Alfred Parsons

WE had left Hong-Kong enveloped in its usual spring fog, and for five long, weary days had steamed across the China Sea in regular monsoon weather, gray and wet and miserable, but during the fifth some rocky islands, outlying sentinels of the three thousand which compose the Mikado’s realm, and occasional square-sailed, high-sterned boats, showed that we were near Japan, the Far East, the Land of Flowers and of the Rising Sun, the country which for years it had been my dream to see and paint; and by six o’clock in the evening, on the 9th of March, we were at anchor in Nagasaki Bay. The aspect of that port on a wet day was not inviting, nor were the little grimy girls, who in a chattering, laughing line carried their baskets of coal on board; so, difficult as it was to decline the hospitable invitations of the English residents, I decided to go on with the ship to Kobe. Early in the morning of the 11th we passed through the Strait of Shimonoseki—the sun shining brightly on the snowy hills and on the crowd of fishing-boats which had been sheltering there from the bad weather—and entered the Inland Sea. After so many days of monotonous gray ocean it was delightful to steam along in sight of land, and wind about among the islets and rocks, so near to many of them that we could see the little villages, the mists of white plum blossoms, the rows of beans and barley growing wherever a level patch could be made on the steep slopes, the people at work in their

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IN THE INLAND SEA

fields, and always in the distance the ranges of snow-covered mountains in Kiushiu and Shikoku, the islands which enclose this lovely sea on the south. I longed to land and begin work at once, with a nervous dread in my heart that I should find nothing so good elsewhere, and, indeed, though there is plenty of material to be found everywhere in Japan, I saw nothing finer than these islands of the Inland Sea; to cruise about among them in a comfortable boat would be an ideal way to spend a summer, and would probably not be devoid of adventure, for our captain told me many tales of treacherous currents and sudden squalls and sunken reefs.

HILLS NEAR KOBE, FROM SUWA-YAMA

We reached Kobe next morning, and before I had been on shore more than an hour I had heard of a village six miles away which was celebrated for its plum orchards, and had started off to find it. Okamoto lies at the foot of the hills which rise behind Kobe on the north, and climbs a little way up them, and in front of the highest cottage, a modest tea-house with platforms arranged to accommodate the visitors who come in crowds to gaze at the blossoms, I unfolded my stool and easel, and in spite of a bitter wind and vicious little snow-storms made my first sketch in Japan. All round me and in the village below were the pink-and-white trees, then a band of rice-lands, pale green with young barley, and beyond them lay Osaka Bay, and the mountains of Yamato, which constantly changed in color as snow-storms passed over, or gleams of sun lighted the shining water and the snow on the distant hills. It is an exciting thing to begin work in a new country, to compare the local color and the atmosphere with those you have tried before, and to find yourself half unconsciously using an entirely new set of pigments. I was too absorbed with these problems to take any notice of the fact that my back was aching, but after two hours, when I had finished my drawing, I found myself unable to rise from that sketching-stool, and for the next fortnight an attack of lumbago prevented my seeing anything more of the plum groves. The Buddhist pictures of their Inferno depict many ingenious tortures; I think they ought to add a man with lumbago doing six miles over a Japanese by-road in a jinricksha. When at last I got back to Okamoto there were still some blossoms, and the trees were tinged with the pink of withered petals, but the luxuriant freshness had gone.

On the 13th of April I said good-bye to my friends and to the comforts of the Kobe Club, and started for Nara, stopping on my way at Osaka to have a look at the town and see the peach blossoms on Momo-Yama (peach mountain). The narrow streets leading up the hill were crowded with visitors, and among the orchards of dwarf trees temporary tea-sheds and resting-places had been erected for their comfort and refreshment. In spite of the many picturesque features in these fÊtes the whole effect is at first disappointing: railings and stages of new raw deal, the untidy and unfinished look of rough bamboo structures, with corners of matting hanging loosely in places where they interfere with the perspective lines, the slovenly pathways,

which are mud or dust according to the weather—all these things make unsatisfactory accessories for the figures and the flowers. After a time they obtrude themselves less on your notice, and you have learned to accept the fact that Japan is not a country of big masses and broad effects, but of interesting bits and amusing details. This is usually true of its landscape; the forms of mountains and trees are more quaint than grand, and the cultivated land has no broad stretches of pasture or corn, but is cut up into patches, mainly rice-fields, with various vegetables grown in little squares here and there.

It was as yet too early in the year for any rice to be planted out. In the fertile valley through which the railway runs from Osaka to Nara some new fields were lying wet or fallow, others were being prepared by spade labor, and others again, not yet flooded, were covered with the bright green of young barley, or the strong light yellow of rape in flower.

Though I had read much about life in Japan, it was an embarrassing experience to be set down for the first time with my baggage in a Japanese room, and to try and adapt myself mentally to the possibilities of living under such conditions. In a bare hut or tent the problem is comparatively simple; there is always one way by which you must enter; but in a Japanese room there is too much liberty; three of the walls are opaque sliding screens, the fourth is a transparent, or rather translucent, one; you can come in or go out where you like; there is no table on which things must be put, no chair on which you must sit, no fireplace to stand with your back to—just a clean, matted floor and perfect freedom of choice. European trunks look hopelessly ugly and unsympathetic in such surroundings, nor are matters much improved when the host, in deference to the habits of a foreigner, sends in a rough deal table, with a cloth of unhemmed cotton, intended to be white, and an uncompromising, straight-backed deal chair. These hideous articles make a man feel ashamed, for though they are only a burlesque of our civilization, they are produced with an air of pride which shows that the owner is convinced they are the right thing, and one cannot but be humiliated by their ugliness and want of comfort. Yet if you want to read or write you have to keep them and make the best of them, for a long evening on the floor is only to be borne after a good many weeks of practice. Things begin to look brighter and pleasanter when the little waiting-maid appears, bringing first some cushions and the hibachi, with its pile of glowing charcoal, and then the tea-tray and a few sweet cakes. This was more the sort of thing I had expected, and made me at once feel at home with my surroundings. It is the first attention shown you in every tea-house, no matter how humble; whether you go as an inmate, or whether you merely sit down for a few minutes’ rest on a journey, the little tea-pot and the tiny cups are at once produced, and the hibachi is placed by your side, a pleasant and friendly welcome, which never failed to make its impression on me, however poor the quality of the tea might be. The Kiku-sui-ya (which means Chrysanthemum-water house) is near the entrance to the great Kasuga Park at Nara; just outside it the road passes under a granite torii flanked with stone lanterns, and winds up to the temple through an avenue of cryptomerias, with rows of lanterns on each side, which get closer and closer together as they near the temple buildings, and are so numerous that tradition says they have never been counted. There are booths here and there where pilgrims can rest and get a cup of tea, for pilgrimage in Japan is not made unnecessarily uncomfortable, and where the tame deer congregate to take the nuts and cakes which are sold

for them to the passers-by. From early morning till nearly sundown this road is lively with groups of visitors. Nara is so near to Osaka that among them a sprinkling of men, mostly no doubt engaged in commerce, wore foreign dress, but the majority of the people were in their native clothes, and as I sat and painted by the road-side I could study the variations of Japanese costume—from that of the old peasant with his white or blue

leggings, straw shoes, big hat, and robe tucked into his girdle, his head shaved down the middle, and the back hair turned up in a queue in the ancient mode, to that of the gay young musumÉ with her rich silk kimono, gorgeous scarlet petticoat, broad obi, and black-lacquered sandals on her pigeon-toed, white-socked feet. The cryptomerias are good, but the old wistarias are the glory of Kasuga Park. The great Fujiwara family formerly owned or were patrons of the temple, and though it is now imperial property, their crest, the wistaria flower (fuji no hana), is still worn by the little girls who perform the sacred dance there, and all over the park the wistaria vines are allowed to grow as they choose, their great snaky stems writhing along the ground and twisting up to the tops of the highest trees.

One very wet day, when painting out-of-doors was impossible, I went round to see the sights of Nara—Kobukuji with its pagoda and fine old statues, the great Buddha, the celebrated big bell, and beyond these the Buddhist temple Ni-gwatsu-do, perched on a hill-side, the steps leading up to it lined with stone lanterns, little shrines, and booths for the sale of endless trifles. The platform surrounding this temple is supported in front by a scaffolding of beams, at the back it abuts against the hill, and from the heavy projecting roof which covers both platform and temple hang hundreds of bronze lanterns, votive offerings. Each of these had been appropriated by a sparrow; trusting to the sanctity of the spot, they had piled in all the rubbish they could find to make their nests; odd ends of straw and paper stuck out everywhere, showing that their stay in the East had not taught them tidy habits. I am sorry to say that their confidence was misplaced; a temple festival came round before their eggs were hatched, and the whole of them with their embryo families were ruthlessly evicted in order that the lanterns might be lighted.

The park at Nara is one of the few places in Japan where you can see real turf, and even there I was struck by the scarcity of ground flowers; there were plenty of scentless violets, some yellow and white dandelions, and in the damp ditches a little purple flower called jirobo by the country people, but there was nothing to compare with the masses of daisies, buttercups, and cowslips which make the English meadows so bright in the spring. Perhaps the mountain moorlands would have been as gay at that time as I found them later in the year; the fields are far too well cultivated for any weed to get a chance of flowering.

The earlier cherry-trees were in blossom by this time, and I lingered on, making studies of them, and learning Japanese words and ways from O Nao San, a young lady about twelve years old, who had appointed herself my special attendant and protector at the Kiku-sui Hotel. One night at the theatre I saw a modern farce, with a policeman, an old-fashioned Japanese gentleman, a Chinaman, and an Englishman as the comic characters. They were ridiculous and amusing, but when all the earlier incidents of the piece were narrated with conscientious realism in evidence before a magistrate the thing became monotonous, and struck me as faulty in dramatic construction. This was the only theatre I saw in Japan in which they had discarded the orchestra and chorus and other traditions of the old stage.

There is a modest little temple opposite Kobukuji, which is visited by most of the pilgrims to Nara; in its court-yard is a pile of stones from which a stream of water flows, fed by the tears of the mother of Sankatchu, a sacrilegious man who killed some of the sacred deer, who was killed himself in consequence, and buried here by her. Day after day groups of visitors stand by the fountain, listening intently to the guide who tells them the pathetic story, and give their prayers and a few coppers to her memory. The family affections are strong in Japan, and the love between parents and children, and among the children themselves, is always pleasant to see. The little ones are never slapped or shaken or pulled about roughly; you may wander through the streets for days without hearing a child cry, nor do they often quarrel in their play. But it is possible to go too far, even in filial piety. There was a murder trial while I was in the country, and by the evidence it appeared that the prisoner’s mother was blind, that the doctor had prescribed the application of a warm human liver, and that he, as he could find no other way to get the remedy, had killed his wife in order to restore his mother’s sight.

In most forms of Japanese art the technique which is admired by native connoisseurs, and the associations connected with the subject represented, can only be understood by those who have studied Japanese methods and traditions, but the old wooden statuary has more in common with Western art, and often reaches a high point of realism. In the religious figures certain traditions had to be followed, and in looking at these this fact has to be remembered; the exaggerated anatomy, unnaturally fierce expressions, and arbitrary number of limbs often disguise their true merits; but in the portrait figures of daimios, priests, and abbots the treatment is both simple and dignified. Mr. Takenouchi, a sculptor to whom I had letters, was making admirable copies of the principal sculptures at Kobukuji, which were to be exhibited at Chicago, and afterwards added to the collection of the Fine Art Museum in Ueno Park, Tokyo. Among the old masters, Unkei, a sculptor of the twelfth century, is perhaps the most noteworthy; there is a mendicant ascetic by him in the Hall of the Thirty-three Thousand Kwannon at Kyoto, a lean old man, clad only in a few rags, resting on his staff and holding out his left hand for alms, which might rank with the work of Rodin.

On the 25th of April the cherry-trees were in full flower, and I left Nara for Yoshino, a village at the foot of Mount Omine, in Yamato, which has for centuries been noted for its cherry groves. Here the cult of the cherry blossom has its headquarters, and during the ten days or so which the blossoms last the little town is crowded with visitors. I was too late to see the place in its full glory; it stands at some height above the sea, and I consequently imagined that the flowers would be later than those at Nara, but the cherry which grows there in such quantities is an early species, and three days of wind and rain had covered the ground with pink petals and left very few of them on the trees in the celebrated groves. Fortunately there were still some flowery trees to be found in gardens and sheltered corners, and at this time of year it would be impossible to settle down in a Japanese village without finding plenty of subjects to paint. The cherry in the Yoshino groves has a single flower, pale pink in color; this is followed by another

kind with white blossoms, more like the European species. Both of these are wild, and from them the Japanese gardeners have raised many varieties, double and single flowered, some with the growth of the weeping-willow, and others with a spreading habit. The flowers vary in color from white to light crimson, and I noticed some young trees with large double blossoms which were pale yellow with a pink flush on the outer petals, like a delicate tea-rose.

At the Tatsumi-ya, just by the remains of the huge bronze torii, which, until it was blown down by a hurricane, formed the entrance to the main street, I found a little suite of rooms built in the garden away from the rest of the house, and at once engaged them, in happy anticipation of quiet nights. These isolated rooms have some disadvantages, such as having to get to the bath and back on wet nights, but a very short acquaintance with life in a tea-house makes the traveller disregard such trifling inconveniences for the certainty of peaceful sleep. The Japanese wanderers usually finish their day’s journey about five in the afternoon, and, after the preliminary cup of tea, discard their travel-stained clothes for the clean kimono which every well-regulated tea-house supplies to its guests, then bathe in water as near the boiling-point as possible, eat their dinner, sit talking and smoking till midnight, snore till five o’clock in the morning, when the clatter of taking down shutters begins, and the elaborate business of tooth-cleaning and tongue-scraping, with an accompaniment of complex noises suggesting seasickness in its worst stages, so it is not till they have departed at six or seven o’clock that a light sleeper gets much chance. In the daytime the tea-house is deserted, except by the proprietor, who sits in the front room and does his accounts, and by the little servant-girls, who, with their heads tied up in towels, kimono tucked into their obi, and sleeves fastened back, showing a good deal of round brown leg and arm, busily sweep and dust the rooms in preparation for the new set of visitors who will arrive in the evening. The thin sliding partitions would be little bar to sound even if they reached to the top of the room, and above them there is generally a foot or so of open wood-work, which allows free ventilation and conversation between the different apartments. Privacy, as we understand it, is no part of the scheme of a Japanese tea-house. Real fresh air from outside is very difficult to get at night. During the hot weather I was always careful to examine the fastenings of the wooden shutters with which, after dark, every house is enclosed like a box, so that I could surreptitiously open a crack opposite my room, although by so doing I was disobeying the

police regulations. These shutters do not keep out the noise of the watchman, who all night long wanders round and knocks two blocks of wood together, just to let burglars know that he is on the lookout.

In these quarters I spent a week or so, painting all day when the weather would allow me, and in the evening struggling with the language and gambling for beans with the family and the servant-girls, who played vingt-et-un (ni ju ichi) with such keenness and discretion that I was generally made a bankrupt, with much laughter and clapping of hands, quite early in the game, and had to be set up again by general contribution.

Everything in Yoshino is redolent of the cherry; the pink and white cakes brought in with the tea are in the shape of its blossoms, and a conventional form of it is painted on every lantern and printed on every scrap of paper in the place. The shops sell preserved cherry flowers for making tea, and visitors to the tea-houses and temples are given maps of the district—or, rather, broad sheets roughly printed in colors, not exactly a map or a picture—on which every cherry grove is depicted in pink. And all this is simply enthusiasm for its beauty and its associations, for the trees bear no fruit worthy of the name. There is an old Japanese saying, “What the cherry blossom is among flowers, the warrior is among men.” I was reminded constantly of a sentence which a friend had written in one of my books, “Take pains to encourage the beautiful, for the useful encourages itself.” It is difficult for an outsider to determine how much of this is genuine enthusiasm and how much is custom or a traditional Æstheticism; but it really matters little. That the popular idea of a holiday should be to wander about in the open air, visiting historic places, and gazing at the finest landscapes and the flowers in their seasons, indicates a high level of true civilization, and the custom, if it be only custom, proves the refinement of the people who originated and adhere to it.

The village street of Yoshino winds up a spur of the hills, passing many temples and little hamlets, and gradually becomes a steep and stony mountain path, which ascends to Mount Omine. The great tracks of forest provide occupation for most of the people in this district; as I sketched by the road-side strings of men and women were constantly passing, carrying down heavy loads of wood and charcoal from the hills, and in front of many of the cottages match-wood was spread out on mats to dry. It was difficult to understand how it could ever get dry, for all the mists of Japan seemed to collect round these mountains and forests; the landscape was rarely free from them, and constantly looked like a Japanese drawing, all vague and white in the valleys, with ridges of hill and fringes of pine showing in sharp clear lines one behind the other.

It is a warm climate too, and everything grows luxuriantly. There are great clumps of bamboo, enormous azalea bushes, and thick undergrowths of palmetto. On the road-side banks in this last week of April, there were ferns just unrolling, the fronds of maidenhair (Adiantum pedatum) all bright-red young shoots of lily and orchid and Solomon’s-seal, and a lovely iris (I. japonica), with many lavender-colored flowers on a branching stalk, each outer petal marked with dark purple lines, and decorated with a little horn of brilliant orange. The gardens of tea-houses and temples were gay with azalea, camellia, magnolia, and cherry, and with the young leaves of maple and andromeda, as bright as any flowers. During a great part of the year these gardens have but few blooms—they are only an arrangement of greens and grays—but in the spring no amount of clipping and training can prevent the shrubs from blossoming. The cherry-trees and magnolias are let

grow as they choose, but the others are trimmed into more or less formal shapes, considered suitable to the species, or helping the carefully studied arrangement of forms, which is the ideal of a Japanese gardener. There are no beds for flowers. In the little ponds the irises and lotus bloom, and in odd corners there may be clumps of lilies, chrysanthemums, or other plants, but these are mere accidents: the designer’s aim is a composition of rocks, shrubs, stone lanterns, ponds, and bridges, which will look the same in its general features all the year round, and conform to established rules. One of my Japanese friends told me, as an instance of the complexity of the landscape-gardener’s art, that if a certain shrub were used it would be necessary to place near it a stone from Tosa, the distant province where it commonly grows. The decorative garden is quite distinct from the flower garden, where the fine varieties of iris, pÆony, and chrysanthemum, for which Japan is famous, are grown by professional florists, or by rich amateurs who can devote a special place to their culture.

On the 3d of May my host at the Ta-tsumiya brought me some pÆony flowers arranged in an old bronze vase. This showed me it was time to move on to Hase, where there is a great display of them, so next morning I made an early start for a long jinricksha ride through the hills of Yamato. My baggage and painting materials could not be packed in less than two kuruma, two more were necessary for my boy and myself, and the four vehicles, with two men drawing each, made an imposing procession as we bumped down the steep village street. The whole staff of the Tatsumi-ya had turned out to say good-bye; there was a row of little girls kneeling on the floor, their noses on the matting and their brown hands placed flat, palms downward, in front of their heads, and the landlord, after giving me the usual presents and a receipt for my “chadai”—the parting tip—insisted on accompanying me to the end of the town.

Our route for two or three miles, as far as the river Yoshino-gawa, was the same that I had climbed on my way up; but nine days had made a great difference in its aspect. Then many of the trees were still bare; now they were covered with spring leaves. After ferrying over to Muda we turned northwards, and a good road led us by low passes and through the grand forests at the foot of Mount Tonomine down to Tosa in the Yamato Valley. Jinricksha travelling is very pleasant when the roads are good, the weather fine, and the men active; there is no noise of horses’ hoofs to disturb the mind, the straw-sandalled feet of the coolies hardly make a sound, nor is your attention distracted from the landscape by having to drive; and the frequent short halts at way-side tea-houses give you a chance of airing your few phrases of Japanese and seeing the ways of the people. My lunch at Tosa was

enlivened by two charming waitresses, who had evidently seen but few foreigners, and who were much interested in me and my belongings. My watch, match-box, cigarette-case, and other small articles had to be examined, talked over, and shown to the rest of the household, and I was plied with questions about my age, my family, and other personal matters, as Japanese etiquette prescribes.

This valley of Yamato is the earliest historic home of the present race; in it there are many tumuli which mark the burial-places of legendary emperors, including that of Jimmu Tenno, the first of all, and it is therefore considered sacred ground by the ancestor-loving Japanese. Every year crowds of pilgrims walk over the district, making their “Yamato-meguri,” or tour of the holy places of Yamato, and thereout the innkeepers suck no small advantage. Hase was full of them, and every tea-house crammed; in the room next mine at least a dozen must have slept, and I thought myself lucky to get a place to myself.

There were still some hours of daylight left after I had settled down in my quarters, so I wandered up the street and climbed the long flight of steps to the great temple of Kwannon. On each side of the steps small beds were built up, and in these the pÆonies grew, and their big flowers, ranging in color from white to dark purple, glowed in the afternoon light against a background of gray stone lanterns. The temple is built on a hill-side, like Ni-gwatsu-do at Nara and many other Buddhist temples, and it consists of a wide veranda filled with incense-burners and votive pictures and bronze lanterns, and of an inner sanctuary. Across the entrance to this stands an altar, and over it an opening in the dark purple curtains allows a glimpse of the great gold figure of Kwannon, nearly thirty feet high, her face, with its expression of calm beneficence, only just distinguishable by the light of a few dim lamps in the gloom of the windowless shrine. Behind this main temple there are various other buildings, priests’ houses and such like, and a little pond for the sacred tortoises.

The main street of Hase is cut up with rivulets; the middle one is used for all domestic purposes, and at all hours you may see the women, with skirts and sleeves tucked up, washing their clothes or their fish and vegetables, and ladling up water for baths and cooking with their long-handled wooden dippers. The side streams turn small water-wheels, which work wooden hammers for pounding and cleaning the rice—an important part of the day’s work in every Japanese village. In the most primitive places it is done with a long-headed wooden mallet and the stump of a tree hollowed out for a mortar; in others big wooden hammers are fixed on a pivot, and are raised by stepping on the other end of the handle, tread-mill fashion. A mountain brook, the parent of these little streams, tumbles along close behind the houses; its banks are overhung with

bamboos, and the rocks at that season were covered with clumps of lavender iris. From Atago-Yama, a hill just across the river, the view is fine; below are the flat, gray roofs of Hase, and the cul-de-sac in which it lies—bordered on either side with green hills, its windings indicated by the curves of road and shining river, its green surface spotted here and there with gray hamlets—gradually opens out into the wider Yamato Valley. Unebi-Yama, which marks the site of Jimmu Tenno’s mausoleum, rises in the centre of the plain, and beyond it all is an enclosing barrier of cloudy mountains.

A morning’s jinricksha ride took me back to my old quarters at Nara, and Kwannon must have rejoiced at my departure from Hase-dera, for while I was there most of the priests and all the acolytes sadly neglected her: they spent the day looking over my shoulder or gazing open-mouthed in my face. This was on the 9th of May, and I was glad to find that the wistaria in Kasuga Park was just in its glory. The masses of flowers turned the lower trees into big bouquets of pale mauve, and seemed to drip like fountains from the tall oaks and cryptomerias; and to add to the beauty, all the undergrowth of andromeda had put out its young leaves in many shades of color; as Chaucer says, “Some very red, and some a glad light green.” One glade particularly attracted me: a tiny clear stream wound along through the brilliant grasses, and the trees which covered the steep banks on each side of this little meadow were completely overgrown with the vines, and smothered with their blossoms. This too was a quiet spot, out of the track of tourists and pilgrims, and it was a blessed relief to work without a gazing crowd; the only passers were a few women and children collecting firewood or gathering the young fern shoots which were sprouting through the grass. These are cut just as they begin to unroll, and when they are boiled and flavored with soy, they are really quite good to eat, at least one thinks so in Japan.

The wistaria blossoms were almost gone when I decided that though there was still plenty to be done in Nara, it would be better to try some new sketching-ground, and having heard of a tea-house with a fine old garden at Hikone, on the shore of Lake Biwa, I determined to move on there for my next venture. I packed all my belongings, and made arrangements for the journey next morning, and then walked once more round the park and the temples, gazing regretfully at all the good things which still remained to be sketched, and climbed Mikasa Yama, a steep grassy hill behind the park, which on fine days is dotted all over with picnic parties. From its summit there is a great view over the plains round Nara, with the Kizugawa, a good

broad stream, winding through them. The grassy ridges and the few wind-beaten pines which grow on them made a fine foreground, and the little green gullies were spotted with low azalea bushes covered with flame-colored flowers. It was too good to leave, and I ought to have unpacked again and prolonged my stay for a few days; but laziness prevailed, the bore of repacking seemed intolerable, and to my lasting remorse this subject remained unpainted.