CHAPTER XII

CONCERNING JAPANESE WOMEN

One of the most charming features about travel in Japan is that one cannot pass a day without being more or less under the gentle influence of the women.
    In China or India one may travel for months and never have occasion to address a woman, for there every servant is a man, and the women do not enter into the foreigner's life at all. But in Japan it is different: and how much pleasanter! For woman is a great power in Japan, and her sphere is a large one. The home is woman's province: so is the inn. Little soft-voiced women fill your every wish and, quite unintentionally, make you feel how indispensable they are to very existence from the time you enter a hostel in Japan to the time you leave it. Life at a Japanese inn has a charm that at first you cannot define. Perhaps you do not try to. You only know that you find it fascinating, but you do not ask yourself why. Certainly it is not the degree of comfort that pleases you so much, nor is the food particularly to your taste. Yet you find you prefer to live at native inns instead of "foreign-style" hotels. Why ? If you ask yourself the question, the answer is easy. It is because you feel the sweet authority of woman the moment you enter a Japanese house. That is the charm. With all its beauty Japan would not be the fascinating holiday-land it is were it not for the gentle, happy little women who minister to your comfort and every need; whose faces are wreathed in perpetual smiles, and who cheerfully fly to do your bidding at any hour of the day or night, no matter how unreasonable your foreign wants may be.
    Whatever woman's position may have been in the past, and whatever it may even be to-day, outside the inn—I cannot say home, because I have had no experience of Japanese home-life, though I suspect it does not differ very much in this respect from life at an inn—there can be no two opinions about the part woman plays inside the household. She is an autocrat, and a clever one, for she rules even where she does not really pretend to rule; but she does it so tactfully that, whilst the husband holds the reins, he does not see—or at least he does not show that he sees—that his little wife has got the bit firmly between her teeth, and he is simply following wherever she chooses to lead.
    But woman is not only pre-eminent in the house, she is fast becoming a very important factor in the whole social and industrial system of the country, and whatever may have been the relative status of man and woman in Japan in days gone by, there is little doubt that another generation or two will see the sexes as much on an equal footing as they are in almost any other country, for women are proving themselves fully as competent as men in many occupations. One now sees female assistants in all the large Tokyo shops; female clerks in post-offices; female operators at telephone exchanges; and female ticket-sellers at the railway stations.
    The Japanese girl is no longer content to remain a pretty chattel of the home. Her emancipation is progressing by leaps and bounds, and she now expects, and is allowed, such freedom as must rudely shock her grandmother when the old lady thinks of the days when she was in her teens. Healthy athletic exercises, every day at school, are fast changing the entire physique of the modern Japanese girl, and she is already larger, and heavier, and longer-limbed than her mother. She demands fresh air and country walks, and the habit of going unattended to school has bred in her an independence that enables her to walk the streets unnoticed, and without fear of molestation.
    From the standpoint of the older people this change is not altogether for the good, for she is losing some of that feminine charm which caused Lafcadio Hearn to describe her as "the sweetest type of woman the world has ever known." The submissiveness, which was one of the Japanese girl's principal attractions, is less noticeable in the present generation than the last—so I am told by Japanese friends, who look upon American notions of school training with pious horror. Modern progressive ideas, and the higher education, are encroaching more and more into the family circle, and undermining the Confucian foundations on which it has rested for so many centuries. The Japanese girl of to-morrow will perhaps consider herself as good as her brother, and may even not hesitate to match her opinions against his. The time is far distant, however, when Japanese women will clamour for votes; though it has come, and passed by, when they were able to demonstrate to all the world that their services were almost as vital to the country in time of war as those of the men.
    Even though the Japanese girl grow less passive under the modern system of education, she is never likely to lose her place among the daintiest and most winsome of her sex, as the refining processes that have gained it for her are never likely to be omitted from her training, no matter what new features are introduced.
    The position which the Japanese wife occupies in the respect and affections of her husband even to-day is but little understood, for so much misinformation has been disseminated about her that a wholly wrong impression is generally held of one who is the most amiable of man's helpmates in the world. The Japanese home is perhaps the most difficult of any to gain intimate access to, yet almost every globetrotter who dashes through Japan is a self-constituted authority on the gracious matron who presides over that home, and many make the unpardonable and fatal mistake of classing the modest, retiring lady of the land, whom probably he never sees, with the popular favourites of the capital and the treaty-ports.
    Even the humbler members of the Japanese feminine world—such as waitresses and hotel servants—have been cruelly maligned, and represented to be what they never at any time were, as their pretty, fascinating ways are often misunderstood by those who come from lands where customs are so different, and who cannot speak the language. "Too many foreigners, we fear," says Professor Chamberlain, "give not only trouble and offence, but just cause for indignation by their disrespect of propriety, especially in their behaviour towards Japanese women, whose engaging manners and naive ways they misinterpret. . . . The waitresses at any respectable Japanese inn deserve the same respectful treatment as is accorded to girls in a similar position at home."
    No class of Japanese womanhood is more misunderstood by foreigners than the geisha. The geisha has no prototype in Europe: she is unique—a purely Japanese creation. To mention the name geisha amongst English people unversed in matters Japanese is to cause uneasy looks and suggestive smiles. Why the geisha should be so misapprehended is difficult to tell.

GEISHA

I have often wondered, too, why it is that when European ladies wear Japanese clothes, or array themselves as "Japanese geisha," they invariably make the most glaring errors—wear elaborately embroidered kimonos, stick many long pins in their hair, tie their sashes in front, and, in short, make themselves resemble neither geisha nor ladies, but public women of the yoshiwara. Neither Japanese ladies nor geisha wear embroidered kimonos ; they never wear a halo of long pins in their hair, nor do they tie their sashes in front. These things are the badges of prostitution.
    The geisha is an entertainer. She is trained from childhood in the arts of music, dancing, singing, story-telling, conversation, and repartee. No Japanese dinner in native style is ever given without attendant geisha. There is usually one geisha at least to every guest. Theirs is the mission to see that the guests are never for a moment dull; to ply the saké bottles and watch the cups, lest for a moment they should be aught but full; and at appropriate intervals during the meal to enliven the diners with music and dancing. Compared with a high-class native dinner in Japan the orthodox European one is the stifFest, slowest social function imaginable.
    The geisha, too, is in great request for boating and picnic parties, and no company of merry-makers intent on a spree—-such as the opening of the Sumida River at Tokyo, or a visit to the Gifu cormorant-fishing—would dream of going without geisha as companions. Whenever two or three jovial spirits are gathered together for an evening's fun at some tea-house a call is made for geisha to furnish the music and to liven matters with their wit and songs. Apart from the unique social place she fills, the geisha is simply a woman—neither stronger nor weaker than others of her sex the world over, exposed to the same temptations.
    An author who has devoted a volume to an exposé of a liaison he formed with a Nagasaki fille de joie has done much to harm the Japanese woman in the eyes of the world; but other writers have equally, though less seriously, misrepresented her in the "pidgin English" they have made her speak. A Japanese woman may speak broken English, but "pidgin English" never. She does not say "velly" for "very"; and for "like" she does not say "likee" but "rike.'' The Chinese replace ''r" with "l'' when speaking English, but not so the Japanese, for their alphabet has no letter "l," whereas "r" is one of the commonest sounds in the language. They therefore turn all our "l's" into "r's" until they have learnt the unfamiliar sound.
    Moreover, the Japanese girl does not suffix her English verbs with "ee." She does not say "talkee," "walkee," "thinkee," "speakee," etc. She never talks this "pidgin" jargon of the Chinese ports, but such English as she knows she speaks, perhaps brokenly, but very prettily. English is now taught in every school, and taught correctly; when one reads, therefore, this gibberish, as samples of a Japanese girl's conversation, one may well be pardoned for wondering whether the writer of it has ever seen Japan.
    To those who would really wish to know this dainty creature—the Japanese lady—who would learn of the whole order of her life, from the time she wears her swaddling clothes to the day she is wrapped in her shroud; who would see the pretty Japanese child grow into happy girlhood, and the happy girl gradually develop into sweet budding womanhood; who would see this sweet woman grow sweeter and more lovable still as she becomes a mother; who would see this gentle mother rear her family, and each day be more honoured and respected until she attains the height of her fondest ambition and power as a grandmother; to those who would, in fact, follow the Japanese woman from the cradle to the grave,—I would say go at once to your bookseller and order Miss A. M. Bacon's work, Japanese Girls and Women, for in the pages of this delightful volume you will find so charming an account of family life in the Land of the Rising Sun that, when you have read it, you will know the Japanese lady far more intimately than you would be ever likely to by travelling in the land.
    Miss Bacon's opportunity was unique, and fortunately she was more than competent to embrace it to the full. Her book is a classic; for a similar chance can never come to any one again. Japan is rapidly changing, and the Japanese girl of to-morrow will be quite a different creature from the Japanese girl Miss Bacon wrote of yesterday.
    The traveller to far Japan must not expect to find home life there an open book. A Japanese visiting England, furnished with good letters of introduction, would be welcomed with open-hearted hospitality into the family circle of his newly-found acquaintance; and every member of the household would do his or her best to contribute to the enjoyment of the guest. After a round of such visits the traveller from the East would be well qualified, on his return home, to write about the home life of the English lady.
    But how different is the case of the European bearing letters to the Japanese! The very most he can expect is to be invited to some club—perhaps a Japanese dinner, with its accompaniment of geisha-dancing, may be arranged in his honour at the Maple Club—or in some exceptional cases he may be invited to see the house and gardens of his host. In still more exceptional instances he may be presented to the wife and daughters; but he will never be invited to stay at his host's house, and, for the time being, become, as it were, a member of the family. How, then, can the passing globe-trotter ever hope to see the Japanese lady in her true perspective, when foreign residents, who have passed their lives in Japan, admit that even they have only formed their estimate by a series of fortunate glimpses, few and far between?
    Owing to the nature of the mission that took me on my last journey to Japan—as a correspondent during the war with Russia—I had the honour of meeting more than one Japanese lady, and the great good-fortune to see certain phases of the character of the women of Japan, which, up to that time, the world had never suspected they possessed. For what I then saw I shall revere and honour the Japanese woman always, for she stood revealed to me in all those qualities that men mostly esteem in the opposite sex. She was sagacious, strong, and self-reliant, yet gentle, compassionate, and sweet—a very ministering angel of forgiveness, tenderness, and mercy.
    I cannot, in the limits of this essay, give more than a few vignettes of this brave yet most feminine of women; but I hope to show that she is something more than a "pretty butterfly," *1  as she is generally thought to be by those who do not know her. When duty calls, there is no woman in the world who obeys more readily and capably; and the best of Japanese manhood respects her as truly as any other woman in the world is respected, even though he loves her less demonstratively. Close observation, during three years of travel in this land, has clearly shown me, too, that the women of the Japanese peasant and poorer classes are accorded such courtesy from the opposite sex as is quite undreamt of by women of the corresponding classes in Europe.

A GEISHA DANCING

    Would that one could speak as warmly of all Japanese men as of their mothers, wives, and daughters! My own experience, however, fully corroborates that of Professor Chamberlain. Writing of Japanese women, he says: "How many times have we not heard European ladies go into ecstasies over them, and marvel how they could ever be of the same race as the men! And closer acquaintance does but confirm such views."
    Shortly after my arrival in Yokohama, in the summer of 1904, one gloomy day—when drenching rain was falling from leaden skies and every street was full of puddles—as my rikisha suddenly turned into Asaki-machi we found our way blocked by a crowd that lined both sides of the street, and in the midst of the throng a long line of people wended their way in silence that was only broken now and then by the depressing and discordant strains of a native brass-band.
    I asked Tomi, my kuramaya, what it all meant, and he replied, "One soldier make kill Manchuria, now make bury." Then I understood that it was only the funeral train of a soldier who had died for his country. I had thought for a moment that surely it must be the Emperor, or at least some other royal personage, whom the crowd awaited, and that these people, tramping in the rain and mud, were latecomers, plodding along the route in the hope of securing a vantage-point farther down the line. But no, they were there to see neither royalty nor the owner of a title; they had come out in the drizzling rain to pay a last tribute of respect to a simple soldier—a private of the rank and file, who had died fighting for his country.
    I had arrived just as the cortège began, and a number of Shinto priests were passing as we stopped. Following them came several hundred carpenters, tinsmiths, jobbers, carvers, and other skilled labourers, each wearing on his back a broad design—the emblem of his craft. Then followed many hundreds of schoolboys, in uniform, some in white, some in red, and some in blue; then, solemnly and sedately, each protected by an Inverness coat and wide umbrella, came fully five hundred of the employees of merchants of the town, and these were closely followed by a quarter of a mile of ladies, walking four abreast, who had braved the elements to tread many weary miles through the muddy streets, all because a simple private, who had once lived in Yokohama, had given his life for his country!
    As the slight little dames pattered by on their quaint high geta *2  I could not help thinking that each one was doing her duty as faithfully and well as the soldiers who went out to die. These little delicate women could not go out to fight, and all of them were not needed in the hospitals; but each had in her breast the qualities that breed the soldier, and so they had not hesitated to come out in their hundreds to walk many weary miles, through muddy streets in the drenching rain, in order that a soldier, who had died in doing his duty, might be shown a last tribute of respect. And as the funeral procession wound on, the same features occurred again and again: schoolboys, school-girls, mechanics, clerks, merchants, ladies, priests, and little girls in white, dressed as Red Cross nurses. There were also many hundreds of men in various uniforms; these were the residents of certain streets who had formed into guilds and adopted a distinctive uniform of their own.
    As the minutes passed by, half an hour changed to an hour, but still the people came and passed along—old and young, man and boy, wife and maid—and the colour of the long procession changed from black to white, from white to grey, and to yellow, and red, and blue; and ever and anon there was a dash of every hue as tiny girls in gay kimonos toddled along under great oiled-paper umbrellas held by their parents. Tired of waiting for the end, I left, for after watching for more than an hour, the tail of the procession seemed as far off as ever.
    There was no corpse borne at the head of the mourners, but only a few relics of the deceased hero, and his larynx, *3 which had been saved from his funeral pyre in Manchuria.     The whole spectacle was at thattime a most significant one, for it plainly showed that, if need be, Japan could rely upon not only every man and boy in the land, but every woman and girl as well, to help her win the fray.
    I witnessed many sad scenes in those days when I was waiting in Japan for permission to go to the Front. Many a time I saw a soldier bidding his last good-byes to wife and mother before embarking for the war; but I seldom saw any tears. Often there were even smiles, for in Japan the smile is a mask which hides the agony of the heart. The women exhibited a front so firm and unquailing as it seemed well-nigh impossible such gentle little creatures could show. And there were no caresses at parting, but only many and many a bow, and sweet oft-echoed sayonara. *4  And as, the farewell over, the little wife and mother turned back to her husbandless home, if nobody cared to know of the fear and dread that lay deep in her bosom, certainly nobody would ever divine it from any betrayal in her features; for her face, like that of her husband, who smilingly went forth perhaps to die, was a mask, a lie, a disguise born only of blood trained for centuries in the mastery of the feelings.
    I saw tears sometimes, however, for every Japanese woman is not a Spartan, and the poorer people cannot always control themselves on such occasions as can the better-educated classes. During the war, correspondents often wrote that "Japanese women never cry," but I have seen women of the lower classes weeping bitterly when parting from their husbands. Not all could restrain their feelings as could those of better blood, but I did not often see such human weakness shown.
    The self-control of the Japanese women, when troops were leaving for the Front, was misunderstood by many foreigners. They were called cold, and lacking in sympathy, and indifferent; but this was far, far from the truth, for they are full of such feminine instincts as sympathy and fellow-feeling. On such occasions as a husband going to the war it is a point of almost honour to control oneself, but I have often seen an act of kindness bring tears to Japanese eyes, and I have seen a whole theatre-full of people—women, and children, and men too—sniffling and sobbing audibly as a touching tragedy was being acted with masterly skill. No! the Japanese woman's heart is not hard and cold; it is full of sympathy, and tenderness, and pity.

A MAID OF FAIR JAPAN

    The Japanese smile, too, which is so often belied by the heart, takes long to understand, but when one knows what it often means, the very soul is sometimes wrung to see it.
    A Japanese friend with whom I travelled for many weeks was constantly talking to me of his sister, to whom he was deeply attached. He showed me her picture—she was a lovely girl, just turned eighteen—and told me so much of the happy days he and she had spent together that I almost seemed to know her. Her parents had taken her to Dzushi, a seaside resort for consumptives, for the dread scourge of Japan had settled on this sweet young life. One day when we arrived in Kyoto, after a long tour in the country, a letter was placed in his hands as we entered our hotel. He tore it open and read it, and then turning to me, with a smile that I shall never forget, laughed, "Ha, ha, my sister is dead already!"
    As his features assumed the ghastly mask, and his tongue uttered the cold-blooded words, a chill of repulsion swept over me; then my soul went out to him in sympathy, for, though there was not a quiver of an eyelash, I knew that the smile was a lie, and that his heart was almost breaking at the unexpected blow. He went at once to his room, and I saw him no more that day—for I respected his evident desire to be alone—but friendship warmed towards him, as I knew that the tears he refused to show in public were shed for many bitter hours in the solitude of his chamber.
    During the American war with Spain there was a Red Cross Society formed at San Francisco, and American ladies vied with each other, during the few hours they snatched each week from their "pink teas" and other social functions, in making abdominal belts to ward off the dysentery and fever of the Philippines. One of these belts was presented to each soldier, who promptly applied it to the use of cleaning his rifle. There was much talk about "Red Cross." The word was in every one's mouth, yet I never knew what it could really mean until I reached Japan. Soon after I arrived in Tokyo I saw a vast room, where a number of ladies—the highest in the land, many of them ladies of title, and led by that most gracious and kindly lady of all, the wife of the Commander-in-Chief, the Marchioness Oyama—worked each day and every day for months, from early morning till evening, making warm woollen and flannel clothing, with their own fair fingers, to be sent out to Manchuria in readiness for the rigorous winter. There were scores of such gatherings at work daily all over Japan. There was not a lady in the land who did not feel that she could do something to help, and every soldier who was made warm and comfortable in the severe winter of 1904 was worth three half-frozen men. But the ladies did more than work with their needles: they threw themselves into hospital work with a will worthy of so great a cause, and when the little band of American nurses arrived in Japan they found the Japanese nurses already knew as much as they themselves.
    Desiring to observe the working of the Japanese Red Cross organisation, I secured permission from the War Department to visit the Reserve Hospitals at Hiroshima.
    Hiroshima, capital of the province of Aki, a beautifully-situated town near the mouth of the Ota River, which flows into the Inland Sea, ranks as the seventh city of the Mikado's Empire—being populated by 130,000 souls.
    Although on the main line of the Sanyo Railway—which, for almost its entire length, from Kobe to Shimonoseki, passes through some of the fairest scenery in the land—Hiroshima does not appear in the usual tourist's itinerary, as its sights are few, consisting, all told, of a fine old Daimyo garden and an ancient feudal castle, of which little remains but the keep. Moreover, the city's attractions, such as they are, are entirely overshadowed by those of the adjacent lovely island, Miyajima, where the globe-trotter, weary of sightseeing, may rest and loaf himself back to activity again in as peaceful a spot as can be found in all the wide world.
    But Hiroshima, from the standpoint of its relation to the war with Russia, stood in importance second only to Tokyo; it was practically the rear of the army as far as the wounded were concerned, for they were sent back there from the Front in a week, with their first-aid bandages still on.
    It was not till I arrived at this place that I began to realise something of the real horrors of war, and the awfulness of the terrible task on which Japan was engaged. In the time that I spent in the hospitals I learnt, too, more than I could otherwise have known in a lifetime about Japanese women; for I saw there what a great and glorious part women can play in time of war.
    On my arrival I found the town swarming with soldiers. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that every fifth person met on the streets wore the uniform of the Japanese army, and in some of the streets there were fifty soldiers to each civilian. Every barrack was full, and fresh troops arrived daily to be billeted on the inhabitants. The streets echoed with the tramp of armed men, marching to embark for the Front at the near-by port of Ujina; the clink of the trooper's spurs, and the clank of his steel scabbard, mingled with the sound of horses' hoofs, the clatter of innumerable transport carts, and the metallic noise of field-guns rumbling and crunching on the macadam.
    The Japanese inn at which I put up abutted on the river; indeed, the balcony hung over it, for at high tide I could look into the clear green water below. Hardly had I entered my room when a number of sampans, being rapidly yuloed up on the flood tide, attracted my attention, from the nature of the burden which they bore. Besides the boatman, each craft carried several figures, and these, as a single glance revealed, were soldiers—but soldiers who no longer stood with the spic-and-span aspect of the warrior outward-bound; soldiers who no longer carried arms; soldiers who no longer held their heads erect, looking the world in the face with steady, unflinching gaze. They were soldiers who sat or lay on soft red blankets; whose forms were bent and whose limbs were bandaged; whose faces were pale and drawn with suflfering; whose uniforms were stained with weather and dirt, and the deeper, lasting dye of blood; or who wore long white kimonos with crosses of brilliant red.
    It was a sight to stir the blood, for these were men fresh from the field of battle—war-stained heroes whose wounds were not yet ten days old. They were men who would bear to the grave the glorious marks of victory; men who had fought the fight; men who had done their duty. They had come from Dalny, Manchuria, in one of the hospital ships, which almost daily arrived at the port of Ujina, and were being conveyed, thus, by water, almost to the portals of the great Reserve Hospital.
    I hurried to the place of landing, a mile farther up the river, where a bank of gleaming sand sloped to the emerald depths. Here were waiting, in the grateful shade of the pine-trees, a number of native coolies, with stretchers lying beside them. Soon the first sampan came into view, and was gently beached on the sand. It contained four wounded officers, the first to reach Japan from the battlefield at Liao Yang, where victory was won at such terrible cost.

PRINKING UP FOR THE DAY

This was quickly followed by many others, bearing officers or men. Some of the less severely wounded were carried ashore on the backs of the coolies; whilst others, with infinite care, were gently laid on stretchers, and borne to the gates of the hospital, near by, where an officer stood and assigned the cases, as they passed him, to certain wards, according to their nature and severity.
    For nearly three weeks I spent the greater part of each day in the various divisions of this hospital, where over twenty thousand wounded soldiers were being cared for; and, having later spent a week in the Russian prisoners' hospitals at Matsuyama, I can truly say that, to friend and foe alike, the Japanese nurses were veritable ministering angels of mercy. Their tender solicitude; their quiet ways, as they moved quickly, yet like phantoms, about the wards; their readiness and willingness to obey instantly the wishes of their charges; their untiring energy and devotion; their patience and earnestness; their courtesy to their patients, and their gentleness in washing and bandaging them—all showed that these Japanese ladies, who had responded so nobly and whole-heartedly to the call of duty and humanity, were as instinct with all the finest virtues of their sex as any women in the world.
    The whole organisation of the Red Cross, in which the Japanese woman played so great a part, had, like that of the army itself, been so thoroughly worked out in every detail that it ran with the smoothness of a well-oiled machine. Everybody went about his or her business quickly, quietly, and unostentatiously, from the highest officials downwards to the stretcher-bearers. There was never at any time any rush, or bustle, or noise, even when hundreds of poor shattered fellows were coming in daily, as they did when I was there, from the battlefield of Liao-Yang.
    Many of the wounded, also, came from the vicinity of Port Arthur, and some of these were in the most shocking condition of filth. They told me they had not had a wash for over four months, for water was scarce on the barren hills of Liao Tung. This alone was a terrible hardship for men hitherto accustomed to have a hot bath every evening of their lives. So thick was the coating of dirt on these men, and so callous the skin on their legs, that only repeated hot baths, followed by scraping the skin with a sharp-edged piece of wood for many days, could bring the limbs back to their normal condition. Some of these poor fellows were not only seriously wounded but had beri-beri as well. They therefore needed an amount of personal attention which can be more easily imagined than described, and over them Japanese ladies would work tenderly and assiduously for days.
    Nothing impressed me more than the stoical manner in which the wounded bore their injuries; and all seemed bright and cheerful and anxious to return to the Front as soon as possible. I noticed, however, one man who hid his face continually in the pillow and never talked or smiled. On asking his nurse the reason, she told me that his arm had been badly and permanently injured in an accident when he was assisting in getting a field-gun up one of the Manchurian hills. He felt that, whilst his comrades would bear to the grave the glorious marks of battle, there was no honour attached to his wound, and when I questioned him personally he told me that death at the hands of the enemy would have been better than such lasting disgrace as he considered must now be his. Nothing would comfort the poor fellow, or convince him that his wound was as honourable as those of his comrades.
    Sometimes I was permitted to watch the surgeons and nurses at work in the operating rooms, and I often saw the bandages removed from injuries so terrible as to make my blood run cold. More than once, too, I stood beside poor wasted heroes, shaking at their last gasp, but I never saw a Japanese soldier give way to tears, or heard a conscious man utter a groan.
    Every week a messenger came from the Emperor to speak a few encouraging words to each individual patient, and present him with a small sum of money for the purchase of cigarettes, or some other little luxury. Ladies of high degree would also constantly come from the capital to inspect the various wards and cheer the inmates by their presence.
    One day I went to the station to inspect a hospital train in which a number of convalescents were to be sent to a hot-spring resort until fully recovered. Whilst I was standing on the platform a train full ot Russian prisoners drew up to the platform. Every man in the train who was not playing a concertina was shouting or singing himself hoarse with joy at having got away from the war. The station was a pandemonium. Just then a train approached from the opposite direction. It was filled with Japanese troops, singing with equal joy because they were off to the Front. No sooner had Russians and Japanese caught sight of each other than half a dozen heads were thrust from every window, and every man burst into cheers—the Russians shouting the Japanese cry of "Banzai'' as heartily as the Japanese. The moment the train came to a standstill the Japs were out of their carriages, and, running over to the unfortunate (?) captives, showered cigarettes upon them, and everything eatable they possessed, whilst the Russians wrung their kindly adversaries' hands, and even tried to kiss their faces. It was one of the most human scenes I have ever witnessed.
    I saw many pathetic scenes, too, during those weeks at Hiroshima; but I think the incident that touched me deepest was when the pupils of a primary school for little Japanese girls visited the principal wards. There were perhaps fifty in all, in the care of their lady teachers, and as they tripped silently, in their soft white socks, into the ward, where I was sitting by the beside of one of my favourites, they all courteously bowed several times to the patients on one side, then several times to the patients on the other. Every soldier who could, returned the courtesy, and those who could neither sit nor stand inclined their heads or raised their hands to the salute.
    The principal lady teacher, in sweet, gentle tones, then quietly addressed the men, telling them how great was the honour that she and her pupils felt to have the privilege of visiting so many gallant soldiers who had helped to gain a glorious victory for Japan. Here the fifty little heads all bowed in mute approval of their teacher's words, and she went on to say that she hoped every soldier would soon be well, and perhaps able to fight again, but that those who had been too severely wounded to return to the Front would always be honoured for the part that they had played in the war. The childish heads were ducked, with one accord, again.
    Turning to the little girls, who all stood meekly with eyes upon the ground, the teacher then addressed her charges, reciting briefly the story of the great battle in which these poor fellows had fought, and how it was won, and how bravely they had done their duty. She continued that it would be a proud moment for their parents when these, their sons, returned to their homes, bearing the honourable scars of war. No woman could have a higher ambition than to be the mother of sons to fight for Japan, and she hoped that when these little girls grew up, and had sons of their own, they would teach them to be as brave and loyal subjects of the Emperor as the soldiers now lying maimed before them.

EN DÉSHABILLÉ

 The tiny lassies here all bowed again in silent resolution, and then, with several parting bows to right and left, they proceeded to another ward.
    To me the incident was a stirring object-lesson of how Japan loses no opportunities of educating her children. Those little girls would remember all their lives what they saw that day; and the words of their school-mistress, I have no doubt, sank deep into each of those childish souls. As years pass by, and those little girls become mothers, the exhortation of that soft-voiced teacher, made under such impressive circumstances, will sound again in their ears; and sons of Japan, as yet unborn, will grow up to be better and braver men because of words their mothers listened to when they were little more than babies themselves.
    At Matsuyama the Russians could not sound the praises of their gentle Japanese nurses loud enough. The looks with which the fallen followed every movement of their little guardians told a plain and simple tale, and more than one gallant fellow, when he left his bed, was pierced by an arrow that wounded him far deeper than the bullet which had laid him low.
    Never in all history did foeman have a kinder and more generous adversary than did Russia in the recent struggle, and never did women of any land play a nobler and more tender part than did the women of Japan.
    It must not be thought that because Hiroshima was a hospital town that it was necessarily a doleful place. Like most garrison towns, it was gay. Indeed it was the gayest of the gay. As I have already said, my hotel bordered on the river—one of the five streams that form the delta of the beautiful Ota-gawa. On either side of it were other hotels, restaurants, and tea-houses; and on the opposite bank of the river similar conditions obtained. These places were all crowded, according to their class, with military officers or soldiers, billeted there for a day or two prior to their departure for the Front.
    As soon as the fall of night settled on the clear green waters, the sound of the samisen rang out from every house beside the moonlit river. As surely, too, as the light on the paper shoji changed from that of day without to that of lamps within, the plaintive cadence of the geisha's song wailed out on the evening air.
    Night after night I listened to her songs of revelry, of love, and of despair. There was something weirdly pathetic about her often sorrowful lay—for the geisha is at her best when singing of some stirring incident that lives for ever in history.
    One night, as a singularly beautiful voice broke on the night air, the samisens and other sounds were silenced, one by one, till naught but this one woman's voice could be heard. Every window was thrown open, and every reveller on each side of the river crowded to the balconies to listen, for the singer was one of the most famous in Japan, and the song she had chosen was the Ballad of Dan-no-ura. *5
    Inspired by the impressive silence, impelled by her art, she sang with magic power the terrible story. In accents wondrously sweet she told of Tokiwa's pleading for her mother and her children, and in piteous tones of the dishonour of the famous beauty. Then in tragic crescendo she sang of Yoritomo's lust of vengeance for his mother's ruin; and in a frenzy of passion of the great Minamoto leader's resolve to stamp the Taira clan from off the earth. She sang of how the tide of battle waged, first this way, then that, in the great historic conflict, till it ended in the complete extermination of the rival clan—even to the slaughter of women and children—and over the sadness of the final lines of suffering and death her voice grew infinitely tender and pathetic, culminating in an outburst of vehement sobs.
    On the balcony, listening beside me, there were several Japanese officers, and the eyes of more than one were dimmed, for the story is the most famous and bloody in Japanese annals—one that will live in the hearts of the people when the war with Russia is forgotten.
    As the sweet voice of the singer ceased only her sobs for some moments broke the silence; then from every balcony and window on both sides of the river there burst forth a storm of applause and loud shouts of approbation.
    At Hiroshima it was always this dainty creature, the geisha, who made merry the last evenings of the officers ere they went forth to the war ; and she was always the last to cheer them on their way, pledging them, in tiny sips of saké, health, victory, and a safe return. Truly it is almost as hard to imagine how Japan could survive without the geisha as without the army itself.
    That the sterling qualities of the Japanese women were appreciated by the officers of the army I had daily evidence during the time that I was attached to the First Division in Manchuria. One of the first questions asked me by every officer whose acquaintance I made was, "What do you think of the Japanese women?" and the following incidents serve to show something of the regard in which they were held by the leaders.
    On one occasion, at Mukden, when I went to pay my respects to the Commander-in-Chief, and to General Baron Kodama, I met the latter outside his head-quarters—a Mandarin's yamen. *6  Kodama was a handsome man, rather American than Japanese in appearance, with a deeply-bronzed face and a pair of dark-brown eyes which were always sparkling with the love of fun. He was the most celebrated wit in Japan, and even during the heat of a great battle his jokes, I was told, never ceased. I had previously met him at Tokyo—the day before the departure of the General Staff for the Front. I was in his drawing-room, when General Baron Terauchi, the Minister of War, called, with several other exalted officers. Instead of the conversation being of a serious turn (seeing that such momentous events were portending), it was, on the contrary, of the most jovial nature, and the impression I shall always have of General Kodama on that occasion was seeing him leaning back in his chair, roaring with laughter at the fit of the War Minister's riding-breeches.
    When I met him in Mukden he at once invited me to enter his house, and holding aside a bamboo portiere that hung in the doorway, and pointing ahead, said, "There! what do you think of that?" in Japanese. I looked, and saw a large kakemono *7  of a Japanese girl, painted in modern style and nearly life-size. I congratulated him on being so good a connoisseur of feminine beauty, whereupon he laughed merrily, saying, "You see I'm not very lonely here with such a lovely girl to look at. Beppin-San des, ne?" ("Isn't she a daisy?") Then he laughed again more merrily than ever.
    I found his apartments luxuriously furnished in Chinese style. There was an immense map of a part of Manchuria stretched out on the kang. *8

JAPANESE LADIES GOING TO THE SHRINES, NIKKO

This map was a captured Russian one, so he informed me, and was marked all over with pegs, denoting the dispositions of the troops. What, however, most attracted my attention was a tall, slender Chinese table of Blackwood—perhaps ten inches square and three feet high—on which stood the most beautiful doll I have ever seen. The little figure was about twelve inches tall, and marvellously life-like. It was dressed in an exquisite mauve silk kimono, with a rich gold brocade obi ; and every detail of a Japanese lady's toilet was carefully worked out, even to a tiny jewelled obi-domi *9  and the pin in her hair. It was, in fact, a perfect miniature of a Japanese lady, and a work of high art. "She is my mascot," said this great General, who was known as "the brain of the Japanese Army." "She is my mascot, and goes with me wherever I go. She has brought me much good luck." Such was General Kodama's tribute to the women of his land.
    As I heard his words I thought how great was the privilege I was enjoying in thus seeing into the heart of this gallant soldier—one of the greatest of modern history. And I thought, too, that if the days of chivalry be dead elsewhere, they still live in Japan, for surely never did knight in the days of old take the field with a fairer, nobler emblem than the image of his lady.
    A few days after this incident I was sitting next to General Kuroki—Commander of the First Division—at a General Staff dinner at the Front. General Kuroki is one of the samurai of the old days—the knights of feudal Japan—and the following episode will show something of the mould in which his gallant soul is cast.
    He spoke no English, but conversation was made through the medium of that lightning interpreter, Captain Okada, who translated each sentence the moment it was spoken.
    Having a fair working smattering of Japanese, I mustered up courage, after a glass or two of wine, to address the General in his native tongue. I was equal to the following simple sentence, and voiced it, "Anata sama Eikoku no kotoba hanashimasen ka?" which means, "Does not your honourable self speak English?" It was simply a plain, unpolished speech, but the effect on General Kuroki was electrical. Turning to me with his eyes opened wide and his brow puckered up, he replied, "Eikoku no kotoba hanashimasen; anata wa Nihon no kotoba yoku wakarimas, so ja arimasen ka?" "I do not speak English; you understand Japanese well; is it not so?"
    I replied that I only knew very little indeed, and then asked General Kuroki what part of the country he came from. He replied, "Satsuma."
    I told him I had read that Satsuma had always been a famous province for producing fighting men.
    "You have studied Japanese history, then?'' he answered.
    "Yes, a little, and I have found it exceedingly interesting, and not unlike our own. Your feudal days are not fifty years old, whereas ours are five hundred; that is the principal difference," I replied.
    From this we got on to various phases of Japanese history, and I mentioned the bombardment of the Kagoshima forts by the British under Admiral Kuper in 1863. Captain Okada had stepped in as interpreter, never hesitating for a word, as the conversation had got beyond my linguistic powers after the few sentences which had served to start it.
    The old General's face became a study, and his eyes a blaze of light, as he replied, "Yes, I was there, I was there at the time. I was a boy of eighteen, and helped to serve one of our guns!"
    So excited did he become as he began to tell me of this affair, and warmed up to it, that he made a plan on the table—using glasses and plates, and anything that was handy, to mark the positions of the various forts—whilst the staff officers crowded round to see. A large ornamental vase on the table was the island of Sakura-jima, and a number of wine-glasses were used to show the position of Admiral Kuper's ships.
    He told me, what I had already read, that a fierce hurricane raged throughout the day, and that some of the ships had to cut their cables and put to sea; that the captain and sixty members of the crew were slain on the flagship, and that although the squadron succeeded in setting fire to the town and dismantling the forts, they departed much the worse from the effects of the Japanese guns and the ravages of the storm.
    After a long pause the old General continued: "Those were dark days for Japan—when all the land was rent with strife; when we were yet in ignorance of what would be the outcome of it all; when we seemed beset on all sides with enemies, and England seemed the most terrible of all. How different it all is now! How different it all is now! England is our warmest friend, and has taught us most of what has brought us success. How could we ever foresee at that time that the trials, through which we were. passing, were but the fire heating the steel which the events of later years have tempered?"
    It was a beautiful speech, and beautifully put. "The tempered steel!'' That is Japan to perfection. Steel tempered when the red has run down to a dull cherry glow, plunged for an instant in cold water, held until the colour has changed to a brilliant straw yellow, and then plunged again. Japan is now as steel tempered thus, and steel treated in this way is tougher than any other.
    It was one of the most interesting hours of my life when that old Satsuma samurai stepped out from the pages of Japanese feudal history; and, with eyes sparkling and hands illustrating on the table, told me of that day which marks one of the deepest of England's injustices, and the darkest stain on her early dealings with Japan. The staff officers were as interested as I in their Chiefs story, and when he had finished, the impressive silence showed how deeply all were stirred.
    Immediately afterwards we were engaged in a discussion on the remarkable qualities of the Japanese soldier—his indifference to hardship, his endurance and bravery, and what he had accomplished.
    General Kuroki after a time spoke thus: "When we speak of the achievements of the Japanese soldier, we must not forget that it is not the men of Japan who are altogether responsible for these deeds. If our men had not been trained by their mothers in the teachings of Bushido—that everything must be sacrificed on the altar of duty and honour—they could not have done what they have to-day. The Japanese women are very gentle and very quiet and unassuming—we hope they may never change—but they are very brave, and the courage of our soldiers is largely due to the training they received, as little children, from their mothers. The women of a land play a great part in its history, and no nation can ever become really great unless its women are before all things courageous, yet gentle and modest. Japan owes as much to her women as her soldiers.''
    As I listened to this gallant tribute of the old General, spoken in such a soft voice, my vision flew back to Japan. The weeks I had spent in the great Hiroshima hospital, when many hundreds of poor fellows, shattered by shot and shell, were being brought in daily, passed in review before me.

DECEMBER IN JAPAN

I saw again those gentle little angels in white flitting noiselessly about amongst the beds. I saw them rapidly, yet tenderly, ministering to the stricken, with kindly glances and soft words, as their wondrous fingers removed and replaced dressings with marvellous dexterity. I saw fragile little women standing by, unmoved, whilst the most terrible operations were being performed, and I saw them kneeling at the bedsides and stroking the brows of poor fellows whose souls were going to rest. I saw, too, those gatherings of ladies—the very noblest in the land—diligently working, day after day, making warm clothing for the soldiers at the front; I saw again those tiny school-girls, being led by their teachers through the wards of the hospital, and being exhorted to remember, when they became mothers, to bring their sons up as brave and fearless as the soldiers who lay maimed, before them, in their beds.
    I thought of all these things, and many more, and when at length General Fujii proudly added to the words of General Kuroki, "Let us drink to the Japanese women, for I think they are the best in all the world," I remembered again that Lafcadio Hearn had said the same of them, and I knew that no one who had seen what the women of Japan really were, and really could do, could honestly affirm there were any better, or truer, or braver women in any land on earth. And one and all of us, who drank the toast, with all our hearts echoed General Kuroki's words, "We hope they may never change."
    One day I went to see the late Prince Ito at his home at Oiso in Japan, and, as he showed me round the gardens, heard, from his own lips, something of how he and his friend Count Enouye, as boys, stowed themselves on board an English ship bound for Shanghai, where they transhipped and engaged as seamen before the mast, and thus reached the country which was to give them the knowledge they craved. Whilst the two students were in London the feeling against foreigners in Japan, which had for years been growing steadily stronger, broke out into open rupture. Of the unfortunate incidents that occurred perhaps the most deplorable was the one known as the "Richardson Affair," which was all the more regrettable because the foreigners concerned were entirely to blame for having, by their foolish action, brought their fate upon their own heads. It was this matter that brought about the bombardment of Kagoshima in 1862, to which I have already referred.
    Ito and Enouyé, who were vassals of the Choshiu Daimyo, hurried home on the first news of these things becoming known to them. But on their return to Japan both these adventurous young men were looked upon as traitors by their fellow-clansmen, and wherever they went they were in peril of their lives.
    On one occasion Enouyé was murderously assaulted and left for dead, but fortunately recovered. Ito, however, escaped uninjured, and owed his life to the resource and bravery of a young girl in the house to which he fled. She hid him in a secret cellar, to which the only entrance was through a door under one of the mats on the floor. Replacing the mat over the door, the girl sat upon it, and when the ruffians entered they found her quite unconcerned and busy with her needlework. They closely questioned her, but she denied all knowledge of the man they sought, so, after searching the house, and finding no trace of their quarry, the would-be assassins went their way.
    This meeting of Prince Ito (he was at that time an untitled samurai) with the brave girl was the beginning of a romance which brought the pair together till the hand of another assassin parted them forty years later;

VICE-ADMIRAL KAMIMURA AND HIS DAUGHTER HOSHIKO

and when the old statesman—who had filled almost every political post until he reached the highest possible as Private Adviser to the Emperor—presented me to the noble, courageous lady, who had saved his life to become his life's companion, I knew that he had bestowed upon me the greatest mark of courtesy that lay in his power, and I duly esteemed the honour.
    One of the most cherished memories of my experiences during the war is a call I made upon Vice-Admiral Kamimura on his return to Tokyo after his crushing defeat of the Vladivostock cruiser squadron. I had the pleasure of meeting his wife and Miss Hoshiko, his twelve-year-old daughter, and for an hour we sat beside a charcoal brazier as the victorious admiral fought the battle o'er again.
    Then he went and donned his uniform, and insisted on being photographed holding his little daughter's hand. Afterwards we had another chat, and as I rose to take my leave, little Hoshiko, with whom I had fallen head over ears in love, ran over to the tokonoma, and took from the vase, which stood in that recess of honour, a spray of artificial flowers. With these she pattered back to me, and, bowing her pretty head to the mats, begged me to accept them, whilst her father proudly added, "She herself made them with her own hands."
    I have those flowers now. Wild horses could not tear them from me. There is nothing that I brought from Japan that I cherish more, for to me they are an emblem of the bravest and best of Japanese manhood, and the very sweetest of Japanese childhood.

    1) There is nothing the Japanese girl, or woman, resents more than to be compared to a butterfly. The cho-cho does not appear to Japanese as we see it—a beautiful summer insect—but as a fickle, restless creature that is ever flitting about from flower to flower, never content to stay anywhere long. The butterfly is, therefore, an emblem of inconstancy, and a Japanese girl is hurt at being compared to one.
    2) Wooden clogs.
    3) The charred larynx was the only part of the body saved from the fire and returned to the relatives.
    4) Farewell.
    5) See page 348.
    6) The mansion of a Chinese official. 
    7) Hanging picture.
    8) A raised portion of the floor of a Chinese room which serves as a bedstead, with flues running underneath its stone floor to warm it in winter.
    9) A small clasp, attached to a narrow silken band, that holds the obi, or sash, tightly in place.

CHAPTER XIII

THE HOUSE AND THE CHILDREN

About the tatami and hihachi of a Japanese household an entire volume might be written, for on and around these important essentials of the home revolves the whole domestic life of the nation. The tatami are the mats which cover the floors of Japanese houses-, and the hihachi is a receptacle for burning charcoal in—the fireplace of Japan.
    The Japanese spends the greater part of his life on tatami. He is born on them, walks on them, sits on them, eats on them, sleeps on them, and dies on them. They are at once the floor, the table, the chairs, and the bedstead of Japan, and as such are deserving of more than passing notice, for they reflect much of the character of the people with whose life they come in such close daily contact.
    Tatami are of many qualities, but of only one size—six feet by three. The area of a room is therefore always estimated by the number it will contain: thus an apartment measuring fifteen feet by twelve will hold ten mats, and is called a "ten-mat room." Any Japanese hearing it described thus, knows its size, because, whatever be the arrangement of the mats, the floor will be covered by ten of them. Rooms are sometimes so small as to have but three mats, or even two, whilst a little chamber of four mats is quite common. Tatami are two inches thick, made of rice-straw, tightly pressed and sewn, with rectangular corners and edges, and covered with closely-woven white matting made from rushes. The six-foot sides are bound with broad tape—usually black, but sometimes white—which laps over on to the surface, forming a border one inch wide. Coloured matting such as is exported to America and Europe is not used in Japan.
    The floors of any well-kept Japanese household present a scrupulously neat and clean appearance, and thus they are a faithful mirror of the people who live on them. They are also yielding and noiseless, especially as Japanese people never wear boots in their houses. Boots are cast oflT at the threshold on entering the house, and slippers are left on the polished wooden floor of the passage outside the room. You can always tell by the number of pairs of boots, or geta, on a doorstep how many visitors are at a house, or by the slippers outside a room how many people are within it.
    In the best households the mats are re-covered twice a year, so that they are always fresh and white, with even a tinge of green in them; or the covering may be turned, as both sides are alike, after six months' use, and renewed completely at the end of the year. The matting becomes yellow with age, and in poor households it is used until worn out. No household, however, is so poor that it cannot afford tatami, though some dispense with the tape binding. The arrangement of the mats is altered occasionally, and the appearance of the room can be completely changed by a fresh grouping of the straight black lines.
    A ten-mat room is a very convenient and even large-sized apartment in middle-class houses; but in the houses of the wealthy and the nobility rooms double this size are quite common, whilst rooms for entertaining a number of guests may have as many as fifty mats or more. At a Japanese inn that I stayed at in Gifu I was shown to an immense apartment, the floor of which took no less than seventy-eight mats to cover it, but my selection fell upon a chamber of more modest dimensions.
    If an apartment be found too small for the use for which it is required, the sliding doors (fusuma, or karakami), dividing it from the next apartment, can be quickly removed, and thus two rooms are thrown into one. If the house be a large one, a number of rooms can be opened up en suite in this manner, should a large hall be required for entertaining purposes. The karakami, which are often adorned with paintings of landscapes or figures, do not reach the ceiling of the room. They are six feet high, and above them there are usually a few panels of open wood-carving, which serve as a ventilator. These are called ramma. The sides of the .room facing the passage-way and open air are filled with sliding screens, covered with rice paper. These are the shoji, and they admit a soft, diffused light into the room. Wooden shutters, called amado, protect the shoji at night-time or in wet weather.
    The principal part of a Japanese room is the tokonoma, a raised recess at one side, usually made out of beautifully grained woods. There the single kakemono (picture which rolls up like a scroll), which the room contains, is displayed, with invariably some object of art beneath it, such as a bronze or porcelain flower-vase, or a piece of carving, or a dwarf tree in a dish.
    The furnishings of a Japanese room are simple. They consist of a hibachi, and a cushion or two to sit on. There are no tables, or chairs, or any of those aids to comfort that help to make life bearable elsewhere. The tatami do duty for all these things. Conspicuous, therefore, in all this emptiness is the hibachi, and there is much of interest about it.

A STUDY BY THE SHOJI

    The hibachi is of many kinds. Sometimes it is a curious stump; or gnarled excrescence of a tree; or a piece of wood of beautiful grain; or it may be of stone, or earthenware, or porcelain. More frequently still it is of brass or bronze, often exquisitely carved. Its shape varies almost as much as its composition. It may be round, or square, or oblong; or it may be polygonal in design. Sometimes the hibachi is built into a small chest, a foot high, in one end of which there is a set of drawers, the top of which serves for a table. This form, however, is only seen in the general domestic living-room of a house or inn, and never in the guest-chambers or private rooms.
    The hibachi is filled to within a few inches of the brim with ash, which should be carefully heaped up into a truncated cone, the top of which is hollowed a little. Into this depression a few embers of glowing charcoal are placed. That, in a nutshell, is the modus operandi of the hibachi ; but about the management of the charcoal and the ash, and the etiquette of the hibachi in general, much of interest may be said.
    For instance, in the best households the ash may be covered with several inches of calcined oyster-shell, called kaki-bai, which is a powder white as driven snow; no common fuel is burnt in it, but cherry-wood charcoal is used—so cleverly charred that even the grain of the bark is intact. Each block is about two inches long, and in diameter according to the size of the branch. It is sawed neatly and without any breaks. Two or three of these little blocks, heated to a glow in the kitchen fire, are carefully buried in the little crater, with the top of one block just showing. These will burn without attention from dawn till dark. The better the ash is heaped up round the charcoal the longer will the latter burn, but if it be desired to increase the heat, with consequent rapidity of consumption of the charcoal, a depression must be formed in the lip of the crater to allow the air to enter at the bottom of the fire, and thus form a draught. Not only must the ash be evenly graded into a cone, but there is a little serrated-edged brass scraper used for this purpose. This has the effect of leaving the slopes of the miniature volcano seamed with shallow furrows that converge towards the summit.
    The charcoal is managed with a pair of brass or bronze tongs, called hibashi, often as delicately wrought as the brazier itself. These are manipulated by the fingers of the right hand in the same manner as chopsticks. At inns the common grade of charcoal usually supplied requires much attention, as the cheaper the charcoal the more rapidly it is consumed. Moreover, at inns one never sees anything so expensive as oyster-shell ash, though I have occasionally seen burnt lime used as a substitute.
    It is a great breach of etiquette to throw cigarette ends or anything into the hibachi which will make it smoke. A small receptacle is always provided in the tabaco-bon *1  for this purpose. At inns, however, no such niceties are observed, and after a meeting of several friends the hibachi usually bristles with cigarette ends sticking in the ash. When the party has dispersed the neisan removes these, and each morning, before renewing the charcoal, she carefully sifts the ash through a wire sieve to separate all lumps, left from the previous day, and any foreign substance that may be in it.
    At high-class Japanese inns the guest-room to which I have been shown has sometimes been of such immaculate cleanliness that I have stood on the threshold hesitating to enter it, for to tread such snowy mats with foreign socks instead of soft white tabi seemed almost like a sacrilege. The karakami would be adorned with frescoes; the ceiling made of beautifully-figured, unpolished wood, and the whole apartment illumined by a flood of soft, mellow light that came through the paper shoji.
    There is no prettier or more characteristic picture of Japan than such a room, with gleaming black-bordered tatami and a fine old hibachi, at which a Japanese lady is sitting. Perhaps the fire has become disarranged or burnt low, so with finished grace she takes the hibashi between her little taper fingers, deftly clips the pieces of charcoal and piles them into a tiny pyramid. Around this she draws the ash with the scraper until she has made a miniature Fuji-san. She does not do this from any superstitious belief that the nearer she approaches in her arrangement of the fire to the shape of the sacred mountain the better it will burn—as I have somewhere read—but because she knows the draught is better so, and to still further aid combustion she burrows a little hole into the lip of the tiny crater to admit the air. When my dainty lady has completed this to her satisfaction she rests her pretty wrists against the edge of the brazier, and holds her palms outstretched to warm them.
    The hibachi has several important appendages, chief of which is the kettle used to heat the water for tea. These kettles are of every conceivable shape and design, and of such beauty that the collector burns with desire to add each fresh specimen he sees to his household gods. They are made of silver, bronze, brass, shakudo, shibuichi, and iron; but of them all the iron ones are the most fascinating. They are very thick and heavy, often weighing four or five pounds—the philosophy of this being that thick metal cools slowly. Some are round, some square, some squat, and some tall, some are plain and some are carved—and in the carving every whim ever known to the Japanese artist is to be found. There are dragons, flowers, landscapes, seascapes, gods, goddesses, animals, legends, historical incidents, and geometrical designs depicted on them. One never sees two alike. These kettles are called tetsu-bin, meaning "iron bottle.''
    The tetsu-bin is placed over the hibachi fire on a little contrivance consisting of a circular hoop of iron, which lies buried in the ash. From this three little iron uprights spring, when required, to support the kettle. This device is called the san-toku, or "three virtues"—the virtues desired in the fire being that it may burn well, clearly, and hotly. Sometimes a wire screen is placed on the san-toku, on which small cakes can be toasted. This is called the ami, or net; and in the case of the special screen, on which the glutinous rice-bread, or mochi, is baked, it is called mochi-ami.
    Around the hibachi circulates not only the domestic but also the social life of Japan. All warm themselves at it; tea is brewed by means of it; guests are entertained, chess played, and politics discussed beside it; secrets are told across it, and love is made over it. The hibachi, in fact, is accessory to so many of the thoughts and sentiments of life in this land that it is easily the most characteristic object of Japan.
    It is quite astonishing how quickly a cold room can be warmed by a hibachi well supplied with charcoal. The reason is that a charcoal fire gives out great heat, and none of this heat is wasted; all the warmth generated by the fire is disseminated into the room. There is no danger whatever of asphyxiation when the better grades of charcoal are burnt; only the cheapest varieties give off any poisonous fumes. 

WRITING A LETTER

The hibachi, however, is not left in the room at night, for any carbonic-acid fumes that may be freed naturally sink to the floor, and Japanese people sleep but a few inches above the mats. It is therefore removed and a small tabaco-bon substituted for it. The tabaco-bon is a sine qua non, for the tiny hibachi that it contains holds a choice piece of cherry charcoal which glows all night; whenever a Japanese awakes, he or she must have a whiff or two from a pipe, as a solace, before sleep comes again. The tabaco-bon is therefore placed close by the bedside.
    Beds are made of thick padded quilts, called futon, spread on the floor. There may be one or several of them, and another is used as a covering. These futon are very warm, and very much esteemed as safe and comfortable retreats by Japanese fleas, which are the most robust and energetic of their kind.
    The makura, or pillow, used by men is a small round and rather hard bolster. This makura is very difficult for a foreigner to manage. Though I have spent many months at Japanese inns, I have never mastered the knack of keeping it from rolling off the futon and letting my head down with a bump. I invariably had to put my large camera-case at the head of the bed to keep it in place—much to the amusement of every neisan who saw it there.
    Women sleep on quite a different pillow, and, as life at many country inns has few secrets, such matters are open to the investigation of the curious. They use a little lacquered stand with a soft pad on top which just fits the neck. The head does not come into contact with this device at all. It projects over it, so that the elaborate coiffure is not disarranged. In the base of this pillow-stand there is a tiny drawer for the reception of hair-pins and other such little feminine requisites.
    "A delicate affair is beautiful hair" in most lands, but in Japan it is a very serious matter. The dressing of a lady's tresses may take an hour or more, and can only be done by a professional kami-yui, or coiffeuse, who visits the house for this purpose. When, therefore, the hair has been arranged, it is carefully kept in order for several days, with merely a little prinking up each morning. If, however, the hair be worn in the pretty foreign-style modified pompadour, now affected by many Japanese girls, the services of the coiffeuse are, of course, not required.
    Enormous spiders, called kumo, haunt Japanese houses. Their bodies are as large as a filbert, and the legs fully four inches from tip to tip. They are quite harmless, but have a distinctly unwelcome look as they walk across the walls. One of the most Japanesey pictures I ever saw was a pair of tiny youngsters, with arms round each other's necks, standing in the passageway watching the peregrinations of a kumo which was creeping on the other side of the semi-transparent shoji, its body throwing a deep black shadow on the paper from the light of a lamp burning in the room. Rats are a great nuisance in Japanese houses because of the noise they make as they scamper over the thin resounding boards comprising the ceiling. Though I have often been disturbed by them, I have, however, never seen one in any native inn.
    Walls have ears in Japanese rooms, and even a sotto voce conversation held in an adjoining chamber can be heard. Not only have they ears, but they have eyes as well, and it is quite a common occurrence to see a human one peeping through some small hole in the shoji. Occasionally you may detect a finger in the act of making such a hole, or enlarging one already made. The paper, however, is fixed to the framework so tightly that when a finger is poked through it, it makes a very audible "pop"; so to obviate this the tip of the finger is moistened, and a slight twisting motion enables the hole to be made quite noiselessly. More than once I have apprehended the little Paul Pry in the act, and caught the offending finger as it entered. Once when I was staying at an inn in a country district 1 noticed a peculiar noise at night as I lay in bed, but put it down to mice. A suspicion, however, crossed my mind that it was something larger when I distinctly heard a whisper, so, jumping out of bed, I threw open the shoji in time to see three pairs of heels flying down the corridor as fast as they could go, whilst shouts of laughter filled the narrow passage from the inquisitive neisans who owned them.
    The frailty of Japanese houses necessitates the children being brought up from infancy to be careful. The average American boy would have a Japanese house to pieces in no time, but the Japanese child instinctively learns, without teaching, to respect such delicate things as paper walls and windows, because it sees the gentleness and care of its elders. Consequently it grows up to be solicitous of everything, and the most delicate things may be put in its way without fear of being harmed.
    At the time of the victory celebrations during the war I saw thousands of paper lanterns hung from frail bamboo poles along streets which were filled with vast crowds of merry-makers. Yet these delicate things were never harmed. This alone speaks volumes for the gentleness of the people and their bringing up; those who can be so heedful for other people's things may well be trusted to take good care of their own. Yet this daintiness and frailness of their surroundings does not make the people mawkish or effeminate, as recent events have clearly shown. The national love and daily use of dainty and beautiful things tends to make a people high-spirited and refined of nature, and such qualities will carry a nation further than mere brute courage and animal strength.
    During the war Japanese boys had a chance to show the kind of stuff they were made of, and availed themselves of it nobly. They used to band themselves together and play at "brownies.'' Many of the peasantry were in great distress at critical seasons for want of labourers to work in their fields, as their sons and breadwinners had gone to answer the call of duty. The young boys of many districts, therefore, stole out after dark, and a score or two would swarm down on to the peasants' fields and toil the whole night through. As the streaks of dawn began to paint the eastern skies they would be off and away, and when the old folk awoke, lo and behold, it was to find their little fields were deeply dug up and put in order for the sowing of the crops. For such benevolent, kindly acts as these Japanese boyhood deserves the loud encomiums of every other nation. Who will deny these humane and helpful little fellows a share of the glory that their elder brothers won?
    When I was staying at a hotel in Kumamōto, in Southern Japan, a Japanese banker and his family had the adjoining rooms to mine. The family consisted of two little girls, aged seven and nine respectively. We soon made friends with each other, and every day the pair came to visit me in my room. In everything they did those two little girls were the model of well-bred courtesy and elegance, and self-consciousness or shyness was unknown to them, though they were full of sweet childish modesty. They taught me their games and I taught them new ones, and at every visit they asked to see my photographs of Japan. These they would examine as they sat on the tatami, laying each picture, as it was done with, aside with the utmost care.

BED-TIME IN JAPAN

And when their mother called them, these two delightful little creatures would bow their heads to the mats, as they voiced the prettiest thanks, and with a happy "sayonara" instantly run to obey the mother's bidding, never waiting for a second summons.
    If all Japanese children were as attractive and winning as the children of the middle and upper classes, there would be reason enough for the lavish praise that has been bestowed upon young Japan in general. Unfortunately, however, they are not, for the children of the peasantry are often more repelling than engaging, as too often they have the dirtiest of little faces and other unattractive distinctions.
    A great percentage of Japanese children of the poorer classes suffer from a form of eczema which covers their shaven heads with a mass of scabs. No attempt is made to cure the ailment, as to let it run its course is said to ensure stamina and vigour later on in life. The infection is doubtless conveyed from poll to poll by means of unclean barbers' brushes, but Miss Bacon *2  offers the explanation that it is due to the sudden change from mother's milk to adult food. Japanese children are not weaned until four or five years old, when they are at once put on to adult diet, there being no middle course, for special feeding of children is considered unnecessary. The natural consequence is to upset the stomach completely; therefore it is about the age of weaning that the disfiguring complaint usually breaks out. In some villages more than half the children suffer thus, apparently without any inconvenience.
    It is quite remarkable how the children of adjacent villages differ in appearance. At Boju, a village within the outer crater walls of the volcano Aso-san, I noticed that the youngsters playing on the roads were neat and comely; whereas at Miyaji, another village not two miles away, they were dirty, ill-kempt, and ugly. The children of the well-to-do, however, are usually the very dearest little creatures, and as different in every respect from the peasant youngsters as are the children of Kensington from the gamins of Poplar.
    One of the most delightful characteristics of Japanese children is their courtesy, not only to strangers but to their parents and each other. It is certainly charming to see school children greeting each other at the school gate with a bow, and to see the respect which the young, one and all, pay to the old.
    When, after several years of travel in foreign countries, I returned to England and explored some of the poorest parts of the East End of London, it was with feelings of disgust and shame that I saw such sights there as no Far East country has to show. I had never seen a drunken woman since I left my native land, and, after the reverence shown in Confucian lands by young to old, it seemed to me a piteous, ghastly mockery of our boasted civilisation when I saw a ragged, drunken old woman shouting foul oaths at a band of children who were goading her to fury. In Japan such a thing could never be. It is sometimes unpleasant to see ourselves as others see us, but after long residence abroad it is possible to obtain this perspective, and I know that such a sight would have filled a Japanese adult, or child, with as much surprise and horror as it filled me with humiliation. If our lower classes had a fraction of the self-restraint of the corresponding classes of the Japanese, and if they knew one-half as much about the proper upbringing of children, we should be a better, cleaner, and altogether more virtuous nation.
    Not only are children gentle and courteous to their elders in Japan, but their elders are also gentle and courteous to them. Courtesy is mutual. Children do not get "spanked" and "sat upon" in Japan. They do not need it. Their bringing up is such that they never become "smart" and precocious like some American youngsters. There are no enfants terribles in Japan. Young and old pull together. The old folk never forget that they themselves were at one time young, and the young seem to divine instinctively what is due to age. There is mutual consideration as well as mutual courtesy. From earliest infancy Japanese children are taught that self-restraint is one of the greatest of virtues, and this teaching manifests itself in a total absence among all classes of the irritableness of many Europeans. Japan has been called a "Paradise of Babies," and Professor Chamberlain has offered the comment, "The babies are generally so good as to help to make it a paradise for adults."
    The fact is, Japan is a pleasant land for every one, for consideration is the birthright of one and all. What could be more convincing evidence of this universal goodwill than New Year's time? This is the season for the battledore and shuttlecock, and every street is filled with youngsters playing the game. Not only do the children play it but the elders join in too. Father and mother come out to play as merrily as the young ones, and even grandfather unbends his rheumatic legs and makes a few dabs at the flying shuttlecocks. Sometimes the passing postman chips in as he jog-trots by, and I have even seen the police-officer, whose deportment is usually more dignified than a beadle's, playing as gaily as any of the rest with a score of children and soldiers.
    That Japan is a children's paradise is quite apparent from the hour one arrives in the land. Comical little fellows romp about the streets quite regardless of the passing rikishas. There are no side-walks, and the roadway is the common property of all. The children seemingly have as much right to play their games there as have the kuramaya to pull their rikishas, and the latter avoid the former much more assiduously than the former trouble about the latter.
    The way Japanese children of tender years run and play about with babies on their backs is one of the first things noticed by a foreigner. It seems a reckless thing to trust a baby of a few months old to a child of four on the open street, yet this is what may be seen everywhere. Strange to say, neither of this infant pair ever seems to come to any harm, for every child is trained to carry another child from the time it begins to walk. At the age of two it has a large doll tied to its back, and the doll is replaced by a larger one later on; thus when baby sister comes along baby brother of three or four is already broken in for riding, and little sister is lashed to his back, without more ado, the very first time she takes the air. In this way, from earliest infancy, Japanese babies associate with their elder brothers and sisters in all their games, and thus they are cultivating an intelligent interest in all around them, at a time when babies in other lands are still prattling in their cradles.
    It is certainly remarkable how Japanese infants will sleep soundly on their elder brother's or sister's backs, whilst the latter are romping all over the street at their games; and it seems more remarkable still that their little necks are not dislocated as their heads wobble about from side to side, and dangle backwards with the top of the poll bobbing against the backbone.
    The children have two special yearly holidays—one for the girls and one for the boys. The girls' fete is held on the 3rd March, when every little maid in the land brings out her dolls for one great annual party. Some little girls have hundreds of them, which are carefully placed away for the rest of the year.

THE PICTURE-BOOK

Many of the dolls are heirlooms that have given pleasure to mother and grandmother, and great-and great-great-grandmother before them; and many are wonderful and costly works of art. The boys' holiday is the 5th May, its great feature being a long bamboo pole outside every house where there is a boy. Hanging to the pole are several large paper or cotton carp, which float in the breeze and resemble the fish swimming in the water. They are hollow and have round, open mouths, through which the wind blows and keeps the body firmly bellied out. "The idea,'' says Professor Chamberlain, "is that as the carp swims up the river against the current, so will the sturdy boy, overcoming all obstacles, make his way in the world and rise to fame and fortune."

    1) A small wooden tray containing a tiny hibachi for lighting pipes and cigarettes at, and a small section of bamboo, called hai-fuki, for the reception of expectorations and stumps of cigarettes.
    2) Japanese Girls and Women.

CHAPTER XIV

NIKKO AND CHUZENJI

Nikko, where the greatest of Japan's old-time rulers was buried, does not rank among the "Three Principal Sights" of the land. It ranks above them. It stands in a special class, alone. It is the climax of Japanese wonders. It is the goal of every traveller to the East, and the name betokens, to the Japanese mind, the standard by which the claims to scenic fame of all other places are measured.
    My first visit to Nikko was inseparably connected with the name of Kanaya. I stayed at the Kanaya Hotel, and since a friend and I one day found O Tōshi San, the youngest daughter of the house, aged one—with her great dark eyes, her dimpled cheeks, her quaintly tonsured poll, and her merry baby laugh—playing with her equally pretty year-older sister and their watchful amah, not all the beauties of the famous shrines, nor of the equally famous scenery, could give us more pleasure than the half-hour that we found each day to play with these fascinating little mortals.
    O Tōshi, indeed, scarcely looked like a mortal, but more like a little Japanese doll as she toddled about, all swaddled up in silks of every rainbow hue; and it is to her that my thoughts fly as I begin to write of Nikko, for she, the youngest of her line, and her grandfather, who was head of it, had much to do with my first visit to this district.

A SHOWER IN THE WOODS

    From the hour that this young lady took the air—and what air, so soft and sweetly scented, yet stimulating as rare old wine!—she had unrivalled scenery all round her, for it was in the midst of the "Mountains of the Sun's Brightness," where all the Japanese sprites, and elves, and brownies live, that O Tōshi Kanaya was born.
    It is no wonder that Nikko is the Japanese Fairyland, for surely never was there anywhere a place with so many things that such little people love. The plashing of the silvery cascades, the murmur of rippling rills, and the roar of foaming rivers fill the air with fairy music, and the grand old forests are just the very place for fairies to play their rings of roses; whilst as for the wondrous temples, they are simply fairy palaces of beauty.
    Just below the garden, where O Tōshi and her sister played, runs the torrent whose roaring "fills the sky-roofed temple of the eternal hills," and across it are the magnificent forests, deep in the brown-green heart of which the temples are buried. The river is spanned by a vermilion bridge, which leaps across it in one beautiful curve. This bridge is for the especial use of the Emperor whenever His Majesty comes this way. But how did the bridge get there? One of Nikko's prettiest legends explains.
    Nearly twelve hundred years ago the Buddhist saint Shodo Shonin, in his search for the holy mountain of his dreams, Nantai-zan, arrived at Nikko, and found his farther progress barred by the waters of the swift Daiya-gawa. As he stood on the bank, revolving in his mind whether he should turn back or endeavour to find a ford to the river higher up, a snake appeared in the grass. Now it so happened that the practice of extreme austerity for many years had enabled the saint to understand much that it is not given to ordinary mortals to comprehend. Amongst other things he had learnt the language of animals; when, therefore, the snake spoke, Shodo Shonin at once understood the words it uttered.
    "What are you thinking of?" it asked. "Do you wish to cross the river?"
    "Yes," answered the saint, "I desire to reach that high peak yonder, which I believe is the holy mountain of my dreams."
    "Have faith in me, and I will help you," said the snake. "Lay yourself on my back and I will carry you across."
    It was not an easy thing to do, but Shonin did as requested, and the snake then stretched and stretched itself out across the thundering torrent, and as it stretched, it became a great red dragon, whose head reached easily to the opposite shore. The priest alighted safely, and as he turned round to thank his benefactor, what was his surprise to find that the great dragon had disappeared!
    That was the origin of the first Red Bridge of Nikko, and the present structure stands in the place where Shodo Shonin crossed the river.
    The year, however, that O Tōshi was born marked a terrible disaster. The Storm-fiends who live in a great cavern on the slopes of the holy Nantai-zan, and yearly let loose the spring and autumn tempests, were in particularly savage mood, and sent forth a hurricane which carried destruction before it and left naught but ruin in its wake. The Daiya river rose suddenly higher than it had ever done before, and the royal Red Bridge, which had for so long given that touch of colour to the forest greenery necessary to make the picture perfect, was torn from its foundations and swept away. There was much lamentation throughout Japan over this calamity, and steps were at once taken to have the famous structure restored.
    Then it was that baby O Tōshi's grandfather, one of the feudal knights of the olden days, played a part in history. The old gentleman took down a bow which hung among the pikes and guns on the wall, and went to the river's bank. His sons and every member of the family, and many others too, came to watch, and this is what they saw. They saw the emerald river dancing, flashing, and foaming in the sunshine between cedar-clad hills that filled the air with a sweet and aromatic odour. For a few moments the silver-haired old samurai stood looking across the water. Then he selected an arrow from the quiver and handed it to one of his sons, who tied it to the end of a ball of twine. He bent the bow two or three times to see if it had lost its virtue of fifty years before; but it had not; it was straight and true and full of life as ever. Then the light in the old man's eyes began to flash with fire, for, as he handled the old-time weapons once more, though his substance stood by the river-side his mind and spirit had gone back half a century—to the days of Commodore Perry and his formidable squadron.
    For a moment he posed like some hero resuscitated from the pages of history, for, silver with years as he was, he was still clean of limb and beautiful of form; then notching the shaft to his bowstring, he took deliberate aim and let the arrow fly.
    There was scarcely a sound as it sprang from the string to speed like a flash across the river and bury its head deep in a soft bed of moss, from which eager hands quickly took it, and gathered in the line and the rope attached to it, and thus was the inception formed of the present Red Bridge of Nikko, by O Tōshi's grandsire, in the year that she was born, nearly twelve hundred years after the saint Shodo Shonin had crossed the river at this very spot.
    Every American writer on Japan has told how, when General Grant visited Nikko, the local authorities opened the Red Bridge for him to pass across, but he declined to break the old tradition. The small boys of the place, however, have no such compunction in treading the sacred planks, and there is no youngster in Nikko who has not stolen across it after dark. A young Japanese, with whom I once visited this district, made no bones whatever about leaping over the gate and crossing the royal footway, and then invited me to do the same. Like the famous General, however, I declined the proffered honour, as there is another bridge for ordinary mortals fifty yards lower down the stream.
    When the great Shogun Iyéyasu, first of the Tokugawa line, died in 1616, his son, Hidétada, who succeeded him, began at once to carry out his father's dying wish that his remains should be interred in a mausoleum eclipsing in gorgeous splendour anything hitherto seen in Japan. The body was therefore buried on the heights of Kuno-zan, overlooking the beautiful Suruga Bay, amidst temples of great magnificence.
    Later it was considered that a still more worthy resting-place could be found among the Nikko mountains, and the building of a much finer shrine was at once embarked upon. For this purpose vast contributions of money and material poured in from all the various Daimyos. There was one Daimyo, however, too poor to give a sum of money befitting one in his position, or an expensive gift of timber; so in lieu he offered to plant two rows of cryptomeria-trees from Utsonomiya to the shrine, a distance of twenty-seven miles. In course of time these trees grew into an avenue exceeding in grandeur any other in Japan, and for two hundred years and more this avenue has been one of Nikko's most famous sights.

THE CRYPTOMERIAS AT NIKKO

Though storm and tempest have made many gaps in it, it stands to-day a beautiful aisle of grand old trunks and redolent foliage ten leagues and more in length.
    Nikko village has grown up since the old days, and the avenue does not now reach to lyeyasu's shrine, but breaks off abruptly at the lower end of the village's single mile-long street. This end, or entrance, to the avenue is truly magnificent. In the midst of the sunlit fields the twin files of veteran trees, whose branches almost meet overhead, make one long tunnel of greenery. They do not begin, or straggle off, with weaklings; two stalwart giants head the lines, and behind them stand other giants just as sturdy. Under the canopy of the grand old trees the afternoon sun throws bars of deep shadow from the bulky trunks across the ancient highway, and between them

The sunshine darting through
Spreads a vapour soft and blue
In long and sloping lines.

    Now the road lies on a level with, now deep below, the bordering farm-lands, and the roots of the trees entwine themselves and form a broad rampart on either side. The beauty of the avenue is marred by ugly telephone poles, which interpose themselves on the view at every hundred yards. These could just as well have been placed outside the avenue as inside it, but consideration for scenic effect is no more a part of the electrical engineer's education in Japan than in any other land.
    Nikko is the name of the whole of the mountain district hereabouts, but to the foreign mind it denotes the villages of Hachi-ishi and Iri-machi. The former stands at the head of the avenue, the latter lies half a mile away on the opposite bank of the river.
    Hachi-ishi is one long street of curio-shops, and shops for the sale of local products—skins, carved furniture, and lacquer boxes. As one walks up this street one is pressed by sweet-voiced little maids to enter every doorway, and it is hard to run the gauntlet of so many smiling sirens without loading oneself up with another box or some wondrous curio. Near the end of the street is the beautifully-appointed Kanaya Hotel, overlooking the Daiya-gawa, and commanding a wondrous panorama of scenery from its verandahs, where one goes to sleep lulled by the murmur of the river below.
    Across the bridge there are a few more shops, and no one ever passed that way without making the acquaintance of Mrs. Onuki, the owner of one of them. This little lady was formerly a geisha, and has all the arts and blandishments of the cleverest of her kind. She waylays every visitor to the temples, and few can resist her greeting and entreaty to "Please come and see my shop." The man who hesitates here is lost, for of all the wheedlers and coaxers in Nikko she is the most adroit. "You are very nice gentleman," she purrs, as she shows some lacquer tray. "I see you very well understand. Every one cannot understand like you, because every one have not so good taste." Her flattering tongue never ceases its "blarney" the whole time she has a possible customer in the shop, and no man-fly ever extricated himself from this little spider's web but was lighter in pocket and richer by some dainty piece of native workmanship.
    A hundred yards away a broad path strikes up the hillside from the main road, and plunges at once into magnificent cryptomeria groves, where only a few stray rays from the noonday sun ever penetrate. A broad and beautifully-kept gravel walk leads to the temple gates. It is flanked by deep stone culverts, and down the middle of the way there is a broader culvert still. Dancing, rippling, gurgling, and flashing in these granite beds, streams of liquid crystal hurry from the hills to join the noisy river in the ravine below. The soft, religious silence of the place is broken only by the murmur of these limpid rills, the occasional croak of a hoarse old crow, or the shrill squeal of a lazily-soaring hawk. The great sweeping curves of Buddhist roofs peep from the groves by the wayside.
    The largest of these buildings is the "Hall of Three Buddhas," beautifully situated in a landscape garden with a lotus pond—a meet place to tarry awhile in meditation should the sacred flowers be blooming. There is a curious "evil-averting pillar" in the grounds, and near it is a belfry, in which hangs a bell that is probably the greatest triumph of the bell-founder's art in Japan. Others there are that are larger, larger by far, but the greater bulk of metal has served to produce a deeper, more sonorous sound—a mellow basso profundo—whereas the Nikko bell is the very sweetest and purest tenor. At every hour from dawn to sunset a priest comes from a neighbouring building and strikes the time by means of a light, suspended log. Immediately after the last stroke he sounds one lighter, softer note—a mere touch of the swinging bole—as a sort of punctuation mark to apprise all hearers that the final blow is struck.
    The Irai-no-kané, or "sundown bell," was to me always the sweetest—coming at that still, subtle hour when day was giving way to night; when the skies were turning to glowing copper; when the redolent woods were giving off the most fragrant of their perfumes, and when everything in this tranquil spot seemed to breathe the restfulness of centuries of hallowed peace. Like many another visitor, I used to listen for its note, and drink in the golden sounds with keenest pleasure.
    At the top of the gravelled slope is a granite torii of noble lines and grand proportions, with majestic crypto-merias towering all around it. Beyond it is a spacious terrace, with footways flagged with granite, leading to the enclosure of Iyéyasu's shrine. By the terrace there is a pagoda, the finest in Japan. Its five blood-red stories are all agleam with gold, and bright with brass and green old copper. Bronze bells hang from every corner of its multiple roofs, and flowers and curious animals, and the crest of the Tokugawa family, are carved and worked in gilt all over it. Facing the torii is the Ni-o-mon, or "Gate of the Deva Kings"; but the terrible figures of the guardian giants have been removed to the temple where the bones of lémitsu, Iyéyasu's grandson, rest. In their place now stand a pair of the Heavenly Dogs. This is the main gate to the long series of courtyards and temple buildings that stand in memory of the great warrior who founded the Tokugawa line of Shoguns.
    To describe these temples in detail is not within the scope of this book, for no description can convey any real conception of their beauty, either in whole or in part. A mere sketch must suffice. As one passes through the paved courtyards, and by superb pavilions, gorgeously painted in coloured lacquer and gold, one marvels at the manner in which each separate part is made subject to the idea that is the nucleus of the whole. Each gallery and pavilion is richly carved. On one of them is the famous monkey trio, with hands to eyes, mouth, and ears, conveying the exhortation not to see, hear, or speak any evil. The most renowned wood-carvers of the time adorned the buildings, Hidari Jingoro being represented by a number of examples of his matchless skill. In the courtyards there are torii, drum-towers, bell-towers, and wonderfully carved bronze lanterns ; and a stone fountain, the brim of which is levelled with such precision that the overflowing water falls in a perfectly even sheet all round it without a bubble or ripple. To all appearance the bowl is surrounded by a plate-glass wall.

THE YOMEI GATE AT NIKKO

    From time to time the complete restoration of all the buildings is undertaken. The latest refreshing of their beauty was begun in 1904, and the work, I was told, would occupy about five years. Those of the buildings already restored in 1906, when I last visited Nikko, were gorgeous in vermilion, black, and gold; but, gorgeous as their splendour was, there was no tawdriness or garish vulgarity. So cleverly has Nature been made to serve as the handmaid of Art, that one feels that the temples and the forests are one—part and parcel of the great master-work, as indeed they are; for the buildings were designed to accord with their surroundings, and every spot of the rich deep colouring and gleaming gold is in perfect harmony with the sumptuous greens of the forests that tower over all, giving the sense of height in which the buildings themselves are lacking.
    One of the gateways, the Yomei-mon, was considered by its builder to be such a climax of skill and beauty that he feared to complete it, lest it should invoke the envy of the gods and bring ruin upon the house of Tokugawa. A main pillar, therefore, was turned upside down, and thus impending evil was averted. This surpassingly beautiful structure appears rather to be the work of the jeweller than of the architect—a casket for gems rather than a building. It is sculptured with an almost incredible wealth of detail. The heads of gilded dragons, with gaping mouths and scarlet throats, and of unicorns and the mythical kirin, glower at the end of every beam, and floral arabesques adorn every possible space, whilst the balustrade running round a projecting balcony is richly carved with high relievos of children at play. A medallion on one of the central pillars is a curio such as the Japanese love. It represents a pair of playful tigers—the natural grain of the wood serving perfectly to illustrate the hair in their coats.
    Beyond this gate is another, smaller, but almost equally beautiful—the Kara-mon, or "Chinese Gate." It is inlaid with designs of plum-trees, dragons, and bamboo, and richly carved with figures of Chinese sages. This is the entrance to the oratory, the interior of which is all ablaze with gold and gorgeous with coloured lacquer.
    In the court between these two gates is a building for the performance of the sacred kagura dance. A comely priestess, wearing a white surplice over a scarlet skirt, with a nun's bonnet on her head, goes through the motions of the dance; but it is not artistic, and consists in merely a few steps to and fro, a few shakes of a rattle, and a few passes with a fan.
    Iyéyasu's tomb lies at the top of a long, winding stairway on the cryptomeria-clad hillside. The stone steps and massive balustrade are all green and grey with moss and lichens, and the soft, green mossy carpet under the stately old trees is inches thick from the damp of centuries.
    After all the grandeur and splendid elaboration of colour of the buildings, this old stairway with its imposing natural surroundings has a most subduing effect, and any sound from human lips seems almost sacrilegious in the hush of the silent shades. That the awe of the great Shogun's presence should be felt in death was the central idea in the building of the shrine. The pomp and majesty of his life is shown by the magnificence of all that has gone before; now one is made to feel the greater majesty of the death of one who was supreme among his fellowmen—whose personality seems yet to be felt about his shrine, though nearly three centuries have passed since his mortal clay was laid to rest.
    The tomb is a large pagoda-shaped casket of bronze, standing within a stone-balustraded enclosure with heavy bronze gates. The metal of both gates and tomb, being heavily impregnated with gold, is of a rich light brown, but the extreme grandeur of its environment and the peaceful solemnity of the whole of this beautiful resting-place, of which the actual tomb is but the kernel, cannot be described. It is Japan's grandest triumph, and a fitting tribute to the memory of the greatest name in the long list of her rulers.
    Iémitsu, third of the Tokugawa Shoguns, was buried on a hill half a mile distant, and the shrine and pavilions, though not so magnificent, are no less beautiful than the last resting-place of his grandfather Iyéyasu.
    One does not go to Nikko, however, only to see these splendid temples. The kindly nature which made this lovely land has surpassed all its other efl-orts in the glorious profusion with which it has scattered feathery woods and sombre forests, silvery cascades and white-robed waterfalls on every side; and for each day of a month one can find some new and still more beautiful walk to explore. Rambling about the deserted bridle-paths in the silent forests, one is ever discovering some moss-overgrown old stairway; a few stone lanterns; a lone, but not neglected, little temple; or some tiny shrine with a few paper prayers, offered by the patient pilgrims who scent such places of communion from afar, and pass by none of them without a supplication or simple oblation. Everything is green and hoary with age, for there were monasteries in these secluded wilds, and monks and abbots were laid to rest in ancient graveyards here for centuries before Iyéyasu saw the light. There are other "God's acres" too, where

Each in his narrow cell forever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

Grand old trees have wept over their graves for hundreds of years, and out of these tears thick moss has sprung and covered the pock-marked tombs with a velvety garment.
    From the gravelled avenues centuries-old, stone-paved pathways lead, and invite one to wander under the proud cryptomerias high up the hillsides to find temples which are poets' dreams of picturesque beauty, with lilting cascades all round them; and every crevice in the hills is filled with some purling stream, and every break in every wooded canon flashes with some rainbowed waterfall. The "Pitch-dark Cascade," called so because of its sombre surroundings; the "Back-View Cascade," which leaps out so far from a cliff that one may walk behind and under the falling torrent with impunity; the "Mist-falling Cascade," which slides down hundreds of feet of the mountain-side over slippery walls of rock—are but a few of them; but there are scores more, and there are mountain views without end which are famous throughout the land.
    Nikko children are nothing if not lovers of nature. One day as I was going over the hills to the "Mist-falling Cascade" I passed a pond by the wayside, and two farmer's youngsters, whose combined ages could not have amounted to more than ten years, stood beside it uttering ejaculations of admiration at the simple beauty of a dewdrop nestling in the cup of a lotus-leaf, and shining in the brilliant sunshine like a gem. On another ramble I came across a group of little ones greatly delighted over a spider's web spun among some bamboo branches.

MEDITATION 
A Study at Gamman-ga-Fuchi, Nikko.

The strands of the web were thickly covered with dew, and as the sun shone through the thousand tiny crystal globules it turned them into many-coloured opals. When rustic children of tender years take pleasure in such pretty glimpses of nature, one ceases to marvel longer at the dainty turn of Japanese art and design.
    Earthly paradise as Nikko is to the traveller and the foreign resident, he penetrates deeper yet into the mountains to find a resort for the summer such as the foreign heart loves. As English people fly to Westmoreland and the Swiss lakes, and as New Yorkers fly to the Adirondacks and the Catskills for the hot months, so do the ambassadorial representatives of these and several other countries transfer themselves, and their whole domestic establishments, from Tokyo to Lake Chuzenji for July and August.
    The lake is eight miles distant from Nikko, and more than two thousand feet higher up in the hills. The way lies by the river-bank for half the distance; then it rises far above it and creeps up the abrupt hillsides by a zig-zag pony path. The scenery along the route is some of the loveliest and most interesting in Japan. For the first few miles the road is broad and well-metalled, with a light gauge tramway running along it. Once every day a train of flat cars, each drawn by a broad-backed ox, comes down the line, bearing heavy ingots of copper. The track is the property of the Ashio copper mines, and is used for no other purpose than the transport of copper to the railroad, and of supplies to the mine, which is a day's journey farther up in the mountains.
    In the mossy shade of the cryptomeria-clad hillside, by a cataract which rages madly down the riverbed between enormous polished boulders, a company of ancient Buddhas sit. Carved in stone, they are mottled with the passage of centuries, and, wrapped in contemplation, they gaze into the troubled waters as though in meditation on life and its afflictions. Formerly these images were so many that no two persons could ever agree as to their number, but of late years time has dealt roughly with them. The water wall which tore down the river-bed in 1902, destroying the Red Bridge and everything else that lay in its path, cut deep into the bank at this point, and swept away all but a dozen or two of the once uncountable idols to be broken to pieces in the maddened torrent.
    The higher one ascends and the nearer one gets to Chuzenji the more magnificent are the views. The road is "well beaded" with tea-houses and tateba, or look-outs, at every point of vantage. As each traveller or pilgrim appears, bright-eyed, rosy mountain maids run to place a cushion on some rustic seat, or on the edge of the tea-house floor, and bring tea and dainty cakes, and a delicious peppermint sweetmeat—a speciality of this district—to stimulate the tissues for further effort, whilst the soul is gladdened by enchanting views of distant waterfalls and lovely vistas of the gorges far below.
    Through my glass I have seen many monkeys on the cliffs hereabouts, and once as I was coming down the road there was a great crashing in the trees, and three huge apes came swinging from bough to bough overhead. The Japanese saru is a pink-cheeked, comical-looking fellow, and is dearly beloved by native artists; but, like the Japanese cat, he has no tail.
    As the top of the pass is reached the road plunges into a pretty undulating forest, where the booming of a near-by cataract is heard. It is Kegon-no-taki, Chuzenji's overflow, a lovely pillar of snowy water leaping over a precipice nearly a hundred yards in height.
    There are tea-houses and more tateba, with charming peeps of the fall through the maple woods, and a path leads down almost to its foot, amidst marvellously beautiful scenery. In places the track burrows deep under overhanging cliffs dripping with water, and once when I came this way in the depths of winter, when the snow lay a yard deep on the ground, these cliffs were bedecked with a thousand enormous icicles, and we had to make our way warily over the slippery path for fear of being precipitated into the gorge below. It was worth the arduous journey in the snow to see those icicles, but I made the trip in the hope of seeing the fine waterfall locked in the arms of the frost king. In this I was disappointed, for there was nothing but a little cluster of icicles at the top of the precipice and not another sign that a great waterfall ever existed here. In spring, however, Kegon is a glorious sight. The cliff is a break in a bed of laminated lava strata, and the water, as it falls, sends up a mist which spreads wide in the breezes, and, catching the rays of the sun, forms brilliant rainbows to bridge the gorge with glowing arcs of colour.
    Near by are the "White Cloud Falls," where a hundred jets of water gush out of the middle of a still higher cliff to form perhaps the most curious cascade in Japan.
    Kegon is an ill-omened waterfall. Some years ago a youth, to whom the terrors of life were greater than his fear of death, inscribed a despairing poem on a tree and then cast himself into the vortex. This novel and spectacular departure for the Land of Shadows won for the suicide great notoriety, and such was the admiration of the students of Japan for his act that several hysterical and hypersentimental youths quickly followed his example, so that it was found necessary to establish a police guard in order to discourage the vogue for this new fashion in self-destruction.
    The Lakeside Hotel is to Chuzenji what the Old England is to Windermere. It is charmingly situated at the south end of the lake, near the Kegon fall, and it is one of the favourite globe-trotter resorts of Japan. Magnificent views are to be had from its gardens and verandahs; and boating, picnic, and fishing parties sally out with well-filled lunch-baskets every morning to spend the day on the lovely sheet of water, or to explore the equally lovely woods—and the Chuzenji woods are the most enchantingly beautiful thing of all in this Japanese Fairyland. The cool blue lake, lying mirror-like among the mountains, is bordered with forests reaching in places to the very loftiest heights, and the trees are all festooned with moss, and in spring with bright wistaria clusters.
    Chuzenji's season is the hot months, but the maples in late October form a wonderful display of colour, and in May every hillside is scarlet with azaleas which even the forests cannot hide, for many of the azalea-trees are nearly thirty feet in height. Few have seen Chuzenji in winter, for the hotels are closed and there is little comfort to be found, and the journey up the steep road in the snow is rather arduous; but when I came here once in January, the woodland—thickly carpeted with white, with every branch of every tree filigreed against the winter sky, as if in silver, with the hoar frost—was every bit as lovely as in its gorgeous autumn garb of colour.
    Even Chuzenji, with all its loveliness, is not the crowning glory of nature's work in this district. The palm for subtle beauty must be given to Lake Yumoto. Effort is asked of no one in these Nikko mountains without the promise of reward rich beyond one's hopes; and those who tramp a farther eight miles deeper into them will find the way bestrewn with scenic gems, and at the journey's end one of the most beautiful little lakes imaginable.

KEGON-NO-TAKI

    For the first half-hour of the walk the road skirts Chuzenji's waters under a bower of birch and maple branches; then it turns away to the "Dragon's Head Cascade," where from a tateba under the pine-trees one may feast one's eyes on as pretty a waterfall as Japan has to show. For well-nigh a quarter of a mile a mountain torrent, on its way to join the near-by "River of Hell," tumbles down a series of rocky ledges, half-covered with moss, and the trees leaning over the snowy stream are moss-grown too, and in places almost meet to form an archway overhead.
    A vast solitude, the "Moor of the Battlefield"—so called because of a conflict that took place here in feudal times—must then be crossed. Great mountains tower above the forests which hedge the barren waste on every side. On the right Nantai-zan reflects its image in the waters of a swamp, and, far over the western peaks, the volcano Shirane-san, queen of all, in height as well as beauty, lacks but seventy yards of nine thousand feet of altitude. Miles away the forest is divided by a thin white line. It is Yu-no-tani, a fine waterfall which slides, a chute of snowy foam, down a smooth wall of rock at an angle of 60° for over two hundred feet of perpendicular height.
    The road winds up the face of a steep hill to the head of the fall, and as the brow is reached the lake bursts into view in all its bewitching beauty.
    Yumoto is a very gem among lakes. Small, and of an exquisite colour, it is to the Nikko mountains what Mirror Lake is to the Yosemite, or Grasmere to Westmorland. The polished emerald of its unruffled waters reproduces every twig of every bordering tree, and every cranny of the lordly peaks which shelter this liquid jewel is doubled in its meagre depths as some conjured scene in a necromancer's magic crystal. Blue-green pines—mossy, mouldy, and splintered with age—lean far over the edge, and fat salmon-trout glide over the fallen water-logged trunks which have sunk to the bottom of the lake.
    Along the road skirting the bights and bays of its uneven shores are grand vistas of the ever-steaming Shirane-san and other encircling peaks. In July the banks are bordered in many places with a lovely fringe of irises, and, when I came this way one autumn, lake and mountains alike were splashed with all the colours of a painter's palette. At the far end, which after all is not so very far, is Yumoto village.
    The water here is all steaming and discoloured from the numerous hot-springs which flow into it, or rise, bubbling, out of its bed. It is strange that in a lake so largely impregnated with sulphur, fish should be so plentiful. I have even seen them leaping amongst the vapours in the milky water at the northern end.
    Yumoto village is a great resort for the pilgrims who swarm to this district in the summer months to do the round of the sacred heights—adding greatly to their balance of merit with the gods for each fresh holy peak they capture. The pretty hamlet is all hotels and inns, and tea-and lodging-houses, and the air everywhere is malodorous with sulphurous fumes.
    The Yumoto air and hot-springs are very beneficial to the skin and blood; and the visitors, being apparently unable to permeate themselves sufficiently by breathing sulphuretted hydrogen into their lungs all day, must needs also spend many hours soaking in the sulphur waters. For this purpose every inn has its dependent bath-house, and guests adjourn their conversation on the balconies only to continue it in these public tubs.

LAKE CHUZENJI

    The bathing arrangements are managed with an ingenuousness natural to remote villages far from the beaten track, and men, women, and children throng the bath-houses all day long and converse with each other unclothed, as unconscious of any immodesty as though fully dressed. Slipping off their garments, the bathers drop into the water and soak a while; then they emerge, and, sitting on the edge, cleanse themselves with bran-bags preparatory to another immersion.
    This process is sometimes continued for an hour or more, and twice or thrice each day; and as the bathers soak, and scrub themselves and each other's backs, they chat with the casual passers-by who pause to give the time-o'-day at the open doorways.
    A police regulation calls for the separation of the sexes. This is accomplished by laying a bamboo across the centre of the bath, one side being designated, in Japanese, for "gentlemen" and the other side for "ladies." Notwithstanding this precaution, I noticed gentlemen bathing on the ladies' side, and ladies soaking unconcernedly amongst the men.
    There are grand excursions to be made into the fastnesses of the surrounding mountains, with magnificent scenery everywhere. The ascent of Shirane-san is the finest, but it is a roughish climb, and cannot be attempted without a competent guide.
    Nantai-zan, the holy mountain of Shōdō Shōnin's vision, which is so prominent a feature of every landscape in this district, is seen at its best from Chuzenji. From the eastern shore of the lake it rises 8150 feet into the heavens, and from this point it is almost as perfectly shaped a cone, and as richly wooded to its summit, as is beautiful Merapi, one of the queenly volcanic peaks of Java.
    Nantai-zan ranks high among the sacred mountains of Japan, and pilgrims swarm up its steep slopes in thousands every summer. Until a few years ago a fine old Shinto temple at the lake side marked the beginning of the ascent. Passing under the great torii the pilgrims made their contributions at the temple threshold, prayed for strength to brace their muscles, received the blessing of the priests and the temple stamp upon their garments, and then began to mount the long flights of endless steps leading to the crest of the dead volcano and the goal of their desire.
    But the year 1902 brought dire disaster to Chu-zenji, as it brought unprecedented ruin to Nikko. Rain fell for many days, without ceasing, that autumn, and the vast pyramid of loose ash and tufa became so sodden with water that an avalanche broke loose well up towards the summit, and, gathering in volume as it fell, swept a wide path through the forest and bore straight down upon the ancient Shinto temple. The priests at prayer heard the roar of the coming doom, but so swiftly did it fall that they had no time to fly to safety. They no more than reached the doors when the landslide was upon them, and temple, priests, and all were swept bodily into the lake, and buried in its limpid depths beneath thousands of tons of the holy mountain-side.
    This enormous mass falling suddenly into the water caused a huge wave to sweep the surface of the lake. Over the Kegon precipice it leapt, and then went racing down the valley of the Daiya-gawa, destroying all in its path, tearing the Red Bridge from its massive foundations, and carrying houses and great trees on its crest to scatter them along the river's bank, as driftwood, for a hundred miles or more.
    A few days after the anniversary of this catastrophe I walked from Nikko to Chuzenji. The rain, which was falling as I started, became steadily heavier as I proceeded, and as I reached a little tea-house nearly half-way along the road, drenched through to the skin, I stopped awhile for some hot tea and saké. I noticed that the house was perfectly new, and that only an old woman and a little boy were in charge. On my remarking to the old lady on the severity of the storm she burst into tears, and told me of that other dreadful tempest just a year before, when she and her daughter and her two grandchildren, a boy and a girl, were living here together. A peasant came along, on his way to Chuzenji, and tarried for a cup of tea and to purchase a pair of waraji. Her daughter was in the house preparing the refreshment, and her little grand-daughter was tying the waraji to the old man's feet. She herself and her little grandson had gone a little way up the hillside to fetch some firewood. Suddenly her grandson called her attention to a terrible and quite unusual sound that filled the air. It was like an angry growl, growing momentarily louder, and seemed to come from up the valley. Looking in that direction, she saw a vast wall of water sweep round a bend in the river, uprooting trees and carrying rocks before it as though they were but weeds and pebbles.
    Before she could even shout to warn her dear ones of the peril, the wave was upon her house. She saw the water smite it, and the frail structure rise like a match-box on to the breast of the flood; in a moment more it was crushed and crumpled like an egg-shell, and her daughter and grand-daughter, and the old peasant at whose knees the little girl was kneeling, together with everything the house contained—all she had and loved in the world except her little grandson—were swept away before her eyes. All was over in an instant. The water rose and passed on like a horrible dream, and when it had gone its way she rubbed her eyes to be sure she was not dreaming. But it was all, alas! too true. In that passing moment her little home had gone for ever. Kind friends, it seems, came to her assistance and enabled her to have a new house built, on the spot where the old one stood; for she could not find the heart to leave the place where she had lived so long and so happily, yet where in one awful instant she had been so bitterly bereaved.
    Sad at heart at the old lady's recital of this tragedy, we started out again in the pelting rain to climb the slippery road. Every minute the storm grew fiercer, and when we reached Chuzenji it had become a perfect deluge. We put up at a native hotel within a hundred yards of the scene of the landslide of a year ago. All that night the storm was of almost unprecedented fury, and, if I must confess it, neither I nor the Japanese friend who was with me could sleep a wink. I found myself regretting more than once that I had made a departure from my usual custom of staying at the Lakeside Hotel—as we sat together, occasionally visited by the landlord or some other member of the hotel staff, who were all as sleepless as ourselves, discussing the possibility of another landslide.
    The whole of the next day the storm never ceased or abated for a moment, and the ensuing night it was even severer still; our fears lest another disaster might happen caused us a further sleepless night, and when the morning dawned and the skies began to clear, all of us felt greater relief than we cared to tell. The Japanese do not often openly betray their feelings, but that no one in the house slept for more than a few consecutive minutes at a time for two nights plainly showed the concern they felt.
    That next morning Kegon was a wonderful sight. An enormous mass of water shot out over the top of

NANTAI-ZAN AND LAKE CHUZENJI

the cliff and fell fully fifty feet clear of its base. The Daiya-gawa was a raging cataract, and when, a day later, we returned to Nikko, we found that irreparable damage had been done. The road for a mile or more had been completely washed away, and the Ashio copper-mine track was a tangled mass of iron in the centre of the river. It was only possible to reach Nikko by taking a detour high along the hillside, and already nearly a thousand workmen from the mine were busy endeavouring to make a new route for the tramway.
    What the previous storm had left of the beautiful Dainichi-do gardens was now but a wretched morass, with a forlorn stone lantern or miniature pagoda still standing here and there; whilst the river had cut for itself an entirely new channel at one place—a hundred yards away from where it was when we passed the place three days before.
    Such are the storms which sometimes devastate this lovely mountain district.

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