Alone With The Hairy Ainu Part 15

[Ill.u.s.tration: AINU BARK WATER-JUGS]

CHAPTER XVIII.

Nearing Civilisation.

Sappro, the present capital of Hokkaido, is a town of fairly large size, with wide streets intersecting each other at right angles. The Hokkaido-cho, a high red-brick building, the law courts, the _Kofikan_, the palace built for the Emperor, and used now as a kind of hotel, and the houses of officials, are the main buildings of the place. There are, besides, a sugar refinery, a hemp and silk factory, and a brewery, mainly supported by the Government. Neither of the first two were "flouris.h.i.+ng industries," and one of the factories, if I remember aright, had long ceased working, and the other was soon to follow suit.

The Government, I must say, have done their best to encourage and push on industries as well as agriculture in this district, but their efforts have produced but poor results. Machinery, which had been imported at great expense from England, America, Germany, and France, was left to rust and perish, and no private company seemed ready to continue the works. As a farming region the Sappro district has also proved more or less a failure from a financial point of view, though again the Government cannot but be highly praised for the money they have spent in trying to educate the people up to some kind of scientific, and therefore paying, method of agriculture. They have a large model farm of about 350 acres laid down in grain fields, as well as in meadows and pastures, stocked with cattle imported mainly from America. In the Toyos.h.i.+ra valley, south of the town, a cattle farm is in full operation, but it yields the Government a very poor return. However, the Government, I believe, only wish to teach the people foreign ways of agriculture, and expect no direct returns for the pains taken and the money sunk--so at least it would appear. Another colonial militia settlement is also found near Baratte, eight miles north of Sappro.

Regarding these settlements, it may prove interesting to transcribe the Imperial Ordinance No. 181, dated August 28th, 1890, by which they were brought into existence and the Tondens were built:--

ARTICLE 1.--Colonial Militia shall be composed of colonial infantry, cavalry, and colonial artillery and colonial military engineers, and shall be set apart for the defence of Hokkaido, where they shall be stationed.

ARTICLE 2.--The Colonial Militia shall be organised as soldiers, in addition to their ordinary occupation of farmers; shall live in military houses which shall be provided for them, and shall take part in military drill, in cultivation, and in farming.

ARTICLE 3.--The Colonial Militia shall also be composed of volunteers from cities and prefectures, and shall change their registered residence (_Houseki_) to Hokkaido, and live there with their families.

ARTICLE 4.--The term of service of Colonial Militia shall be twenty years: the service with the colours being three years, in the first reserve four years, and in the second reserve thirteen years.

Should a colonial militiaman be released from service during his term, owing to the attainment of the full age of forty years, or through death, or some other cause, a suitable male of the family shall be ordered to fulfil the remaining term of service. Such service may be remitted if there be no suitable male.

ARTICLE 5.--The Colonial Militia shall fulfil supplementary military service during ten years after the end of service in the second reserve, and shall be mobilised in time of war or other emergency.

ARTICLE 6.--The term of each stage of military service under Articles 4 and 5 shall be counted from April 1st of the year in which the soldier enters the Militia.

ARTICLE 7.--The terms may be prolonged, even though the period for each stage has fully elapsed, should war or other emergency, or the requirements of military discipline, or the inspection of soldiers (_kwampei-s.h.i.+ki_) demand the same, or should the soldier be then in transit from or to, or be stationed in, a foreign country.

SUPPLEMENTARY RULES:--

ARTICLE 8.--Colonial Militia enlisted before the carrying out of these regulations shall be treated according to the following distinctions:--

(_a_) Those enlisted between the eighth year of Meji and the sixteenth year of Meji shall serve in the first reserve during four years and in the second reserve during nine years.

(_b_) Those who were enlisted between the seventeenth year of Meji and the twentieth shall serve in the first reserve during four years from the twenty-fourth year of Meji, and in the second reserve after the lapse of the above period during twenty years, reckoned from the year in which they were enlisted.

(_c_) Those who were enlisted in the twenty-first year of Meji shall serve in the first reserve during four years from the twenty-fifth year of Meji, and in the second reserve after the lapse of the above period during twenty years, reckoned from the year in which they were enlisted.

(_d_) Those who were enlisted in and after the twenty-second year of Meji shall be treated in accordance with these regulations.

ARTICLE 9.--The mode of reckoning the terms of service of Colonial Militia levied before the twenty-first year of Meji shall be in accordance with Article 6 of these regulations. The term of service with the colours of those levied in the twenty-second and twenty-third years of Meji shall be counted from the day on which they were included in the Colonial Militia, and their term of service in the first and second reserves from the day next to the lapse of the full term of the former service.

ARTICLE 10.--These regulations shall come into force on and after the first day of the fourth month of the twenty-fourth year of Meji.

(Colonial Militia.) Imperial Ordinance No. 181.

We hereby give our sanction to the present amendment of the regulations relating to Colonial Militia, and order the same to be duly promulgated.

(His Imperial Majesty's sign-manual), Great Seal.

Dated August 29th, 1890.

(Countersigned) COUNT OYAMA IWAO, (Minister of State for War).

(_j.a.pan Daily Mail_, September 14th, 1890.)

Sappro was a civilised place compared to others I had seen in Yezo; but it had neither the picturesqueness, nor the strangeness, nor yet the interest of more uncivilised spots.

There is no doubt that savagery--when you have got accustomed to it--is a great deal more fascinating than civilised life, and infinitely more so than a base imitation of civilisation.

It might have been thought that after the months of privation to which I had been subjected, after all the hara.s.sing experiences I had gone through, after the accident which had made the last thirty days of my journey so agonising, I should have been glad to rest in this "London"

of the Ainu country, at least until I was well again. But in truth this indirectly reflected civilisation worried me. The bustle of the people, the lights in the streets, the sounds of the _Shamesen_--everything annoyed me.

His Excellency the Governor, Mr. Nagayama, kindly called on me, and when I put on some decent clothes which were lent me, he drove me to his house, where I had a lengthy conversation on the future of Yezo and the Kurile Islands. He seemed to approve of many of the points which I put before him, among which I suggested that the exports of sulphur from Kus.h.i.+ro, on the south-eastern coast, would be greatly increased if it were opened to foreign trade, and I was pleased to hear several months later that a motion to that effect was proposed in the j.a.panese Parliament. He also agreed with me that Yezo needed roads and railways badly, and that when more facile ways of communication should be established along the coast and across country, then without doubt Yezo would be rich and flouris.h.i.+ng.

He expressed sorrow that emigration was not carried on on a larger scale from the Southern Island of j.a.pan, and that private companies of capitalists in no way helped the Government.

His Excellency was also kind enough to drive me round the town and show me all the sights of Sappro, including the small museum containing zoological specimens from Hokkaido, and the implements of the Ainu and the Koro-pok-kuru. A huge grizzly bear which had killed two babies and a man is now stuffed, and occupies the first small room, while a bottle by the side preserves in spirit the head and foot of one baby and some parts of the man which were found in its stomach when captured and dissected.

I left Sappro for Otaru by the coal train. Otaru is situated on a semicircular well-sheltered bay, which makes it the best and only safe port on the western coast of Yezo.

The coast at the mouth of the Is.h.i.+kari River curves gently round, and is exposed to the north as far as Cape Shakotan. Otaru is rapidly growing in importance, owing to the fact that it is the nearest s.h.i.+pping port to the Poronai coal mines. Unfortunately, three small hills, which were being levelled when I was there, had greatly interfered with the first laying out of the settlement, which accounts for the town being all crooked and irregularly planned. It has the appearance of a thriving place, and much resembles one of the small seaports of Southern j.a.pan.

In the main street a go-ahead tailor had written over his door the following inscription for the attraction of foreign clients: "Tailor.

New Forms of every country shall be made here." The notice was tempting, and I went in to request his services in furnis.h.i.+ng me with "new forms,"

as he called them, of English fas.h.i.+on; but to my great regret he had come to an end of his stock of goods, and I had to be contented with my "old forms," and go on as best I could with what I had till I should reach Hakodate, where I had left most of my baggage. At Otaru I left all my paraphernalia to be s.h.i.+pped to Hakodate by the first s.h.i.+p calling, and I proceeded by land on the north and then on the north-west coast. I felt that, suffering as I still was, I should keep alive as long as I kept moving, as long as I was distracted by new scenery and new excitements. I felt that if I were left to myself, not pitied or sympathised with, I should be able to drag on and conquer in the end.

There is nothing, it seems to me, that makes people feel so ill or is so enervating as the sympathy of friends and the verdict of a doctor. Among civilised people nine out of ten do not know whether they are very ill or not until the doctor p.r.o.nounces his opinion, which shows that many complaints would be scarcely felt at all if the patient did not know the name of his malady, or if he had sufficient determination as to prevent his physical pain from becoming a moral one as well. We have a proof of this in hypnotism, by which sicknesses of many kinds can be cured by impressing on the subject the belief that his body is perfectly free from disease. Of course in this case it is a stronger will acting on a weaker one, which, so reinforced, is able to overpower the physical trouble. Again, I may be allowed to state that savages and barbarians, though affected with horrid diseases of all kinds, do not seem to suffer from them as much as we do. If an Ainu man breaks his leg he does not think for a moment of lying in bed for the regulation forty days; first of all, because he has no bed to lie on; and next, because the confinement and inaction would simply kill him. He may lie down on the hard ground for two or three days, after which time he crawls about as best he can until nature makes his broken bone right again. He does not worry himself much about it. Wild animals do the same. If, then, the Ainu, and with them savages of other countries, do that, why should not I, a human being like them, do the same?

Freed from the enc.u.mbrance of my baggage, I set off on a good horse down the north coast, and moving from east to west. My baggage now consisted of a crutch which I had made for myself, a stick, a couple of j.a.panese _kimonos_, and a few sketch-books.

The travelling was extremely slow, and I shall not dwell at length on this part of my journey, for it has no interest in connection with the Ainu, as I met with scarcely any. On a practicable and pleasant track leading all across the hills beyond Oshoro village, a lovely view of the cliffs between that place and Yoichi, lying to the west, is to be had.

In some parts the scenery is really grand. Coming down on the other side of the hill, Momonai and Kawamura, two fishermen's villages of some importance, are pa.s.sed, and further west, through a picturesque and narrow entrance of rugged volcanic rocks, is Yoichi, a large village, which was entirely burnt down last year, but has since been built up again. The road to Iwanai branches off at Kawamura, across the Shakotan peninsula. This peninsula is partly volcanic, partly composed of tertiaries, on which metal veins are found, especially along the course of the Yoichi River.

About three miles from Yoichi a small flax factory was being built as an experiment by a Mr. Tok.u.matz Kuroda, in the employ of the Mitzui Company. Twenty-five miles further south-west of Yoichi is Iwanai.

About ten miles from Kawamura, at Hando, a black tumbledown shed, like a haunted house, stands in the middle of the woods, and from here the track again goes over a mountain. On the other side is Iwanai. Five or six weeks previous to my arrival a large fire had destroyed nearly the whole of the village, and--just my luck again!--I had great difficulty in finding a place in which to obtain shelter for the night.

From Iwanai the coast-line roughly describes a semicircle, which is almost concentric with Volcano Bay on the south coast, the distance between the two seas being about twenty or twenty-five miles, so that it forms a kind of large peninsula stretching towards the south, and widening considerably at its most southern part on the Tsugaru Strait.

The first two or three miles from Iwanai were a pretty flat and easy track, but then I struck the mountain trail, which was steep and heavy for my pony. It was raining in torrents, and the narrow track was literally turned into a running rivulet. By good luck the rain stopped, and when I reached the summit I had a glorious panorama of the brilliant rocks and cliffs of the Shakotan Cape to the north-east, with the Kamui and the Hurupira Mountains on one side, and the villages of s.h.i.+ribets, Isoya, and Karibayama along the coast on the other. I descended into the valley and then went up again the next mountain, the Iwaon.o.bori, a higher peak than the first. I went down its slopes on the other side in a zig-zag fas.h.i.+on, and then came to the snake-like river called s.h.i.+ribets, on both sides of which a few fishermen's houses are found, forming the s.h.i.+ribets village.

Three miles further is a larger settlement, Isoya, the half of which is called Notto Isoya, the other s.h.i.+makotan Isoya. It is a long row of fishermen's houses scattered along the coast until we get to Ushoro, eight miles further, a settlement of 120 houses.

Ushoro is connected by a road to Oshamambe, on Volcano Bay, but I went on to s.h.i.+tzo, four miles north-west of Ushoro. The way was fairly good in some parts, and execrably bad in others. The heavy rain which had again come on was not exactly suited to my present state of health; moreover, it swelled all the small brooks, which fell in a series of picturesque waterfalls over the high cliffs down on to the beach. As the beach was narrow, this meant each time a cold shower-bath, which, however, did not much matter, for I was already drenched by the rain, and I had no very "swell" garments to spoil, as my readers know.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AINU HALF-CASTE CHILD OF VOLCANO BAY.]

s.h.i.+tzo is an old-looking place, but there is nothing attractive about it. It is in a small bay sheltered by Cape Benke, but its anchorage is only fit for junks or very small skiffs. It is much exposed to northerly and easterly winds. The coast from s.h.i.+tzo to the Cape is lined with rocky bluffs and cliffs of conglomerate and volcanic formation, with bare hills inland.

There are many reefs stretching out, both along the coast and off the Cape; but in many places channels are cut in them, to all appearance produced by some remote volcanic action.

On the western side of Cape Benke is the village of Masatomari. There were formerly some Ainu villages on this part of the coast, but hardly any natives are to be found now. The few remaining have adopted to a certain extent j.a.panese customs and manners.