Samurai Trails by Lucian Swift Kirtland

Author:Lucian Swift Kirtland [Kirtland, Lucian Swift]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Travel, Nonfiction, East, Asia, Japan
ISBN: 9788827524817
Google: G0KZtAEACAAJ
Publisher: Skyline
Published: 2017-11-29T05:00:00+00:00

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VII

THE IDEALS OF A SAMURAI

In the morning we found great brass basins of water waiting for us in the sunny iris garden. One of the super-errors that a foreigner can make in a native inn is to ask to have the basins brought to his room. Such a request can be understood only as a perversion, or a barbarity. One reason why the houses and inns seem so clean is that they eliminate so many of the chances for their being otherwise; and this defence might be added into the weighing when criticizing Japanese nudity at ablutions.

Breakfast was brought to us steaming under the lacquer covers of the bowls, but the priest’s daughter was not holding the wooden ladle for the rice. It was a rather late hour when she had returned to her father’s house, but the mothers and daughters of a Japanese home are accustomed to having their working hours overlap into the night. In subtlety we brazenly accused each other of having frightened the gentle ne-san into not returning. The truth was—as it afterwards came out—that we had each found opportunity to hint to the host’s ear the night before that the maid’s slumber by no means should be disturbed for our morning’s start. Thus we each privately thought we knew the secret of her non-appearance, but just as we were tying on our shoes at the door a breathless message was brought by her small brother. She had overslept. It had not been our late hour which was responsible. The family of the Shinto priest had sat up almost until the first light in the East to listen to the wonder tale of their daughter who had endured such a singular and daring adventure.

The ancient host gave us presents and we gave him presents. We said our farewells at the door and then, after that, he and his granddaughter walked along with us half through the village. Finally we bowed our formal seven bows of farewell. When we reached the end of the street we turned and saw them still standing where we had left them.

The road led across a wide, flat valley. That morning there was a truly extraordinary phenomenon. The claret red of the sun flamed and danced against the snows of the mountain wall at our left. Finally our road broke up into a delta of small paths. The soft earth had been so cut into ruts by heavy carts that Hori was forced to accede to the demands of the bicycle that it should be assisted and not ridden, but he did not surrender until the wheel had demonstrated its malevolence by pitching him a half-dozen times off the saddle. Thus we all walked along together. The villages were rather mean, with the air of having come down in the world. Some of the towns, in the days before machinery, had had special fame in the various handicrafts; one had been known for its hand-made wooden combs. Evidently there remain

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