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only in undertones, and make no sound, save as their clogs clatter
on stones and gravel.
It is impossible to carry away more than a general and bewildered
impression of the splendid walled and lanterned courts, the superb
gate-ways, and the temples themselves, but certain details, upon
which the guides insist, remain strangely clear in memory. Over the
doors of the stable where the sacred white pony is kept are colored
carvings representing groups of monkeys with eyes, or ears, or
mouth covered with their paws—the signification being that one
should neither see, hear, nor speak any evil. In one superbly-carved
gate-way is a little medallion of two tigers, so cunningly studied and
worked out that the curving grain and knots of the wood give all the
softly-shaded stripes of their velvet coats and an effect of thick fur.
One section of a carved column in this gate is purposely placed
upsidedown, the builder fearing to complete so perfect and
marvellous a piece of workmanship. Above another gate-way curls a
comfortable sleeping cat, which is declared to wink when rain is
coming, and this white cat has as great a fame as anything along the
Daiyagawa.
The strangest hierophant in Nikko is the priestess who dances at
the temple of Iyeyasu. She looks her three-score years of age, and is
allowed a small temple to herself, where she sits, posed like an altar
image, with a big money-box on the sacred red steps before her, into
which the pious and the curious toss their offerings. Then the
priestess rises and solemnly walks a few steps this way, a few steps
that way, poses before each change, shakes an elaborate sort of
baby’s rattle with the right-hand, and gesticulates with an open fan in
the left-hand. The sedate walk to and fro, the movements of the
rattle and fan constitute the dance, after which this aged Miriam sits
down, bows her head to the mats, and resumes her statuesque
pose. She wears a nun-like head-dress of white muslin, and a loose
white garment without obi, over a red petticoat, the regular costume
of the Shinto priestesses. She seems always amiable and ready to
respond to a conciliatory coin, but the visitor wonders that the cool
and shaded sanctuary in which she sits, with nearly the whole front
wall making an open door, does not stiffen her aged joints with
rheumatism and end her dancing days.
At some of the great mineral springs there are now separate pools
for men and women, in deference to foreign prejudice; but more than
one generation will pass before promiscuous bathing is done away
with.
At all medicinal springs the baths are owned and managed by the
Government and are free to the people. Here at Yumoto, men,
women, and children walk into the one large room containing the
pools, undress, lay their clothing in a little heap on the raised bench
or platform running around the edge of the room, and step into the
water; and, as has been said, no one sees any impropriety in this
custom. Women sit or kneel on the edges of the pool, scouring
themselves with bags of rice-bran, and chattering with their friends in
or out of the water. People stop at the open doors, or breast-high
windows, to talk to the bathers, and conduct is as decorous, as
reserved, and as modest as in a drawing-room. The approach of a
foreigner sends all the grown bathers deep into the water, simply out
of respect to his artificial and incomprehensible way of looking at
natural things. They know, though they cannot understand, that the
European finds something objectionable, and even wrong, in so
insignificant a trifle as being seen without clothes.
At our tea-house in Yumoto our three rooms in the upper story
were thrown into one during the daytime, making an apartment open
to the gallery on three sides. Hibachis, or braziers, with mounds of
glowing charcoal, tempered the morning and evening air, and all day
we could sit on piles of futons, and enjoy the superb picture of
mountains and lake before us. We were poled over the placid water
in a queer ark of a boat, and the mountain-paths were always
alluring, the roughest trail often passing under torii, or leading past
some shrine, just when it seemed that no foot had ever preceded
ours. At night, when the chilling air presses the sulphur fumes closer
to earth, Yumoto streets resound with the wailing whistle of the blind
shampooer, or amah. These amah are found everywhere—in the
largest cities and in the smallest mountain villages—and, whether
men or women, are never young, or even middle-aged. Theirs is an
indefinite, unscientific system of massage, and their manipulations
often leave their charges with more lame and aching muscles than
before. But the amah are an institution of the country, and Yumoto
streets would ring with their dreary music, and our screens would be
slipped aside by many an ill-favored crone, as soon as it was time for
the usual evening baths to be prepared at the tea-houses.
Upon another visit to Nikko and Chiuzenji in late October there
was a more splendid autumnal pageant than the most gorgeous hill-
sides of America had ever shown me. Frost had done its most
wonderful work, and the air was exhilarating to intoxication. The
clear and brilliant weather moved the coolies to frisk, play, and chant
like children—even that dignified little man, Ito, relaxing his gravity to
frolic like a boy, and to pry bowlders over the edges of precipices to
hear them crash and fall far below. Chiuzenji looked a vast, flawless
sapphire, and Nantaisan was a mosaic of richest Byzantine coloring.
Kegon-no-taki, the fall of three hundred feet by which the waters of
Chiuzenji drop to the valley in their race to the Daiyagawa, seemed a
column of snow in its little amphitheatre hung with autumn vines and
branches. But we dared not remain, for already Yumoto was closed
and boarded up for the season, and on any day the first of the
blockading snows of winter might shut the door of the one tea-house
left open at Chiuzenji, and end the travel from the Ashiwo copper-
mines.
CHAPTER XVII
THE ASCENT OF FUJIYAMA