Alfred Parsons

IT is difficult nowadays to imagine how the Japanese managed to live without tea; everybody drinks it at all hours of the day, and the poorest people rarely get a chance of drinking anything stronger, and yet it is, as things went in old Japan, a comparatively recent introduction. Tea was introduced with Buddhism from China, and though some plants were brought as early as the ninth century, it was not much grown until the end of the twelfth. Daruma, an Indian saint of the sixth century, often represented in Japanese art either crossing the ocean on a reed, or sitting a monument of patience, with his hands in his sleeves, was the father of the tea-plant. After years of sleepless watching and prayer he suddenly got drowsy, and at last his eyelids closed and he peacefully slept. When he awoke he was so ashamed of this pardonable weakness that he cut off the offending eyelids and threw them on the ground, where they instantly took root and sprouted into the shrub which has ever since had power to keep the world awake.

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CARRYING HOME TEA LEAVES, NEAR UJI

In the twelfth century Kyoto was the centre of life in Japan, and the district of Uji, between that city and Nara, has always kept its reputation for producing the finest tea. The most valuable leaves are those on the young spring shoots, and when I passed through on the 19th of May these were just being gathered and dried. Most of the shrubs grow in the open air without any protection, evergreen bushes from two to three feet high, and among them the women and children were at work. As they squatted by the plants, filling their baskets, very little of them was visible, but their big grass hats shone in the sun, looking like a crop of gigantic mushrooms. The Japanese “kasa” is made of various light materials—straw, split bamboo, rushes, or shavings of deal; it is used, like an umbrella tied to the head, as a protection against sun and rain; in the evening or on cloudy days it is laid aside, and the laborers wear only their cotton kerchief, spread out like a hood, or tied in a band round their brows. Though it cannot be called the “vast hat the Graces made,” it is, nevertheless, very effective in the landscape, and the variations of its outline in different positions indicate happily the action of its wearer.

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A PLANTATION COVERED WITH MATTING NEAR UJI

The plants which produce the most expensive teas, costing from six to eight dollars a pound, are carefully protected by mats stretched on a framework of bamboo, so that the tender leaves may neither be scorched by the sun nor torn by the heavy rains, and there are acres of them so enclosed. It was a curious thing to look down from a little hill-top on a sea of matting which filled the whole valley from one pine-clad hill to another, its surface only broken by the ends of the supporting poles and by the thatched roofs of the drying-houses which stuck up here and there like little islands. Underneath the mats women were picking, and in every wayside cottage those who were not in the fields were busily sorting and cleaning the leaves. There are no large factories or firing-houses; each family makes its own brand of tea, labelling it with some fanciful or poetic name, such as “jewelled dew.”

The road through this fertile district crosses two large rivers, the Kisugawa and Ujikawa, and many smaller streams. They are all carefully banked in, and the water is carried where it is needed by endless ditches and channels. During the heavy rains these rivulets become raging torrents, and would soon cover the country with stones and gravel if they were not kept under control; the quantity of dÉbris they bring from the mountains is so great that, instead of being down in a hollow, they are raised above the rest of the country, and you have to go up-hill to ford them. Before getting into the long and uninteresting suburbs of Kyoto there are some large ponds on either side of the way, willows and tall reeds growing on their banks, and in every little creek fishermen with their boats and nets, all very picturesque and paintable. So was the Nesan at the Tatsu-ya, who when I halted for lunch at once led me round to the principal room at the back of the house (the best rooms and the gardens are usually at the back), and showed me her tame gold and silver carp, which came to be fed when she clapped her hands. It was a tiny little

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POND IN THE GARDEN OF RAKU-RAKU-TEI, HIKONE

garden, not more than twenty-five feet square, but it had its pond and bridge, and mountain of rock, and old pine-tree, like the best of them.

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THE CASTLE AT HIKONE

I reached Hikone by rail the same evening, and took up my quarters at the Raku-raku-tei tea-house, a great rambling place, with a large garden and suites of rooms to suit all tastes. I was shown into a gorgeous apartment with gold screens, its floor raised above the level of the rest of the house, which no doubt was intended for great people, who in the old days must often have come here to see the Daimio, Ii Kamon no Kami; but I felt I could not live up to this, and after viewing the rooms overlooking the lake, and those built on piles over the fish-pond, I selected some that looked out into the garden, with a trellis of wistaria just in front under which the purple trails of blossom nearly a yard long were still hanging. There are no crowds of

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THE CASTLE AT NAGOYA, FIELD OF IRIS IN THE FOREGROUND

visitors now, and the fine old garden looks rather tangled and neglected, with bushes untrimmed and paths overgrown with weeds. On a steep rocky hill close by is the castle where the Daimio formerly lived; the hill is on one side protected by the lake, and on the others by a wide moat, crossed by picturesque wooden bridges, and the roads which lead to the plateau at the top are defended by more bridges over dry moats, gate-houses, and zigzag walls of large, well-fitted stones. The architecture of all these castles is very much alike, and though there are not many of them now standing, they must have abounded in the feudal times. The finest I saw was that at Nagoya; it was a good deal shaken by the last great earthquake, but is still quite sound, and the great gold dolphins on its bronze roof shine high above the rest of the city. In the short period after the introduction of Western ideas, when the craze for things European

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AN OLD CASTLE MOAT, AKASHI, NEAR KOBE

led to many acts of vandalism, most of them were pulled down, and this one at Hikone was only just saved from destruction by the intervention of the Emperor; now that a reaction has set in, and the Japanese official mind is not so eager to forget the past and obliterate its relics, they are likely to be carefully preserved. All of them have a massive foundation of large stones, not squared except at the angles, but carefully trimmed and fitted together without mortar; and the superstructure is of timber and plaster, with roofs and eaves of heavy tiles or metal. The moats, overhung with pines and filled with lotus during the summer months, are always interesting. It was a blazing hot day when I walked

FIELDS NEAR LAKE BIWA

up and examined the castle; there was not a cloud in the sky, and Lake Biwa and its mountains lay still and clear and soft in the delicate blue haze which seems to be their own peculiar property. The fields outside the town were covered with a bright pink flower like a clover, which is not used for fodder, as there are hardly any animals to feed, but is dug in to improve the land for the rice, and this blaze of color consoled me for not finding as many azaleas as I expected. I set to work at a study of it, and sent my boy Matsuba, who, with the quickness of his race, quite understood the kind of thing I was looking for, to search the neighborhood for azalea bushes. He came back early in the afternoon to tell me that he had not been successful, but that there were some races going on in the town, so we wandered up, and established ourselves in a room just over the starting-post. The course was about two hundred and fifty yards along the pebbly bed of a dry river, and all the arrangements were very unlike those of a European racecourse. Two upright posts of bamboo stood about five yards apart, with a stout pole slung between them; the vicious little ponies were brought along by two grooms, each holding a long cord fastened to the bridle, and with a good deal of shoving and hustling were wedged in, shoulder to shoulder, between this pole and another behind them at about the height of their hocks. Their heads were pulled over the front pole, and held firmly by a groom with a long running cord through the bridle rings, while the jockeys were fully occupied in preventing the little brutes from striking each other with their fore and hind legs. Meanwhile the spectators, who had kept at a respectful distance until the ponies were safely fixed, crowded up behind them, pulling their tails and whacking them with bamboos. The starter then appeared, made a few remarks, and beat a small drum, upon which the men in charge of the pulleys dropped the front pole, the grooms slipped their ropes out of the bridle rings and jumped aside, and the ponies scrambled off as best they could. The jockeys rode without saddles or stirrups, with their great toes hitched into a surcingle, and directly they were off they dropped the reins, held their left hands in the air, and plied their whips with the right until they had passed the winning-post. It was just a scurry, with no time for scientific riding, and, as far as I could see, the pony who got over the pole best always won. O Kazu San, my waitress at the Raku-raku-tei, was helping at the tea-house, and kept me supplied with tea and cakes, and I stayed watching the races and the spectators, and being watched by them, until the dusk put a stop to sport. I left too soon, for my boy told me that there was a fight afterwards about a bet; it was the only fight I heard of while I

was in Japan, and I should have liked to see it. Two days of heavy rain turned the course into a river once more, so that the heats were never decided. Some few days after, Matsuba told me that there was a “Japanese man’s circus” in the town. It was not in the least like a circus; it was a theatrical performance in which all the members of the company, who in this troupe were women, were mounted on horseback. There was a small stage, with a set scene at the back, and in front of it, on the same level as the spectators, a space of bare earth on which the action took place. The play consisted mostly of combats; the swords and other necessary properties were brought in by attendants, and placed on a high stand where they could be easily reached by the actors, and the horses were then led into position, and held there while the fighting went on. None of the performers fell off, but beyond this there was no horsemanship; they could not even get their steeds on and off the stage without the help of a groom.

My thoughts recurred to another travelling theatre, at Stratford-on-Avon, where I saw a stirring drama called Tel-el-Kebir, or the Bombardment of Alexandria, in which Sir Beauchamp Seymour had a hand-to-hand conflict with Arabi Pasha. Mr. Lawrence, the spirited actor-manager, informed me afterwards, when I congratulated him on the performance, that it was always popular, and that he had played it twenty-three times in one day at Nottingham Goose-Fair. In reply to my objection that it took at least an hour, he said that of course they cut the dialogue, and only had the combats and the bombardment. I remembered, too, his remarks when called before the curtain at the end of his season; he enlarged on the dignity of the actor’s profession, and how essential it was that he should be a gentleman, saying, in conclusion; “‘Ow, I harsk, could a chimney-sweep (if there’s a chimney-sweep present I beg ’is pardon), but ’ow could ’e act the part of a prince or a nobleman? ’E could not do it, my friends; ’e’s not ’ad the hedjucation.”

The fine days at this season were perfectly glorious; hot enough to give an inkling of what it would be like in the full blaze of summer, and yet with a taste of spring’s freshness left in the air. They were interspersed with too many wet or uncertain days, but, with the garden close by, I managed to waste very little time. The first lotus leaves were just coming up in the ponds and the irises blossoming round the water’s edge, the azalea bushes were covered with flowers, and the tips of the pale green maple boughs were tinged with rosy pink. When the pouring rain had begun to drip through my sketching umbrella, and I was driven in-doors, there was no lack of society. O Kazu San, a plain little thing with brown velvet eyes, and the rest of the girls were never tired of looking at my belongings, thumbing my sketch-books, and asking me endless questions; and though I was sometimes irritable, their good-humor was unlimited. This unvaried good temper is itself annoying, when the foreigner feels that it is not the result of sympathy, but because he is regarded as a strange animal, not to be judged by the rules which govern the conduct of civilized people. At last Matsuba told me that he had found a place, “top side,” with plenty of azaleas, and rooms where I could stay. It was a small Buddhist temple called Tennenji, once very popular but now almost deserted, which stood on the hill-side beyond the rice lands, and somewhat above the swarms of mosquitoes which haunt the marshy shores and the lagoons of Lake Biwa. Ji means a Buddhist temple—at least

that is one of its meanings—and tennen means “produced by nature.” The name itself suggested peace and quietness and repose, and these I found in that delightful place, always seen in my mind through a rosy haze of azalea blossom.

A granite sign-post where the little temple path turns off from a track through the rice-fields tells all who can read it that the temple is dedicated to the five hundred Rakkan (disciples of Buddha), and their gilded and lacquered effigies sit in long tiers round one large building within the court-yard; beyond this is the Hondo, where the principal altars are, and where the services are performed at daybreak by the old priest who has sole charge of the establishment. My room was a little annex of the Hondo, quite apart from the living-rooms of the family, and open on two sides to the air. The angle of my veranda projected over the fish-pond, and on the right and the left stepping-stones led down from it into the garden, a small patch of level ground, with a pine-clad hill-side rising sharply beyond it. Just at the foot of this hill there was a rocky projection, covered with an undergrowth of azaleas, and spotted with statues of Buddha and his sixteen principal followers. These were rudely carved of the natural stone; with their growth of lichens and mosses they looked as old as the rocks themselves, and were hardly to be distinguished from them at a little distance. Several stony zigzagging footpaths, mere tracks through the bushes and pine-trees, led to the top of the ridge, from which one looked down on fertile valleys enclosed by more pine-clad ridges, and to the westward on the great shining plain of Lake Biwa, its lagoons, islands, and distant mountains. Many times I walked to the top of this hill, sometimes in the clear brilliant moonlight, when the delicate pinks and reds of the azaleas were hardly visible, and only their honeysuckle scent made me conscious of their presence, and when all the world would have been silent but for the incessant chorus of myriads of frogs which came up from the rice-fields below.

In the daytime the whole of the wood was lively with cicadÆ, who kept up a constant and irritating clatter, but then there was the delight of finding new flowers, or making the acquaintance of old garden friends in their own homes. A little damp gully just behind the bamboo grove was full of deutzia bushes in blossom, and under them grew a clump of pale pink lilies (Lilium krameri), which seemed to me the loveliest flowers I had ever seen. The priest at Tennenji was so anxious to have some of my work that I made a drawing of these for him; it hangs among the temple treasures, and may be a surprise to some wandering foreigner, who will little expect to find any European traces in such an out-of-the-way spot. The family, consisting of Sokin the father, O Shige San the mother, and Takaki, a son employed in the office of police at Hikone, soon

adopted me as a friend, and did all they could to make me comfortable. Takaki had received a modern education (they teach English in the Hikone schools, as you find out from the small boys, who shout A B C after you in the streets); but he had not got beyond the word “Yes,” beginning every sentence with it and then lapsing into Japanese. We made many excursions together, he, Matsuba, and I, strolling down to the town after dinner and looking in at the theatres and shops.[A] O Shige San was great at cooking, and took delight in providing me with new and strange forms of food every evening; for breakfast and lunch I ate what European food Matsuba could provide, and as flour and whiskey could be bought, and a cow was slaughtered in Hikone every Saturday, I did not do badly; you can get the necessary sustenance in a shorter time on foreign “chow,” but when work was over and I had taken my hot bath and exchanged my suit of flannels for a cotton kimono, it was amusing to sit on the floor and speculate on the composition of the dishes which she brought me, trying with the aid of a dictionary to find out what they really were, and to acquire a taste for “daikon.”[B] Among her successes were eels cooked in soy, broiled fish, and bean curd “À la brochette”; young bamboo shoots, chrysanthemum leaves fried in batter, and lily bulbs boiled in sugar were eatable; but a sausage made of rice and herbs, and some of the quaint vegetables, were simply nauseous. In one of my water-colors there was a large group of leaves, round ones with a dark hole where the stem goes in, commonly known as the “foreground plant,” and I noticed one afternoon to my disgust that these had been cut; the boiled stalks were given to me at dinner that evening, and I never tasted anything more unpleasant. When the various dishes had all been brought in and arranged round me by the priest or Takaki, O Shige San would appear and kneel in front of me, keeping my sake cup and rice bowl filled, and watching with intense anxiety my expression as I tasted each compound, and at the end of my dinner would remark that I had eaten nothing, and that Japan was a dirty, ugly country, to which I always replied that I had feasted, that England was dirty and ugly, but that Japan was a beautiful country. Such is Oriental politeness. Then Sokin came in with his pipe and pouch and little fire-box, and, after taking a cup of sake with me, sat and smoked and conversed, or brought out the tea things of his lamented patron, Ii Kamon no Kami, and made me a bowl of powder tea with all the correct ceremonies. The Cha-no-yu is not to be confounded with ordinary tea-drinking. It is an elaborate form of entertainment which cannot be appreciated by an uneducated foreigner; every movement is regulated by laws known to the initiated, and the conversation is confined to some object of art, or poem produced by the host. The kettle, water-bowl, and other utensils should all have some historic or artistic interest, and the cup from which the mixture is drunk is usually an example of archaic pottery. The rules of the game have not been altered for about two centuries, though there are various schools which differ as

to minor details—whether the whisk with which the drink is stirred should afterwards be laid on the seventh or thirteenth seam of the matting, and things of that sort, which seem of infinitely small importance to the ignorant, but make a vast difference to the connoisseur. Our love of tobacco was a great bond of sympathy, although after trying each other’s pipes we both preferred our own. The old man, who knew that I did not like to be watched while painting, would sit in his little room and gaze at me as I worked in the garden or among the stone gods on the hill-side, and when he saw that my pipe was out, would fill another for me and bring it out with a box of matches, making this an excuse to look over my shoulder for a few minutes, and to have a little conversation.

As the summer came on and the weather got hotter the insects became more and more numerous; there were splendid butterflies and dragon-flies in the daytime, swarms of fire-flies over the rice-fields at night, and unfortunately many others which bit at all hours, flying things, and things which mosquito-curtains could not keep out. The Japanese house has no separate rooms for living and sleeping; when bedtime comes quilts are brought in and laid on the floor, and, if necessary, a mosquito-netting of thick green gauze is slung over them from the four corners of the apartment. The natives use a small wooden pillow, with a depression for the neck to rest in; I never could manage this, but after a time I succeeded in sleeping well with coats or another quilt rolled up for a bolster.

Certain paragraphs about me in the local papers brought a good many visitors to the temple to see what I was doing, among them a gentleman who was introduced to me as the best singer in Hikone, and a little conversation and whiskey induced him to give me some specimens of his art—songs of the Buddhist and Shinto priests, and others

which might be described as popular airs. To foreign ears they were quite devoid of melody, and his elaborate vocalization only produced sounds which were disagreeable and harsh, or else ludicrously inadequate to the efforts they cost him. My friend, who appeared to be an all-round Æsthete, spent a good part of the afternoon in arranging a big bronze jar of azalea boughs and a hanging vase of irises, curling the leaves and snipping off any stray shoots which did not conform to the fish-scale arrangement (sakana no uroko no kata) which he was trying to make.

The family were very busy all through this month with their crop of silk-worms, which required incessant care and feeding. I was taken to see them first in an outbuilding when they were just little black specks; as they got older the air of this shed did not suit them, and they were moved into the Hondo, where they flourished and grew with astonishing rapidity under the eye of the Buddha, and devoured the baskets of chopped mulberry leaves as fast as they could be prepared. The caterpillars were huddled together on mats hung one above another in a framework; a netting of string was spread over each mat so that the whole mass could be lifted and the dÉbris cleared away with very little trouble. When they had ceased to grow, and began to stand on end, waving their heads in the air after the idiotic fashion of silk-worms who want to spin, they were picked off and put in little nests of straw or bundles of brush-wood, which soon became a mass of soft yellow cocoons. It was an anxious time for O Shige San, for a considerable part of her income depended on the crop of silk; the cocoons are worth about thirty yen a koku, a measure rather less than five bushels.

The pond under my veranda was full of carp and baby tortoises, which hurried up to be fed as soon as they saw me leaning over the rail; the old tortoises were more shy, and I only saw them on very hot days, sunning themselves on the stones, and they slipped into the water with a flop if I attempted to get near them. I caught one on a patch of sandy ground, after watching its struggles to cover up the hole in which it had just laid some leathery-looking white eggs. These days brought out the snakes too, some of them very big, and all unpleasant to look at, but quite harmless. There is only one venomous snake in the country, a small brown beast called “Mamushi”; the other sorts are not ill-treated, indeed, they are considered lucky, but this is always killed and skinned, and a medicine is prepared from its dried body.

It would have been easy to dream away months here, but the wise regulations of the Japanese government, foreseeing that the traveller might be tempted to neglect his duties and become a mere loafer, forced me to return to Kobe and get a new passport, so I had to say good-bye to my friends, and the Rakkan with the lichen-covered azaleas, still gay with crimson flowers which trailed round their feet, and the terrace where every evening I had watched the sun setting over Biwa, and to descend once more to the railway and the commonplace.

The rain came down in torrents as I left the temple, and continued to do so all the day, but there was plenty that was amusing to be seen from the carriage window. The people were busy putting out their young rice plants, and the fields were full of men and women working in mud and water half-way up to their knees, and wearing their “kasa” and straw coats, oiled paper, rush mats, or other contrivances to keep off the rain. It is surely the dirtiest and most laborious form of agriculture; the work is almost entirely done by manual labor with a spade and a heavy four-pronged rake, though I occasionally saw a cow

or a pony, with a little thatched roof on its back to shoot off the rain, dragging a sort of harrow through the mud. As soon as the spring crop of barley or rape-seed is garnered and hung up to dry, the ground is trenched with the spade, and water is turned over it until it has become a soft slush, which is worked level with the rake. The young rice plants, grown thick together in nursery patches, are pulled up when the fields are ready for planting, their roots are washed, and they are tied in bundles, which are thrown into the mud and water; then the men and women wade in, untie a bundle, and set the seedlings in lines by just pressing them with their fingers into the mud. They do this wonderfully quickly, and can plant eight or nine in a row without moving from their places; when the field is all planted it looks like a pond with a delicate green haze over it. The dividing banks are planted with beans or other vegetables, so that not a yard of ground is wasted. This was the 18th of June, the beginning of the “dew month,” a period full of discomforts for the traveller, and especially for the landscape-painter.