Vol. I, Sect. IX. The “Ko-Ji-Ki”
A very famous book in Japan is named the “Ko-Ji-Ki,” and the word means “A Record of Ancient Matters.” We thought on our second morning as we walked through the hills that if there should happen to be a modern chronologist recording a present-time Ko-Ji-Ki those hours of the sun’s approaching meridian would be entered without dispute as The-Forever-Famous-Never-To-Be-Equalled-Day-Of-Fire. In the valleys there was no breeze; on the summits there was no shade; and everywhere it seemed probable that on the next instant the road would blister into molten heat bubbles under our feet. However—to anticipate—if such a postulated chronicler had so styled that second day of our walking as one without chance of peer among historical days of heat, on the very next following day he would have had to turn back to cross out his lines. In the burning glare of the rice fields, anything that had gone before was so easily surpassed that we forever lost belief in maximums, unless indeed kinetic energy might continue on such a wild rampage of vibration that it would shake itself completely out of existence.
Our first rest of the second day, as I said, was devoted to the arithmetic of finance. At that early hour the dew was not yet off the grass, but when we began planning for another rest the world had grown parched. Looking about for some possible spot we saw through the trees the roof of a small temple. We halted at the entrance and tried to push open the gate. It would not move. It was nailed to the ribs of the fence, but the gate was low enough to be vaulted. Our feet fell on the ghost of a path that had once led to the shrine. Harsh brambles and weeds had fought for the possession of the path until they had almost conquered the flaggings. If we thought at all we thought that that particular walk must have been abandoned for some other entrance and as the scratches were not very serious we pushed our way through until at last we stepped forth into the temple yard. Not a sign of caretaking devotion was anywhere in evidence nor was there a nodding priest sitting in the temple door.
Sometimes the Chinese desert their temples but, when incense is no longer burned before an altar, celestial practical sense leaves little that is movable behind. We slowly walked up the steps to the door, expecting to find the temple rifled. The door was sealed by spiders’ webs. We then walked around the balcony and peered through the wide cracks in the shogi. No fingers of man had rummaged there since the priests had said the last mass, but the fingers of decay had been busily working. The rotted fabrics hung down from the altars of the shrines and the ashes of the incense in the bronze bowls was hidden by the blacker dust which the wind had carried through the shutters. Surely we were the first intruders to step upon the balcony since the gate had been swung to and nailed.
We walked around the corners until we had seen everything that there was to see and then we jumped down to a grassy slope on the shady side of the temple and stretched ourselves out in relaxation. It was very quiet. As I knew O-Owre-san could sleep for ten minutes and then wake up to the instant, I closed one eye and then the other. They both came open together. I had felt a soft dragging across my ankles and I raised my head to see a very thin, long, green and grey snake raising its head up between my feet to stare into my face. After a beady inspection it wriggled away with slow undulations into the grass. And then, from the spot where that snake had taken passage over my ankles, came the head of another. I jerked my feet up under me.
The instant before there had been an oppressive quietness. The silence had been so supreme that we ourselves had scarcely spoken. Now there was a vast hurrying of little noises. Lizards ran along the rafters under the roof and dropped down the wall, as lizards do, to flatten themselves away into corners. Huge buzzing flies rose from the surface of the pond and bumped against us aimlessly. Mosquitoes came from the shadows. I had thrown my helmet on the grass. I picked it up to find it beset with ants. I tried to beat them out of the lining by pounding the hat against the side of the temple. The effort broke loose a roach infested board.
We grinned at each other a little shamefacedly when we were safely out into the sunshine of the highroad. We had not stayed to argue in the temple yard. As we stood thus vanquished and ejected, two peasants came passing by. They looked at us, then glanced hurriedly at the temple roof above the low trees, and then eyed us again. They mumbled a word or two. Perhaps they were trying to tell us that an accursed goblin had stolen over their shrine to be the abode of insects and crawling things. I was not so sure that I had not seen the glowing eyes of a goblin staring malevolently at us from the cracks of the shogi when I turned to look back over my shoulder as we fled.
For a long way my blood welcomed the sun. The road led down into a broad valley to become later little more than an interminable bridge across the terraced paddy fields. The rice had sprouted but had not grown rank enough to block the mirror surface of the water from throwing back the heat rays. Ahead were low-lying hills with higher slopes beyond and from the map we thought that over that barrier would be the broad plain across which we would find the road leading straight to Nagoya.
There was one ambition to luxury which we always possessed—when we chose a rest spot we wished one of comfort and, if it could be included, also that it should have a view. Curiously, owners of land do not seem to endeavour to provide such rest places for sensitive travellers, at least to be obtrusive at any exact second when desired. We had taken seven or eight miles across the valley at an unusually accelerated pace since our last attempt at a rest. Messages from the cords of our legs were telling us to concede some compromise to our particularity. However, we continued walking and searching without paying attention to the messages. The grass patches always disclosed little ant hills upon close inspection and the occasional heaps of stones to be found were never under the shade. That obstinacy of ours was of the stuff ambition should be, and finally its persistency met due reward. We found a wide, shady platform built against a long building, half house, half granary. The building flanked the road at a bend and as we made the turn we could see the family of the house lying on the floor. An old man was telling an elaborate story and his listeners were so intent upon the tale that none of them happened to look up to see us. The platform was out of their vision and we thought that we might rest there with the comfortable feeling that trespassing does not exist unless discovered.
The tale that was being told was undoubtedly humorous. The daughters of the family were hard struggling with laughter. The men were emphasizing their approval by pounding on the rim of the charcoal brazier with their iron pipes. All were repeating a continuous hei, hei. But there was a baby, and the baby was not so much interested in the story as he was in a butterfly. He suddenly betook himself to his dimpled legs and circled into the road in pursuit. The whims of the gyrations of the mighty hunter carried him to a spot where the next turn left him facing two foreigners on the platform. He stood with feet apart and carefully lifted the corner of his diminutive shirt to his mouth for more careful cogitation, as any Japanese child should and does do when confronted by a kink in the well-ordered running of affairs.
The mother called out an admonition but there was no response from the akambo. She left the story to find out what might be the enchantment. She, too, began staring without responding to admonitions. Another head bobbed around the corner post and then another and another until finally the teller of the tale himself forsook the realm of fancy for fact and followed after his audience. We said “O-hayo!”—which is good-morning—and they said “O-hayo!” After that their rigid attention included everything from our hats to our boots. Then in a body they walked back into the house and were quiet except for the most hushed of whispers.
“Two trespassing strangers are about to receive some mark of respect,” said O-Owre-san.
“Respect of being told to move on, most likely,” was my more worldly judgment.
“How about betting a foreign dinner to be paid in Yokohama before the boat sails?” asked O-Owre-san.
I took the wager, and lost.
The old man who had been the teller of the story now reappeared. He was somewhat embarrassed but at each step of his approach he had a still broader smile. He was short and he was thin, with lean, knotted muscles. His limbs had grown clumsy from heavy toil. His face was squat as if in his malleable infancy some evil hand had pressed his forehead down against his chin. One piece of cloth saved him from nudity. He was a coolie of generations of coolies, but despite his embarrassment and despite his clumsy limbs, the very spirit of graciousness created a certain grace as he placed a tray before us. He backed away with low bow succeeding low bow. The tray held a pot of tea and two cups and some thin rice cakes.
Good man, he fortunately never knew what an argument his gift precipitated! My opponent began it all by suggesting that we leave a twenty sen silver piece on the tray. I disputed.
“A cup of tea is of such slight cost to the giver,” was my eloquent and disputatious argument, “that by being of no price it becomes priceless and thus is a perfect symbol of a complete gift in an imperfect world. Japan has this tradition which we have lost in our own civilization. This simplicity allows the poorest and humblest to give a gift to the richest and mightiest in the purity of hospitality. If we leave money on the tray we are robbing the peasant of his privilege.”
O-Owre-san would have none of my transcendentalism. “By leaving money,” said he, “a sum which means no more to us than does the cup of tea to the peasant, we are making an exchange of gifts. We know that he is very poor. Twenty sen is probably more than the return for two days of his labour. It will buy him a pair of wooden geta or a new pipe, or a bamboo umbrella for his wife, or such a toy for the baby as it has never dreamed of. After giving our gift we shall disappear down the road, leaving the memory of two ugly but generous foreign devils.”
There was no dispute between us about wishing to leave some gift. The final compromise was somewhat on my side as we gave a package of chocolate to the child. We carried the chocolate for emergency’s sake and it had cost several times twenty sen. I do not believe that Japanese children like chocolate and there was more than a possibility that this highly condensed brand would make the baby ill. Surely the deposed gods of the ancient Tokaido must have made merry if the news of our analytics was carried to their Valhalla. Nevertheless our present, wrapped in a square of white paper according to the etiquette of gifts, was received by the family with as many protestations of appreciation as if we had handed them a deed to perpetual prosperity.
The rays of the forenoon’s sun when we were crossing the valley of the rice fields had sent up heat waves from the dust of the road until the road itself seemed to me to have a quaking pitch and roll. We were now in the full glory of the noontide. I was becoming somewhat disturbed over certain phenomena. Trees and rocks and houses fell into the dance of the heat waves with an undignified stagger. Sometimes the bushy trees reeled away in twos and threes where but a moment before I had seen but one. The most disconcerting part of the development was my peculiar impersonal interest and study of my own distress. I knew that my eyes were aching and I knew that the trees were really standing still. I had the perfect duality of being fascinated by the day and thus not wishing to be any place else in the world and yet, as I said, of being extremely disturbed by the preliminary overtures of a sunstroke. We had had about two hours of climbing since we left the house of the rice farmer and we were on the summit of the last high hills. Immediately ahead the rocky path dropped sharply down into the plain. A rest-house marked the point where the climbing changed to the descent. I suggested a halt.
The rest-house was more than a peasant’s hut. It was easy to believe that in more aristocratic days it had been an inn of some pretension. Now it was a spot for weary coolies to throw down their heavy packs for a few minutes’ rest in its shade by day or by night to curl up on the worn mats. We walked into the deepest recess of the entrance before we sat down. I could look beyond a half-folded screen into the kitchen. The polished copper pots and the iron and bronze bowls were not of this generation; probably to-morrow’s will find them on a museum shelf or cherished in some antique shop. However, I had no desire to discover curios nor did I have any preference whether the inn was old or new, nor whether it had been its fortune to entertain daimyos or pariahs. We first asked for something to drink. The hostess dragged up a bucket from the well and brought us bottles of ramune which had been cooling in the depths. I drank the carbonated stuff and then pushed my rucksack back along the mat for a pillow and closed my eyes for a half-hour’s blissful forgetfulness. When I awoke the throbbing under my eyelids had passed away and for the first time I really looked at our hostess. She was kneeling beside us and was slowly fanning our faces.
Her teeth were painted black, as was once the fashion for married women. She had known both toil and poverty, but it was not a peasant’s face into which I looked. Her thin fingers and wasted forearms found repose in the lines which the ancient artists were wont to copy from the grace of Old Japan. Her calm face was beautiful.
It was time that we should make our way down the rocky path. She brought us tea before we went. The bill for everything, as I remember, was about seven cents. We left a silver coin beside the teapot. She began to tell us that we had made a mistake. We told her no. Shielded by an unworldly, intangible delicacy, I doubt whether any rudeness of her guests ever became sufficiently real to her to disturb her passivity or her emotions, but such a guardianship presents a thin callous against sympathy. As we said good-bye a sudden sense of human mutuality smote the three of us, an experience of sheer bridging-over intuition which sometimes comes for a second.
The absolute relaxation had so marvellously driven out the devils from my eyes that I did not even tell O-Owre-san of my hallucinations. To make up for our lingering we pushed on through the villages without stopping to wander into temple grounds or to explore by-ways. Between a misreckoning of miles on our part and some misinformation which I gathered from a peasant, we reached the rather large town of Siki an hour earlier than we had hoped. As we strolled through the main street, we saw several inns which might well have given us comfortable shelter, but I sensed that the traveller at my side was waiting for some bubbling of inspiration. I kept silent, an expiation for having carried a disproportionate number of points that day. We continued walking. I could see the fringe of the first rice field ahead. My faith was beginning to waver but before I erred by showing it O-Owre-san stopped abruptly and inquired the Japanese word for inn. He then asked for one or two other words and adjectives. Thus armed he stepped into a shop, the appearance of which had perhaps been the stimulus to his inspiration.
The shop had glass windows and a glass door. It was the most metropolitan example of commercial progressiveness which we had seen since we left Kyoto. In fact, compared to the other shops of Siki it had as haughty an exclusiveness as any portal along New Bond Street seeks to maintain over possible rivals. Looking through the glass of the door we discovered that the floor was not covered with matting. Such a last touch of foreignism meant that one could walk in without taking off one’s dusty boots. I do not remember that we ever again found this detail of Western culture outside the port cities. In the heart of the most isolated mountain range the most lonesome charcoal burner knows three things about the foreigner: that he is hairy like the red fox; that he has a curious and barbarous custom known as kissing; that his boots are part of his feet.
Into this shop, then, O-Owre-san walked without having to undo his bootlaces. There was also an aristocratic glass counter and under the glass, in show trays, were gold watches. Behind this counter sat a young man in a kimono of black silk. His face was pale, ascetic, and contemplative. He smiled and bowed in formal hospitality. The grace of such a bow comes from centuries of saying yes instead of no. A cultured Japanese, almost any Japanese, never flatly contradicts unless to deny another’s self-derogatory statement. The iiye (used as “no”) is rarely heard and the carrying over of the omnibus hei, hei, or the more polite sayo, into the English yes often brings consternation to the Westerner seeking accurate information.
O-Owre-san said, “Please, good inn” (directly translated). As if the pale and ascetic seller of gold watches was accustomed daily to having perspiring foreigners with packs on their backs inquire for this information, he bowed again and smiled and said, “Hei, hei!” This time the hei, hei did mean yes. He drew his kimono tighter about his hips and adjusted his silken obi, and walked out of the shop with us. Apologizing for the necessity of going before, he piloted us through turns of the street to the gateway of an inn. Calling for the mistress he made a dignified oration of introduction, and backed away from our sight with innumerable appreciations for the honour of being asked to be of service.