Kakemono

The Sea of Japan, as it wandered down the western coast, took a sudden and unexpected bite out of the land of Izumo; and that bite is the bay of Kizuki. It is the tiniest of bays, with but half a mile of sandy shore between the two steep lines of hills that run straight out to sea: green hills that stretch so far, the green has time to grow a misty blue before they curve toward the water in a deep blurred line. Landwards a length of sandy dune shuts out the village street; and the little bay, set between the hills, and cut off from the sea, lies like an ebbing lake.

On the sandy shore it is still and cool; and from the dozens of Japanese families comes only the high pitched laughter of the playing children. Kizuki is the Margate of the West, and the pilgrims who journey to its shrine stay to breathe its sea air, and combine a religious pilgrimage with a summer holiday in a manner so usual in Japan.

The big hotel under the great north wall of green, with its ground floor, and, wonder of wonders, two, yes—two storeys, is full. So full that the landlord was forced to tuck away his distinguished guests in a back room of the old inn up the village street. The square two-storied house, with all its shōji pushed back and the contents and occupants of every room exposed to public view, looks for all the world like a big doll’s house with the door gone. And its inhabitants eat, drink, play, laugh, sing with the natural unconcern which we could only reach secure behind brick walls, curtained windows, and venetian blinds. The unconcern is so simple, so unaffected, that the Yokohama foreigner, feeling dimly that his own behaviour could never be so natural under such conditions, suspects “play acting,” and will sometimes speak of a “nation of mountebanks” with the scorn of a man among monkeys.

The hotel is built just where the blue beyond of the Western Sea, glowing between the headlands, draws eye and mind away, adding the unbroken curve of Infinity to the quiet lake’s rounded life.

The sun has set; perhaps behind that great green wall he still drops swiftly to the horizon, but in Kizuki there is twilight, a luminous grey twilight that has no shadows, which, spreading, blots all colour from the world. Between wall and wall of hill the sky stretches clear and green. The bay is flooded with a golden light. And there, a black line from gold to green, its base in the yellow water, its crest on the sunset sky, stands Kizuki’s second wonder, the third beauty of Izumo—a tall pointed rock. For the Japanese, who seek much more for line than colour in their beauty, glory in its curves; and the little bay of Kizuki owes its visitors not to the purity of its air, its fishing, boating, bathing, or casino, but to the beauty of its solitary rock and the nearness of its sacred temple.

From shore to sky the luminous grey twilight climbs. The flood of golden light is dead. The great green walls that make the bay are dark. Only in the sky the faintest stain of colour lingers; and there the rock’s lone crest blots a black line upon the dying green.

My kurumaya, in his long parson’s coat and waistcoat, blanched the purest white, asks if I have ever seen a bay more beautiful. And all the dozens of Japanese families stand looking out to sea, for the cult of the stone is in their hearts.

Slowly the luminous twilight draws the world in Chinese ink. It climbs the sky, and the colour dies; only the sombre lines of rock are left.

The little bay is grown a mystic kakemono.