Japan

When Yejiro pushed the shoji and the amado (night shutters) apart in the morning, he disclosed a bank of snow four feet deep; not a snowfall over night, but the relic of the winter. I found myself in a snow grotto beyond which nothing was visible. He then imparted to me the cheerful news that the watchman had changed his mind, and now refused to set out with us. It was too late in the day to start, the man said, which, in view of his having informed us only the night before that the snow would not be fit to travel on till this very hour, was scarcely logical.

The fancy took me to go to Noto.

It seemed a strange fancy to my friends.

Yet I make no apology for it; for it was a case of love at first sight.

The owner of the farmhouse had inherited it from his father. There was nothing very odd about this even to our other-world notions of property, except that the father was still living, as hale and hearty as you please, in a little den at the foot of the garden. He was, in short, what is known as an inkyo, or one "dwelling in retirement," - a singular state, composed of equal parts of this world and the next; like dying in theory, and then undertaking to live on in practice.

It was on the day but one before the festival of the fifth moon that we set out, or, in English, the third of May; and those emblems of good luck, the festival fishes, were already swimming in the air above the house eaves, as we scurried through the streets in jinrikisha toward the Uyeno railway station. We had been a little behindhand in starting, but by extra exertions on the part of the runners we succeeded in reaching the station just in time to be shut out by the gatekeeper.

It was bound to come, and we knew it; it was only a question of time. But then we had braved the law so far so well, we had almost come to believe that we should escape altogether. I mean the fatal detection by the police that we were violating my passport. That document had already outrun the statute of limitations, and left me no better than an outlaw. For practical purposes my character was gone, and being thus self-convicted I might be arrested at any moment!

The first object to catch my eye, when the shoji were pushed apart, the next morning, was a string of the ubiquitous paper fish, dangling limp in the motionless May air from a pole in a neighboring yard; highly suggestive of having just been caught for breakfast. The sight would have been painfully prophetic but for the food we had brought with us; for, of all meals, a Japanese breakfast is the most cold, the most watery, and the most generally fishy in the world. As it was, breakfast consisted of pathetic copies of consecrated originals.

Comfort disappears - Fine Scenery - An Alarm - A Farm-house - An unusual Costume - Bridling a Horse - Female Dress and Ugliness - Babies - My Mago - Beauties of the Kinugawa - Fujihara - My Servant - Horse-shoes - An absurd Mistake.

FUJIHARA, June 24.

Ito's informants were right. Comfort was left behind at Nikko!

The Symbolism of Seaweed - Afternoon Visitors - An Infant Prodigy - A Feat in Caligraphy - Child Worship - A Borrowed Dress - A Trousseau - House Furniture - The Marriage Ceremony.

KUBOTA, July 25.

Barrenness of Savage Life - Irreclaimable Savages - The Aino Physique - Female Comeliness- Torture and Ornament - Child Life - Docility and Obedience.

BIRATORI, YEZO, August 24.

AN ACCOUNT OF TRAVELS IN THE INTERIOR INCLUDING VISITS TO THE ABORIGINES OF YEZO AND THE SHRINE OF NIKKO

by Isabella L. Bird