The beauties of the Inland Sea have been so often and so graphically described, that detailed praise is superfluous. Every one has heard of the thousands of islets, on which are perched villages, villas, and pines innumerable; of the hillsides, geometrically subdivided into rice-fields; of the junks with pleated and divided sails, which dart like white birds through the exquisite blue plain; of the strange mirage, which throws upon the sky at certain hours, when the heaven above and the waters beneath melt into a vast silver-grey mirror, the shapes of phantom archipelagoes suspended in mid-air. To those who have seen it and are familiar with the fans, the netsukes, and the tea-cups, which reproduce favourite designs of pictorial art, only one adjective, vague yet precise, will occur: this pocket-Mediterranean is essentially Japanese. It is an ornamental piece of prettiness, designed by the Celestial Painter in one of his most Japanese moods, for in it you will find the cardinal characteristic of the national taste, its subordination of the sublime to the dainty, of big effect to graceful detail, its inevitable preference for miniature and vignette. One critic has said that such art “is small in great things, great in small things”; another, that the Japanese “admire scenes, but not scenery.” Both these dicta could be applied to the Inland Sea, were it not that Europeans admire it more than the natives, but the charm which it exerts is undeniably akin to the spell of those workers in silk or clay or ivory who achieve a maximum of beauty in a minimum of space. The Norwegian fiords, the Italian lakes, the Ægean and Adriatic Seas, all present at some point or other some grandiose aspect, but the channels which lie between Shikoku, Kyūshu, and the Main Island never threaten or impose; they are simply a soft fluid setting for precious stones of varying size and colour.
Most famous of these insular jewels is Miyajima. As no boats were running thither from Kōbe, we travelled by the San-yo railway as far as Onomichi, skirting the coast so closely that we hardly once lost sight of the sea. Though sorely tempted to break the journey for the purpose of visiting the great feudal castles of Himeji and Okayama, we pressed on until the bay of Fukuyama, glittering like molten fire in a superb sunset, was hailed with rapture and relief, for the train journey had been hot and long, and we welcomed the prospect of repose. One of those delicious, indolent evenings, when the traveller reclines on piled cushions, drinking tea or saké, until he be roused from waking dreams by the low laughter of attendant musumé, demanding permission to strew the beds and light the lanterns, would have formed an excellent climax to that fatiguing day. But I never dared anticipate repose in the company of Mr. Bates, who was apt to burst into sudden flame on the slightest provocation. And during that week provocation lurked in two hotels out of three. The guide-book describes Onomichi as “a bustling, prosperous place”: it may be “prosperous”; it is undeniably “bustling.” We were barely out of the train and had just set foot in the straggling main street, when two hotel touts seized us by the arm, jovially aired some broken English, and deposited us with our bags on the steps of a large hotel. “Ask the price!” shouted Mr. Bates, “ask the price! I have never yet entered an hotel without knowing what I have to pay. Ask the price!” I complied, but the landlord with soft, evasive phrases, wafted us to an upper floor, while my companion smouldered. Suddenly a chair and table appeared. “Take them away!” he shouted, “take them away! I know the trick. They will make us pay double, and I refuse to be swindled.” This time we insisted on knowing the charges, and the proprietor, as we expected, demanded three times as much as we had now become accustomed to pay. We protested. He assured us that “honourable guests from Yokohama and Kōbe” never paid less, but we replied that Kōbe and Yokohama were nothing to us, who always paid Japanese prices for Japanese accommodation. Finding him impervious to reason, we shouldered our bags and marched out of the house. Then he consented to receive his due, and reinstalled us on our own terms. But the hotel girls were cross and discourteous, the native visitors noisy, the food bad and badly served. As a last attempt to get the better of us, the landlord affirmed that now there was no chance of a boat being despatched to Miyajima before the following afternoon, and that the information we had gathered from a casual shopkeeper the night before, that one would sail at eight o’clock in the morning, was erroneous. But Mr. Bates had been compelled twice before to spend an extra day in one of these seaside hotels, on the plea that the boat had gone, or would only go, apparently, at the landlord’s bidding. Smiling, therefore, but without hesitation, we made our own way to the wharf at seven o’clock and took our own tickets, that there might be no collusion between the hotel-boy and the official who booked passengers. At eight o’clock we steamed away from Onomichi. Through clustered islands our tiny steamer threaded in and out, until Kure appeared, an important arsenal at the foot of the Aki Hills. Here we discharged some hundreds of copper slabs, and while that slow operation was in progress were amused by the animation which prevailed on the men-of-war and on the numerous sampans plying between them and the shore. About four miles away on the island of Etajima stands the Imperial Naval College. When this and other points of interest had been indicated to us by polite fellow-passengers, our attention was riveted on the labourers, who jerked the slabs from hand to hand and piled them on the floor of a barge in symmetrical heaps. The “chantey” which they sang to lighten the labour was simple and monotonous, consisting of two words, which sounded absurdly like “Hong Kong” and “Shanghai” repeated ad infinitum. At last we continued our voyage, but were again subjected to a long delay at Hiroshima, where we landed and beguiled the tedium of waiting by chaffering with bum-boat women for sweets and chestnuts. The town stands far back from the water, and a causeway three miles in length runs out into the spacious harbour, formed by the delta of the Otagawa. As this is the most busy commercial centre west of Kōbe, there was plenty of movement: rows of boats were loading and unloading, rickshaws driving up perpetually from the town, while shrill-voiced youngsters did a brisk trade in fruit and vegetables. At the risk of being left behind, my indefatigable companion made a dash for the distant shops, and returned triumphant, hugging in one arm two loaves of bread and in the other a dilapidated Buddha, whose grimy gilt was irresistible to the collector. His disgust when I guessed the exact price he had paid (about five yen, or ten shillings), and refused to believe that it could be worth a penny more to any one, was too deep for words.
Darkness had fallen when Miyajima was reached, and as we were rowed ashore the outlines of temple and grove were shrouded in gloom. Only the colossal torii loomed black against the shimmering water, while all that lay behind was covered by the shadow of climbing forests. We took supper at an hotel near the entrance to the temple-grounds, and were then conducted by two of the landlord’s daughters on a tour of inspection through the main street. We discovered a curio-shop, of which the proprietress set such extravagant value on her wares that Mr. Bates at once was lured into hot discussion. Night interposed, and at an early hour, before I was well awake, I heard the resumption of battle below my balcony. The proprietress with gentle laughter and firm accent extolled her treasures; the would-be purchaser, in nervous tones which tingled with cupidity and despair, attempted in vain to cheapen them. His patience was rapidly giving way, and very soon he cried out for his interpreter to descend and assault the enemy. But this time I deliberately closed ears and eyes, feigning sleep. I had not come to that holy island to fight for curios, and though I had attained the knack of giving the lie courteous to crafty dealers, I shrank from translating rough language to a woman. Fidelity was routed by chivalry. They finished the struggle without my intervention, and victory remained with the lady.
When I descended, the defeated combatant was seeking consolation in photography. And seldom had his camera been confronted with more beautiful pictures. The winding valleys and soaring rocks converge at an elevation of more than a thousand feet on a little shrine, in which has been burning a sacred fire for more than a thousand years. From the opposite shore, as one traces the salient features of this evergreen island, all the details—streamlet and temple-roof, cliff and maple and pine—merge in a majestic harmony of serried line and luxuriant colour. But on the island itself one is drawn, as by a magnet, to the great temple of Itsukushima Hime, which, being partly built over the water on piles, seems at high tide, like the Breton vision of Is, to rise from the depths of the sea. At all times the torii, or wooden archway, which stands before this Shintō temple is partially submerged, and Hiroshigi in his fifty-four meisho, or views of Japan, gives such prominence to it, that the long galleries and avenue of stone lanterns, as well as the central hall, from which the colonnades diverge like wooden arms, bent to embrace the incoming tide, are barely suggested. Daimyō, Shōgun, and Emperor have vied with one another in decorating this temple, and the successive chapels are hung with paintings by famous artists from the sixteenth century to the present time. Many quaint customs, formerly regarded as conducive to the purity of a holy place, are still observed. Neither death nor birth is allowed to sully its eternal immunity from change. When either is anticipated, the patient is ferried across to the mainland. Dogs are forbidden, but deer roam the streets and feed fearlessly from the hands of tourist or pilgrim. All day the temple-courts are thronged with worshippers, and sometimes at night, when a pious noble or rich American affords himself the sight, the lit lanterns of stone or bronze, which line the approaches to the temple, define the interlacing courts and bridges in traceries of fire. But this illumination we had not the good fortune to see.
Another temple on a neighbouring hill, though less beautiful, is equally unique. It consists of a vast platform, from which spring twenty-four massive columns to support the roof, whose only ornamentation on the interior, if ornamentation it can be called, is a frieze of wooden spoons, some small, others enormous: they are nailed there, or on the columns, as the donor’s caprice dictates, and confer comparative immortality at trifling cost, for each is inscribed with an autograph. Thus the ingenious Japanese have found a way of diverting and profiting by that first infirmity of ignoble minds, which robs St. Paul’s of dignity and desecrates Westminster Abbey with such legends as “Peter Jones from Hampstead” and “Eliza Smith of Bethnal Green.” Much impressed by this strange custom, each of us bought a spoon and, veiling our vulgarity in Latin, suspended this device from the right-hand pillar of the porch:
Venit, Vidit, Oravit,
O. E. R. B.
For two months I had been haunted by visions of the bridge-Kintaikyō, as it seems to have haunted the landscape-painters of Japan. I remembered it as one of the most remarkable in Hokusai’s series of “A Hundred Bridges”; I had another marvellous drawing of the five arches overwhelmed by a snow-storm and apparently detached from both land and water, for Hiroshigi understands the isolation of his subject from irrelevant detail as few others, slaves of perspective, would dare imagine. If uneducated eyes took the picture to represent a peal of blue bells, sprinkled with cotton-wool and straddling through space, so much the worse for uneducated eyes. But at any rate, being so near, I resolved to dispel vision by looking on reality, and spent half a day in visiting Iwakuni. We were obliged to leave our rickshaws at the foot of Katō Kiyomasa’s towering temple that overlooks the almost waterless bed of the Nishikigawa, for none but a pedestrian could climb the huge arcs, thirty feet long, which spring in five bounds from shore to shore, like the curves of a switchback railway. Then the faithful camera was brought into play, and a bevy of perplexed ducks were hustled into the foreground, with the inevitable result of attracting several loiterers to share with them the glory of being photographed. These had to be politely expelled, and in the end several excellent views were taken. But not one of them conveys the fantastic liberty of that flying bridge so realistically as the snowscape of Hiroshigi.
Kintaikyō Bridge.