THE CALIFORNIAN. A WESTERN MONTHLY MAGAZINE. VOL. II.-JULY, 1880.—No. 7. THE GREAT BRONZE GOD. and the roads. The Japanese, who are as a race small and slender, frequently ride two, and even three, in one jinrikisha, and, when they do, the general "baby-wagon" air makes it strongly suggestive of huge twins or monster triplets. American dignity, however, airing itself abroad, rises superior to Japanese economy, and your globe-trotter invariably makes the jinrikisha game a game of solitaire; consequently, they are not the most sociable things in the world, particularly in view of the fact that, the law requiring them to travel in single file to avoid collisions, conversational indulgence is attainable only by means of a speaking trumpet or a peripatetic telephone. It was near nine o'clock, on one of the sunniest, brightest mornings that ever transformed the Yokohama Bay ripples into diamonds or fringed Fuji-yama's robe of snow with purest gold. We were going to interview Daibutz, the great bronze Mogul of the Buddhist gods. We had heard much of Daibutz. Every Japanned American we met wanted to know if we had seen him, and every other one confided to us religiously that we ought to see him; but for three days previously an anti-Buddhist weather-clerk had dampened our enthusiasm, taken the starch out of our plans, and imprisoned us with floods of "moist, unpleasant" rain. On this Sunday morning, however, all was serene, from the meteorological outlook to the tempers of those concerned; and, blue skies eliminating blue spirits, we cheerfully prepared for departure-heads, their dogged indifference to the weather, we embracing Doctor and Mrs. Eldridge, patron saints of Americans in Yokohama, and a party of American ladies and navy officers, recipients of their hospitality. A dozen jinrikishas waited before the door, and two dozen coolie biped steeds lounged picturesquely and otherwise in waiting. A word as to these phenomenal conveyances, since this journey, like all others in Japan, depended solely on them. They are to Japan both street-cars and carriages, and are as curious a style of vehicle as civilized people can well imagine. They are simply huge perambulators, in which grown folk are trundled about pretty much as babies are at home, only the delectable and dilatory nurse-girls are replaced in Japan by small, muscular, bow-legged, and scantily clad cool-❘ ies. You employ an oriental tandem of one, two, or three of these coolies at a time, according to your weight, the distance to be traveled, Vol. II.-I. The coolies are a curious class. They seem so like animals, with their bare legs, feet, and going bare-footed and bare-legged in the snow storms, and their monkey-like chattering in voices which are always unnaturally hoarse or shrill, that it makes you almost uncomfortable to think that they, too, are of flesh and blood, and may possibly have souls-curious foreign souls, to be sure to be saved. They have an odd habit of going along quietly enough when they have a single vehicle in charge; but when a long line of them are traveling together, and the first one comes to a bridge, a rut, or any obstruction, large or small, in the road, some heathenish sounding word is passed along the line, and bellowed, groaned, hooted, and howled to the end, making the wildest succession of noises ever heard outside of a boiler factory or of a Methodist camp-meeting. But they never kick and never shy, nor do they explode or run away. When we were finally ensconsed in our queer, but royally comfortable, [Copyright by THE CALIFORNIA PUBLISHING COMPANY. All rights reserved in trust for contributors.] low-backed cars, it was with a feeling of perfect confidence in the brown and muscular motors, who only waited for steam to be turned on to fly like mad over a strange and lovely country, and under the bluest sky that ever smiled on a pious visit to the god of somebody else's ancestors. china exposed in the little open recesses they call shops, and long distances of gay-colored, cheap curio and clothing bazars, often past a stock of mixed, common, and inferior foreign goods, jarring like a false note in a harmonious strain, stared at by blear-eyed old women and smiled at by young ones, unnoticed by the men and pursued with shouts by the children, until finally we rolled over the last bridge and found ourselves suddenly trundling along the muddy embankments that raised us above the level of the low, intentionally overflowed, terraced rice fields. These last, we were told, were soon to bud and blossom as the rose; but this was only a prophecy, and they were still for us a monotonous, unvarying set of rich, black mudflats. True Californians never pin their faith on overflowed lands. The somber monotone of the rice fields was relieved here and there by pict Our way led first through the narrow and populous by-streets of Yokohama, with their low, smooth-planed, unpainted, windowless houses, with doors and walls that slide so that the entire front of the house is taken out and set on one side in all but the most unpleasant weather. If there are any nails in a Japanese house, they are invisible. Everything is grooved, fitted, smooth sliding, and, as they are a cleanly people, their houses, as you pass them, are something exquisitely neat and dainty to look at. The dresses are as quaint and curious as the houses. Their general costume is a very lazy❘uresque little black, conical, thatched cottages, one, and is utterly incompatible with hurried movements or violent exercise of any kind. It is well that this is so, for in a Japanese dwelling any sudden motion would be liable to send you through the inner walls, which are composed entirely of small, translucent paper panes, set in very delicate wooden frames. One good, energetic American, in a fit of absent-mindedness, could walk through a whole block of Jap-mother-in-law's funeral to which a navy officer anese houses and never feel that his progress had been interfered with. As we passed over the simple, substantial, arched granite bridges that spanned the canal, which is everywhere in Yokohama, the swift quietness of the easy-rolling jinrikishas was broken by the sound of wooden clogs, which clicked like castanets and clattered like the bones of the minstrel end-man, as the numerous passers-by tripped along in a slow, pigeon-toed, and not ungraceful fashion. The people are quaint, composed, easy-going little folk, and understand being clumsy in the most graceful possible way. Almost everything in Japan is diminutive and infantile. Their carriages are like baby-wagons; their ordinary costume bears a strong family likeness to an infant's swaddling clothes; the houses are like play-houses; their childen like funny bric-àbrac dolls, and unreasonably near of a size; even in their graveyards, the head-stones are from six to twelve inches high, and so close together as to give the idea that they must have been buried standing, and in defiance of the cubic air ordinance at that. These and many more things struck us as we wound through devious highways and by-ways in the suburbs of Yokohama, past the picturesque tiled roofs and the cunning, wide-open little houses, by fathoms of blue and white nestled among slender green trees, while children in richly colored rags played and shouted around them. Despite the cloister-like characteristics of the jinrikisha, our good lungs and high spirits kept us from feeling completely isolated, and the air was laden with comments, witticisms, and snatches of song, with a jollity that made our long single file strikingly like the compared it. The tea-house girls viewed our good time with sympathetic smiles. Tea-houses are everywhere in Japan. They sprang up like mushrooms under our feet, and gentle handmaidens, in gray and navy blue garments lined with red, stood at the roadside and besought us in silver-voiced chorus to pause and enter. But we were fresh from the best of breakfasts, and relentlessly bent on interviewing Daibutz, and even the persuasive tea-house girl could not turn us from our fell pursuit-at least not then. It was long before we could decide which were the more numerous in Japan, the tea-houses or children, but at last the children took the palm. They crowd the streets of the city. You expect that; but in the alleged lonesome and quiet country they swarm like bees by the roadside, and swoop down upon you in bands and armies. Their shrill-voiced "ohio," which is "Jap" for "good-day," and their funny, patched, gay-colored clothes, pursue you like a decorative nightmare, turn where you may. But children and tea-houses were alike forgotten when a turn in the road brought us suddenly into the presence of Fuji-yama—that peerless mountain, worshiped by the Japanese and a beautiful memory to all who have seen it. This day it loomed up against the delicate blue sky, a great, lone, white cone, so near you could almost touch it, so grand, so pure, so daz zlingly white that the sight of it was awesome. Far down its side faint, blue shadows gave it shape and blended with the olives, yellows, and browns of the trees, low hills, and rice fields in the foreground. It was very beautiful, and we succumbed to its spell, wondering no longer at the mountain idolatry of the queer, impressionable little people around us. A few more turns and we began to feel sensible that we had advanced somewhat on our road. Distances in Japan are largely a matter of temperament. It is from nine to eighteen miles from Yokohama to Daibutz, according to the company, the weather, and the digestion. One. bilious man assured us that it was twenty. The true American abroad, as at home, is accustomed to gauge distances by his pocketflask, and by the time those trusty pedometers said half way, we were contented to give the mud-stained coolies their hard-earned rest, and at last yield to the solicitations of the ubiquitous and inviting tea-house. The jinrikishas rolled into a small court-yard, and we bundled out and seated ourselves on a very low verandah that bounded the court-yard on three sides. Presently we crossed it, and sat cross-legged on soft mats in one of the pretty, little paper alcoves, utterly destitute of furniture, that yawned invitingly all around the court-this in response to voluble, sweet-voiced, coquettish, and unintelligible greetings from low-bowing Japanese maidens, headed by a horrible duenna with blackened teeth. They brand them this way in Japan for having committed matrimony, though even that is not sufficient to make them keep their mouths closed. Leaving their sandals on the verandah, they glided noiselessly about in stocking feet, bringing us astringent and unpalatable Japanese tea in dainty, fragile porcelain bowls, served on pretty lacquer stands, with a sauce piquante of oriental salaams and smiles, and an accompaniment of reasonably good confectionery. Japanese girls are lovely in the best style of decorative art, with their bright black eyes, pretty painted faces, the simple straight kimono, or dress, made of fine silk and red lined, the obi, or sash, made of rich, thick, brocaded silk, wound round and round the waist, and the small shapely hands and plump smooth arms disclosed by the falling away of the loose sleeve. But their crowning glory, the climax as it were, is the superstructure which adorns their pretty little heads. It is the abundant shining black | hair dressed in picturesque spread-eagle fashion, with gay crêpe bands wound in and out among the tresses, and stabbed with many long curious gilt daggers and pins. The ensemble is beautifully grotesque, and it is hard to believe them anything but phenomenal peripatetic dec orations. Our repast having been finished, the paying of the insignificant bill, and the bestowal of a few cents of pour-boire, brought such prostrations and such bumping of winged heads on the floor as quite distressed us, and we made all possible haste to our jinrikishas, and were soon. spinning along toward Kamakura and Daibutz. Once more over the paddy fields, and anon over and among low green hills, through narrow paths where a chance motion would start a crimson shower of odorless petals from the tall bloom-laden camellia hedges, or bring one in contact with the graceful bamboo fences, into which the young shoots still growing are woven, making barriers too lovely to do anything but shut out sentiments or imprison emotions. The hills are thickly wooded, and in the loveliest spot on every hillside you will always find a Buddhist shrine. Sometimes it is hollowed out of a rock, sometimes carved in the stump of a tree, sometimes built of wood or stone, and always containing one or more rudely carved stone or wooden images of Buddha. About the shrine there are often piles of smooth, round stones, offerings of the faithful-sometimes garments, and frequently sandals, proffered by suffering wayfarers with a prayer for the ease of pain. On this day the distance to Daibutz was but nine miles, although the roads were heavy. At early noon a last turn through the paddy fields and a last pull over the hill brought us to Kamakura, beyond which is Daibutz. At Kamakura we traveled a long mile through a densely populated street, and kept our fingers. in our ears through just one mile of continuous, prolonged "ohio." Thence through a magnificent avenue of stately trees, where before us lay the sea-our first glimpse of it since leaving Yokohama, and at our left the grand old black, red, and pagoda-topped temples of Kamakura. Leading straight from the temples to the sea, there stretches a broad granite way, with scattered trees on either side, down which, in times long gone by, the high priests, in full panoply, went once a year to the seaside to perform religious rites now quite abandoned and almost forgotten. We went from the grand avenue across an open stretch of country by the seaside, then among the trees again, and suddenly into a lovely little village nestled among the hills and out of all sight and hearing of the sea. But we looked in vain for Daibutz. We were told that we were not to dash rudely, with giddy heads, empty stomachs, and whirling jinrikishas, into the presence of the god. So the pro cession came to a halt in front of the regulation | ically valuable as the almost perfect expression tea-house, where, after a glass of dry Mumm of a grand idea-the idea of divine repose. While in the interior it seemed incredible that this monstrous image could be the work of the puny Japanese. It was cast, we were told, in sections, and the parts so joined as to appear one casting. The bronze of which it is made is excellent in quality, containing considerable gold. Gold was once very cheap in Japan, and as late as 1600 they exchanged gold for silver, weight for weight, with the Dutch. This information, and much more besides, was imparted to willing listeners by the one or two of the party who were old residents, while we went through the next step in the programme. That was to climb a ladder, scramble over his thirty-four feet of bronze knees, and recline on his tremendous thumb while we were being photographed. There is room on his hands for a party of a dozen, and one can never realize his photographed insignificance till he sees himself perched, flea-like, on Daibutz's thumb-nail. A few years ago an enterprising Yankee, a New Yorker this time, tried to buy the god, with the idea of taking it to pieces for transportation, and putting it up and exhibiting it in New York. As the church was in a tight place, Daibutz was bargained for and almost sold, when the English in Japan made such an outcry against the vandalism that the government put a stop to the sale. Bric-a-brac gods and empty pockets strongly tempt the sacrifice of one and |