“set me down at the sailors’ home,” i ordered, stepping into the first ’rickshah to reach me.
“no good,” answered the runner, dropping the shafts. “sailor home he close.”
“we’ll go and see,” i replied, knowing the ways of ’rickshah-men.
but the home was unoccupied, sure enough, and its windows boarded up. the runner assumed the attitude of a man who had been insulted without reason.
“me know ver’ fine hotel,” he said, haughtily, “many white sailor man stop. me takee there. ver’ fine.”
i acquiesced, and he jogged out along the strand driveway and halfway round the sparkling harbor. near the top of one of the ridges on which nagasaki is built he halted at the foot of a flight of stone steps cut in a hillside.
“hotel topside,” he panted, pointing upward.
in the perfumed grove at the summit stood a house so frail and dainty that it seemed a toy dwelling. its courtyard was gay with nodding flowers, about the veranda posts twined red-blossomed vines. in the doorway stood a japanese woman, buxom, yet pretty. though her english was halting, her welcome was most cordial. she led the way to a quaintly decorated chamber, arranged cushions, and bade me sit down. i laid aside my bundle and gazed out across the panorama of the harbor, delicate in coloring; a scene rarely equaled in any clime. fortunate, indeed, had i been to find so charming a lodging.
a panel moved noiselessly aside. the proprietress again slipped into the room and clapped her hands thrice. behind her sounded a choral whisper, and six girls, lustrous of coiffure, clad in gaily flowered kimonas, glided towards me with so silent a tread that they seemed to float through the air. all were in the first bloom of youth, as dainty of face and form as they were graceful of movement. twice they circled around me, ever drawing nearer, then, halting a few feet away, they dropped to their knees, touched their foreheads 463to the floor, and sat up smiling. the landlady, standing erect, gazed down upon me.
“sailor man, how you like?” she purred, “ver’ nice?”
“yes, very nice,” i echoed.
“well, take which one you like and get married,” she continued.
the ’rickshah-man, alas, knew the ways of sailors but too well. i picked up my bundle and, glancing regretfully down upon the harbor, stepped out on the veranda.
“what!” cried the matron, following after me, “you not like get married? ver’ nice room, ver’ good chow, ver’ nice wife, fifteen yen one week.”
i crossed the flowery courtyard towards the stone stairway.
“you no like?” called the landlady, “ver’ sorry. good-bye.”
beside a canal down near the harbor i found a less luxurious hotel. the proprietor, awakened from a doze among the bottles and decanters of the bar-room, gurgled a thick-voiced welcome. he was an american, a wanderer since boyhood, for some years domiciled in nagasaki. the real manager of the hotel was his japanese wife, a sprightly matron whose farsighted business acumen was evidenced by a stringent rule she had laid down forbidding her besotted spouse entrance, except at meal hours, to any other section of the hostelry than the bar-room. most interesting of the household were the offspring of this pair, a boy and girl of twelve and ten. in them were combined the best qualities of the parent races. no american children could have been quicker of wit nor more whole-heartedly diligent at work or play; no japanese more open to impression nor more inherently polite of demeanor. already the father was accustomed to refer to his son problems too complicated for his own unresponsive intellect; the mother left to her daughter the details of flower-plot and wardrobe.
lodged in an airy chamber, i could have slept late next morning had i not been awakened at daybreak by what seemed to be a rapid succession of revolver shots. i sprang to the window, half fearing that the proprietor was assassinating his wife in a drunken frenzy. in the yard below squatted the half-breed children, with a stick of “punk” and a great bundle of fire-crackers. i had forgotten the date. it was the fourth, and nagasaki was celebrating. all through the day bombilations sounded at regular intervals about the city; nor was the racket instigated entirely by american residents.
ordinarily the boy and girl of the hotel dressed exactly like their 464playmates and no sooner turned their backs on their father than they lapsed at once into the native tongue. but on this american day the boy wore a knickerbocker suit and leather shoes; his sister had laid aside her kimona and wooden sandals to don a short frock and long stockings. instead of the intricate coiffure of the day before, her jet-black hair hung in two braids over her shoulders; and not once during all that festal day did a word of japanese pass between them.
two days later, garbed in an american khaki uniform chosen from the stock of a pawnbroker popular with soldiers returning from the philippines, i sought out the railway station and took third-class passage for hiroshima. two policemen blocked my entrance to the platform, and, in spite of my protest that my history was recorded in full on the hotel register, they filled several pages of their notebooks with an account of my doings. for the war with russia was at its height and a strict watch was kept on all white men within the empire.
the train wound off through a rolling, sylvan country, here circling the base of a thickly-wooded hill, there clinging close to the shore of a sparkling bay. not an acre capable of production was untilled. peasants toiled in every valley, on every hillside; their neat cottages dotted the landscape as far as the eye could see. populous, wide-awake villages succeeded each other rapidly. the stations were well-equipped buildings bearing both in japanese and english the name of the town they served. in his eagerness to imitate the western world the jap has adopted one custom which might better have been passed over. the gorgeous landscape was half hidden at times by huge unsightly signboards bellowing forth the alleged virtues of every conceivable ware.
the coaches were built on the american plan, and every carriage was a smoking-car; for the use of tobacco is well-nigh universal in japan among both sexes. barely had a lady folded her legs under her on a bench across the aisle than she drew out a pipe in appearance like a long lead pencil, the bowl of which held much less than the smallest thimble, and a leather pouch containing tobacco as fine as the hair of the head. the pipe lighted, she took one long pull at it, knocked out the residue on the back of the seat before her, refilled the bowl, exhaled from her lungs the first puff, and, turning the pipe upside down, lighted it again from the glowing embers of the first filling. the pipe held only enough for one puff; the smoker filled it a score of times before she was satisfied, always keeping the smoke in her lungs until the bowl was refilled, and using a match only for the first lighting. dining-cars were there none. at nearly every station boxes containing a goodly supply of rice, several boiled and pickled vegetables, one baked fish, and a pair of chopsticks only half split in two, were sold on the platform. the contents were always the same; the price fixed and surprisingly low.
a swimming-school of japan, teachers on the bank, novices near the shore, and advanced students in white head-dress, well out in the pool
women do most of the work in the rice-fields of japan
465i had not taken care to choose a through-train to hiroshima. not long after nightfall the one on which i was traveling reached its terminal, a town named hakata, and left me to spend the night in the waiting-room. before i had fallen asleep a band of youths employed about the station began a series of tricks that kept me wide-awake until morning. they threw vegetables and rotten fruit at me through the windows; they pushed open the door to roll tin cans across the floor; if i fell into a doze they sneaked inside to deluge me with water or drag me off my wooden couch. much we hear of the annoyances to which the kindly japanese residents on our pacific slope are subjected; yet no band of san francisco hoodlums could have outdone these youths in concocting schemes to make life miserable for a foreigner in their midst.
two hours’ ride from hakata brought me to moji and the ferry that connects the southern island with the largest of the kingdom. policemen halted me on both sides of the strait and twice i was compelled to dictate the history of my past. from shimonesaki the railway skirted the shore of the inland sea, passing the military hospital of itsukaishi, where hundreds of convalescing soldiers, attired in flowing white kimonas with a great red cross on their breasts, strolled and lolled in the surrounding groves.
i descended in the twilight at hiroshima in company with two english-speaking youths who had taken upon themselves the task of finding me a lodging. the proprietor of a hotel not far from the station acknowledged that he had never housed a white man, but begged for permission to show his versatility. i bade my new acquaintances farewell. the hotel office was a sort of patio, paved with small stones, from which a broad stairway with quaintly carved balustrade led upward. mine host shouted a word of command. a smiling matron, short of stature, her inclination to embonpoint rendered doubly conspicuous by the ample oba wound round and round her waist, appeared on the landing above and beckoned to me to ascend. i caught up my bundle; but before i had mounted two steps the proprietor sprang forward with a scream and, clutching at my coat-tails, dragged 466me back. a half-dozen servant girls tumbled wild-eyed into the patio and joined the landlord in heaping abuse upon me. i had dared to start up the stairway without removing my shoes! the sight of a guest at a fifth-avenue hotel jumping into bed fully clad could not have aroused such an uproar.
i pulled off the offending brogans; the keeper added them to a long line of wooden sandals ranged along the wall; and the matron conducted me to a small chamber with a balcony opening on the street. everything about the apartment added to the feeling that i was a giant among lilliputians; the ceiling, gay with gorgeously tinted dragons, was so low, the walls mere sliding panels of half-transparent paper stamped with flowers and strange figures, the highly-polished floor so frail that it yielded under every step. with a flying start a man could have run straight through the house and left it a wreck behind.
the room was entirely unfurnished. the hostess placed a cushion for me in the center of the floor and clapped her hands. a servant girl slipped in, bearing a tray on which was a tiny box of live coals, several cigarettes, a joint of bamboo standing upright, and a pot of tea with cup and saucer. having deposited her burden at my feet, and touched her forehead to the floor, the maid handed me a cigarette, poured out tea, and remained kneeling a full half-hour, filling the tiny cup as often as i emptied it. when she was gone i picked up the joint of bamboo, fancying it contained sweetmeats or tobacco. it was empty, however, and i was left to wonder until the hostess returned. when she had understood my gestures she began a wordy explanation; but i shook my head. with a grimace that was evidently meant to be an apology, she caught up the hollow joint and spat into it. the thing was merely a japanese spittoon.
a maid soon served supper. she brought first of all a table some eight inches high, then a great wooden bucket brimming full of hard-packed rice, and lastly, several little papier-maché bowls. one held a greasy liquid in which floated the yolk of an egg, another a small, soggy turnip, a third a sample of some native salad, at the bottom of the fourth lay in dreary isolation a pathetic little minnow. of rice there was sufficient for a squad of soldiers; but without it the meal could not have satisfied a hungry canary.
horses are rare in japan. men and baggage are drawn by coolies
japanese children playing in the streets of kioto
as i ate, the girl poured out tea in a cup that held a single swallow. fortunately, i had already served my apprenticeship in the use of chopsticks, or i should have been forced to revert to the primitive 467table manners of the hindu. as it was, it required great dexterity to possess myself of the swimming yolk; and he who fancies it is easy to balance a satisfying mouthful of rice on the ends of two slivers has only to try it to be disillusioned.
the meal over, i descended for a stroll through the town. the host brought my shoes, grinning sympathetically at the weight thereof, and i stepped out to mingle with the passing throng. there is nothing more inimitable than the voice of the street in japan. he who has once heard it could never mistake it for another. there is no rumble of traffic to tire the senses, no jangle of tramways to inflict the ear. horses are almost as rare as in venice, and the rubber-tired ’rickshah behind a grass-shod runner passes as silently as a winged creature. the rank and file, however, are content to go on foot, and the scrape, scrape, scrape of wooden clogs sounds an incessant trebled note that may be heard in no other land.
there are oriental cities in which the stranger would hesitate to wander after nightfall; in this well-ordered land he feels instinctively that he is running less risk of disagreeable encounter than in any metropolis of our own country. class and mass mingle in the multitude; evil and brutal faces pass here and there; the european is sometimes subjected to the annoyance of unseemly curiosity, he may even be roughly jostled now and then; for the politeness of the jap is individual, never collective. but rarely does the sound of brawling rise above the peaceful falsetto of scraping clogs.
i returned to the hotel fancying i was doomed to sleep on the polished floor; but the matron, apprised of my arrival, glided in and inquired, by the cosmopolitan pantomime of resting her cocked head in the palm of her hand, if i was ready to retire. i nodded, and at her signal a servant appeared with a quilt of great thickness, which she spread in the center of the floor. to an uncritical wanderer this seemed of itself a soft enough resting place, but not until six pudding-like counterpanes had been piled one on top of the other was the landlady content. over this couch, that had taken on the form of a huge layer-cake, the pair spread a coverlet—there were no sheets—and backed out of the room. i rose to disrobe, but before i had touched a button they were back again, this time dragging behind them a great net, stout enough in texture to have held paul’s draught of fishes. disentangled, the thing proved to be canopy-shaped. while the matron attached the four corners of the top to hooks in the ceiling, the maid tucked the edges in under the stack of quilts.
468i was not averse to retiring at once, but at that moment there arrived a cotton-clad youth who announced himself as a police interpreter. official hiroshima was anxious to know more of the americajín whose arrival had been reported by the station guards. the youth drew forth a legal form and read, in a sing-song voice, questions covering every period of my existence since squalling infancy. between each the pause was long, for the interpreter must repeat each answer to the open-mouthed females kneeling beside us and set it down in the muscular native script. i passed a yawning half-hour before he was finished, and another before he ended a smoke-choked oration on the joy which my coming had awakened in the hearts of his fellow officers. ere he departed he found opportunity to inquire into my plans for the future. i announced my intention of continuing eastward in the morning.
“you must go so fastly?” he queried, with grief-stricken countenance. “then you shall go on the ten o’clock train; there is no other but very late.”
i had no notion of leaving hiroshima on any train, but, considering my plans no affair of his, i held my peace. he departed at last and a moment later i was sorry i could not call him back long enough to interpret my orders to the matron and her maid. the pair refused to leave the room. when i pointed at the door they waved their hands towards the bed in a gesture that said i was at liberty to disrobe and turn in. but neither rose from her knees. i tried more energetic pantomime. the matron certainly understood, for she dismissed the servant; but refused herself to withdraw. i began to unbutton my jacket, hoping the suggestion would prove effective. she sighed audibly and settled down on her heels. i sat down on my cushion and lighted a cigarette, determined to smoke her out. she drew out a tobacco pouch and a pipe, picked the cigarette out of my fingers to light the first filling, and blew clouds of smoke at the ceiling.
perhaps she was waiting to tuck me in when once i was abed. the notion seemed ludicrous; yet that was exactly for what she was waiting. with much shouting i prevailed upon her at last—not to leave the room, but to turn her back to me. slipping off my outer garments, i crawled under the net and drew the coverlet over me. the matron rose gravely to her feet and marched twice round my couch, tucking in a quilt corner here, fastening a fold of the kaya there. then, closing the panels on every side, she picked up the lamp and departed.
469the room soon grew stuffy. i crawled out to push back one of the panels opening on the veranda. barely had i regained my couch, however, when a trembling of the floor announced approaching footsteps and that irrepressible female appeared on the balcony, silhouetted against the starlit sky. calling out something i did not understand—fortunately perhaps—she pushed the panel shut again. i am accustomed to sleep with wide open windows; but it was useless to contend against fate. my guardian angel of the embonpoint knew that the only safe sleeping chamber was a tightly-closed room; and in such i spent the night.
rarely have i experienced a stranger sensation than at the moment of awakening in that hotel of hiroshima. it was broad daylight. the sun was streaming in across the balcony, and the incessant scraping of clogs sounded from the street below. but the room in which i had gone to bed had entirely disappeared! i sat up with bulging eyes. under me was the stack of quilts, but all else was changed. the net was gone and i sat alone and deserted in the center of a hall as large as a dancing pavilion, the front of which for its entire length opened on the public street. the transformation was no magician’s trick, though it was several moments before i had sufficiently recovered to admit it. the servant girls had merely pushed together the panels.
for all the sinuosities of her streets and my ignorance of the japanese tongue i had no great difficulty in picking up the highway out of hiroshima. a half-century ago it would have been more dangerous to wander unarmed through rural japan than in china. to-day the pedestrian runs no more risk than in england. there is a suggestion of the british isles, too, in the open country of the island kingdom. just such splendidly constructed highways stretch away between bright green hedge rows. populous villages appear in rapid succession; the intervening territory, thickly settled and fertile, shows the hand of the industrious husbandman. but old england herself cannot rival this sea-girdled kingdom in her clear, exhilarating air of summer, in her picturesque landscapes of checkerboard rice fields, certainly not in the scenic charm of the inland sea.
the roadway, dropping down from the plateau of hiroshima, soon brought to view this sapphire-blue arm of old ocean, and wound in and out along the coast. here and there a ripple caught the glint of the sun; in the middle distance and beyond tiny wooded isles rose from the placid surface; now and again an ocean liner, awakening 470memories of far-off lands, glided by almost within hailing distance. in shallow coves unclad fishermen, exempt from sunburn, disentangled their nets and heaped high their catches in wicker baskets.
it needed a very few hours on the road to teach me that japan is the home of the ultra-curious. compared with the rural jap the arab is as self-absorbed as a cross-legged statue of the enlightened one. i had but to pass through a village to suspend every activity the place boasted. workmen dropped their tools, children forgot their games, girls left their pitchers at the fountain, even gossips ceased their chatter; all to stare wide eyed if i passed on, to crowd round me if i paused. wherever i halted for a drink of water the town rose en masse to witness my unprecedented action. my thirst quenched, the empty vessel passed from hand to hand amid such a chorus of gasps as rises from a group of lean-faced antiquarians examining a vase of ante-christian date. to stop for a lunch was almost dangerous, for the mob that collected at the entrance to the shop threatened to do me to death under the trampling clogs. in the smaller villages the aggregate population, men, women, and children, followed me out along the highway, leaving the hamlet as deserted as though the dogs of war had been loosed upon it. once i passed a school at the recess hour. its two hundred children trailed behind me for a long mile, utterly ignoring the jangling bell and the shouts of their excited masters.
well on in the afternoon i had taken refuge from the sun in a wayside clump, when a youthful jap, of short but stocky build, hurrying along the white route, turned aside and gave me greeting. there was nothing unusual in that action; a dozen times during the day some garrulous native, often with a knowledge of english picked up during californian residence, had tramped a mile or more beside me. but the stocky youth threw himself down on the grass with a sigh of relief. he was out of breath; the perspiration ran in streams along his brown cheeks; his nether garments were white with the dust of the highroad. like most villagers of the district he wore a dark kimona, faintly figured, a dull brown straw hat resembling a panama, thumbed socks, and grass sandals. perhaps his haste to overtake me had been prompted merely by the desire to travel in my company; but there was about him an air of anxiety that awakened suspicion.
i set off again and he jogged along beside me, mopping his streaming face from time to time with a sleeve of his kimona. he was 471more supremely ignorant of english than i of japanese, but we contrived to exchange a few confidences by grunts and gestures. he, too, had walked from hiroshima. the statement surprised me, for the white stones at the wayside showed that city to be twenty-five miles distant. enured to tramping by more than a year “on the road,” i had covered the distance with ease; but it was no pleasure stroll for an undersized jap.
once my companion pointed from his legs to my own, raised his eyebrows, and sighed wearily. i shook my head. he pointed away before us with inquiring gesture.
“kobe,” i shouted.
“so am i,” he responded by repeating the name and thumping himself on the chest.
i knew he was lying. kobe was more than a hundred miles away; third-class fare is barely a sen a mile in japan; it is far cheaper to ride than to buy food sufficient to sustain life on such a journey. the fellow was no beggar, for we had already toasted each other in a glass of saki. certainly he was not covetous of the yens in my pocket, for he was small and apparently unarmed, and there was nothing of the footpad in his face or manner. yet he seemed fearful of losing sight of me. when i stopped, he stopped; if i strode rapidly forward, he struggled to keep the pace, passing a sleeve over his face at more frequent intervals.
could it be that he was a “plain clothes cop” sent to shadow me? the suspicion grew with every mile; it was confirmed when we entered a long straggling village. my companion dropped back a bit and, as we passed a police station, i caught him waving a surreptitious greeting to four officers in uniform, who nodded approval.
a spy! what reason had the police of japan to dog my footsteps? my anger rose at the implied insult. the fellow was urging me to stop for the night; instead i redoubled my pace. not far beyond the route forked, and, turning a deaf ear to his protests, i chose the branch that led away over steep foothills. the short legs of the jap were unequal to the occasion. he broke into a dog trot and puffed along behind me. his grass sandals wore through; he winced when a pebble rolled under his feet. night came on, the moon rose; and still i marched with swinging stride, the little brown man panting at my heels.
three hours after sunset, amid the barking of dogs and the shouting of humans, i stalked into the village of hongo and sat down in 472the doorway of an open shop. a moment later the spy, reeling like an inebriate, his face drawn and haggard, dropped at full length on the matting beside me. his endurance was exhausted; and small wonder, for hiroshima was forty-six miles away over the hills.
in the twinkling of an eye we were surrounded by a surging throng of dirty yokels. for hongo is a mere mountain hamlet and its inhabitants do not practice all the virtues for which their fellow countrymen are noted. to stay where we were was to court annihilation by the stampeding multitude. i struggled to my feet determined to press on. the spy screamed weakly and the villagers swept in upon us and imprisoned me within the shop. a long conference ensued. then the spy, leaning on two men, hobbled up the street, while another band, promising by gestures to find me lodging, dragged me along with them, the mob howling at our heels.
the fourth or fifth booth beyond proved to be an inn, a most un-japanese house, for it was squalid and dirty. the frightened keeper bade us enter and set a half-dozen slatternly females to preparing supper. the entire village population had gathered in the street to watch my every movement with straining eyes. i sat down on a stool and it smashed to bits under me. a clawing, screaming mob swept forward to roar at my discomfiture. a half hundred of the boldest pushed into the shop in spite of the keeper’s protest and drove me further and further towards the back of the building, until i was forced to beat them off to save myself being pushed through the rear wall. a woman brought me rice. the boors fought with each other for the privilege of being the first to thrust their fingers into it. another servant poured out tea. the villagers snatched the cup from my fingers before i had drunk half the contents, and passed it from hand to hand. a third domestic appeared with a saucer of baked minnows. each of a half-dozen of my persecutors picked up a fish in his fingers and attempted to thrust it into my mouth. they had no notion that such conduct was annoying. it was merely their way of showing hospitality.
the throng at the doorway surged slowly but steadily nearer. i caught up several clogs from the floor and threw them at the front rank of the rabble. the multitude fell back into the street, but my immediate entourage continued to snatch cups from my fingers and to poke me in the face with baked minnows. vocal protest was useless. i picked up the bowl of rice and flung the contents into their faces. this time the affectionate fellows understood. when the dish was filled again they granted me elbow-room sufficient to continue my meal.
a japanese lady
473a saner man might have profited by experience and taken care not to re-arouse the waning curiosity. in a thoughtless moment i filled my pipe. before it was lighted i suddenly recalled that “bulldog” pipes have not been introduced into japan. but it was too late. a hoarse murmur sounded in the street, like the rumble of far-off thunder at first, then swelling louder and louder; and with a deafening roar the astonished multitude surged pellmell into the shop, shrieking, scratching, tearing kimonas, trampling pottery under their clogs, bowling over the guardian shopkeeper, sweeping me off my feet, and landing me high and dry on a chest against the rear wall. it required a quarter-hour of fighting to drive them out again into the night and nothing short of grapeshot could have cleared the street before the building as long as there remained a possibility of once more catching sight of that giant pipe.
i took good care to keep it out of sight thereafter; but the multitude had not visibly diminished when, towards midnight, i signed to the proprietor that i was ready to retire. the inn boasted only one sleeping-chamber, a raised platform in one corner of the room carpeted with grass mats and partitioned off with dirty curtains suspended from the ceiling. this foul-smelling apartment i was forced to share with a dozen men and boys, odoriferous and ragged, who chattered like excited apes for an hour after i had lain down. all night long i was on exhibition. for when my companions were not striking matches to study my physical and sartorial make-up, the proprietor outside was raising a corner of the curtain to display me to a group of gabbling rustics.
profiting by experience, the police authorities did not set one man the task of following me all the next day. the first of a relay of spies overtook me at the outskirts of the village. he was long and lean, and for ten miles he stalked along several yards behind me, making no attempt to cultivate my acquaintance. at the first large village he was relieved by a stocky youth of more sociable disposition, who walked at my side and offered to “set ’em up” in a roadside saki shop at least once in every mile. as often i halted to watch some native craftsman. in one tiny hamlet a dozen women and girls, all naked above the waist line, were weaving reed mats in an open hovel. far from objecting to my curiosity, they invited us to enter and placed ragged cushions for our accommodation. before we were 474seated the head of the establishment began to chatter. she was well past middle age and of the form of a well-stuffed grain sack,—just the type of human that can talk for an unlimited period without anything to talk about. the japanese word for “yes” along the shores of the inland sea is “ha.” it was the only reply which my companion found opportunity to interject into the conversation, and for a full half-hour he sat crosslegged on his cushion, observing at regular intervals and with funereal countenance:—“ha!—ha! ha! ha!—ha! ha!—ha!”
a few miles beyond he retired in favor of a much older man whose penchant was to be taciturn and stealthy in the discharge of his duty. anxiously he strove to impress upon me that he was traveling in my direction by merest chance. if i halted, he marched past me with an expression of total self-absorption and slipped into some hiding-place a few yards down the highway until i went on. there was relief from the monotony of tramping in concocting schemes to shake him off, but every such attempt failed. if i slipped into a shop to run out the back door, the howling of the pursuing multitude betrayed me; if i dashed suddenly off into a wayside forest, i succeeded in rousing the spy to feminine shrieks of dismay, but before i could cover a mile he was again at my heels. in the afternoon i abandoned the road and darted away up a mountain path. at the summit i came upon a temple and a deep blue lake framed in tangled forests. this time, apparently, i had outwitted my shadower. i threw off my clothes and plunged in for a swim. when i regained the bank, the spy, panting and dripping with perspiration, lay on his back in a shady thicket beside my garments.
it was nearly sunset and the fourth lap in the police relay when a man pushed his way through a village mob that surrounded me and greeted me in a jargon that bore some resemblance to my native tongue. i sat down by a shop door to rest, and for a half-hour the fellow plied me with questions in near-english, with a sullen scowl and an arrogant manner that said as plainly as words that he had a decidedly low opinion of white men. his comprehension of my remarks was by no means complete; his interpretation of them to the gaping throng was probably even less lucid. about all he seemed to gather was that i was traveling on foot, from which he concluded that i was penniless.
i rose to depart and he caught me by an arm.
“so you tramp?” he cried. “one time me go states. many time 475see tramp. in states tramp many time hungry. not in japan. jap man all good; give plenty. wait. i make you present.”
having found his people the least lovable and by far the most selfish on the globe, i awaited the proposed benefaction with great curiosity. the fellow turned and harangued the gathering at great length. his hearers crowded up to give me congratulatory slaps on the back. i expected to have at least a ticket to my own land forced upon me. having published his generosity to the four winds, the charitable fellow set the cavalcade in motion and marched down the street at my side.
“jap man ver’ good,” he reiterated, while his admirers beamed upon me. “you damn tramp. no business in japan, but ver’ hungry. me give you this.”
he opened his hand and displayed a copper sen.
being covetous of the half-cent as a souvenir of japanese generosity, i stretched out a hand for it. the philanthropist snatched his own away.
“not give money to damn tramp!” he cried. “wait for shop. me buy you two rice cakes.”
rice cakes being valueless as souvenirs, i rejected the kind offer and left the cavalcade to chatter their astonishment.
the village was long. a half-mile beyond i stopped at a shop and ordered supper, the price of which amounted to six cents. a great hubbub soon arose in the street outside, and, before the meal was served, my would-be benefactor, red-eyed with rage, fought his way into the booth.
“why you tell you have no money?” he bellowed.
i denied having made any such statement.
“but you walk by the feet!” he screamed. “me going to give you one sen because you not starve. you run way and buy dinner like rich man. you damn tramp, try be thief—”
i rose and kicked him into the street. his physical courage was on a par with his philanthropy. but his bellowing of my alleged perfidy aroused great anger in the gathering, and i was all but mobbed when i left the shop.
the half-mountainous scenery, the rampant curiosity of villagers, and the spy relay continued for two days more, at the end of which i turned in at the sailors’ home of kobe. among the cosmopolitan beachcombers who spun their yarns in the back yard of the institution was one victim of the wanderlust whose misfortunes are 476rarely equaled even in the vagabond world. he was a youth of twenty, son of an italian father and a japanese mother. in early childhood—his mother having died—he had returned with his father to naples. ten years later a tavern brawl left him an orphan; utterly so, for never had he heard a hint of the existence of parental relatives.
driven from the garret that had been his home, he joined the waifs that prowl among the garbage heaps of the italian metropolis until he had grown large enough to ship as a mozzo on a coasting steamer. with the end of his apprenticeship came a longing to visit the land of his birth. he joined the crew of an east-indiaman and “jumped her” in kobe.
in the long interim, however, he had utterly forgotten the language of his childhood. english would have served him well enough, but unlike most seamen he had picked up barely a word of that tongue. his italian was fluent, but it was neapolitan italian, and it is doubtful if there were a dozen men in all japan who understood that dialect. a man suddenly struck deaf and dumb could not have found himself in sadder straits. there were european residents in the suburban villas of kobe, there were generous tourists in her shops and hotels; but it was useless to tell them hard-luck tales in a language they could not understand. the italian consul drove him off with wrathful words, indignant at the attempted imposition of a masquerading jap. the japanese were even less inclined to give succor to one who, in features a fellow countryman, aped the white man in garb and refused to speak the native tongue.
under the weight of his calamities, the half-breed—tainted, perhaps, with the fatalism of the east—had degenerated into a groveling, cadaverous wretch, who cowered by day in a corner of the yard of the home and crawled away by night into noisome hiding places. from time to time he contrived to get arrested, but the police were cruelly lenient and soon drove him forth again into a world that denied him even prison fare.
i had not been an hour in the home when a servant summoned me to the office. the superintendent and two police officers awaited me.
“say, franck,” began the former, “i hope that story you told me was on the level? the cops have it you’re a russian.”
“you came last night? you walked from hiroshima?” demanded one of the officers.
“right you are,” i answered.
477“this is the one,” he continued, turning to the superintendent, “the police followed him from hiroshima. he is a russian, they telegraph me.”
“nonsense!” said the manager; “he’s an american.”
“how can that be?” queried the second officer. “he wears even a russian uniform.”
a light broke in upon me. no wonder i had been so popular with the police for four days past.
“russian nothing,” i answered. “this is an american uniform from the philippines.”
“just the kind the russians wear,” objected the officer, stretching out a hand to feel the texture of my jacket. “how, mr. manager, do you know he is an american?”
“by his talk, of course,” replied the superintendent.
“but you are an englishman,” retorted the detective.
“just the reason i can tell an american,” responded the manager.
“here! look these over,” i put in, producing my papers.
the officers, however, were unreasonably skeptical and not only discussed the documents at great length but insisted on inscribing in their notebooks a very detailed account of my movements since entering the country. it was all too evident that they did not believe that i traveled on foot by choice; and as long as i remained in kobe i was conscious of being shadowed each time i left the home.
on my third day in the city i rose early and passed out along the highway to the eastward. the police, evidently, had been caught napping, for no spy overtook me, and by noonday i was wandering through the maze of streets and canals of osaka. my presence in that city was soon known, however, for an interpreter sought me out in the early evening at the inn to which i had retired. as if his quizzing were not sufficient, a second officer aroused me at dawn and not only put me through the usual catechism but followed at my heels until i had entered the precincts of the railway station. there two officers dragged me into their booth and subjected me to a cross-examination the length of which caused me to miss the second train i had hoped to catch.
luckily the service was frequent. i purchased a ticket to kyoto and boarded the ten o’clock express. barely had i settled down in my seat, however, when two officers dashed into the car.
“the police captain say you come police station!” cried one of them, catching me by the arm. “captain like speak you.”
478“the captain be blowed!” i answered, pushing him away.
“you come! captain say not go with this train!” shouted the officer.
his companion came to his assistance and the pair laid hands on me. i braced my knees against the back of the next seat and let them pull. in the western world we hear much of jiu-jitsu and the physical prowess of the japanese. as for her policemen, and this was but one of many a personal encounter they forced upon me, it was never my misfortune to meet one with more strength than a schoolgirl. for fully five minutes the pair tugged and yanked at my arms and legs; but not once during that time was i in the least danger of being dragged from my seat.
the pair held the trump card, however, for they forbade the express to move while i remained on board. i took pity on my fellow passengers, therefore, and, pushing the pair aside, followed them into the station. in the first-class waiting-room they arranged a morris chair for my accommodation, brought me several english newspapers and a packet of cigarettes, and, requesting me to remain until they returned, hurried away. there were several policemen in the square outside, however, who peered in upon me from time to time.
i had been reading nearly an hour when another interpreter stepped into the room.
“the police captain have sent me,” he announced, with a conciliatory smile, “to say that you are not the man which he think and that you can go when you are care to.”
i caught the fourth train and reached kyoto in the early afternoon—and was immediately arrested. in short, not a day passed during the rest of my stay in the country, except in the open ports, that i was not taken into custody several times. every officer to clap eyes on my khaki-clad figure was sure to demand my surrender, convinced that to his eagle eye his country owed its preservation. it was never difficult to shake off a pair of officers, a few slaps always sufficed; but, unlike other orientals, they did not run away. they dogged my footsteps into temples and bazaars, through shrieking slum sections, down alleyways reeking with refuse, until an interpreter came to establish my nationality.
japanese canal-boats and coolies of kioto
i spent a day in kyoto and could have spent many more with pleasure. at the station next morning four yen more than sufficed for a ticket to tokyo, with unlimited stop-overs. at maibara a squad of russian prisoners, garbed in arctic cloaks and fur caps, huddled 479in a sweltering group on the platform. as long as the train halted not the hint of a jeer rose from the surrounding multitude, and the townspeople came in continual procession to offer the stolid fellows baskets of fruit, packets of tobacco, and all manner of delicacies. i left the train at nagoya, third city of the kingdom, in which the chief point of interest is a great castle, at that season the residence of hundreds of russian prisoners.
among the few guests at the inn to which i turned at nightfall was an invalided sergeant, nearly recovered from two bullet wounds received in manchuria. a paper panel separated his room from my own. we pushed it aside and shared a double-sized chamber. from the moment of our meeting the sergeant was certain that i was a russian. gestures of protest and innumerable repetitions of the word “americajín” did not alter his conviction in the least. too well he knew the czar’s uniform and the cast of features of the “moosky!”
we conversed almost uninterruptedly for three hours, during which time barely a word passed our lips. certainly the sergeant must have been an actor in his preliminary days, for there was no thought nor opinion so complex that he could not express it clearly and concisely in pantomime. rendered into english his gestures and grimaces ran as follows:—
“well, you are a nervy fellow, yes, indeed! i suppose you’re only an escaped prisoner; but you’ll be shot as a spy the moment you’re found out. you’re not a russian? nonsense! don’t spring any such yarns on me. i’ve seen too many of you fellows. you may fool these unsophisticated stay-at-homes, but i know you as i should know my own father. so would any of the boys who have been to the front. oh, come, stop it! it’s no use telling me you’re an american. tell that to the civilians and the policemen, the blockheads. it’s a mighty fine joke on them. but we’re alone now; let’s be honest. you needn’t be in the least afraid of me. i’m on, but i wouldn’t peach for the world. but i’m afraid your scheme won’t work. there is not another man besides myself in nagoya who would keep your secret. the first schoolboy or old woman to find you out will run his legs off to tell the police. you can bank on that. a year ago, before i’d seen the world, i was as big a tattle-tale as the rest; but i take a more cosmopolitan view of life since i got these scars, and i can sympathize with a man now even if his skin is white.”
the police interpreter came at this point to take my deposition, and the sergeant preserved a noncommittal gravity during the interview, 480though he winked twice or thrice as the policeman bent over his notebook. when the visitor was gone, the soldier took up the story of his army life. it was a gesticulatory epic, rich in detail, amusing in incident. from the parting with his parents he carried me along with him through the training camp of recruits, across the sea of japan on a crowded transport, into the winter-bound bivouac in manchuria, on cruel forced marches to the northward, into many a raging battle, to the day when he fell helpless in the bottom of a trench. his musket stood in a corner of the room. he used it often in the story and took great delight in assuring me that it had sent many of what he considered my fellow-countrymen to their final reckoning. he imitated their death throes with striking realism, rolling about the floor with twitching limbs and distorted features, choking and gasping as a man does in the last struggle. in comedy he was as effective as in tragedy. his caricature of a russian at his prayers was a histrionic masterpiece; his knowledge of the “moosky” service as exact as that of a patriarch.
we turned in towards midnight and parted in the morning the best of friends. from nagoya the railway turned southward, and, following the old royal highway along the coast of the main island, gave us frequent glimpses of the ocean. the country grew less mountainous, often there were miles of unbroken paddy fields in which uncountable peasant women wallowed in the inundated mire, clawing with bare hands the mud about the roots of the rice plants. on the slopes, too steep to be flooded, long rows of tea bushes stretched from the railway line to the wooded summits.
i tired of riding at four and dropped off at numadzu, a village of fishermen where the inhabitants to this day, i fear, remember me as the most unobliging of mortals. my host spoke some english. taking advantage of his linguistic accomplishment, i requested him to prepare a bath. a servant placed and filled a tub in the center of the inn courtyard. i had begun to disrobe when a panel was pushed aside and into the patio stalked a dozen men and women, the landlord at their head.
“here!” i protested; “i thought this was a bath room?”
“sure! bath room, a’ right,” returned my host. “go ’head, make bath.”
“are you crazy?” i demanded. “drive those women out of here until i have finished bathing!”
the castle of nagoya, in which many russian prisoners were kept
laying out fish to dry along the river in tokio. japan lives principally on fish and rice
481“why for?” inquired the jap, while the company squatted along the wall.
i explained my objections and pushed them out one by one. the proprietor was the last to go.
“why for you so damn selfish?” he growled. “why you not make bath if ladies here? they not hurt you. they come see if you white all over. you come see ladies make bath they not give damn kick. damn selfish american!”
i closed the panels and returned to my tub. but the curiosity of the unselfish ladies was not so easily overcome. as i ceased my splashing a moment, a poorly suppressed cough sounded above me, and i looked up to see the entire party gazing down upon me from an upper balcony. i caught up a cobblestone and they withdrew; but, though callers innumerable dropped in during the evening, the proprietor never tired of relating the story of my unprecedented selfishness.
two policemen interviewed me on my way to the station next morning, a third was in waiting when i descended at the village of gotemba, and a spy dogged my footsteps during the day’s tramp among the foothills of fujiyama. it is the ambition of the mikado’s government to “keep tab” on every foreigner from the day of his arrival in the country until his departure; and local officers strive diligently to supply the information demanded. but the system is something of a farce. the most tolerant tourist is apt to tire of being incessantly interviewed and, in a spirit of retaliation or merely for the sake of variety, to try his hand at fiction. as for beachcombers, there are few indeed who do not take delight in weaving “fairy tales” for gullible officials.
in the open ports of japan i scraped acquaintance with more than a score of white sailors who had journeyed across the country afoot or “on the cushions.” they passed for americans, nearly every man of them, though three-fourths were europeans and at least four, to my knowledge, russians. but the point of nationality aside, there was not one of them who told police interpreters the same story twice. the jap finds great difficulty in pronouncing the letter “l.” jocular beachcombers of my acquaintance swore on their discharge books that they had lain awake nights to piece together names unpronounceable for the next policeman. hence it was that the traveler who announced himself at one station as “alfred leland from lincolnlane,” 482assured the officers of the next that he was “lolo lipland longlock from los angeles.” it mattered little what the wanderer dubbed himself; a police interpreter could not tell an american from a zulu name, and though “lolo lipland longlock” spoke only a half-hundred words of english, the name, alleged nationality, and “fairy tale” were solemnly inscribed on the records. that was well enough for the gullible interpreter; but what of the puzzled government bookkeeper at tokyo, who poured over volumes of reports from the rural districts, seeking in vain to find out what had become of “alfred leland of lincolnlane?”
i reached yokohama that night and, having deposited my bundle in the sailors’ home, continued next day to tokyo. financially i was near the end of my rope. my daily expenditures in japan had barely averaged twenty-five cents; but even at that rate the fortune arising from the gratitude of the “jungle king” of kung chow and the generosity of the fausang’s captain had been gradually dissipated. bankruptcy mattered little now, however, for tokyo was the last city in my itinerary. once back in yokohama, it would be strange if i could not soon sign on some craft homeward bound. i squandered the seven yen that remained, therefore, in three days of riotous living in the capital; and, on a morning of late july, wandered out along the highway to the neighboring port.
an employee of the tokio-yokohama interurban, and some street urchins
fishermen along the bay on my tramp from tokio to yokohama
