Fujiyama is the highest mountain in Japan, and the crater ring of the slumbering volcano is 12,395 feet above the surface of the Pacific Ocean. Fujiyama is a holy mountain; the path up it is lined with small temples and shrines, and many pilgrims ascend to the top in summer when the snow has melted away. It is the pride of Japan and the grandest object of natural beauty the country possesses (Plate XX.). It would be vain to try to enumerate all the objects on which the cone of Fujiyama has been represented from immemorial times. It is always the same mountain with the truncated top—in silver and gold on the famous lacquered boxes, and on the rare choice silver and bronze caskets, on the valuable vases in cloisonne, on bowls, plaques, and dishes, on screens, parasols, everything.
PLATE XX. FUJIYAMA.
Painters also take a delight in devising various foregrounds to the white cone. I once saw a book of a hundred pictures of Fujiyama, each with a new foreground. Now the holy mountain was seen between the boughs of Japanese cedars, now between the tall trunks of trees, and again beneath their crowns. Once more it appeared above a foaming waterfall, or over a quiet lake, where the peak was reflected in the water; or above a swinging bridge, a group of playing children, or between the masts of fishing-boats. It peeped out through a temple gate or at the end of one of the streets of Tokio, between the ripening ears of a rice-field or the raised parasols of dancing girls.
Thus Fujiyama has become the symbol of everything that the name Nippon implies, and its peak is the first point which catches the rays of the rising sun at the dawn of day.
Singularly cold and pale the holy mountain stands out against the dark blue sky as we steer out again to sea in the moonlight night. It is our last night on the long sea voyage from Bombay. Close to starboard we have Oshima, the "great island," an active volcano with thin vapour floating above its flat summit; Japan has more than a hundred extinct and a score of still active volcanoes, and the country is also visited by frequent earthquakes. On an average 1200 are counted in the year, most of them, however, quite insignificant. Now and then, however, they are very destructive, carrying off thousands of victims, and it is on account of the earthquakes that the Japanese build their houses of wood and make them low.
In the early morning the Tenyo Maru glides into the large inlet on which Yokohama and Tokio are situated. Yokohama is an important commercial town, and is a port of call for a large number of steamboat lines from the four continents. Its population is about 400,000, of whom 1000 are Europeans—merchants, consuls, and missionaries.
A few miles south-west of Yokohama is the fishing-village of Kamakura, which was for many centuries the capital of the Shoguns. It has now little to show for its former greatness—at one time it was said to have over a million inhabitants—except the beautiful, colossal statue of Buddha, the Daibutsu (Plate XXI.). The figure, which is about 40 feet high, is cast in bronze, and dates from 1252.
