The early darkness has once again come on, and once
again the elders have assembled round the fire in two long lines, with
the younger men at the ends, Pipichari, who yesterday sat in the place
of honor and was helped to food first as the newest arrival, taking his
place as the youngest at the end of the right-hand row. The birch-bark
chips beam with fitful glare, the evening sake bowls are filled, the fire-god
and the garlanded god receive their libations, the ancient woman, still
sitting like a Fate, splits bark, and the younger women knot it, and the
log-fire lights up as magnificent a set of venerable heads as painter or
sculptor would desire to see,--heads, full of—what? They have no history,
their traditions are scarcely worthy the name, they claim descent from
a dog, their houses and persons swarm with vermin, they are sunk in the
grossest ignorance, they have no letters or any numbers above a thousand,
they are clothed in the bark of trees and the untanned skins of beasts,
they worship the bear, the sun, moon, fire, water, and I know not what,
they are uncivilizable and altogether irreclaimable savages, yet they are
attractive, and in some ways fascinating, and I hope I shall never forget
the music of their low, sweet voices, the soft light of their mild, brown
eyes, and the wonderful sweetness of their smile.
After the yellow skins, the stiff horse hair, the
feeble eyelids, the elongated eyes, the sloping eyebrows, the flat noses,
the sunken chests, the Mongolian features, the puny physique, the shaky
walk of the men, the restricted totter of the women, and the general impression
of degeneracy conveyed by the appearance of the Japanese, the Ainos make
a very singular impression. All but two or three that I have seen are the
most ferocious-looking of savages, with a physique vigorous enough for
carrying out the most ferocious intentions, but as soon as they speak the
countenance brightens into a smile as gentle as that of a woman, something
which can never be forgotten.
The men are about the middle height, broad-chested,
broad- shouldered, “thick set,” very strongly built, the arms and legs
short, thick, and muscular, the hands and feet large. The bodies, and specially
the limbs, of many are covered with short bristly hair. I have seen two
boys whose backs are covered with fur as fine and soft as that of a cat.
The heads and faces are very striking. The foreheads are very high, broad,
and prominent, and at first sight give one the impression of an unusual
capacity for intellectual development; the ears are small and set low;
the noses are straight but short, and broad at the nostrils; the mouths
are wide but well formed; and the lips rarely show a tendency to fullness.
The neck is short, the cranium rounded, the cheek-bones low, and the lower
part of the face is small as compared with the upper, the peculiarity called
a “jowl” being unknown. The eyebrows are full, and form a straight line
nearly across the face. The eyes are large, tolerably deeply set, and very
beautiful, the color a rich liquid brown, the expression singularly soft,
and the eyelashes long, silky, and abundant. The skin has the Italian olive
tint, but in most cases is thin, and light enough to show the changes of
color in the cheek. The teeth are small, regular, and very white; the incisors
and “eye teeth” are not disproportionately large, as is usually the case
among the Japanese; there is no tendency towards prognathism; and the fold
of integument which conceals the upper eyelids of the Japanese is never
to be met with. The features, expression, and aspect, are European rather
than Asiatic.
The “ferocious savagery” of the appearance of the
men is produced by a profusion of thick, soft, black hair, divided in the
middle, and falling in heavy masses nearly to the shoulders. Out of doors
it is kept from falling over the face by a fillet round the brow. The beards
are equally profuse, quite magnificent, and generally wavy, and in the
case of the old men they give a truly patriarchal and venerable aspect,
in spite of the yellow tinge produced by smoke and want of cleanliness.
The savage look produced by the masses of hair and beard, and the thick
eyebrows, is mitigated by the softness in the dreamy brown eyes, and is
altogether obliterated by the exceeding sweetness of the smile, which belongs
in greater or less degree to all the rougher sex.
I have measured the height of thirty of the adult
men of this village, and it ranges from 5 feet 4 inches to 5 feet 6.5 inches.
The circumference of the heads averages 22.1 inches, and the arc, from
ear to ear, 13 inches. According to Mr. Davies, the average weight of the
Aino adult masculine brain, ascertained by measurement of Aino skulls,
is 45.90 ounces avoirdupois, a brain weight said to exceed that of all
the races, Hindu and Mussulman, on the Indian plains, and that of the aboriginal
races of India and Ceylon, and is only paralleled by that of the races
of the Himalayas, the Siamese, and the Chinese Burmese. Mr. Davies says,
further, that it exceeds the mean brain weight of Asiatic races in general.
Yet with all this the Ainos are a stupid people!
Passing travelers who have seen a few of the Aino
women on the road to Satsuporo speak of them as very ugly, but as making
amends for their ugliness by their industry and conjugal fidelity. Of the
latter there is no doubt, but I am not disposed to admit the former. The
ugliness is certainly due to art and dirt. The Aino women seldom exceed
five feet and half an inch in height, but they are beautifully formed,
straight, lithe, and well-developed, with small feet and hands, well-arched
insteps, rounded limbs, well- developed busts, and a firm, elastic gait.
Their heads and faces are small; but the hair, which falls in masses on
each side of the face like that of the men, is equally redundant. They
have superb teeth, and display them liberally in smiling. Their mouths
are somewhat wide, but well formed, and they have a ruddy comeliness about
them which is pleasing, in spite of the disfigurement of the band which
is tattooed both above and below the mouth, and which, by being united
at the corners, enlarges its apparent size and width. A girl at Shiraoi,
who, for some reason, has not been subjected to this process, is the most
beautiful creature in features, coloring, and natural grace of form, that
I have seen for a long time. Their complexions are lighter than those of
the men. There are not many here even as dark as our European brunettes.
A few unite the eyebrows by a streak of tattooing, so as to produce a straight
line. Like the men, they cut their hair short for two or three inches above
the nape of the neck, but instead of using a fillet they take two locks
from the front and tie them at the back.
They are universally tattooed, not only with the
broad band above and below the mouth, but with a band across the knuckles,
succeeded by an elaborate pattern on the back of the hand, and a series
of bracelets extending to the elbow. The process of disfigurement begins
at the age of five, when some of the sufferers are yet unweaned. I saw
the operation performed on a dear little bright girl this morning. A woman
took a large knife with a sharp edge, and rapidly cut several horizontal
lines on the upper lip, following closely the curve of the very pretty
mouth, and before the slight bleeding had ceased carefully rubbed in some
of the shiny soot which collects on the mat above the fire. In two or three
days the scarred lip will be washed with the decoction of the bark of a
tree to fix the pattern, and give it that blue look which makes many people
mistake it for a daub of paint. A child who had this second process performed
yesterday has her lip fearfully swollen and inflamed. The latest victim
held her hands clasped tightly together while the cuts were inflicted,
but never cried. The pattern on the lips is deepened and widened every
year up to the time of marriage, and the circles on the arm are extended
in a similar way. The men cannot give any reason for the universality of
this custom. It is an old custom, they say, and part of their religion,
and no woman could marry without it. Benri fancies that the Japanese custom
of blackening the teeth is equivalent to it; but he is mistaken, as that
ceremony usually succeeds marriage. They begin to tattoo the arms when
a girl is five or six, and work from the elbow downwards. They expressed
themselves as very much grieved and tormented by the recent prohibition
of tattooing. They say the gods will be angry, and that the women can’t
marry unless they are tattooed; and they implored both Mr. Von Siebold
and me to intercede with the Japanese Government on their behalf in this
respect. They are less apathetic on this than on any subject, and repeat
frequently, “It’s a part of our religion.”
The children are very pretty and attractive, and
their faces give promise of an intelligence which is lacking in those of
the adults. They are much loved, and are caressing as well as caressed.
The infants of the mountain Ainos have seeds of millet put into their mouths
as soon as they are born, and those of the coast Ainos a morsel of salt-fish;
and whatever be the hour of birth, “custom” requires that they shall not
be fed until a night has passed. They are not weaned until they are at
least three years old. Boys are preferred to girls, but both are highly
valued, and a childless wife may be divorced.
Children do not receive names till they are four
or five years old, and then the father chooses a name by which his child
is afterwards known. Young children when they travel are either carried
on their mothers’ backs in a net, or in the back of the loose garment;
but in both cases the weight is mainly supported by a broad band which
passes round the woman’s forehead. When men carry them they hold them in
their arms. The hair of very young children is shaven, and from about five
to fifteen the boys wear either a large tonsure or tufts above the ears,
while the girls are allowed to grow hair all over their heads.
Implicit and prompt obedience is required from infancy;
and from a very early age the children are utilized by being made to fetch
and carry and go on messages. I have seen children apparently not more
than two years old sent for wood; and even at this age they are so thoroughly
trained in the observances of etiquette that babies just able to walk never
toddle into or out of this house without formal salutations to each person
within it, the mother alone excepted. They don’t wear any clothing till
they are seven or eight years old, and are then dressed like their elders.
Their manners to their parents are very affectionate. Even to-day, in the
chief’s awe-inspiring presence, one dear little nude creature, who had
been sitting quietly for two hours staring into the fire with her big brown
eyes, rushed to meet her mother when she entered, and threw her arms round
her, to which the woman responded by a look of true maternal tenderness
and a kiss. These little creatures, in the absolute unconsciousness of
innocence, with their beautiful faces, olive-tinted bodies,--all the darker,
sad to say, from dirt,--their perfect docility, and absence of prying curiosity,
are very bewitching. They all wear silver or pewter ornaments tied round
their necks by a wisp of blue cotton.
Apparently the ordinary infantile maladies, such
as whooping-cough and measles, do not afflict the Ainos fatally; but the
children suffer from a cutaneous affection, which wears off as they reach
the age of ten or eleven years, as well as from severe toothache with their
first teeth.
The houses in the five villages up here are very
good. So they are at Horobets, but at Shiraoi, where the aborigines suffer
from the close proximity of several grog shops, they are inferior. They
differ in many ways from any that I have before seen, approaching most
nearly to the grass houses of the natives of Hawaii. Custom does not appear
to permit either of variety or innovations; in all the style is the same,
and the difference consists in the size and plenishings. The dwellings
seem ill-fitted for a rigorous climate, but the same thing may be said
of those of the Japanese. In their houses, as in their faces, the Ainos
are more European than their conquerors, as they possess doorways, windows,
central fireplaces, like those of the Highlanders of Scotland, and raised
sleeping- places.
The usual appearance is that of a small house built
on at the end of a larger one. The small house is the vestibule or ante-room,
and is entered by a low doorway screened by a heavy mat of reeds. It contains
the large wooden mortar and pestle with two ends, used for pounding millet,
a wooden receptacle for millet, nets or hunting gear, and some bundles
of reeds for repairing roof or walls. This room never contains a window.
From it the large room is entered by a doorway, over which a heavy reed-mat,
bound with hide, invariably hangs. This room in Benri’s case is 35 feet
long by 25 feet broad, another is 45 feet square, the smallest measures
20 feet by 15. On entering, one is much impressed by the great height and
steepness of the roof, altogether out of proportion to the height of the
walls.
The frame of the house is of posts, 4 feet 10 inches
high, placed 4 feet apart, and sloping slightly inwards. The height of
the walls is apparently regulated by that of the reeds, of which only one
length is used, and which never exceed 4 feet 10 inches. The posts are
scooped at the top, and heavy poles, resting on the scoops, are laid along
them to form the top of the wall. The posts are again connected twice by
slighter poles tied on horizontally. The wall is double; the outer part
being formed of reeds tied very neatly to the framework in small, regular
bundles, the inner layer or wall being made of reeds attached singly. From
the top of the pole, which is secured to the top of the posts, the framework
of the roof rises to a height of twenty-two feet, made, like the rest,
of poles tied to a heavy and roughly-hewn ridge-beam. At one end under
the ridge-beam there is a large triangular aperture for the exit of smoke.
Two very stout, roughly-hewn beams cross the width of the house, resting
on the posts of the wall, and on props let into the floor, and a number
of poles are laid at the same height, by means of which a secondary roof
formed of mats can be at once extemporized, but this is only used for guests.
These poles answer the same purpose as shelves. Very great care is bestowed
upon the outside of the roof, which is a marvel of neatness and prettiness,
and has the appearance of a series of frills being thatched in ridges.
The ridge-pole is very thickly covered, and the thatch both there and at
the corners is elaborately laced with a pattern in strong peeled twigs.
The poles, which, for much of the room, run from wall to wall, compel one
to stoop, to avoid fracturing one’s skull, and bringing down spears, bows
and arrows, arrow- traps, and other primitive property. The roof and rafters
are black and shiny from wood smoke. Immediately under them, at one end
and one side, are small, square windows, which are closed at night by wooden
shutters, which during the day-time hang by ropes. Nothing is a greater
insult to an Aino than to look in at his window.
On the left of the doorway is invariably a fixed
wooden platform, eighteen inches high, and covered with a single mat, which
is the sleeping-place. The pillows are small stiff bolsters, covered with
ornamental matting. If the family be large there are several of these sleeping
platforms. A pole runs horizontally at a fitting distance above the outside
edge of each, over which mats are thrown to conceal the sleepers from the
rest of the room. The inside half of these mats is plain, but the outside,
which is seen from the room, has a diamond pattern woven into it in dull
reds and browns. The whole floor is covered with a very coarse reed-mat,
with interstices half an inch wide. The fireplace, which is six feet long,
is oblong. Above it, on a very black and elaborate framework, hangs a very
black and shiny mat, whose superfluous soot forms the basis of the stain
used in tattooing, and whose apparent purpose is to prevent the smoke ascending,
and to diffuse it equally throughout the room. From this framework depends
the great cooking-pot, which plays a most important part in Aino economy.
Household gods form an essential part of the furnishing
of every house. In this one, at the left of the entrance, there are ten
white wands, with shavings depending from the upper end, stuck in the wall;
another projects from the window which faces the sunrise, and the great
god—a white post, two feet high, with spirals of shavings depending from
the top—is always planted in the floor, near the wall, on the left side,
opposite the fire, between the platform bed of the householder and the
low, broad shelf placed invariably on the same side, and which is a singular
feature of all Aino houses, coast and mountain, down to the poorest, containing,
as it does, Japanese curios, many of them very valuable objects of antique
art, though much destroyed by damp and dust. They are true curiosities
in the dwellings of these northern aborigines, and look almost solemn ranged
against the wall. In this house there are twenty-four lacquered urns, or
tea-chests, or seats, each standing two feet high on four small legs, shod
with engraved or filigree brass. Behind these are eight lacquered tubs,
and a number of bowls and lacquer trays, and above are spears with inlaid
handles, and fine Kaga and Awata bowls. The lacquer is good, and several
of the urns have daimyo’s crests in gold upon them. One urn and a large
covered bowl are beautifully inlaid with Venus’ ear. The great urns are
to be seen in every house, and in addition there are suits of inlaid armor,
and swords with inlaid hilts, engraved blades, and repousse scabbards,
for which a collector would give almost anything. No offers, however liberal,
can tempt them to sell any of these antique possessions. “They were presents,”
they say in their low, musical voices; “they were presents from those who
were kind to our fathers; no, we cannot sell them; they were presents.”
And so gold lacquer, and pearl inlaying, and gold niello-work, and daimyo’s
crests in gold, continue to gleam in the smoky darkness of their huts.
Some of these things were doubtless gifts to their fathers when they went
to pay tribute to the representative of the Shogun and the Prince of Matsumae,
soon after the conquest of Hokkaido (Yezo). Others were probably gifts
from samurai, who took refuge here during the rebellion, and some must
have been obtained by barter. They are the one possession which they will
not barter for sake, and are only parted with in payment of fines at the
command of a chief, or as the dower of a girl.
Except in the poorest houses, where the people can
only afford to lay down a mat for a guest, they cover the coarse mat with
fine ones on each side of the fire. These mats and the bark-cloth are really
their only manufactures. They are made of fine reeds, with a pattern in
dull reds or browns, and are 14 feet long by 3 feet 6 inches wide. It takes
a woman eight days to make one of them. In every house there are one or
two movable platforms 6 feet by 4 and 14 inches high, which are placed
at the head of the fireplace, and on which guests sit and sleep on a bearskin
or a fine mat. In many houses there are broad seats a few inches high,
on which the elder men sit cross-legged, as their custom is, not squatting
Japanese fashion on the heels. A water-tub always rests on a stand by the
door, and the dried fish and venison or bear for daily use hang from the
rafters, as well as a few skins. Besides these things there are a few absolute
necessaries,--lacquer or wooden bowls for food and sake, a chopping-board
and rude chopping-knife, a cleft- stick for burning strips of birch-bark,
a triply-cleft stick for supporting the potsherd in which, on rare occasions,
they burn a wick with oil, the component parts of their rude loom, the
bark of which they make their clothes, the reeds of which they make their
mats,--and the inventory of the essentials of their life is nearly complete.
No iron enters into the construction of their houses, its place being supplied
by a remarkably tenacious fiber.
I have before described the preparation of their
food, which usually consists of a stew “of abominable things.” They eat
salt and fresh fish, dried fish, seaweed, slugs, the various vegetables
which grow in the wilderness of tall weeds which surrounds their villages,
wild roots and berries, fresh and dried venison and bear; their carnival
consisting of fresh bear’s flesh and sake, seaweed, mushrooms, and anything
they can get, in fact, which is not poisonous, mixing everything up together.
They use a wooden spoon for stirring, and eat with chopsticks. They have
only two regular meals a day, but eat very heartily. In addition to the
eatables just mentioned they have a thick soup made from a putty-like clay
which is found in one or two of the valleys. This is boiled with the bulb
of a wild lily, and, after much of the clay has been allowed to settle,
the liquid, which is very thick, is poured off. In the north, a valley
where this earth is found is called Tsie- toi-nai, literally “eat-earth-valley.”
The men spend the autumn, winter, and spring in
hunting deer and bears. Part of their tribute or taxes is paid in skins,
and they subsist on the dried meat. Up to about this time the Ainos have
obtained these beasts by means of poisoned arrows, arrow-traps, and pitfalls,
but the Japanese Government has prohibited the use of poison and arrow-traps,
and these men say that hunting is becoming extremely difficult, as the
wild animals are driven back farther and farther into the mountains by
the sound of the guns. However, they add significantly, “the eyes of the
Japanese Government are not in every place!”
Their bows are only three feet long, and are made
of stout saplings with the bark on, and there is no attempt to render them
light or shapely at the ends. The wood is singularly inelastic. The arrows
(of which I have obtained a number) are very peculiar, and are made in
three pieces, the point consisting of a sharpened piece of bone with an
elongated cavity on one side for the reception of the poison. This point
or head is very slightly fastened by a lashing of bark to a fusiform piece
of bone about four inches long, which is in its turn lashed to a shaft
about fourteen inches long, the other end of which is sometimes equipped
with a triple feather and sometimes is not.
The poison is placed in the elongated cavity in
the head in a very soft state, and hardens afterwards. In some of the arrow-heads
fully half a teaspoonful of the paste is inserted. From the nature of the
very slight lashings which attach the arrow-head to the shaft, it constantly
remains fixed in the slight wound that it makes, while the shaft falls
off.
Pipichari has given me a small quantity of the poisonous
paste, and has also taken me to see the plant from the root of which it
is made, the Aconitum Japonicum, a monkshood, whose tall spikes of blue
flowers are brightening the brushwood in all directions. The root is pounded
into a pulp, mixed with a reddish earth like an iron ore pulverized, and
again with animal fat, before being placed in the arrow. It has been said
that the poison is prepared for use by being buried in the earth, but Benri
says that this is needless. They claim for it that a single wound kills
a bear in ten minutes, but that the flesh is not rendered unfit for eating,
though they take the precaution of cutting away a considerable quantity
of it round the wound.
Dr. Eldridge, formerly of Hakodate, obtained a small
quantity of the poison, and, after trying some experiments with it, came
to the conclusion that it is less virulent than other poisons employed
for a like purpose, as by the natives of Java, the Bushmen, and certain
tribes of the Amazon and Orinoco. The Ainos say that if a man is accidentally
wounded by a poisoned arrow the only cure is immediate excision of the
part.
I do not wonder that the Government has prohibited
arrow-traps, for they made locomotion unsafe, and it is still unsafe a
little farther north, where the hunters are more out of observation than
here. The traps consist of a large bow with a poisoned arrow, fixed in
such a way that when the bear walks over a cord which is attached to it
he is simultaneously transfixed. I have seen as many as fifty in one house.
The simple contrivance for inflicting this silent death is most ingenious.
The women are occupied all day, as I have before
said. They look cheerful, and even merry when they smile, and are not like
the Japanese, prematurely old, partly perhaps because their houses are
well ventilated, and the use of charcoal is unknown. I do not think that
they undergo the unmitigated drudgery which falls to the lot of most savage
women, though they work hard. The men do not like them to speak to strangers,
however, and say that their place is to work and rear children. They eat
of the same food, and at the same time as the men, laugh and talk before
them, and receive equal support and respect in old age. They sell mats
and bark- cloth in the piece, and made up, when they can, and their husbands
do not take their earnings from them. All Aino women understand the making
of bark-cloth. The men bring in the bark in strips, five feet long, having
removed the outer coating. This inner bark is easily separated into several
thin layers, which are split into very narrow strips by the older women,
very neatly knotted, and wound into balls weighing about a pound each.
No preparation of either the bark or the thread is required to fit it for
weaving, but I observe that some of the women steep it in a decoction of
a bark which produces a brown dye to deepen the buff tint.
The loom is so simple that I almost fear to represent
it as complicated by description. It consists of a stout hook fixed in
the floor, to which the threads of the far end of the web are secured,
a cord fastening the near end to the waist of the worker, who supplies,
by dexterous rigidity, the necessary tension; a frame like a comb resting
on the ankles, through which the threads pass, a hollow roll for keeping
the upper and under threads separate, a spatula-shaped shuttle of engraved
wood, and a roller on which the cloth is rolled as it is made. The length
of the web is fifteen feet, and the width of the cloth fifteen inches.
It is woven with great regularity, and the knots in the thread are carefully
kept on the under side. {20} It is a very
slow and fatiguing process, and a woman cannot do much more than a foot
a day. The weaver sits on the floor with the whole arrangement attached
to her waist, and the loom, if such it may be called, on her ankles. It
takes long practice before she can supply the necessary tension by spinal
rigidity. As the work proceeds she drags herself almost imperceptibly nearer
the hook. In this house and other large ones two or three women bring in
their webs in the morning, fix their hooks, and weave all day, while others,
who have not equal advantages, put their hooks in the ground and weave
in the sunshine. The web and loom can be bundled up in two minutes, and
carried away quite as easily as a knitted soft blanket. It is the simplest
and perhaps the most primitive form of hand-loom, and comb, shuttle, and
roll, are all easily fashioned with an ordinary knife.
LETTER XXXVII--(Continued)
A Simple Nature-Worship—Aino Gods—A Festival Song—Religious
Intoxication—Bear-Worship—The Annual Saturnalia—The Future State—Marriage
and Divorce—Musical Instruments—Etiquette—The Chieftainship—Death and Burial—Old
Age—Moral Qualities.
There cannot be anything more vague and destitute
of cohesion than Aino religious notions. With the exception of the hill
shrines of Japanese construction dedicated to Yoshitsune, they have no
temples, and they have neither priests, sacrifices, nor worship. Apparently
through all traditional time their cultus has been the rudest and most
primitive form of nature-worship, the attaching of a vague sacredness to
trees, rivers, rocks, and mountains, and of vague notions of power for
good or evil to the sea, the forest, the fire, and the sun and moon. I
cannot make out that they possess a trace of the deification of ancestors,
though their rude nature worship may well have been the primitive form
of Japanese Shinto. The solitary exception to their adoration of animate
and inanimate nature appears to be the reverence paid to Yoshitsune, to
whom they believe they are greatly indebted, and who, it is supposed by
some, will yet interfere on their behalf. {21}
Their gods—that is, the outward symbols of their religion, corresponding
most likely with the Shinto gohei—are wands and posts of peeled wood, whittled
nearly to the top, from which the pendent shavings fall down in white curls.
These are not only set up in their houses, sometimes to the number of twenty,
but on precipices, banks of rivers and streams, and mountain-passes, and
such wands are thrown into the rivers as the boatmen descend rapids and
dangerous places. Since my baggage horse fell over an acclivity on the
trail from Sarufuto, four such wands have been placed there. It is nonsense
to write of the religious ideas of a people who have none, and of beliefs
among people who are merely adult children. The traveler who formulates
an Aino creed must “evolve it from his inner consciousness.” I have taken
infinite trouble to learn from themselves what their religious notions
are, and Shinondi tells me that they have told me all they know, and the
whole sum is a few vague fears and hopes, and a suspicion that there are
things outside themselves more powerful than themselves, whose good influences
may be obtained, or whose evil influences may be averted, by libations
of sake.
The word worship is in itself misleading. When I use it of these savages it simply means libations of sake, waving bowls and waving hands, without any spiritual act of deprecation or supplication. In such a sense and such alone they worship the sun and moon (but not the stars), the forest, and the sea. The wolf, the black snake, the owl, and several other beasts and birds have the word kamoi, god, attached to them, as the wolf is the “howling god,” the owl “the bird of the gods,” a black snake the “raven god;” but none of these things are now “worshipped,” wolf-worship having quite lately died out. Thunder, “the voice of the gods,” inspires some fear. The sun, they say, is their best god, and the fire their next best, obviously the divinities from whom their greatest benefits are received. Some idea of gratitude pervades their rude notions, as in the case of the “worship” paid to Yoshitsune, and it appears in one of the rude recitations chanted at the Saturnalia which in several places conclude the hunting and fishing seasons:
“To the sea which nourishes us, to the forest which protects us, we present our grateful thanks. You are two mothers that nourish the same child; do not be angry if we leave one to go to the other.“The Ainos will always be the pride of the forest and of the sea.”
The peculiarity which distinguishes this rude mythology
is the “worship” of the bear, the Hokkaido (Yezo) bear being one of the
finest of his species; but it is impossible to understand the feelings
by which it is prompted, for they worship it after their fashion, and set
up its head in their villages, yet they trap it, kill it, eat it, and sell
its skin. There is no doubt that this wild beast inspires more of the feeling
which prompts worship than the inanimate forces of nature, and the Ainos
may be distinguished as bear-worshippers, and their greatest religious
festival or Saturnalia as the Festival of the Bear. Gentle and peaceable
as they are, they have a great admiration for fierceness and courage; and
the bear, which is the strongest, fiercest, and most courageous animal
known to them, has probably in all ages inspired them with veneration.
Some of their rude chants are in praise of the bear, and their highest
eulogy on a man is to compare him to a bear. Thus Shinondi said of Benri,
the chief, “He is as strong as a bear,” and the old Fate praising Pipichari
called him “The young bear.”
In all Aino villages, specially near the chief’s
house, there are several tall poles with the fleshless skull of a bear
on the top of each, and in most there is also a large cage, made grid-iron
fashion, of stout timbers, and raised two or three feet from the ground.
At the present time such cages contain young but well- grown bears, captured
when quite small in the early spring. After the capture the bear cub is
introduced into a dwelling-house, generally that of the chief, or sub-chief,
where it is suckled by a woman, and played with by the children, till it
grows too big and rough for domestic ways, and is placed in a strong cage,
in which it is fed and cared for, as I understand, till the autumn of the
following year, when, being strong and well-grown, the Festival of the
Bear is celebrated. The customs of this festival vary considerably, and
the manner of the bear’s death differs among the mountain and coast Ainos,
but everywhere there is a general gathering of the people, and it is the
occasion of a great feast, accompanied with much sake and a curious dance,
in which men alone take part.
Yells and shouts are used to excite the bear, and
when he becomes much agitated a chief shoots him with an arrow, inflicting
a slight wound which maddens him, on which the bars of the cage are raised,
and he springs forth, very furious. At this stage the Ainos run upon him
with various weapons, each one striving to inflict a wound, as it brings
good luck to draw his blood. As soon as he falls down exhausted, his head
is cut off, and the weapons with which he has been wounded are offered
to it, and he is asked to avenge himself upon them. Afterwards the carcass,
amidst a frenzied uproar, is distributed among the people, and amidst feasting
and riot the head, placed upon a pole, is worshipped, i.e. it receives
libations of sake, and the festival closes with general intoxication. In
some villages it is customary for the foster- mother of the bear to utter
piercing wails while he is delivered to his murderers, and after he is
slain to beat each one of them with a branch of a tree. [Afterwards at
Usu, on Volcano Bay, the old men told me that at their festival they despatch
the bear after a different manner. On letting it loose from the cage two
men seize it by the ears, and others simultaneously place a long, stout
pole across the nape of its neck, upon which a number of Ainos mount, and
after a prolonged struggle the neck is broken. As the bear is seen to approach
his end, they shout in chorus, “We kill you, O bear! Come back soon into
an Aino.”] When a bear is trapped or wounded by an arrow, the hunters go
through an apologetic or propitiatory ceremony. They appear to have certain
rude ideas of metempsychosis, as is evidenced by the Usu prayer to the
bear and certain rude traditions; but whether these are indigenous, or
have arisen by contact with Buddhism at a later period, it is impossible
to say.
They have no definite ideas concerning a future
state, and the subject is evidently not a pleasing one to them. Such notions
as they have are few and confused. Some think that the spirits of their
friends go into wolves and snakes; others, that they wander about the forests;
and they are much afraid of ghosts. A few think that they go to “a good
or bad place,” according to their deeds; but Shinondi said, and there was
an infinite pathos in his words, “How can we know? No one ever came back
to tell us!”On asking him what were bad deeds, he said, “Being bad to parents,
stealing, and telling lies.” The future, however, does not occupy any place
in their thoughts, and they can hardly be said to believe in the immortality
of the soul, though their fear of ghosts shows that they recognize a distinction
between body and spirit.
Their social customs are very simple. Girls never
marry before the age of seventeen, or men before twenty-one. When a man
wishes to marry he thinks of some particular girl, and asks the chief if
he may ask for her. If leave is given, either through a “go-between” or
personally, he asks her father for her, and if he consents the bridegroom
gives him a present, usually a Japanese “curio.” This constitutes betrothal,
and the marriage, which immediately follows, is celebrated by carousals
and the drinking of much sake. The bride receives as her dowry her earrings
and a highly ornamented kimono. It is an essential that the husband provides
a house to which to take his wife. Each couple lives separately, and even
the eldest son does not take his bride to his father’s house. Polygamy
is only allowed in two cases. The chief may have three wives; but each
must have her separate house. Benri has two wives; but it appears that
he took the second because the first was childless. [The Usu Ainos told
me that among the tribes of Volcano Bay polygamy is not practiced, even
by the chiefs.] It is also permitted in the case of a childless wife; but
there is no instance of it in Biratori, and the men say that they prefer
to have one wife, as two quarrel.
Widows are allowed to marry again with the chief’s
consent; but among these mountain Ainos a woman must remain absolutely
secluded within the house of her late husband for a period varying from
six to twelve months, only going to the door at intervals to throw sake
to the right and left. A man secludes himself similarly for thirty days.
[So greatly do the customs vary, that round Volcano Bay I found that the
period of seclusion for a widow is only thirty days, and for a man twenty-five;
but that after a father’s death the house in which he has lived is burned
down after the thirty days of seclusion, and the widow and her children
go to a friend’s house for three years, after which the house is rebuilt
on its former site.]
If a man does not like his wife, by obtaining the
chief’s consent he can divorce her; but he must send her back to her parents
with plenty of good clothes; but divorce is impracticable where there are
children, and is rarely if ever practiced. Conjugal fidelity is a virtue
among Aino women; but “custom” provides that, in case of unfaithfulness,
the injured husband may bestow his wife upon her paramour, if he be an
unmarried man; in which case the chief fixes the amount of damages which
the paramour must pay; and these are usually valuable Japanese curios.
The old and blind people are entirely supported
by their children, and receive until their dying day filial reverence and
obedience.
If one man steals from another he must return what
he has taken, and give the injured man a present besides, the value of
which is fixed by the chief.
Their mode of living you already know, as I have
shared it, and am still receiving their hospitality. “Custom” enjoins the
exercise of hospitality on every Aino. They receive all strangers as they
received me, giving them of their best, placing them in the most honorable
place, bestowing gifts upon them, and, when they depart, furnishing them
with cakes of boiled millet.
They have few amusements, except certain feasts.
Their dance, which they have just given in my honor, is slow and mournful,
and their songs are chants or recitative. They have a musical instrument,
something like a guitar, with three, five, or six strings, which are made
from sinews of whales cast up on the shore. They have another, which is
believed to be peculiar to themselves, consisting of a thin piece of wood,
about five inches long and two and a half inches broad, with a pointed
wooden tongue, about two lines in breadth and sixteen in length, fixed
in the middle, and grooved on three sides. The wood is held before the
mouth, and the tongue is set in motion by the vibration of the breath in
singing. Its sound, though less penetrating, is as discordant as that of
a Jew’s harp, which it somewhat resembles. One of the men used it as an
accompaniment of a song; but they are unwilling to part with them, as they
say that it is very seldom that they can find a piece of wood which will
bear the fine splitting necessary for the tongue.
They are a most courteous people among each other.
The salutations are frequent—on entering a house, on leaving it, on meeting
on the road, on receiving anything from the hand of another, and on receiving
a kind or complimentary speech. They do not make any acknowledgments of
this kind to the women, however. The common salutation consists in extending
the hands and waving them inwards, once or oftener, and stroking the beard;
the formal one in raising the hands with an inward curve to the level of
the head two or three times, lowering them, and rubbing them together;
the ceremony concluding with stroking the beard several times. The latter
and more formal mode of salutation is offered to the chief, and by the
young to the old men. The women have no “manners!”
They have no “medicine men,” and, though they are
aware of the existence of healing herbs, they do not know their special
virtues or the manner of using them. Dried and pounded bear’s liver is
their specific, and they place much reliance on it in colic and other pains.
They are a healthy race. In this village of 300 souls, there are no chronically
ailing people; nothing but one case of bronchitis, and some cutaneous maladies
among children. Neither is there any case of deformity in this and five
other large villages which I have visited, except that of a girl, who has
one leg slightly shorter than the other.
They ferment a kind of intoxicating liquor from
the root of a tree, and also from their own millet and Japanese rice, but
Japanese sake is the one thing that they care about. They spend all their
gains upon it, and drink it in enormous quantities. It represents to them
all the good of which they know, or can conceive. Beastly intoxication
is the highest happiness to which these poor savages aspire, and the condition
is sanctified to them under the fiction of “drinking to the gods.” Men
and women alike indulge in this vice. A few, however, like Pipichari, abstain
from it totally, taking the bowl in their hands, making the libations to
the gods, and then passing it on. I asked Pipichari why he did not take
sake, and he replied with a truthful terseness, “Because it makes men like
dogs.”
Except the chief, who has two horses, they have
no domestic animals except very large, yellow dogs, which are used in hunting,
but are never admitted within the houses.
The habits of the people, though by no means destitute
of decency and propriety, are not cleanly. The women bathe their hands
once a day, but any other washing is unknown. They never wash their clothes,
and wear the same by day and night. I am afraid to speculate on the condition
of their wealth of coal-black hair. They may be said to be very dirty—as
dirty fully as masses of our people at home. Their houses swarm with fleas,
but they are not worse in this respect than the Japanese yadoyas. The mountain
villages have, however, the appearance of extreme cleanliness, being devoid
of litter, heaps, puddles, and untidiness of all kinds, and there are no
unpleasant odorous inside or outside the houses, as they are well ventilated
and smoked, and the salt fish and meat are kept in the godowns. The hair
and beards of the old men, instead of being snowy as they ought to be,
are yellow from smoke and dirt.
They have no mode of computing time, and do not
know their own ages. To them the past is dead, yet, like other conquered
and despised races, they cling to the idea that in some far-off age they
were a great nation. They have no traditions of internecine strife, and
the art of war seems to have been lost long ago. I asked Benri about this
matter, and he says that formerly Ainos fought with spears and knives as
well as with bows and arrows, but that Yoshitsune, their hero god, forbade
war for ever, and since then the two-edged spear, with a shaft nine feet
long, has only been used in hunting bears.
The Japanese Government, of course, exercises the
same authority over the Ainos as over its other subjects, but probably
it does not care to interfere in domestic or tribal matters, and within
this outside limit despotic authority is vested in the chiefs. The Ainos
live in village communities, and each community has its own chief, who
is its lord paramount. It appears to me that this chieftainship is but
an expansion of the paternal relation, and that all the village families
are ruled as a unit. Benri, in whose house I am, is the chief of Biratori,
and is treated by all with very great deference of manner. The office is
nominally for life; but if a chief becomes blind, or too infirm to go about,
he appoints a successor. If he has a “smart” son, who he thinks will command
the respect of the people, he appoints him; but if not, he chooses the
most suitable man in the village. The people are called upon to approve
the choice, but their ratification is never refused. The office is not
hereditary anywhere.
Benri appears to exercise the authority of a very
strict father. His manner to all the men is like that of a master to slaves,
and they bow when they speak to him. No one can marry without his approval.
If any one builds a house he chooses the site. He has absolute jurisdiction
in civil and criminal cases, unless (which is very rare) the latter should
be of sufficient magnitude to be reported to the Imperial officials. He
compels restitution of stolen property, and in all cases fixes the fines
which are to be paid by delinquents. He also fixes the hunting arrangements
and the festivals. The younger men were obviously much afraid of incurring
his anger in his absence.
An eldest son does not appear to be, as among the
Japanese,
a privileged person. He does not necessarily inherit the house and curios.
The latter are not divided, but go with the house to the son whom the father
regards as being the “smartest.” Formal adoption is practiced. Pipichari
is an adopted son, and is likely to succeed to Benri’s property to the
exclusion of his own children. I cannot get at the word which is translated
“smartness,” but I understand it as meaning general capacity. The chief,
as I have mentioned before, is allowed three wives among the mountain Ainos,
otherwise authority seems to be his only privilege.
The Ainos have a singular dread of snakes. Even
their bravest fly from them. One man says that it is because they know
of no cure for their bite; but there is something more than this, for they
flee from snakes which they know to be harmless.
They have an equal dread of their dead. Death seems
to them very specially “the shadow fear’d of man.” When it comes, which
it usually does from bronchitis in old age, the corpse is dressed in its
best clothing, and laid upon a shelf for from one to three days. In the
case of a woman her ornaments are buried with her, and in that of a man
his knife and sake-stick, and, if he were a smoker, his smoking apparatus.
The corpse is sewn up with these things in a mat, and, being slung on poles,
is carried to a solitary grave, where it is laid in a recumbent position.
Nothing will induce an Aino to go near a grave. Even if a valuable bird
or animal falls near one, he will not go to pick it up. A vague dread is
for ever associated with the departed, and no dream of Paradise ever lights
for the Aino the “Stygian shades.”
Benri is, for an Aino, intelligent. Two years ago
Mr. Dening of Hakodate came up here and told him that there was but one
God who made us all, to which the shrewd old man replied, “If the God who
made you made us, how is it that you are so different—you so rich, we so
poor? ” On asking him about the magnificent pieces of lacquer and inlaying
which adorn his curio shelf, he said that they were his father’s, grandfather’s,
and great-grandfather’s at least, and he thinks they were gifts from the
daimyo of Matsumae soon after the conquest of Hokkaido (Yezo). He is a
grand-looking man, in spite of the havoc wrought by his intemperate habits.
There is plenty of room in the house, and this morning, when I asked him
to show me the use of the spear, he looked a truly magnificent savage,
stepping well back with the spear in rest, and then springing forward for
the attack, his arms and legs turning into iron, the big muscles standing
out in knots, his frame quivering with excitement, the thick hair falling
back in masses from his brow, and the fire of the chase in his eye. I trembled
for my boy, who was the object of the imaginary onslaught, the passion
of sport was so admirably acted.
As I write, seven of the older men are sitting by
the fire. Their gray beards fall to their waists in rippled masses, and
the slight baldness of age not only gives them a singularly venerable appearance,
but enhances the beauty of their lofty brows. I took a rough sketch of
one of the handsomest, and, showing it to him, asked if he would have it,
but instead of being amused or pleased he showed symptoms of fear, and
asked me to burn it, saying it would bring him bad luck and he should die.
However, Ito pacified him, and he accepted it, after a Chinese character,
which is understood to mean good luck, had been written upon it; but all
the others begged me not to “make pictures” of them, except Pipichari,
who lies at my feet like a staghound.
The profusion of black hair, and a curious intensity
about their eyes, coupled with the hairy limbs and singularly vigorous
physique, give them a formidably savage appearance; but the smile, full
of “sweetness and light,” in which both eyes and mouth bear part, and the
low, musical voice, softer and sweeter than anything I have previously
heard, make me at times forget that they are savages at all. The venerable
look of these old men harmonizes with the singular dignity and courtesy
of their manners, but as I look at the grand heads, and reflect that the
Ainos have never shown any capacity, and are merely adult children, they
seem to suggest water on the brain rather than intellect. I am more and
more convinced that the expression of their faces is European. It is truthful,
straightforward, manly, but both it and the tone of voice are strongly
tinged with pathos.
Before these elders Benri asked me, in a severe
tone, if I had been annoyed in any way during his absence. He feared, he
said, that the young men and the women would crowd about me rudely. I made
a complimentary speech in return, and all the ancient hands were waved,
and the venerable beards were stroked in acknowledgment.
These Ainos, doubtless, stand high among uncivilized
peoples. They are, however, as completely irreclaimable as the wildest
of nomad tribes, and contact with civilization, where it exists, only debases
them. Several young Ainos were sent to Tokyo, and educated and trained
in various ways, but as soon as they returned to Hokkaido (Yezo) they relapsed
into savagery, retaining nothing but a knowledge of Japanese. They are
charming in many ways, but make one sad, too, by their stupidity, apathy,
and hopelessness, and all the sadder that their numbers appear to be again
increasing; and as their physique is very fine, there does not appear to
be a prospect of the race dying out at present.
They are certainly superior to many aborigines,
as they have an approach to domestic life. They have one word for HOUSE,
and another for HOME, and one word for husband approaches very nearly to
house-band. Truth is of value in their eyes, and this in itself raises
them above some peoples. Infanticide is unknown, and aged parents receive
filial reverence, kindness, and support, while in their social and domestic
relations there is much that is praiseworthy.
I must conclude this letter abruptly, as the horses
are waiting, and I must cross the rivers, if possible, before the bursting
of an impending storm.
I rode twelve miles through the forest to Mombets,
where I intended to spend Sunday, but I had the worst horse I ever rode,
and we took five hours. The day was dull and sad, threatening a storm,
and when we got out of the forest, upon a sand-hill covered with oak scrub,
we encountered a most furious wind. Among the many views which I have seen,
that is one to be remembered. Below lay a bleached and bare sand-hill,
with a few gray houses huddled in its miserable shelter, and a heaped-up
shore of gray sand, on which a brown-gray sea was breaking with clash and
boom in long, white, ragged lines, with all beyond a confusion of surf,
surge, and mist, with driving brown clouds mingling sea and sky, and all
between showing only in glimpses amidst scuds of sand.
At a house in the scrub a number of men were drinking
sake with much uproar, and a superb-looking Aino came out, staggered a
few yards, and then fell backwards among the weeds, a picture of debasement.
I forgot to tell you that before I left Biratori, I inveighed to the assembled
Ainos against the practice and consequences of sake-drinking, and was met
with the reply, “We must drink to the gods, or we shall die;” but Pipichari
said, “You say that which is good; let us give sake to the gods, but not
drink it,” for which bold speech he was severely rebuked by Benri.
Mombets is a stormily-situated and most wretched
cluster of twenty- seven decayed houses, some of them Aino, and some Japanese.
The fish-oil and seaweed fishing trades are in brisk operation there now
for a short time, and a number of Aino and Japanese strangers are employed.
The boats could not get out because of the surf, and there was a drunken
debauch. The whole place smelt of sake. Tipsy men were staggering about
and falling flat on their backs, to lie there like dogs till they were
sober,--Aino women were vainly endeavoring to drag their drunken lords
home, and men of both races were reduced to a beastly equality. I went
to the yadoya where I intended to spend Sunday, but, besides being very
dirty and forlorn, it was the very center of the sake traffic, and in its
open space there were men in all stages of riotous and stupid intoxication.
It was a sad scene, yet one to be matched in a hundred places in Scotland
every Saturday afternoon. I am told by the Kocho here that an Aino can
drink four or five times as much as a Japanese without being tipsy, so
for each tipsy Aino there had been an outlay of 6s. or 7s., for sake is
8d. a cup here!
I had some tea and eggs in the daidokoro, and altered
my plans altogether on finding that if I proceeded farther round the east
coast, as I intended, I should run the risk of several days’ detention
on the banks of numerous “bad rivers” if rain came on, by which I should
run the risk of breaking my promise to deliver Ito to Mr. Maries by a given
day. I do not surrender this project, however, without an equivalent, for
I intend to add 100 miles to my journey, by taking an almost disused track
round Volcano Bay, and visiting the coast Ainos of a very primitive region.
Ito is very much opposed to this, thinking that he has made a sufficient
sacrifice of personal comfort at Biratori, and plies me with stories, such
as that there are “many bad rivers to cross,” that the track is so worn
as to be impassable, that there are no yadoyas, and that at the Government
offices we shall neither get rice nor eggs!An old man who has turned back
unable to get horses is made responsible for these stories. The machinations
are very amusing. Ito was much smitten with the daughter of the house-
master at Mororan, and left some things in her keeping, and the desire
to see her again is at the bottom of his opposition to the other route.
Monday.—The horse could not or would not carry me
farther than Mombets, so, sending the baggage on, I walked through the
oak wood, and enjoyed its silent solitude, in spite of the sad reflections
upon the enslavement of the Ainos to sake. I spent yesterday quietly in
my old quarters, with a fearful storm of wind and rain outside. Pipichari
appeared at noon, nominally to bring news of the sick woman, who is recovering,
and to have his nearly healed foot bandaged again, but really to bring
me a knife sheath which he has carved for me. He lay on the mat in the
corner of my room most of the afternoon, and I got a great many more words
from him. The house-master, who is the Kocho of Sarufuto, paid me a courteous
visit, and in the evening sent to say that he would be very glad of some
medicine, for he was “very ill and going to have fever.” He had caught
a bad cold and sore throat, had bad pains in his limbs, and was bemoaning
himself ruefully. To pacify his wife, who was very sorry for him, I gave
him some “Cockle’s Pills” and the trapper’s remedy of “a pint of hot water
with a pinch of cayenne pepper,” and left him moaning and bundled up under
a pile of futons, in a nearly hermetically sealed room, with a hibachi
of charcoal vitiating the air. This morning when I went and inquired after
him in a properly concerned tone, his wife told me very gleefully that
he was quite well and had gone out, and had left 25 sen for some more of
the medicines that I had given him, so with great gravity I put up some
of Duncan and Flockhart’s most pungent cayenne pepper, and showed her how
much to use. She was not content, however, without some of the “Cockles,”
a single box of which has performed six of those “miraculous cures” which
rejoice the hearts and fill the pockets of patent medicine makers!
I. L. B.
I like Shiraoi very much, and if I were stronger
would certainly make it a basis for exploring a part of the interior, in
which there is much to reward the explorer. Obviously the changes in this
part of Hokkaido (Yezo) have been comparatively recent, and the energy
of the force which has produced them is not yet extinct. The land has gained
from the sea along the whole of this part of the coast to the extent of
two or three miles, the old beach with its bays and headlands being a marked
feature of the landscape. This new formation appears to be a vast bed of
pumice, covered by a thin layer of vegetable mold, which cannot be more
than fifty years old. This pumice fell during the eruption of the volcano
of Tarumai, which is very near Shiraoi, and is also brought down in large
quantities from the interior hills and valleys by the numerous rivers,
besides being washed up by the sea. At the last eruption pumice fell over
this region of Hokkaido (Yezo) to a medium depth of 3 feet 6 inches. In
nearly all the rivers good sections of the formation may be seen in their
deeply-cleft banks, broad, light- colored bands of pumice, with a few inches
of rich, black, vegetable soil above, and several feet of black sea-sand
below. During a freshet which occurred the first night I was at Shiraoi,
a single stream covered a piece of land with pumice to the depth of nine
inches, being the wash from the hills of the interior, in a course of less
than fifteen miles.
Looking inland, the volcano of Tarumai, with a bare
gray top and a blasted forest on its sides, occupies the right of the picture.
To the left and inland are mountains within mountains, tumbled together
in most picturesque confusion, densely covered with forest and cleft by
magnificent ravines, here and there opening out into narrow valleys. The
whole of the interior is jungle penetrable for a few miles by shallow and
rapid rivers, and by nearly smothered trails made by the Ainos in search
of game. The general lie of the country made me very anxious to find out
whether a much-broken ridge lying among the mountains is or is not a series
of tufa cones of ancient date; and, applying for a good horse and Aino
guide on horseback, I left Ito to amuse himself, and spent much of a most
splendid day in investigations and in attempting to get round the back
of the volcano and up its inland side. There is a great deal to see and
learn there. Oh that I had strength!After hours of most tedious and exhausting
work I reached a point where there were several great fissures emitting
smoke and steam, with occasional subterranean detonations. These were on
the side of a small, flank crack which was smoking heavily. There was light
pumice everywhere, but nothing like recent lava or scoriae. One fissure
was completely lined with exquisite, acicular crystals of sulfur, which
perished with a touch. Lower down there were two hot springs with a deposit
of sulfur round their margins, and bubbles of gas, which, from its strong,
garlicky smell, I suppose to be sulphuretted hydrogen. Farther progress
in that direction was impossible without a force of pioneers. I put my
arm down several deep crevices which were at an altitude of only about
500 feet, and had to withdraw it at once, owing to the great heat, in which
some beautiful specimens of tropical ferns were growing. At the same height
I came to a hot spring—hot enough to burst one of my thermometers, which
was graduated above the boiling point of Fahrenheit; and tying up an egg
in a pocket-handkerchief and holding it by a stick in the water, it was
hard boiled in 8.5 minutes. The water evaporated without leaving a trace
of deposit on the handkerchief, and there was no crust round its margin.
It boiled and bubbled with great force.
Three hours more of exhausting toil, which almost
knocked up the horses, brought us to the apparent ridge, and I was delighted
to find that it consisted of a lateral range of tufa cones, which I estimate
as being from 200 to 350, or even 400 feet high. They are densely covered
with trees of considerable age, and a rich deposit of mold; but their conical
form is still admirably defined. An hour of very severe work, and energetic
use of the knife on the part of the Aino, took me to the top of one of
these through a mass of entangled and gigantic vegetation, and I was amply
repaid by finding a deep, well-defined crateriform cavity of great depth,
with its sides richly clothed with vegetation, closely resembling some
of the old cones in the island of Kauai. This cone is partially girdled
by a stream, which in one place has cut through a bank of both red and
black volcanic ash. All the usual phenomena of volcanic regions are probably
to be met with north of Shiraoi, and I hope they will at some future time
be made the object of careful investigation.
In spite of the desperate and almost overwhelming
fatigue, I have enjoyed few things more than that “exploring expedition.”
If the Japanese have no one to talk to they croon hideous discords to themselves,
and it was a relief to leave Ito behind and get away with an Aino, who
was at once silent, trustworthy, and faithful. Two bright rivers bubbling
over beds of red pebbles run down to Shiraoi out of the back country, and
my directions, which were translated to the Aino, were to follow up one
of these and go into the mountains in the direction of one I pointed out
till I said “Shiraoi.” It was one of those exquisite mornings which are
seen sometimes in the Scotch Highlands before rain, with intense clearness
and visibility, a blue atmosphere, a cloudless sky, blue summits, heavy
dew, and glorious sunshine, and under these circumstances scenery beautiful
in itself became entrancing.
The trailers are so formidable that we had to stoop
over our horses’ necks at all times, and with pushing back branches and
guarding my face from slaps and scratches, my thick dogskin gloves were
literally frayed off, and some of the skin of my hands and face in addition,
so that I returned with both bleeding and swelled. It was on the return
ride, fortunately, that in stooping to escape one great liana the loop
of another grazed my nose, and, being unable to check my unbroken horse
instantaneously, the loop caught me by the throat, nearly strangled me,
and in less time than it takes to tell it I was drawn over the back of
the saddle, and found myself lying on the ground, jammed between a tree
and the hind leg of the horse, which was quietly feeding. The Aino, whose
face was very badly scratched, missing me, came back, said never a word,
helped me up, brought me some water in a leaf, brought my hat, and we rode
on again. I was little the worse for the fall, but on borrowing a looking-glass
I see not only scratches and abrasions all over my face, but a livid mark
round my throat as if I had been hung!The Aino left portions of his bushy
locks on many of the branches. You would have been amused to see me in
this forest, preceded by this hairy and formidable-looking savage, who
was dressed in a coat of skins with the fur outside, seated on the top
of a pack-saddle covered with a deer hide, and with his hairy legs crossed
over the horse’s neck—a fashion in which the Ainos ride any horses over
any ground with the utmost serenity.
It was a wonderful region for beauty. I have not
seen so beautiful a view in Japan as from the river-bed from which I had
the first near view of the grand assemblage of tufa cones, covered with
an ancient vegetation, backed by high mountains of volcanic origin, on
whose ragged crests the red ash was blazing vermilion against the blue
sky, with a foreground of bright waters flashing through a primeval forest.
The banks of these streams were deeply excavated by the heavy rains, and
sometimes we had to jump three and even four feet out of the forest into
the river, and as much up again, fording the Shiraoi river only more than
twenty times, and often making a pathway of its treacherous bed and rushing
waters, because the forest was impassable from the great size of the prostrate
trees. The horses look at these jumps, hold back, try to turn, and then,
making up their minds, suddenly plunge down or up. When the last vestige
of a trail disappeared, I signed to the Aino to go on, and our subsequent
“exploration” was all done at the rate of about a mile an hour. On the
openings the grass grows stiff and strong to the height of eight feet,
with its soft reddish plumes waving in the breeze. The Aino first forced
his horse through it, but of course it closed again, so that constantly
when he was close in front I was only aware of his proximity by the tinkling
of his horse’s bells, for I saw nothing of him or of my own horse except
the horn of my saddle. We tumbled into holes often, and as easily tumbled
out of them; but once we both went down in the most unexpected manner into
what must have been an old bear-trap, both going over our horses’ heads,
the horses and ourselves struggling together in a narrow space in a mist
of grassy plumes, and, being unable to communicate with my guide, the sense
of the ridiculous situation was so overpowering that, even in the midst
of the mishap, I was exhausted with laughter, though not a little bruised.
It was very hard to get out of that pitfall, and I hope I shall never get
into one again. It is not the first occasion on which I have been glad
that the Hokkaido (Yezo) horses are shoeless. It was through this long
grass that we fought our way to the tufa cones, with the red ragged crests
against the blue sky.
The scenery was magnificent, and after getting so
far I longed to explore the sources of the rivers, but besides the many
difficulties the day was far spent. I was also too weak for any energetic
undertaking, yet I felt an intuitive perception of the passion and fascination
of exploring, and understood how people could give up their lives to it.
I turned away from the tufa cones and the glory of the ragged crests very
sadly, to ride a tired horse through great difficulties; and the animal
was so thoroughly done up that I had to walk, or rather wade, for the last
hour, and it was nightfall when I returned, to find that Ito had packed
up all my things, had been waiting ever since noon to start for Horobets,
was very grumpy at having to unpack, and thoroughly disgusted when I told
him that I was so tired and bruised that I should have to remain the next
day to rest. He said indignantly, “I never thought that when you’d got
the Kaitakushi kuruma you’d go off the road into those woods!”We had seen
some deer and many pheasants, and a successful hunter brought in a fine
stag, so that I had venison steak for supper, and was much comforted, though
Ito seasoned the meal with well-got-up stories of the impracticability
of the Volcano Bay route.
Shiraoi consists of a large old Honjin, or yadoya,
where the daimyo and his train used to lodge in the old days, and about
eleven Japanese houses, most of which are sake shops—a fact which supplies
an explanation of the squalor of the Aino village of fifty-two houses,
which is on the shore at a respectful distance. There is no cultivation,
in which it is like all the fishing villages on this part of the coast,
but fish-oil and fish-manure are made in immense quantities, and, though
it is not the season here, the place is pervaded by “an ancient and fish-like
smell.”
The Aino houses are much smaller, poorer, and dirtier
than those of Biratori. I went into a number of them, and conversed with
the people, many of whom understand Japanese. Some of the houses looked
like dens, and, as it was raining, husband, wife, and five or six naked
children, all as dirty as they could be, with unkempt, elf-like locks,
were huddled round the fires. Still, bad as it looked and smelt, the fire
was the hearth, and the hearth was inviolate, and each smoked and dirt-stained
group was a family, and it was an advance upon the social life of, for
instance, Salt Lake City. The roofs are much flatter than those of the
mountain Ainos, and, as there are few store-houses, quantities of fish,
“green” skins, and venison, hang from the rafters, and the smell of these
and the stinging of the smoke were most trying. Few of the houses had any
guest-seats, but in the very poorest, when I asked shelter from the rain,
they put their best mat upon the ground, and insisted, much to my distress,
on my walking over it in muddy boots, saying, “It is Aino custom.” Ever,
in those squalid homes the broad shelf, with its rows of Japanese curios,
always has a place. I mentioned that it is customary for a chief to appoint
a successor when he becomes infirm, and I came upon a case in point, through
a mistaken direction, which took us to the house of the former chief, with
a great empty bear cage at its door. On addressing him as the chief, he
said, “I am old and blind, I cannot go out, I am of no more good,” and
directed us to the house of his successor. Altogether it is obvious, from
many evidences in this village, that Japanese contiguity is hurtful, and
that the Ainos have reaped abundantly of the disadvantages without the
advantages of contact with Japanese civilization.
That night I saw a specimen of Japanese horse-breaking
as practiced in Hokkaido (Yezo). A Japanese brought into the village street
a handsome, spirited young horse, equipped with a Japanese demi-pique saddle,
and a most cruel gag bit. The man wore very cruel spurs, and was armed
with a bit of stout board two feet long by six inches broad. The horse
had not been mounted before, and was frightened, but not the least vicious.
He was spurred into a gallop, and ridden at full speed up and down the
street, turned by main force, thrown on his haunches, goaded with the spurs,
and cowed by being mercilessly thrashed over the ears and eyes with the
piece of board till he was blinded with blood. Whenever he tried to stop
from exhaustion he was spurred, jerked, and flogged, till at last, covered
with sweat, foam, and blood, and with blood running from his mouth and
splashing the road, he reeled, staggered, and fell, the rider dexterously
disengaging himself. As soon as he was able to stand, he was allowed to
crawl into a shed, where he was kept without food till morning, when a
child could do anything with him. He was “broken,” effectively spirit-broken,
useless for the rest of his life. It was a brutal and brutalizing exhibition,
as triumphs of brute force always are.
This morning I left early in the kuruma with two
kind and delightful savages. The road being much broken by the rains I
had to get out frequently, and every time I got in again they put my air-pillow
behind me, and covered me up in a blanket; and when we got to a rough river,
one made a step of his back by which I mounted their horse, and gave me
nooses of rope to hold on by, and the other held my arm to keep me steady,
and they would not let me walk up or down any of the hills. What a blessing
it is that, amidst the confusion of tongues, the language of kindness and
courtesy is universally understood, and that a kindly smile on a savage
face is as intelligible as on that of one’s own countryman! They had never
drawn a kuruma, and were as pleased as children when I showed them how
to balance the shafts. They were not without the capacity to originate
ideas, for, when they were tired of the frolic of pulling, they attached
the kuruma by ropes to the horse, which one of them rode at a “scramble,”
while the other merely ran in the shafts to keep them level. This is an
excellent plan.
Horobets is a fishing station of antique and decayed
aspect, with eighteen Japanese and forty-seven Aino houses. The latter
are much larger than at Shiraoi, and their very steep roofs are beautifully
constructed. It was a miserable day, with fog concealing the mountains
and lying heavily on the sea, but as no one expected rain I sent the kuruma
back to Mororan and secured horses. On principle I always go to the corral
myself to choose animals, if possible, without sore backs, but the choice
is often between one with a mere raw and others which have holes in their
backs into which I could put my hand, or altogether uncovered spines. The
practice does no immediate good, but by showing the Japanese that foreign
opinion condemns these cruelties an amendment may eventually be brought
about.
It is nearly midnight, but my bed and bedding are
so wet that I am still sitting up and drying them, patch by patch, with
tedious slowness, on a wooden frame placed over a charcoal brazier, which
has given my room the dryness and warmth which are needed when a person
has been for many hours in soaked clothing, and has nothing really dry
to put on. Ito bought a chicken for my supper, but when he was going to
kill it an hour later its owner in much grief returned the money, saying
she had brought it up and could not bear to see it killed. This is a wild,
outlandish place, but an intuition tells me that it is beautiful. The ocean
at present is thundering up the beach with the sullen force of a heavy
ground- swell, and the rain is still falling in torrents.
I. L. B.
“Weary wave and dying blast Sob and moan along the shore, All is peace at last.”
In Hokkaido (Yezo), as on the main island, one can
learn very little about any prospective route. Usually when one makes an
inquiry a Japanese puts on a stupid look, giggles, tucks his thumbs into
his girdle, hitches up his garments, and either professes perfect ignorance
or gives one some vague second-hand information, though it is quite possible
that he may have been over every foot of the ground himself more than once.
Whether suspicion of your motives in asking, or a fear of compromising
himself by answering, is at the bottom of this I don’t know, but it is
most exasperating to a traveler. In Hakodate I failed to see Captain Blakiston,
who has walked round the whole Hokkaido (Yezo) sea-board, and all I was
able to learn regarding this route was that the coast was thinly peopled
by Ainos, that there were Government horses which could be got, and that
one could sleep where one got them; that rice and salt fish were the only
food; that there were many “bad rivers,” and that the road went over “bad
mountains;” that the only people who went that way were Government officials
twice a year, that one could not get on more than four miles a day, that
the roads over the passes were “all big stones,” etc. etc. So this Usu-taki
took me altogether by surprise, and for a time confounded all my carefully-constructed
notions of locality. I had been told that the one volcano in the bay was
Komono-taki, near Mori, and this I believed to be eighty miles off, and
there, confronting me, within a distance of two miles, was this grand,
splintered, vermilion-crested thing, with a far nobler aspect than that
of “THE” volcano, with a curtain range in front, deeply scored, and slashed
with ravines and abysses whose purple gloom was unlighted even by the noon-day
sun. One of the peaks was emitting black smoke from a deep crater, another
steam and white smoke from various rents and fissures in its side—vermilion
peaks, smoke, and steam all rising into a sky of brilliant blue, and the
atmosphere was so clear that I saw everything that was going on there quite
distinctly, especially when I attained an altitude exceeding that of the
curtain range. It was not for two days that I got a correct idea of its
geographical situation, but I was not long in finding out that it was not
Komono-taki!There is much volcanic activity about it. I saw a glare from
it last night thirty miles away. The Ainos said that it was “a god,” but
did not know its name, nor did the Japanese who were living under its shadow.
At some distance from it in the interior rises a great dome-like mountain,
Shiribetsan, and the whole view is grand.
A little beyond Mombets flows the river Osharu,
one of the largest of the Hokkaido (Yezo) streams. It was much swollen
by the previous day’s rain; and as the ferry-boat was carried away we had
to swim it, and the swim seemed very long. Of course, we and the baggage
got very wet. The coolness with which the Aino guide took to the water
without giving us any notice that its broad, eddying flood was a swim,
and not a ford, was very amusing.
From the top of a steepish ascent beyond the Osharugawa
there is a view into what looks like a very lovely lake, with wooded promontories,
and little bays, and rocky capes in miniature, and little heights, on which
Aino houses, with tawny roofs, are clustered; and then the track dips suddenly,
and deposits one, not by a lake at all, but on Usu Bay, an inlet of the
Pacific, much broken up into coves, and with a very narrow entrance, only
obvious from a few points. Just as the track touches the bay there is a
road-post, with a prayer-wheel in it, and by the shore an upright stone
of very large size, inscribed with Sanskrit characters, near to a stone
staircase and a gateway in a massive stone-faced embankment, which looked
much out of keeping with the general wildness of the place. On a rocky
promontory in a wooded cove there is a large, rambling house, greatly out
of repair, inhabited by a Japanese man and his son, who are placed there
to look after Government interests, exiles among 500 Ainos. From among
the number of rat-haunted, rambling rooms which had once been handsome,
I chose one opening on a yard or garden with some distorted yews in it,
but found that the great gateway and the amado had no bolts, and that anything
might be appropriated by any one with dishonest intentions; but the house-master
and his son, who have lived for ten years among the Ainos, and speak their
language, say that nothing is ever taken, and that the Ainos are thoroughly
honest and harmless. Without this assurance I should have been distrustful
of the number of wide-mouthed youths who hung about, in the listlessness
and vacuity of savagery, if not of the bearded men who sat or stood about
the gateway with children in their arms.
Usu is a dream of beauty and peace. There is not
much difference between the height of high and low water on this coast,
and the lake-like illusion would have been perfect had it not been that
the rocks were tinged with gold for a foot or so above the sea by a delicate
species of fucus. In the exquisite inlet where I spent the night, trees
and trailers drooped into the water and were mirrored in it, their green,
heavy shadows lying sharp against the sunset gold and pink of the rest
of the bay; log canoes, with planks laced upon their gunwales to heighten
them, were drawn upon a tiny beach of golden sand, and in the shadiest
cove, moored to a tree, an antique and much-carved junk was “floating double.” Wooded,
rocky knolls, with Aino huts, the vermilion peaks of the volcano of Usu-taki
redder than ever in the sinking sun, a few Ainos mending their nets, a
few more spreading edible seaweed out to dry, a single canoe breaking the
golden mirror of the cove by its noiseless motion, a few Aino loungers,
with their “mild-eyed, melancholy” faces and quiet ways suiting the quiet
evening scene, the unearthly sweetness of a temple bell—this was all, and
yet it was the loveliest picture I have seen in Japan.
In spite of Ito’s remonstrances and his protestations
that an exceptionally good supper would be spoiled, I left my rat-haunted
room, with its tarnished gilding and precarious fusuma, to get the last
of the pink and lemon-colored glory, going up the staircase in the stone-faced
embankment, and up a broad, well-paved avenue, to a large temple, within
whose open door I sat for some time absolutely alone, and in a wonderful
stillness; for the sweet-toned bell which vainly chimes for vespers amidst
this bear-worshipping population had ceased. This temple was the first
symptom of Japanese religion that I remember to have seen since leaving
Hakodate, and worshippers have long since ebbed away from its shady and
moss-grown courts. Yet it stands there to protest for the teaching of the
great Hindu; and generations of Aino heathen pass away one after another;
and still its bronze bell tolls, and its altar lamps are lit, and incense
burns for ever before Buddha. The characters on the great bell of this
temple are said to be the same lines which are often graven on temple bells,
and to possess the dignity of twenty-four centuries:
“All things are transient; They being born must die, And being born are dead; And being dead are glad To be at rest.”
Along the paved avenue, besides the usual stone
trough for holy water, there are on one side the thousand-armed Kwan-non,
a very fine relief, and on the other a Buddha, throned on the eternal lotus
blossom, with an iron staff, much resembling a crosier, in his hand, and
that eternal apathy on his face which is the highest hope of those who
hope at all. I went through a wood, where there are some mournful groups
of graves on the hillside, and from the temple came the sweet sound of
the great bronze bell and the beat of the big drum, and then, more faintly,
the sound of the little bell and drum, with which the priest accompanies
his ceaseless repetition of a phrase in the dead tongue of a distant land.
There is an infinite pathos about the lonely temple in its splendor, the
absence of even possible worshippers, and the large population of Ainos,
sunk in yet deeper superstitions than those which go to make up popular
Buddhism. I sat on a rock by the bay till the last pink glow faded from
Usu-taki and the last lemon stain from the still water; and a beautiful
crescent, which hung over the wooded hill, had set, and the heavens blazed
with stars:
“Ten thousand stars were in the sky, Ten thousand in the sea, And every wave with dimpled face, That leapt upon the air, Had caught a star in its embrace, And held it trembling there.”
The next morning was as beautiful as the previous
evening, rose and gold instead of gold and pink. Before the sun was well
up I visited a number of the Aino lodges, saw the bear, and the chief,
who, like all the rest, is a monogamist, and, after breakfast, at my request,
some of the old men came to give me such information as they had. These
venerable elders sat cross-legged in the verandah, the house-master’s son,
who kindly acted as interpreter, squatting, Japanese fashion, at the side,
and about thirty Ainos, mostly women, with infants, sitting behind. I spent
about two hours in going over the same ground as at Biratori, and also
went over the words, and got some more, including some synonyms. The click
of the ts before the ch at the beginning of a word is strongly
marked among these Ainos. Some of their customs differ slightly from those
of their brethren of the interior, specially as to the period of seclusion
after a death, the non-allowance of polygamy to the chief, and the manner
of killing the bear at the annual festival. Their ideas of metempsychosis
are more definite, but this, I think, is to be accounted for by the influence
and proximity of Buddhism. They spoke of the bear as their chief god, and
next the sun and fire. They said that they no longer worship the wolf,
and that though they call the volcano and many other things kamoi, or god,
they do not worship them. I ascertained beyond doubt that worship with
them means simply making libations of sake and “drinking to the god,” and
that it is unaccompanied by petitions, or any vocal or mental act.
These Ainos are as dark as the people of southern
Spain, and very hairy. Their expression is earnest and pathetic, and when
they smiled, as they did when I could not pronounce their words, their
faces had a touching sweetness which was quite beautiful, and European,
not Asiatic. Their own impression is that they are now increasing in numbers
after diminishing for many years. I left Usu sleeping in the loveliness
of an autumn noon with great regret. No place that I have seen has fascinated
me so much.
LETTER XL--(Continued)
The Sea-shore—A “Hairy Aino”—A Horse Fight—The Horses
of Hokkaido (Yezo)—“Bad Mountains”—A Slight Accident—Magnificent Scenery—A
Bleached Halting-Place—A Musty Room—Aino “Good-breeding.”
A charge of 3 sen per ri more for the horses for
the next stage, because there were such “bad mountains to cross,” prepared
me for what followed—many miles of the worst road for horses I ever saw.
I should not have complained if they had charged double the price. As an
almost certain consequence, it was one of the most picturesque routes I
have ever traveled. For some distance, however, it runs placidly along
by the sea-shore, on which big, blue, foam-crested rollers were disporting
themselves noisily, and passes through several Aino hamlets, and the Aino
village of Abuta, with sixty houses, rather a prosperous-looking place,
where the cultivation was considerably more careful, and the people possessed
a number of horses. Several of the houses were surrounded by bears’ skulls
grinning from between the forked tops of high poles, and there was a well-grown
bear ready for his doom and apotheosis. In nearly all the houses a woman
was weaving bark-cloth, with the hook which holds the web fixed into the
ground several feet outside the house. At a deep river called the Nopkobets,
which emerges from the mountains close to the sea, we were ferried by an
Aino completely covered with hair, which on his shoulders was wavy like
that of a retriever, and rendered clothing quite needless either for covering
or warmth. A wavy, black beard rippled nearly to his waist over his furry
chest, and, with his black locks hanging in masses over his shoulders,
he would have looked a thorough savage had it not been for the exceeding
sweetness of his smile and eyes. The Volcano Bay Ainos are far more hairy
than the mountain Ainos, but even among them it is quite common to see
men not more so than vigorous Europeans, and I think that the hairiness
of the race as a distinctive feature has been much exaggerated, partly
by the smooth-skinned Japanese.
The ferry scow was nearly upset by our four horses beginning to fight. At first one bit the shoulders of another; then the one attacked uttered short, sharp squeals, and returned the attack by striking with his fore feet, and then there was a general melee of striking and biting, till some ugly wounds were inflicted. I have watched fights of this kind on a large scale every day in the corral. The miseries of the Hokkaido (Yezo) horses are the great drawback of Hokkaido (Yezo) traveling. They are brutally used, and are covered with awful wounds from being driven at a fast “scramble” with the rude, ungirthed pack-saddle and its heavy load rolling about on their backs, and they are beaten unmercifully over their eyes and ears with heavy sticks. Ito has been barbarous to these gentle, little- prized animals ever since we came to Hokkaido (Yezo); he has vexed me more by this than by anything else, especially as he never dared even to carry a switch on the main island, either from fear of the horses or their owners. To-day he was beating the baggage horse unmercifully, when I rode back and interfered with some very strong language, saying, “You are a bully, and, like all bullies, a co