Landscape and Life in Japan.

New Zealand Illustrated Magazine, Volume 1, Issue 10, 1 July 1900, Page 51

Landscape and Life in Japan.

By W. Gray Dixon, M.A.,

Sometime Professor of English in the, Imperial College oi Engineering, Tokyo. Author of The Land of the Morning.

[continued]

§OVING inland from the fishing villages and the long towns that bead, as it were, the highways on the seaboard, we take note of the farmhouses and the monasteries and the castles. It is at once evident that this land bears the impress of ancient feudal and ecclesiastical systems, and that this impress heightens vastly the natural picturesqueness of the land. It is a land of a romance strangely parallel to that . of mediaeval Europe, tlie Buddhist community corres-, ponding to the Catholic Church, and the feudalism with which Buddhism was allied, and even at times, in the case of warlike prelates, identified, so developed as to be pronounced by good authorities the most elaborate the world has seen. Blending with the natural sunshine of this bi'ight land is the soft, sweet, mystic Light of Asia, keeping watch with its mountain fastnesses are the white curving-eaved towers of its many castles of chivalric fame.

Descending a mountain pass, a lush green plain opens to the eye, flat as a chess-board and ohequored like a chess-board with rice

fields. In the middle distance cluster tho buildings of the provincial capital, and central and conspicuous among them tho towers, white above the grey battlements of the castle, rivalled only by the pagodas and marquee-like roofs of the temples. Beyond rises a blue background of mountains. Farmhouses and villages are- packed cozy in clumps of -wooding, and around the temples are dense groves, and Far Eastern pines stretch their arms over the castle moat. The Castle of Yedo has a spiral moat at least ten miles long 1 , spanned until lately by forty-eight bridges, and with embankments sometimes forty or fifty feet deep ; some of tho blocks of granite in the battlements of Osaka Oastle measure twenty to forty-two feet in length by fifteen to twenty in width and six or eight in thickness.

Occasionally a feudal keep appears, not on the middle of a plain, but high on a rock among the forest heights, whore the waterfalls glance like spears, and tho mountain stream marches to its perennial music far beneath. And marvellously picturesque are the monasteries that we pass in our wanderings among the hills. A rush into tho ears of the trilling of insects, a deepened flavour of the incense of pine, a dappling of the path

ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE.

with denser shadows, and we see that "we have come upon one of those retreats of the seekers of Nirvana. The rich dull red of the consecrated buildings shows exquisitely against the dense vivid green of the trees, with the bronze fittings and the slaty and white tiles or grey layers, thick as thatch, of shingles, and the matchless curving of the roof. The five tiers of the pagoda hung with tiny bells in token of the music of the spheres emerge partially behind the inter-

his most famous sequences to the dictation of just such another water-wlieel weirdly musical among the mountains. In an open tower hangs the great tnonastory bell : it may be anything up to seventy tons in weight ; and when it lings, struck from without by a soi't of battering ram, its mellow roar seems to shake the whole valley.

If it be a shrine of the indigenous cult of Japan, Shintd, that we pass, the approach to the much plainer and more primitive

DAIBUTSU AT KAMAKURA.

vening layers of pine boughs, and the screw-like finial pierces the sky. Stepping along the broad slabs that pave the approach, we note a dim light burning before the altar, incense blends with the fragrance of the pines; and there fLo'Mb forth a chant in bones which we might almost call Gregorian. Down in the valley a water-wheel slowly give& forth the notes, d : —: — | t : \ t : — |d : t | l,\: — : — , and we think of Notker, the monk of St. Gall, who composed one of

Vol. I.— No. 10.-56.

structure is spanned by that variety of portal peculiar to Japan known as a torii. Tho torii consists of two upright, slightly converging pillars, crossed at the top by a beam curving at the ends, a little below which is another beam let into the pillars. Sometimes a torii forms a frame for the view of a distant sacred mountain. Thus have I looked from the top of a pass right .across the province of Hida to the White Mountain of Kaga.

The roofs of the cottages, too, are retried and picturesque and congenial to the scenery. There are steep, thatched roofs, with eaves projecting over the gables like those of temples. There are broad roofs, sloping only slightly, but projecting well over the walls and covered irregularly with stones

seldom more than two storeys high, but in the valleys of Kaga in Western Japan I have seen them of three, or four, doubtless on account of the heavy winter snowfall. 3?or the same reason I have seen thatched roofs with two and three storeys of attics. Many a stirring and romantic scene have

like the roofs of chalets in Switzerland. Perphed above, .rivers under the forest steeps, villages with roofs of this type look exceedingly pioturesque, especially when decked with the banners, of the many guilds of pilgrims w,ho : tra^ersej them in t-he satumer months on ijheirway to th,e» sacred sutnmits. These cottages are generally .pne^to^y, and

these hills and valleys witnessed in the days of old Japan. Processions of barons -with their twq-sworded retainers emerged from barbicans. Swash-bucklers traversed the mpuntain passes. Castles were besieged and even monasteries, as, for example, that of Hiyei-zan, three thousand feet . above the imperial city of Ky6to, whose warlike monks

defied even the Emperor to subdue them. Feudal times are now gone, gone for Japan more completely in some respects than for England, so drastic has been the recent revolution. Man's ways have changed, have become — must we not confess it? — somewhat vulgarized by the commercialism that has

The landscape is but little modified. The impress of the so recent, if much discarded, feudalism is all-pervasive. Not all the castles have been dismantled, and those dismantled are beautiful in death. The temple bell still blends with the rumble of the waterfall. The peasants sing at thoir

displaced the old feudalism ; but nature remains as before. As a Japanese poet of the tenth century sang :

work in the valley as they have sung for two thousand years. Strings of pack-horses round the corners of the passes as of old, the happy deferential driver dismounting, in respect for the European stranger as >in former days for the two-sworded samurai. Landlords bow their visitors from, abroad to the handsome apartments formerly reserved

" No, no ! As for man, How his heart is none can tell, But the plum's sweet flower In my birthplace, as of yore, Still emits the same perfume."

for noblemen and gentlemen in the village inns with much of the old-time courtesy. The geisha still twang the samisen and sing in tremulous nasal falsetto in the hotels built about the many hot springs. Silk factories have not altogether withdrawn the good wife from her spinning wheel in the cottage open to the village street. Troops of pilgrims in white brush aside the long bamboo grass, pace the avenues of pine and cryptomeria, view with veneration the vast

deeds in battle, of gentlest courtesy in peace, is far from dead, and, even when the exigencies of modern life give it a new form, must continue to express itself to the lasting glory of tliis ancient and attractive people. The recent war concerning Korea, which was a singular parallel to what had happened just three centuries before, awoke the whole world in surprise at the spirit of immemorial Japan. And as for the ancient art of the country, it might almost be said

cone of Fuji-san closing the forward vista, pause and drone their prayers before wayside images of the benign Buddha, banter the pretty waitresses in the tea-houses and village inns, toil in zig-zag course up the lava slopes, and ranged on the summit of their country above the clouds at eai'ly dawn — white against the blue — greet the rising sun with a psalm.

However it may be with a few in the open ports, the Yamato-damashii, the spirit of Yamato, the Japan of chivalry, of doughtiest

that there is hardly a home in Christendom that is without traces of it, that docs not in some degree help to perpetuate the impress of the Japanese landscape and life,

At frequent intervals on the Japanese highways one is tempted to halt by attractive booths where winsome nesan or waitresses dispense tea and sweetmeats. These reßthouses are often most picturesquely situated at vantage-points in the course of a mountain pass. Emerging from a forest and straining up a zig-zag to a natural platform high

above the trees, nothing can delight one more than to see one of these places of refreshment with its tidy matted platforms,

its rows of brilliant flowers set in handsome porcelain pots, and its musical, graceful welcome from mine hostess.

Tea-drinking is quite a fine art in Japan. When Rikin, the most celebrated teacher of the art of tea-making, was asked by a pupil to state the objects of his art, he replied, " To make tea to suit the palate, to arrange charcoal to boil water, and to construct a house so as to ensure coolness in summer and warmth in winter." On hearing this, the pupil was disappointed, and said that if that were all he had no need to learn; whereupon the teacher rejoined, "Very well, I wish you to become my instructor." " Right, sir," cried a priest who sat near ; " a little child understands all you have said, but the most experienced man could not perfectly carry it oat in practice,"

Through the hospitality of the late Lord of Kuwana the writer had the privilege of being present at a cei'emonial tea-party. The house is situated on a hill commanding an extensive view of the flat city of T6kyo. It is thoroughly Japanese in oharaoter, although some innovations— such as clooks, carpets, or mirrors, to be seen in some of tho apartments— suggest foreign intercourse. At the entrance wo find a novel arrangement for announcing the arrival of guests : as soon as we step on the board in front of tho door, an electric bell is set in action. Having of course taken ofi our shoes, we are ushered into a room, entirely Japanese, with tho exception of some trivial details, such as a few small foreign pictures, when we are received by our host and hostess— tho former apparently between thirty and forty, the lattor not more than twenty-five. The lady has

considerable beauty, and is plainly bat richly dressed in silk, light brown prevailing. Both she and her husband have the long

clear-cut features characteristic of the aristocracy of Japan. Our host and hostess having left, we are conducted into a small room exclusively devoted to tea-drinking, and, as befits its purpose, of plain but neat appearance. One side consists of two recesses, one containing a censer emitting wreaths of sweet-smelling incense, the other a kakemono, or hanging

picture, with a fan-shaped pen-and-ink sketch. The side opposite this is occupied with the usual Japanese sliding windows ; and of the two remaining walls, one is bare, the other bavin-,' a small kakemono. Here we are received by one of our host's retainers, who bows his head to the floor as we enter. We squat in a semi-circle facing the mau, while he occupies himself in infusing tea,

performing every manipulation by rule and with the greatest care. On his right is a quaint brasier, the charcoal ashes of which are piled up into a miniature, Fuji-san, with one red ember glowing in its crater. Beside the brasier lies a dingy basket of plaited bamboo, from which the stove is occasionally replenished with a lump of charcoal. Crude and decayed as this basket appears to our eyes, it is no doubt of great value on account both of its history and of the evidences of high art which the initiated can detect in its marks and irregular lines. The tea leaves are in a venerable porcelain jar, the brown surface of which shines with a brilliant but uneven glaze. A bamboo scoop is produced from amid its wrappings of crimson silk, and a quantity of the leaves is measured out into a tiny teapot not more than an inch and a half in diameter. Water is then poured from the kettle into the teapot, which, notwithstanding its dimensions', seems to have a capacity quite magical, for from its spout there presently issues enough of a pale-green effusion to partly fill five little blue-and-white cups, each apparently almost as large as itself. The t^a is tepid, as the best tea in Japan should be, and very strong, but of a peculiarly mellow flavour.

The ceremony is that of sen-elia, or infused tea, one of the two methods of conducting the cha-no-yu or tea-clubs instituted by the IShogun, or Regent, Yoshimasa, in the fifteenth century. The whole scene is fascinating. It is quite a glimpse into old Japan. The quiet decorum in the little chamber, the sweet fragrance of the' crimson incense burning in the dimly-lighted recess, the sound of the fifes and stringed instruments upstairs discoursing weird minor runs and harmonies, and a glimpse, between, the window screens, of the quiet city lying beneath the moonlight, make up a scene as romantic as to our Western eyes it is strange.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]