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[8] The plant yomogi (Artemisia vulgaris) grows wild in many of the half-dry beds of the Japanese rivers.
IV
Letters come by the post; photographs give me the shadow!
Only one thing remains which I cannot hope to gain.
V
If I may not see the face, but only look at the letter,
Then it were better far only in dreams to see.
VI
Though his body were broken to pieces, though his bones on the
shore were bleaching,
I would find my way to rejoin him, after gathering up the bones.[9]
Mi wa kuda kuda ni
Hon we isob ni
Sarasoto mama yo
Hiroi atsumt
St misho.
The only song of this form in the collection. The use of the verb soi implies union as husband and wife.
Thus was it that these little songs, composed in different generations and in different parts of Japan by various persons, seemed to shape themselves for me into the ghost of a romance,—into the shadow of a story needing no name of time or place or person, because eternally the same, in all times and places.
*
Manyemon asks which of the songs I like best; and I turn over his manuscript again to see if I can make a choice. Without, in the bright spring air, the washers are working; and I hear the heavy pon-pon of the beating of wet robes, regular as the beating of a heart. Suddenly, as I muse, the voice of the boy soars up in one long, clear, shrill, splendid rocket-tone,—and breaks,—and softly trembles down in coruscations of fractional notes; singing the song that Manyemon remembers hearing when he himself was a boy:—
Things never changed since the Time of the Gods:
The flowing of water, the Way of Love.
"I think that is the best," I said. "It is the soul of all the rest."
"Hin no nusubito, koi no uta," interpretatively murmurs Manyemon. "Even as out of poverty comes the thief, so out of love the song!"
It had been intended to celebrate in spring the eleven hundredth anniversary of the foundation of Kyto; but the outbreak of pestilence caused postponement of the festival to the autumn, and the celebration began on the 15th of the tenth month. Little festival medals of nickel, made to be pinned to the breast, like military decorations, were for sale at half a yen each. These medals entitled the wearers to special cheap fares on all the Japanese railroad and steamship lines, and to other desirable privileges, such as free entrance to wonderful palaces, gardens, and temples. On the 23d of October I found myself in possession of a medal, and journeying to Kyoto by the first morning train, which was over-crowded with people eager to witness the great historical processions announced for the 24th and 25th. Many had to travel standing, but the crowd was good-natured and merry. A number of my fellow-passengers were Osaka geisha going to the festival. They diverted themselves by singing songs and by playing ken with some male acquaintances, and their kittenish pranks and funny cries kept everybody amused. One had an extraordinary voice, with which she could twitter like a sparrow.
You can always tell by the voices of women conversing anywhere—in a hotel, for example—if there happen to be any geisha among them, because the peculiar timbre given by professional training is immediately recognizable. The wonderful character of that training, however, is fairly manifested only when the really professional tones of the voice are used,—falsetto tones, never touching, but often curiously sweet. Now, the street singers, the poor blind women who sing ballads with the natural voice only, use tones that draw tears. The voice is generally a powerful contralto; and the deep tones are the tones that touch. The falsetto tones of the geisha rise into a treble above the natural range of the adult voice, and as penetrating as a bird's. In a banquet-hall full of guests, you can distinctly hear, above all the sound of drums and samisen and chatter and laughter, the thin, sweet cry of the geisha playing ken,—
"Futats! futats! futats!"—
while you may be quite unable to hear the shouted response of the man she plays with,—
"Mits! mits! mits!"
The first surprise with which Kyoto greeted her visitors was the beauty of her festival decorations. Every street had been prepared for illumination. Before each house had been planted a new lantern-post of unpainted wood, from which a lantern bearing some appropriate design was suspended. There were also national flags and sprigs of pine above each entrance. But the lanterns made the charm of the display. In each section of street they were of the same form, and were fixed at exactly the same height, and were protected from possible bad weather by the same kind of covering. But in different streets the lanterns were different. In some of the wide thoroughfares they were very large; and while in some streets each was sheltered by a little wooden awning, in others every lantern had a Japanese paper umbrella spread and fastened above it.
There was no pageant on the morning of my arrival, and I spent a couple of hours delightfully at the festival exhibition of kakemono in the imperial summer palace called
Omuro Gosho. Unlike the professional art display which I had seen in the spring, this represented chiefly the work of students; and
I found it incomparably more original and attractive. Nearly all the pictures, thousands in number, were for sale, at prices ranging from three to fifty yen; and it was impossible not to buy to the limit of one's purse. There were studies of nature evidently made on the spot: such as a glimpse of hazy autumn rice-fields, with dragonflies darting over the drooping grain; maples crimsoning above a tremendous gorge; ranges of peaks steeped in morning mist; and a peasant's cottage perched on the verge of some dizzy mountain road. Also there were fine bits of realism, such as a cat seizing a mouse in the act of stealing the offerings placed in a Buddhist household shrine.
But I have no intention to try the reader's patience with a description of pictures. I mention my visit to the display only because of something I saw there more interesting than any picture. Near the main entrance was a specimen of handwriting, intended to be mounted as a kakemono later on, and temporarily fixed upon a board about three feet long by eighteen inches wide,—a Japanese poem. It was a wonder of calligraphy. Instead of the usual red stamp or seal with which the Japanese calligrapher marks his masterpieces, I saw the red imprint of a tiny, tiny hand,—a living hand, which had been smeared with crimson printing-ink and deftly pressed upon the paper. I could distinguish those little finger-marks of which Mr. Galton has taught us the characteristic importance.
That writing had been done in the presence of His Imperial Majesty by a child of six years,—or of five, according to our Western method of computing age from the date of birth. The prime minister, Marquis Ito, saw the miracle, and adopted the little boy, whose present name is therefore Ito Medzui.
