THE LAND OF THE RISING SUN.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXV, Issue 38, 13 February 1904, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE LAND OF THE RISING SUN.

No. S. "See Xikko and die/ or. as a popular Japanese proverb puts it, "Do not use J the word magnificent until you have 1 seen Xikko." Nikko means "sunny splendour," although rainy weather is J its prevailing characteristic, but mud I and drizzle are forgotten amidst the beauty of its surroundings. It lies two thousand feet above the sea. embosomed in hills, ciad with evergreen trees to their summit. At the upper end of the ! village there comes a sudden dip into a ' ravine, through which the Daiza-gawa j foams and dashes. Formerly this stream [ was spanned by the sacred" Red Bridge. j but this, together with the one used by ordinary mortals, was washed away in the tremendous floods of last year. Crossing by a temporary bridge, one begins the ascent through a paved grove of cryptomerias. and passing by abroad which runs between a group of minor temple buildings to the right, and the summer residence of the young Imperial Princesses, and a public park, to the left, one reaches the granite torii. a iorm of gateway which is the sure index of approach to a Shinto temple. And now by a series of broad stone steps one rises from terrace to terrace, while each moment oik- is charmed by objects of ever-increasing beauty and splendour. The eye i≤ simply dazzled by this Acropolis of Japan. Xikko has been a sacred place to EJhintoists from the earliest days, and to Buddhists; ever since the eighth century, when a wise old Buddhist missionary from China visited it, and instead of declaring the Wind God an impostor, quietly annexed him as a ■"manifestation of Buddha." .Hence we find here, as throughout Japan, a "union of the churches." and the usual thing is to practise the rites of one religion during life, and be buried with the rites of mc other. But the group of magnificent building? to be seen at the present day ail centre round the tomb of the first great Shojun (the Emperor's rivall.Thye-Yasu. who extirpated Christianity from Japan, and was buried by his son on the tnp of the hill above Xikko in the year 1617. The crest of this family is a trefoil, and it is to bs '

seen on almost every beautiful building in Tokio as in Nikko. The Tokugawa seem to have been in art as well as statecraft the Medicis of Japan. Pagodas and holy water cistern, bronze and stone lanterns, temples and shrine for the sacred dance, all cluster several hundred feet below the ultimate goai, the tomb of the founder of the family, which stands high in the mountains, amidst the giant cryptomerias. All that is best in Japanese and Chinese art, form, and colour have been focussed in these buildings, and no poor -words of mine can convey a comprehensive lidea of the marvellous beauty and great j intricary of workmanship of groulps 1 (all carved in wood) of trees, birds, ; beasts, fishes, flowers, fruit, as well as i of children at play, and Chinese and Coi rean sages. The lower panels of the i outer cloister wall are carved entirely J with storks, ducks, geese-, and other ; waterfowl, in flight, standing on the I banks of streams, and lakes, or swimi ming and diving in the water. The harj mony of rich colour, added to the ex- : quisite beauty of form, one .must see to i comprehend. The only thing in the [ Western -world I can in the least degree compare to it is, strangely enough, i to be seen in Wales. Let any Xew Zea- ' lander bent on a Home trip visit the recently renovated Norman Castle of the late Marquis of Bute and he will : see coloured carvings on walls and ceil- | ings not unworthy of Xikko. On one ! white lacquered pillar, the chief gate- ; way, the pattern is upside-down, lest : the perfeutkn of the structure should excite the envy of the gods!! It is j called '"the evil averting pillar." I But glorious although these wonderful. ! struetur&s are. gleaming in purple and i gold, against the overarching green, it j is the human beings wandering to and i fro who chiefly interest mc. We tourj ists seem quite out of pla.ee as we toss our pence to the priestess of the sacred dance, or go through a mock service, as I observed some English people doing. So low is the church fallen that the priests perform for mere heretics for the sum of tenpenee. The congregation was choking with ill-concealed "laughter, and it pained mc as I recalled the scene' of a few moments before. A lady leading a little girl by the hand, and'folloxrecl ! by a train of attendants, had arrived I

at the principal temple. On seeing her the green-robed priests sprang v.'ith great alacrity to their feet, and while some took up positions by the sacred drum, others threw open the door of . the Holy of Holies, closed to all but to members of the Imperial family. The ; la-dy and. the child entered, and with great reverence went through a ceremony not unlike our Communion service, and on bended knee received cakes and cups of saki. Then the priests administered the same sacrament to the attendants, who, with faces toueh--1 ing the floor, were waiting in the outer temple. I noticed one of the women reverently folding up the little earthenware cup in a handkerchief to take home with her. The majority of the visitors are, however, apparently poor people, who are doing the round of the sacred mountains in pilgrimage, much as I have seen Roman, Greek and Armenian Christians ' do in their sacred places. But the gl°ry of the priesthood has departed, and nowadays the sightseer brings the larg- [ est revenues into the temple coffers. \ Materialism is professed by those Japa-; nese who wish to be considered up-to- j I date and in touch, as they fancy, with | European culture. Darwin and Haeck-1 el, and principally Nic-tsehe, are the' writers who chiefly influence educated men. although, as I hope to show later.! missionary effort is making plow but ' sure headvv-ay amongst the yonng. Just below the temple enclosure, along the banks of the river, flanked bj" the sacred mountain of Nantai-san, a long line of many hundred Buddhas stood for centuries in attitudes of severe contemplation. The popular story was that no j one could count them. But now the i river bank has crumbled away before ! the force of the persistent stream, and . instead of by hundreds the images may i now be counted by tens. Let us hope ' that in the long run this scene will be typical of the influence of Christian upon \ Buddhist religion. In Nikko the tourist hails from many lands, and in my little Japanese Euro- ' pean hotel within a week wp have had American, Chinese, German, French and English. On pleasure bent, they invariably call for the chief pleasure-makers —the Geisha singing and dancing girls. There are thirty thousand of these girls I

in the capital, and they are to be met with in every hotel and tea-house. I have been fortunate enough not to j see them in tourist fashion, but in real i Japanese style on an open-air stage, set up in the midst of the quaintest garden attached to the principal Japanese inn of the place. Of course, all the moveable -walls of the inn were drawn back, and, much as in the Chaucerian days in the old land, so the guests viewed the performances. In the garden itself the villagers were standing in a dense crowd. Arriving late, I was taken, by special favour, round by the open-air green room to a point of vantage, where I could see both before and behind the scenes. It was very curious to watch j the sphinx-like faces of the young girls relax when the curtain was down. Those who only saw them before the scenes | lost half the fun. The decorum of the j , dance, its dissimilarity to the boister- i ous ballet of the West, the long flowing robes, a pantomime which has been already too often described. I ; saw a peony, a cherry, a fan, and a : scarf dance: but within twenty minutes ; the whole thing grew monotonous, and 1 J shall never forget the horror of the! S music as the playing on the samisen, i interspersed with shrieks and unearthly noises is called. Miss "Chrysanthemum" >liss "Singing Leaf," Miss "First Happy," Miss "Singing Pine Tree," and the rest of the little ladies possess a certain quaint fascination. But decorous in every way as the performance was, I think I understand the young German j who. in my hearing, in reply to the | enquiry of the waitress as to I how he liked the Geishas, ex- j claimed, with Teutonic force, "I hate! them." Much the same feeling possess- \ ed mc when the other night we travel- i lers were kept awake by the shrill voice j of a Geisha who had been sent for by i a Chinese tourist to amuse him by turning night into day. Missionaries have often been accused of narrowness because they spoke with disfavour of the Geisha girl, hut let English - speaking tourists stay a few nights at a real Japanese inn, where walls have ears, or, more i strictly, where paper screens take the' place of walls, a.nd they will be compelled to admit that these young ladies are not under the careful chaperonage : travellers are usually made to believe. I