Kimono Part 7

"Dear Mrs. Barrington, are you a daughter of j.a.pan, and have never heard of the Twenty-four Children?"

"No; who are they?"

"They are model children, the paragons of goodness, celebrated because of their love for their fathers and mothers. One of them walked miles and miles every day to get water from a certain spring for his sick mother; another, when a tiger was going to eat his father, rushed to the animal and cried, 'No, eat me instead!' Little boys and girls in j.a.pan are always being told to be like the Twenty-four Children."

"Oh, how I'd hate them!" cried Asako.

"That is because you are a rebellious, individualistic Englishwoman.

You have lost that sense of family union, which makes good j.a.panese, brothers and cousins and uncles and aunts, all love each other publicly, however much they may hate each other in private."

"That is very hypocritical!"

"It is the social law," replied Kamimura. "In j.a.pan the family is the important thing. You and I are nothing. If you want to get on in the world you must always be subject to your family. Then you are sure to get on however stupid you may be. In England you seem to use your families chiefly to quarrel with."

"I think our relatives ought to be just our best friends," said Asako.

"They are that too in a way," the young man answered. "In j.a.pan it would be better to be born without hands and feet than to be born without relatives."

CHAPTER IV

NAGASAKI

_Hono-bono to Akas.h.i.+ no ura no Asa-giri ni s.h.i.+ma-kakure-yuku Fune wo s.h.i.+ zo omou._

My thoughts are with a boat Which travels island-hid In the morning-mist Of the sh.o.r.e of Akas.h.i.+ Dim, dim!

After Hongkong, they let the zone of eternal summer behind them. The crossing from Shanghai to j.a.pan was rough, and the wind bitter. But on the first morning in j.a.panese waters Geoffrey was on deck betimes to enjoy to the full the excitement of arrival. They were approaching Nagasaki. It was a misty dawn. The sky was like mother-of-pearl, and the sea like mica. Abrupt grey islands appeared and disappeared, phantasmal, like guardian spirits of j.a.pan, representatives of those myriads of s.h.i.+nto deities who have the Empire in their keeping.

Then, suddenly from behind the cliff of one of the islands a fis.h.i.+ng boat came gliding with the silent stateliness of a swan. The body of the boat was low and slender, built of some white, s.h.i.+ning wood; from the middle rose the high sail like a silver tower. It looked like the soul of that sleeping island setting out upon a dream journey.

The mist was dissolving, slowly revealing more islands and more boats.

Some of them pa.s.sed quite close to the steamer; and Geoffrey could see the fishermen, dwarfish figures straining at the oar or squatting at the bottom of the boat, looking like Nibelungen on the quest for the Rhinegold. He could hear their strange cries to each other and to the steamer, harsh like the voice of sea-gulls.

Asako came on deck to join her husband. The thrill of returning to j.a.pan had scattered her partiality for late sleeping. She was dressed in a tailor-made coat and skirt of navy-blue serge. Her shoulders were wrapped in a broad stole of sable. Her head was bare. Perhaps it was the inherited instinct of generations of j.a.panese women, who never cover their heads, which made her dislike hats and avoid wearing them if possible.

The sun was still covered, but the view was clear as far as the high mountains on the horizon towards which the s.h.i.+p was ploughing her way.

"Look, Asako, j.a.pan!"

She was not looking at the distance. Her eyes were fixed on an emerald islet half a mile or less from the steamer's course, a jewel of the seas. It rose to the height of two hundred feet or so, a conical knoll, densely wooded. On the summit appeared a scar of rock like a ruined castle, and, rising from the rock's crest, a single pine-tree.

Its trunk was twisted by all the winds of Heaven. Its long, lean branches groped the air like the arms of a blinded demon. It seemed to have an almost human personality an expression of fruitless striving, pathetic yet somehow sinister--a Prometheus among trees. Geoffrey followed his wife's gaze to the base of the island where a shoal of brown rocks trailed out to seawards. In a miniature bay he saw a tiny beach of golden sand, and, planted in the sand, a red gateway, two uprights and two lintels, the lower one held between the posts, the upper one laid across them and protruding on either side. It is the simplest of architectural designs, but strangely suggestive.

It transformed that wooded island into a dwelling-place. It cast an enchantment over it, and seemed to explain the meaning of the pine-tree. The place was holy, an abode of spirits.

Geoffrey had read enough by now to recognize the gateway as a "_torii_"; a religious symbol in j.a.pan which always announces the neighbourhood of a shrine. It is a common feature of the country-side, as familiar as the crucifix in Catholic lands.

But Asako, seeing the beauty of her country for the first time, and unaware of the dimming cloud of archaeological explanations, clapped her hands together three times in sheer delight; or was it in unconscious obedience to the custom of her race which in this way calls upon its G.o.ds? Then with a movement entirely occidental she threw her arms round her husband's neck, kissing him with all the devotion of her being.

"Dear old Geoffrey, I love you so," she murmured. Her brown eyes were full of tears.

The steamer pa.s.sed into a narrow channel, a kind of fiord, with wooded hills on both sides. The forests were green with spring foliage. Never had Geoffrey seen such a variety or such density of verdure. Every tree seemed to be different from its neighbour; and the hillsides were packed with trees like a crowded audience. Here and there a spray of mountain cherry-blossom rose among the green like a jet of snow.

At the foot of the woods, by the edge of the calm water, the villages nestled. Only roofs could be seen, high, brown, thatched roofs with a line of sword-leaved irises growing along the roof-ridge like a crown.

These native cottages looked like timid animals, cowering in their forms under the protecting trees. One felt that at any time an indiscreet hoot of the steamer might send them scuttering back to the forest depths. There were no signs of life in these submerged villages, where the fight between the forester's axe and primal vegetation seemed still undecided. Life was there; but it was hidden under the luxuriance of the overgrowth, hidden to casual pa.s.sers-by like the life of insects. Only by the seaside, where the houses were cl.u.s.tered together above a seawall of cyclopean stones, and on the beach, where the long narrow boats, sharp-prowed and piratical, were drawn up to the sh.o.r.e, the same gnome-like little men, with a generous display of naked brown limbs, were sawing and hammering and mending their nets.

The steamer glided up the fiord towards a cloud of black smoke ahead.

Unknown to Geoffrey, it pa.s.sed the grey Italianate Catholic cathedral, the shrine of the old Christian faith of j.a.pan planted there by Saint Francis Xavier four hundred years ago. Anchor was cast off the island of Des.h.i.+ma, now moored to the mainland, where during the locked centuries the Dutch merchants had been permitted to remain in profitable servitude. Des.h.i.+ma has now been swallowed up by the j.a.panese town, and its significance has s.h.i.+fted across the bay to where the smoke and din of the Mitsubis.h.i.+ Dockyard prepare romantic visitors for the modern industrial life of the new j.a.pan. Night and day, the furnace fires are roaring; and ten thousand workmen are busy building s.h.i.+ps of war and s.h.i.+ps of peace for the Britain of the Pacific.

The quarantine officers came on board, little, brown men in uniform, absurdly self-important. Then the s.h.i.+p was besieged by a swarm of those narrow, primitive boats called _sampan_, which Loti has described as a kind of barbaric gondola, all jostling each other to bring merchants of local wares, damascene, tortoise-sh.e.l.l, pottery and picture post cards aboard the vessel, and to take visitors ash.o.r.e.

Geoffrey and Asako were among the first to land. The moment of arrival on j.a.panese soil brought a pang of disappointment. The sea-front at Nagasaki seemed very like a street in any starveling European town.

It presented a line of offices and consulates built in Western style, without distinction and without charm. Customs' officers and policemen squinted suspiciously at the strangers. A few women, in charge of children or market-baskets, stared blankly.

"Why, they are wearing kimonos!" exclaimed Asako, "but how dirty and dusty they are. They look as though they had been sleeping in them!"

The j.a.panese women, indeed, cling to their national dress. But to the Barringtons, landing at Nagasaki, they seemed ugly, shapeless and dingy. Their hair was greasy and unkempt. Their faces were stupid and staring. Their figures were hidden in the m.u.f.fle of their dirty garments. Geoffrey had been told they have baths at least once a day, but he was inclined to doubt it. Or else, it was because they all bathed in the same bath and their ablutions were merely an exchange of grime. But where were those b.u.t.terfly girls, who dance with fan and battledore on our cups and saucers?

The rickshaws were a pleasant experience, the one-man perambulators; and the costume of the rickshaw-runners was delightful, and their gnarled, indefatigable legs. With their tight trunk-hose of a coa.r.s.e dark-blue material and short coat to match like an Eton jacket and with their large, round mushroom hats, they were like figures from the crowd of a Flemish Crucifixion.

Behind the Barrington's _sampan_, a large lighter came alongside the wharf. It was black with coal-dust, and in one corner was heaped a pile of shallow baskets, such as are used in coaling vessels at j.a.panese ports, being slipped from hand to hand in unbroken chain up the s.h.i.+p's side and down again to the coal barge. The work was finished. The lighter was empty except for a crowd of coal-stained coolies which it was bringing back to Nagasaki. These were dressed like the rickshaw-men. They wore tight trousers, short jackets and straw sandals. They were sitting, wearied, on the sides of the barge, wiping black faces with black towels. Their hair was long, lank and matted. Their hands were bruised and shapeless with the rough toil.

"Poor men," sighed Asako, "they've had hard work!"

The crowd of them pa.s.sed, peering at the English people and chattering in high voices. Geoffrey had never seen such queer-looking fellows, with their long hair, clean-shaven faces, and stumpy bow-legs. One more disheveled than the others was standing near him with tunic half-open. It exposed a woman's breast, black, loose and hard like leather.

"They are women!" he exclaimed, "what an extraordinary thing!"

But the children of Nagasaki--surely there could be no such disillusionment. They are laughing, happy, many-coloured and ubiquitous. They roll under the rickshaw wheels. They peep from behind the goods piled on the floors of the shops, a perpetual menace to shopkeepers, especially in the china stores, where their bird-like presence is more dangerous than that of the dreaded bull. They are blown up and down the temple-steps like fallen petals. They gather like humming-birds round the itinerant venders of the streets, the old men who balance on their bare shoulders their whole stock in trade of sweetmeats, syrups, toys or singing gra.s.shoppers. They are the dolls of our own childhood, endowed with disconcerting life. Around their little bodies flames the love of colour of an oriental people, whose adult taste has been disciplined to sombre browns and greys. Wonderful motley kimonos they make for their children with flower patterns, b.u.t.terfly patterns, toy and fairy-story patterns, printed on flannelette--or on silk for the little plutocrats--in all colors, among which reds, oranges, yellows, mauves, blues and greens predominate.

They invaded the depressing atmosphere of the European-style hotel, where Geoffrey and Asako were trying to enjoy a tasteless lunch--their grubby, bare feet pattering on the worn lino.

It pleased him to watch them, playing their game of _Jonkenpan_ with much show of pudgy fingers, and with restrained and fitful scamperings. He even made a tentative bid for popularity by throwing copper coins. There was no scramble for this largesse. Gravely and in turn each child pocketed his penny; but they all regarded Geoffrey with a wary and suspicious eye. He, too, on closer inspection found them less angelic than at first sight. The slimy horror of unwiped noses distressed him, and the significant prevalence of scabby scalps.

After their dull lunch in this drab hotel, Geoffrey and his wife started once more on their voyage of discovery. Nagasaki is a hidden city; it flows through its narrow valleys like water, and follows their serpentine meanderings far inland.

They soon left behind the foreign settlement and its nondescript ugliness to plunge into the labyrinth of little native streets, wayward and wandering like sheep-tracks, with sudden abrupt hills and flights of steps which checked the rickshaws' progress. Here, the houses of the rich people were closely fenced and cunningly hidden; but the life of poverty and the shopkeepers' domesticity were flowing over into the street out of the too narrow confines of the boxes which they called their homes.

With an extra man to push behind, the rickshaws had brought them up a zigzag hill to a cautious wooden gateway half open in a close fence of bamboo.

"Tea-house!" said the rickshaw man, stopping and grinning. It was clearly expected of the foreigners that they should descend and enter.