Chapter XI: Western and Southern Japan

Those who leave the beaten track of foreign travelers through Japan, that is, the main route between Nikko and Nagasaki, find that the Japanese are generally polite but have great curiosity. Sometimes they are angry at Americans, as when we pass laws to keep them from migrating to our country, and then they are not so courteous to us for a few weeks. In the ports and large cities, where many foreigners are seen, some of the Japanese men and boys are rude. But perhaps that is partly the fault of foreigners, who sometimes forget that visitors in another people’s country should be as careful as if they were visiting in another person’s home.

Most of the time the Japanese of all classes show great courtesy to travelers and to one another. It is very interesting to see a group of them bidding a friend good-by at a railway station. As the train starts they bow low, all together, so many times that they make you think of a field of wheat with strong gusts of wind blowing over it. Often when I have been walking through parts of Japan where foreigners are seldom seen, a whole village would leave its work or its play to crowd about me. The inhabitants were merely curious, without any intention of being rude. Many of the boys and girls, and sometimes even a few of the men and women, would follow me out into the country. It made me feel like the Pied Piper of Hamelin!

This queer vehicle is called a _basha_. In out-of-the-way parts of
Japan it is still the most rapid and aristocratic means of
conveyance.
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But that was long ago, and now the Japanese everywhere are a little more familiar with foreigners. Yet crowds often surrounded us on our later trips. They might be only schoolboys, in their uniform caps and queer plaid kimonos. Nearly every pupil in the high schools of Japan wishes to learn English, and they are not so bashful or diffident about it as many American boys and girls are in practising a foreign language they are studying. They take every opportunity to learn more English by trying out, on any foreigner they see, what they have learned in school. So we were often surrounded, even on railway platforms, by boys who were speaking English slowly and often poorly, yet who did not give up even when the others giggled at their efforts. On the whole perhaps the Japanese are less bashful than we are. Or it may be that they are so much more eager to learn that they swallow their bashfulness. We were also often surrounded because of our small boy, for many Japanese have never seen a foreign child. The fact that his hair is very blond doubtless increased the size of the crowds, because many Japanese seem to think that only jet-black hair is real.

© E. M. Newman, from Publishers Photo Service

Fujiyama, the “Peerless Mountain” of Japan, is a perfect cone,
perpetually capped with snow and ice and often reflected in the
lakes near its base.
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© E. M. Newman, from Publishers Photo Service

A happy crowd of Japanese children near the great _torii_ of Miyajima.
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On Foot Through the Mountains

Walking is a pleasant and a profitable way to travel almost anywhere, but particularly in Japan, that empire of mountainous islands. One especially beautiful section, about in the center of Honshu, the largest island, is called the “Japanese Alps.” If ever you go to Japan, do not forget to spend a few days tramping in those splendid forested mountains, inhabited by simple, good-hearted people. Another delightful walking trip is to roam about the base of Fujiyama, the “Peerless Mountain,” so dear to the Japanese that they almost worship it. On a clear day the traveler may see that perfect snow-capped cone even before he reaches Yokohama, and behold it all the way to Kyoto, perhaps, though it often hides its head in the clouds for weeks at a time. It is hard work, yet very much worth while, to climb to the top. That, however, can only be done in midsummer, when the snow cap is not so deep.

Whether you ride or walk along the shore of it, or take a steamer through it, you will always remember the Inland Sea of Japan. It is a great stretch of blue water, dotted with islands and sailboats, between the western end of Honshu, the largest island, and Shikoku, the fifth largest island of Japan. One of the most beautiful sights along it is Miyajima, a kind of holy village, with a wonderful old _torii_, or Japanese square arch, standing out in the sea at high tide but on land at low tide. Miyajima is one of the “Great Sights” of Japan. First and foremost among these is of course Fujiyama. The others are Matsushima, those pine-tree islands off the coast in the Bay of Sendai, and Ama-no-hashidate, on the western coast of the biggest island. The name of this last one means “Bridge to Heaven.” There is a Japanese legend that the god Izanagi stood on this “bridge” when he shook from his spear the drops of water that turned solid and became the islands of Japan. It is really a narrow pine grove on a sand bar, and the Japanese make it look like a bridge to heaven by stooping down and gazing at it between their outspread legs. The name of Ama-no-hashidate and the legend show how imaginative are the Japanese.

The Inland Sea of Japan at Miyajima, showing the famous _torii_
reflected in the water at high tide. The picture on page 142 is a
nearer view and gives a good idea of the great size of this
religious arch of which the Japanese are so proud.
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Kyushu Island

My son at the Japanese shrine in the garden of the native hotel at
Beppu, where there are natural hot baths for everyone.
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Most foreign travelers in Japan either do not see Kyushu, the big southern island, at all or they hurry across it to or from Nagasaki. We spent more than two weeks on it. At Beppu, celebrated for its hot mineral baths, using water from a near-by volcano, we found a hotel where we could live in a little Japanese “annex” set in a garden of flowers and pine trees, with the privilege of bathing in a great tank of naturally hot water and of eating in the foreign-style main building. You can always have your bath as hot as you like at Beppu, without heating it. Thousands of Japanese go there every year to soak themselves in the hot water or hot mud from the volcano and cure themselves of rheumatism and other ailments. In places the peasants do not have cooking stoves, for they have only to set their kettles over steaming fissures in the rocks. There are many of these natural hot baths in Japan, because it is a mountainous country with many volcanoes. Next to going on religious pilgrimages, the Japanese travel most to such “water cures” as Beppu.

I think the new railway down the eastern side of Kyushu is finished now, but when I traveled over it there were still half a dozen tunnels to be dug in the great granite mountains. Railroad travel in Japan sometimes seems like a succession of smoky tunnels. I had to bump along a bad road in an old Ford between the two parts of the line that were running. In this part of Japan there were many little rice fields laid out like shelves or stairs on the terraced hills. The blue sea looked so like a great mirror whenever we caught sight of it that it seemed as if a steamer or sailboat would scratch it.

In Kagoshima, southernmost city of Japan proper, the work horses wear
elaborate harnesses, gaily decorated in red and gold. Perhaps the
owners are more pleased with such display than the horses are.
]

There is another and older railway line down the other side of Kyushu, and both that and the new one end at the famous old city of Kagoshima. For centuries this was the most southern Japanese city, and it was there that St. Francis Xavier, the first Roman Catholic missionary to Japan, landed centuries ago, before Japan turned hermit and shut itself off from the outside world for more than a hundred years. There also, according to Japanese legend, the divine couple from whom the emperors of Japan descended, landed to found the great empire of Nippon. Queerly enough, though Kagoshima was the first place to welcome foreigners, or at least Westerners, it was there that the last stand was made against copying the modern Western world. The Satsuma lords of Kagoshima who opposed the other rulers of the country in this matter were defeated, and committed suicide. But their rebellion is completely forgiven now, and statues of the greatest of them, in ancient _shogun_ costumes, rise among the trees and ponds in the hillside park of Kagoshima.

Looking across Nagasaki, one of the best known cities of Japan, which
is built on a number of hills.
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As a city Kagoshima was hot and dusty, now that May was almost over, and many of its people went nearly as naked as the Hindus. What made it seem still hotter was that the volcano island of Sakurajima out in its harbor was smoking as if there were a great furnace beneath it. Kyushu is so far south that great quantities of bamboo grow there. That most useful plant, which sometimes shoots up a foot in twenty-four hours, is one of the best friends Japan has. If I merely listed the things the Japanese make of bamboo, I could cover several pages.

At Nagasaki, Japanese women as well as men work in loading coal onto
ships. Two passengers on my ship were so curious that I had to
include them in the picture—partly.
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Even though one leaves Kyushu by another way, one should not fail to visit Nagasaki, its principal port. It is not only a pretty city among its many wooded hills, but it has a very interesting history. During all the years that Japan was closed to the outside world, a few Hollanders were allowed to live on a tiny island in Nagasaki harbor and trade with the Japanese. They could not go anywhere else in Japan, and only the merchants who had business with them could visit their little island, which is now just a commonplace part of downtown Nagasaki. So they sat and smoked their pipes with Dutch patience, waiting for the day when they would be rich enough to go back to Holland. Though it is many years since Japan opened its doors to the outside world, the children of Nagasaki still call any foreigner they see, “Horando-san,” that is, “Mr. Hollander.”

The traveler who goes in or out of Nagasaki on a steamer will probably see one of the strangest sights in Japan. There is so much coal in the island of Kyushu that even our American warships on the way to or from the Philippines stop there for it. But as Nagasaki still has no modern coal chutes, the coal all has to be loaded by hand. There are almost as many women as men among the hundreds of workers who swarm down to the ship that is to be loaded. They look like human ladders on the gangways, for when the barges arrive the coal is passed in baskets from one person to another, over their heads, and the empty baskets are thrown down upon the barge again. With a dozen of these lines all working as fast as possible, the air seems to be full of baskets, and the workers get so thoroughly covered with coal dust that you might almost think they were negroes.