compatriots. He answered that two facts, in his opinion, contributed greatly to its want of success. The first was its extraordinary similarity to Buddhism. The ideas of a saviour of mankind resigning kingly power to become a wandering beggar; of virginal motherhood; of trinitarian godhead; of the beauty of holiness and charity, love to men and kindness to animals; of heaven and hell, as the populace conceived them, though in reality but intermediary stages to the ultimate Nirvana;—these, and the miracles attributed to the rakan, or disciples of Buddha, which bore such remarkable resemblance to the wonders attributed to Christian saints, prayers for the dead, and monastic institutions;—indeed, almost every salient doctrine of Christianity, as taught by priests of the Roman See, could be found with more or less modification in one or other of the numerous Buddhist sects. Why should a believer, then, apostatise from the faith of his forefathers to adopt a foreign creed so similar to, and yet so remote from, his own? I found that his conceptions of Christianity were derived from a Romish priest, whom he had known in the island of Yezo. There was also a patriotic reason which struck me as rather unusual. The loyal Japanese believed that their Emperor was descended from the gods, and in the “Kojiki,” which is regarded with the same reverence by them as the Bible by Europeans, many actions implying divine power are said to have been performed by such beings as the Heavenly-August-Sky-Luxuriant-Dragonfly-Youth, by the Great-Refulgent-Mountain-Dwelling Grandee, and by other kami, or superior ones (“them that are above us,” Mrs. Dolly Winthrop would have said), to whom it was impossible to refuse the rank of deity. But the missionary said, “Thou shalt have none other gods but Me,” which commandment imposed on the convert the necessity of becoming disloyal as well as an apostate. Yet, so tolerant were Buddhist and Shintō believers, that they did not subject a pervert to any sort of persecution. They practised and allowed entire freedom of belief. I replied that, granting his premisses, his conclusions were irresistible, and we parted excellent friends.
At Akabane Junction I took leave of O Sen San, and met by appointment Mr. Richard Bates, whose acquaintance I had made about three months before in a curio dealer’s Shop at Kyōto. As we had agreed to take the waters of Akakura and Dōgō together, I must apologise to him and to the reader for interpolating a brief description of this invaluable companion. His accomplishments were so numerous that I shrink from detailing them, but they were all of such a nature as to enhance the pleasure of travelling. He was a good cook, a good nurse, a good photographer; he had the infallible flair of a curio hunter, and while less wily collectors were hesitating and beating about the bush, he would mark his prey—perhaps an old lacquer bowl, perhaps a bronze incense-burner—pounce on it, appreciate it, depreciate it, and by sheer force of will-power whisk it away to his lair before the dealer had made up his mind on the subject of price. He had two deficiencies, which were also virtues on occasion: he easily lost command of Japanese idiom and British phlegm. As he chose to consider me a fair linguist, it fell to my lot to translate arguments and accusations which were violently impossible to reproduce. However, I did my best, and was rewarded by many scenes of rare comedy. I often thought he would have done better to rely on himself, since discussion gave the seller time to invent incredible merits for his wares: at such times one glance or gesture of contemptuous disbelief inspired more respect for the buyer than languid protest, and that fiery fashion of raiding a china shop, of assessing the stock with the rapidity of a freebooter, and helping himself to anything that took his fancy, was so appalling to the deliberate, ceremonious vendor, that I believe goods were frequently yielded up in terror and a vague hope of appeasement. Not that Mr. Bates invariably got the better of the bargain. It is my belief that many geese sully with unsuspected falsity the whiteness of his swans. But for him every purchase was a swan, and, if you hinted otherwise, the crime of a Frenchman who should express an unpatriotic belief in Captain Dreyfus’ innocence were light in comparison. I seldom committed that imprudence, but indulged a secret hope that one robbery balanced another, and that in the end the spoils of war were equally divided. Commercial habit does breed an instinct of distrust, which many tourists would find discomforting; but this instinct was so agreeably modified in my fellow-countryman by generosity and justice, that on the whole we made as many friends as enemies. If a landlord tried to cheat us, we told him so with reprehensible directness; if he treated us well, we gave him a handsome present, and were as pleased as Diogenes would have been had he pursued his famous quest by the light of a Japanese lantern.
Men, honest or dishonest, interested us but little that day, so absorbingly magnificent was the scenery. At Akakura we should be in sight of the Sea of Japan, while Tōkyō faces the Pacific, so that our route ran north-west at an angle of about forty-five degrees, very nearly from coast to coast of the main island. The train would have to climb to a height of 3080 feet, crossing by means of the Usui Pass the volcanic backbone of mountains which culminates in Asama-yama (8280 feet), the largest active volcano in the country. As we steamed slowly up the steep gradient to the grassy levels of New and Old Karuizawa, a series of twenty-six tunnels, bored at such short distances from each other as to resemble the disjointed sockets of a gigantic telescope, provided intermittent glimpses of jagged cliffs and terrific gorges. Far below lay green valleys and plains, threaded by silver rivulets and dotted with infinitesimal châlets; beside us, densely-wooded slopes; to left and right, on the horizon, Myyōgi San and the Kōtsuke peaks rose frowning to the sky. Many passengers descended at Karuizawa, for it stands on a lofty moor, where cows and wild flowers flourish to the joy of European children. Here the wise missionary builds his villa and transports his family in the hot months. Donkeys and bicycles, bestridden by sturdy, blue-eyed youngsters, excite wonder in the meek pedestrian native, while papa, untrammelled by clerical attire, manfully mounts his five thousand feet and gazes into the red sulphureous crater. Has not a local parodist thus celebrated the annual exodus?
“When summer strikes Tsukiji