Part 14

The heat was still intense even in the night, within fifty yards of the sea; we went down to the quay and hired a boat with man and boy, to drift out into the hazy moonlight. The boy did the main part of the work: we lay in the boat, seeing nothing but this little body, and the flapping of its garments, and everything else a vague space of lightened shadow. We rowed or sculled far away, came near to a shore where there was a tea-house, for women opened its closed sides and, revealed by their lanterns, came down and called to us. But we pulled off and later, in a far-off ocean with no shore nor sky, came across a little summer-house built on piles, through which the volume of the sea pressed and recoiled. Nothing could be more abandoned, more improbable. There was nothing in sight. Had we entered the little pavilion, and moored our boat or let it float away, we might have felt as if out in the distant sea. We were the center of a globe of pearl; no edges nor outlines of anything visible, except a faint circular light above, from which the pearly color flowed tremulously, and a few wrinkles of silver and dark below; no sound but a gentle sway of water. And we came home, having had the sense of the possibility of intense isolation in a fairyland of twilight.

AT SEA, OFF IZU, September 3.

We sailed this morning on the French steamer. It is now quite late in the afternoon. The Pacific keeps its blue under us, and a blue sea haze separates us from the violets and greens of the mountains of the shore, behind which the light is slowly sinking. All is gentle and soothing; but our captain says that he is not sure, and that "_hors d'Izu nous aurons la houle du Pacifique_." While waiting for this long, angry roll, I shall tell you about yesterday, of which there was little--for we had undertaken too much.

We left rather too late, and drove a good way in the foggy morning, passing much culture, and under many trees, of all of which I remember little. It was late when we stopped to breakfast at the little inn from which we were to be taken by _kuruma_, first to the big statue of Buddha, then wherever we might have time to go. We left the place, and reached the hollow between hills where the statue dwells, after passing through a curious deep cutting right through the rocks, which marks some old approach to the former city; for these hollows and fields were once covered by a great city, the city of Kamakura, the city of Yoritomo, and the great statue now out of doors was once in a temple of that city. Places are shown you in the dells: this was where was once the mansion of such a hero, here was that of the administrators of the military rule in the fifteenth century; here stood the palace where, with his two hundred and eighty last followers, such a one retired to perform harakiri, and perish in the flames, when overwhelming forces had captured the great city which was once the other capital of Japan. Trees and ordinary culture cover these spaces now.

And here was the temple. Sixty-three pillars supported its roof, and many of their bases are still there. But a great inundation from the sea, now some miles distant, destroyed the temple and its adjacent buildings. This happened as far back as the end of the fifteenth century, and the temple has not been rebuilt. The desire of Yoritomo to see the great statue made during his lifetime was not granted; but one of his waiting-ladies, after his death, collected the necessary funds, and it appears to have been cast in 1252 by Ono Go-rō-ye-mon. I know nothing about him, but if he be the artist, it is pleasant to record his name. The image is made of bronze cast in pieces brazed together and finished with the chisel. It is nearly fifty feet high as it sits; and if these points help you to its size, learn that its eyes, for instance, are four feet long, the length across its lap from knee to knee is thirty-five feet, and the circumference of the thumb is fully three feet. But these measures, though they show a large scale and great size, do not indicate a proportion, as we should understand it. The whole modeling is for effect, and the means and methods of the modeling are simple and elementary. Like all work done on archaic principles, the main accentuations are overstated, and saved in their relations by great subtleties in the large surfaces. It is emphatically modeled for a colossus; it is _not a little thing made big_, like our modern colossal statues; it _has always been big_, and would be so if reduced to life-size.

We saw it first from the side through trees, as we ran rapidly to the front, where are a temple gate, and a long courtyard still in order, that leads up to the statue. From the side one can see how it bends over, and rough as it is from behind, the impression of something real was strong as its gray form moved through the openings of the trees. The photographs must long have made you know it, and they also show the great base and the immense temple ornaments that stand upon it at the feet of the statue. They show also the little lodge at the side, where the priest in attendance lives, and gives information, and sells photographs and takes them, and generally acts as showman. We took many photographs from new points of view, and we even removed the thatch of a penthouse so as to get nearer and under the statue to the side; and I painted also, more to get the curious gray and violet tone of the bronze than to make a faithful drawing, for that seemed impossible in the approaching afternoon. We did not know how long a time we had spent lingering about it. The clouds had begun to open, and a faint autumnal light filled the little hollow, which has only small trees, and no imposing monuments like the great cryptomeria, which alone might seem fit to grow about here. All, on the contrary, was gentle and small--the lines of the hills, the trees, the garden plants about us: we might have been anywhere. Perhaps it is just as well; the whole impression comes from the statue, with the only objection or detraction that we can get near enough to it to see the mechanism, the means, and details of its expression. An accident, the breaking of its prison temple by a great cataclysm of nature, a great wave of the sea coming far inland and destroying the great building, has given to the statue something that it could never have had to the physical eye--in the degree it has now. Now, freed from its shrine, the figure sits in contemplation of entire nature, the whole open world that we feel about us, or its symbols--the landscape, the hills, the trees and fields, the sky and its depths, the sunshine playing before the eyes of the seated figure, the air in which dance all the things that live in air, from the birds that fly to the atoms of dust, and the drifting leaves and blossoms, the confusion or the peace of the elements, the snow in crystals, and the rain in drops. All this world of ours, which to the contemplative mind is but a figurative fragment of the universe, lies before the mental gaze of the Buddha. Unwinking, without change of direction, he looks forever; his will is forever subdued and held beneath him, as his fingers pressed together indicate his freedom from all the disturbances of that past of being which is subject to time and change, and his cognition, undisturbed, envelops and images the universe in final contemplation.

Astounding success of the artist in what he has really done, for there is no trace of means; the sum of realism is so slight, the conventional has so great a part; each detail is almost more of an ornament than of a representation. One almost believes that the result may be partly accidental: that, as one cannot fathom the reason of the expressiveness of a countenance, or of the influence of a few musical notes, even though one knows the mechanism, so it seems difficult to grant that there was once a choice in the other mind that caused it, that there were once many paths opened before it.

And still more do I believe that the accident of the great tempest has given a yet more patent and subtle meaning to the entire figure. Once upon a time its details, indeed, if not its entirety, must have looked more delicate in the reflected light of the temple building, when the upper part of the figure was bathed in mysterious gloomy light, while the lower glittered in answer to the openings of the doors. But could anything ever have rivaled the undecidedness of this background of veiled sky and shifting blue, which makes one believe at times that the figure soon must move? As one looks longer and longer at it, with everything around it gently changing, and the shadows shifting upon its surface, the tension of expectation rises to anxiety. The trees rustle and wave behind it, and the light dances up and down the green boughs with the wind; it must move--but there is no change, and it shall sit forever.

As we left, and I walked down the long pavement in front of the statue, in the early autumn sunshine and the rising freshness of the wind, I turned again and again, each time with the realization that the statue was still sitting, until we turned out of sight, a vague, unreasonable sense of having left it alone accompanying me, until other, different, light, and gay impressions broke the influence and allowed me to think of what I had seen as a work of art, such as I could understand and decompose--and, if I wished, make also.

And we lunched at Hase, near by, and from the comfortable inn could see on the gray hill above the temple of Kuwannon, and its red buildings and balustrades. After a very long lunch, we walked up to the temple, and from the platform in front looked toward the afternoon sea right before us, and the plain of Kamakura. Then we entered, and were taken in behind the great screen doors to a narrow but high place--lighted only from the little entrance--wherein stood right by us and over us a standing figure of the divinity, all golden in the dark. It is over thirty feet high, and whether it be great art or not,--for the darkness was too great to judge of form,--the glitter of a smile of gold far up above our heads, in the obscurity of the roof, was an impression that, even so near to the great statue out of doors, remains distinct. It was late afternoon; we dared look at no more statues, nor at relics of warriors of Kamakura, and started for the beach, partly with the hope of seeing Fuji behind us. But all was veiled in the sky; we walked along the beach, our _kurumas_ dragging behind us, and crossed a little stream, and while A---- bathed in, and thereby took possession of, the Pacific, I walked up the sand-hills toward the little village at the end of the strand. As I came near it, an unfortunate distorted being, scarred with some leprous disease, plunged toward me in the twilight from some vague opening in the hills, and begged piteously, following me afterward with a thankful wail of "O Danna San! Danna San! Danna San!" that I hear yet. We reëntered our _kurumas_ and drove in triumph to the inn of the little village. I say in triumph: _I_ drove in triumph, observed of all observers--I had my usual costume and was clothed. A----, rather than wait to get dry, rode along with only a partial covering of _yukatta_, and attracted no attention. Had he had nothing on at all, he would have been still more in keeping with many of our neighbors. Night was falling, nothing more could be done; we got back to our carriage and horses, and drove back in the warm darkness to Yokohama. And I close as we begin to feel the roll, "_la houle du Pacifique_."

[9] The gentry, the old Samurai, however, still constitute the governing class to-day apparently, and the aristocratic spirit stands in the way of indiscriminate rise of the plebeians.

KIOTO

September 16.

We came into Kioto from Osaka, by rail, one fine afternoon. I had a half-childish hope of being surprised, a memory of days when, a boy, I read of the great forbidden city. Only a few years ago it was still forbidden, and now the little respectable car was hurrying us there as prosily as older life translates the verse of our early dreams. We were in September heat and glare. We passed over wide spaces of plain, edged by sharp mountains, looking hot and barren; through great plantations and stretches of green, with here and there a temple half hidden,--and over dried river-beds.

The station closed all views on our arrival, and the sudden transfer to streets showing no European influences was as if we had passed through a city's walls.

The first sensation was merely the usual one of a whirl through innumerable buildings, low, of wood, and more or less the same; extremely wide streets, all very clean; many people; a great bridge across the stony bed of a river almost dry; then some trees and little gardens and corners of temples with heavy roofs, as we turned through little roads and drove up to the gate of the hotel inclosure, which is placed on the edge of the outside hills and looks down upon Kioto. We were high up, in rooms, looking over trees just below; next to us the corner of temple grounds that rounded away out of sight.

Early on most mornings I have sat out on our wide veranda and drawn or painted from the great panorama before me--the distant mountains making a great wall lighted up clearly, with patches of burning yellow and white and green, against the western sky. The city lies in fog, sometimes cool and gray; sometimes golden and smoky. The tops of pagodas and heavy roofs of temples lift out of this sea, and through it shine innumerable little white spots of the plastered sides of houses. Great avenues, which divide the city in parallel lines, run off into haze; far away always shines the white wall of the city castle; near us, trees and houses and temples drop out occasionally from the great violet shadows cast by the mountain behind us. Before the city wakes and the air clears, the crows fly from near the temples toward us, as the great bell of the temple sounds, and we hear the call of the gongs and indefinite waves of prayer. Occasionally a hawk rests uneasily on the thin branches below. Then the sun eats up the shadows, and the vast view unites in a great space of plain behind the monotony of the repeated forms of the small houses, broken by the shoulders of the roofs and pagodas of many temples. But near us are many trees and tea-houses and gardens, and we are as if in the country.

We have worked conscientiously as mere sightseers until all is confused as with an indigestion of information. I could hardly tell you anything in a reasonable sequence, for in and out of what I go to see runs a perpetual warp of looking at curios, of which occupation I feel every day disgusted and ashamed, and to which I return again as a gambler might, with the hope of making it all right with my conscience by some run of luck. This began on our very first day, when at our first visit to an excellent merchant, for whom we had letters, we spent the hours after dinner looking at the bric-à-brac brought together for our purchase or amusement. We had had the presentation and disappearance of the ladies of the house after their customary genuflections; and a European dinner, waited upon, in part, by lesser clients of our entertainer. Meanwhile his one little girl sat beside him, half behind him, and occasionally betrayed her secret love for him by gently pressing his leg with the sole of her little stockinged foot. Japanese children are one of the charms of Japan, and this one is a type of their stillness; her sweet, patient face watching the talk of the elders, no change in her eyes revealing anything, but the whole person taking everything in--the little delicate person, which disappeared in a dress and sash not unlike her elders', except for color. Then there was a visit to another merchant, in the oldest house of the city, built low, so that none might perchance look down upon the sovereign lord's procession. Display of family relics--marriage gifts and complete _trousseaux_ of the past; marriage dresses of the same time, symbolical in color,--white, red, and finally black. We are told to notice that the gold and silver fittings of precious lacquers are wanting, because many years ago some sumptuary edict of the Tokugawa government suddenly forbade the display or use of the precious metals in excess--a gradation to be determined by inspecting officials--for persons who, like merchants, should not pretend to pass a certain line.

Then, owing to other letters, we have paid our devoirs to the governor, and called, and subsequently received the polite attentions of his intelligent secretary. Under his guidance we visit the School of Art and see boys sketching, and enter rooms of drawing devoted respectively to the schools of the North and the South.

And we visit the school for girls, where the cooking-class is one bloom of peach-like complexions, like a great fruit-basket; where the ladylike teacher of gymnastics and child etiquette wears divided skirts; where the rooms for the study of Chinese classics and history contain a smaller number of fair students, looking more reasonable and much paler; and where, on admiring in the empty painting-class a charming sketch of Kioto wharves, like the work of some lesser Rico, I am told that the fair artist has disappeared--married, just as if it had happened with us at home. But with a difference worth weighing gravely, for our guide and teacher informs me that the aim of this education is not to make girls independent, but rather to make more intelligent and useful daughters, sisters, or wives. And in this old-fashioned view I come to recognize the edges of a great truth.

Then temples, for Kioto is a city of temples; and every day some hours of hot morning have been given to visits, all of which make a great blur in my mind. The general memory is impressive and grand; the details run one into the other.

Thus we are paying dear for sightseeing, but it is impossible to set aside the vague curiosity which hates to leave another chance unturned. And when again shall I return, and see all these again? Now, however, all is associated with heat and glare, and with the monotony of innumerable repeated impressions, differing only in scale. Still, probably, when I shall have left I shall recall more clearly and separately the great solemn masses of unpainted wood, for which early forests have been spoiled; the great size of their timbers, the continuous felicity of their many roofings, the dreary or delicate solemnity of their dark interiors, the interminable recurrence of paintings by artists of the same schools; the dry and arid court-yards, looked at, in this heat of weather, from the golden shadows, where are hidden sometimes lovely old statues, sometimes stupid repetitions; images of the whole race of earlier shoguns; the harsh features of the great Taiko Sama, the sleek and subtle face of the great Iyéyasŭ, or the form of K'wan-on, carved by early art, leaning her cheek on long fingers; or noble, tapestried figures, rich in color and intensity of spotting, painted by the Buddhist Cho-Den-Su....

I should like to describe the temple ceilings, in which are set the lacquered coffers of the war junk of Taiko, or of the state carriage of his wife....

I have sketched in his reception hall, peopled to-day only by specters of the past--with gilt and painted panels on which may have looked the great Iyéyasŭ, who was to succeed him, and the blessed Xavier, and the early Jesuits, and the chivalric Christian lords who were to die on great battlefields. And close to a great room, where many monks bent over peaceful books, the little closet, with dainty shelves, in which Taiko looked at the heads of his dead enemies, brought there for inspection.

And we have gone up into the plain little pavilion, sacred to the ceremonies of tea-drinking, where the rough and shrewd adventurer offered to grim, ambitious warriors, as honorific guerdon for hard service, the simple little cups of glazed clay that collectors prize to-day.

I run over these associated details, because certainly the question of the great buildings is too weighty for my present mood. But the greater part of the romance of Japan is called up at every moment by what we see just now.

At Uji, among the tea gardens, we stopped on our way to Nara, the older capital, to see the temple of Bio-do-in and its "Phœnix hall," built in wood, that is now over eight hundred years old; its statues; its half-defaced paintings of the "Paradise in the West"; its high, dusty ceiling, inlaid with mother-of-pearl; and its sweet-toned bell.

And we saw the legendary bow of Yorimasa, which you will recall with me whenever you see a picture of the bow of the moon, across which flies the Japanese cuckoo. It was here that he defended Uji bridge, with a forlorn hope, against the army of the Taira, that his prince might have time to escape; and here, at Bio-do-in, while his last followers kept off the rush of the enemy, Yorimasa ran himself through with his sword, as a final duty paid to the honor of Japan.

On this side of the bridge, as I walked up other temple steps, hedged in by trees, with our friend Oye-San, the violet butterflies and blue dragon-flies crossed our path in every bar of sunshine.

At the monastery of Kurodani, on the edge of the mountain near us, are shown the graves of Nawozane and of the young Atsumori, whom he killed in battle. We are shown the portrait of the victim, painted in sorrow by the victor, and the pine-tree still stands upon which the warrior hung his armor when, tormented by remorse, he carried out his vow of never more bearing arms, and sought this place to enter religion and pray for the soul of the youth he had unwillingly slain. Strange flower of human pity, blooming out of the blood of civil wars like some story of Italy in the coeval day of St. Francis.

At that time the great war of the Genji and the Heike was devastating Japan, and in 1184, in a great battle by the sea, Yoshitsune, the hero of romance of Japan, serving his brother Yoritomo, whose story I told you at Nikko, defeated the Heike, and the "death of Atsumori" took place. This delicate boy, a prince of the Heike, scarcely sixteen years old, met in the battle the veteran Nawozane. Atsumori had fought bravely on the shore, having at first fled, and then returned, forcing his horse through the water. The greater strength of the older man prevailed, and the child fell under the blows of the powerful man-at-arms. When Nawozane disengaged his enemy's helmet, intending to take off the usual trophy of a head, the sight of the youthful face recalled his own son slain in battle, and he hesitated in inflicting on other parents a suffering like his own. But if he did not kill him others would, and his reputation would be endangered. He killed him, Atsumori bravely meeting death, and bore off the terrible trophy. Then, in the revulsion of remorse, he vowed himself to a religious life; he restored to Atsumori's father the son's fair head and his armor, and, going to Kioto, became a disciple in religion of the holy Hónen Shónin, the founder of Kurodani; and there, near its lovely garden, are the tombs of the man and of the boy.