CHAPTER XVII
THE ASCENT OF FUJIYAMA
It was in the third week of July that we made our long-talked-of ascent of Fujiyama. There were nine of us, all told, four stalwart men, three valiant women, and two incomparable Japanese boys, or valets. For forty miles we steamed down the old line of the Tokaido, drawing nearer to the sea in its deep indentation of Odawara Bay, and to the blue bar of the Hakone range that fronts the ocean. At Kodzu we took wagonettes and rattled over the plain and up a valley along the Tokaido, children being snatched from under the heels of the horses, and coolies, with poles and baskets over their shoulders, getting entangled with the wheels all the way. A Japanese driver is a most reckless Jehu, and the change to jinrikishas, after the wild ten-mile charge up the valley, was beatific. Ascending a narrow canon, and rounding curve after curve, we saw at last the many lights of Miyanoshita twinkling against the sky.
Miyanoshita, the great summer resort, is the delight alike of Japanese and foreigner. It has excellent hotels kept in western fashion, clear mountain air, mineral springs and beautiful scenery, and it is the very centre of a most interesting region. All the year round its hotels are well patronized, the midwinter climate being a specific for the malarial poison of the ports of southern China. Famous, too, is the wooden-ware of Miyanoshita, where every house is a shop for the sale of Japanese games, household utensils, toys and trifles, all made of the beautifully-grained native woods, polished on a wheel with vegetable wax. Exquisite mosaics of a hundred broken patterns amaze one with their nicety of finish and cheapness, and no one escapes from the village without buying.
Guides and coolies had been engaged for us at Miyanoshita, and at six o’clock, on the morning after our arrival, the three kagos of the ladies were carried out, and the four cavaliers, the two boys, and six baggage coolies followed. The broad path zigzagged upward to the narrow, knife-edge ride of the mountain range known as the O Tomi Toge pass. From its summit we looked back along the checkered green valley to Miyanoshita and Hakone Lake, with the Emperor's island palace. Looking forward across a checkered plain, we saw Fujiyama rise straight before us, its obstinate head still hidden in clouds. Dropping quickly to the level of the plain, we reached Gotemba, and, changing to jinrikishas, were whirled away to Subashiri, six miles distant.
Trains of descending pilgrims and farmers, perched high on the backs of pack-horses, smiled cheerfully at the procession of foreigners bound for Fuji, and at each rest-house on the way women and children, petrified with astonishment, stood staring at us. Black cinders and blocks of lava announced the nearness of the volcano, and the road became an inky trail of coal-dust through green fields. Banks of scoriæ, like the heaps of coal-dust around collieries, cropped out by the road-side, and the wheels ground noisily through the loose, coarse slag. The whole of Subashiri, crowding the picturesque street of a typical Japanese village, welcomed us. In the stream of running water, on either side of the broad highway danced, whirled, and spouted a legion of mechanical toys, some for the children's pleasure, and others turning the fly-brushes hung over counters of cakes and sweetmeats. The place looks in perpetual fete, with the hundreds of pilgrim flags and towels fluttering from each tea-house, and at the end of the street is a torii, leading to an ancient temple in a grove, where all Fuji pilgrims pray before beginning the ascent of the mountain. In the light of the afternoon, the double row of thatched houses and the street full of bareheaded villagers looked like a well-painted stage scene. Meanwhile the sun sank, and in the last crimson glow of its fading the clouds rolled away, and Fuji’s stately cone stood over us, its dark slopes turning to rose and violet in the changing light.
We rose with the sun at four o’clock, looked at Fuji, all pink and lilac in the exquisite atmosphere of the morning, snatched a hasty breakfast and set off, the women in their kagos and the men on mettlesome steeds that soon took them out of sight along the broad cindery avenue leading to the base of the slanting mountain. In that clear light Fuji looked twice its twelve thousand feet above the sea, and the thought of toiling on foot up the great slope was depressing. Instead of a fifteen-mile walk, it looked fifty miles at least. All along the forest avenue moss-grown stone posts mark the distance, and at one place are the remains of a stone wall and lantern-guarded gate-way setting the limit of the mountain’s holy ground. From that point the soil is sacred, although horses and kagos are allowed to go a mile farther to a mat-shed station, known as Umagayeshi (Turn Back Horse). Thence the great Fuji sweeps continuously upward, and a tall torii at the head of the stone staircase marks the beginning of the actual ascent, the holy ground on which only sandaled feet may tread.
In the mat-shed the kagos were stored for a two days’ rest, luggage was divided and tied on the backs of the coolies, who were as gayly fringed as Indians on the war-path, with the many pairs of straw sandals tied at their waists and hanging from their packs. The coarse cinders cut through boot-soles so quickly that foreigners tie on these waraji to protect their shoes, allowing eight pairs of the queer galoshes for the ascent and descent of Fuji. From Umagayeshi, the path goes up through woods and stunted underbrush and on over bare cinder and lava, pursuing the even slope of the mountain without dip or zigzag to break the steady climb. Three small Shinto temples in the woods invite pilgrims to pray, pay tribute, and have their staff and garments marked with a sacred seal. Beyond these temples, ten rest-houses, or stations, stand at even distances along the path, the first, or number one, at the edge of the woods, and the tenth at the summit. Priests and station-keepers open their season late in June, before the snow is gone, and close in September. In the midsummer weeks the whole mountain-side is musical with the tinkling bells and staffs of lines of white-clad pilgrims. Notwithstanding their picturesqueness, these devotees are objectionable companions, as they fill tea-houses and mountain stations, devour everything eatable, like swarms of locusts, and bear about with them certain smaller pilgrims that make life a burden to him who follows after. Nearly thirty thousand pilgrims annually ascend Fujiyama. These pious palmers are chiefly from the agricultural class, and they form mutual pilgrimage associations, paying small annual dues, from the sum of which each member in turn has his expenses defrayed. They travel in groups, each man furnished with his bit of straw matting for bed, rain coat, or shelter. They carry, also, cotton towels marked with the crest of their pilgrim society, to be hung, after using, at temple water-tanks, or as advertisements of their presence at the tea-houses which they patronize. At each new shrine they visit the priests stamp their white clothing with the red seal of the temple.
Fujiyama is invested with legends, which these pilgrims unquestioningly accept. It is said to have risen up in a single night two thousand years ago, when a great depression appeared to the southward, which the waters of Lake Biwa immediately filled. For a thousand years pilgrims have toiled up the weary path to pray at the highest shrine and to supplicate the sun at dawn. Fuji-san, the goddess of the mountain, hated, it is said, her own sex, and stories of devils, who seize women and fly off into the air with them, still deter all but the most emancipated Japanese women from making the ascent. It was after Fuji-san had quarrelled with all the other gods that she set up this lofty mountain of her own, where she might live alone and in peace. No horse’s foot is allowed to fall on the steep approaches to her cloudy throne, and even the sand and cinders are so sacred, that whatever dust is carried down on the pilgrims’ feet by day is miraculously returned by night. Even to dream of the peerless mountain is a promise of good-fortune, and Fuji, with the circling storks and the ascending dragon, symbolizes success in life and triumph over obstacles.
Until the year 1500, Fuji wore a perpetual smoke-wreath, and every century saw a great eruption. The last, in 1707, continued for a month, and threw out the loose cinders, ashes, and lumps of baked red clay that still cover the mountain. Ashes were carried fifty miles, damming a river in their path, covering the plain at its base six feet deep with cinders, and forming an excrescence on the north side, which still mars the perfect symmetry of the cone.
Umagayeshi, or Turn Back Horse, is four thousand feet above the sea, and the other eight thousand feet are surmounted in a distance of fifteen miles. We desired to reach Station Eight by four o’clock; either to sleep there until three o’clock the next morning, or to push on to the tenth and last station, rest there, and see the sun rise, from the door-way of that summit rest-house. Our two Colorado mountaineers had faced the slope like chamois, and were leaping the rocks walling the first station, before the female contingent had left the torii. Of the fifteen coolies accompanying us, three were assigned to each woman, with orders to take her to the top if they had to carry her pickaback. After an established Fuji fashion, one coolie went first with a rope fastened around the climber's waist, while another pushed her forward. Aided still further by tall bamboo staffs, we were literally hauled and boosted up the mountain, with only the personal responsibility of lifting our feet out of the ashes.
For the first three or four miles, the path led through a dense, green bower, carpeted with vines, and starred with wild flowers and great patches of wild strawberries. Scaling moss-covered log steps, we passed through temples with gohei, or prayer papers, hanging from the gates and doors, and bare Shinto altars within. At one shrine, the sound of our approaching footsteps was the signal for blasts from a conch-shell horn and thumps on the hanging drum, and the priests, in their purple and white gowns and black pasteboard hats, gave us a cheerful welcome, and many cups of hot barley-tea. At our request, they stamped our clothing with big red characters, the sacred seal or crest of that holy station, and sold us the regulation pilgrim’s staff, branded with the temple mark. The old priest, to dazzle us with his acquirements, and to show his familiarity with foreign customs, glibly placed the price of the alpenstock at “Sen tents.”
The forest ended as suddenly as if one had stepped from a door-way, and a sloping dump of bare lava and cinders stretched upward endlessly; the whole cone visible, touched with scudding bits of thin white clouds. Every dike and seam of lava between the forest edge and the summit was clearly seen, and the square blocks of rest-houses, though miles away, stood out on the great ash-heap as if one could touch them. It was apparent that the walk would be merely a matter of perseverance. There are no dizzy precipices, no dangerous rocks, no hand-over-hand struggles, nor narrow ledges, nor patches of slippery stone—only a steadily ascending cinder path to tread. Above the forest line, nothing interrupts the wide views in every direction, and the goal is in plain sight.
After we had passed the third station, the scudding clouds closed in and hid the summit, and we trudged along, congratulating ourselves on our escape from the glaring sun while we were out on the open lava slope. Station Number Four was closed and its roof in partial ruins, where a rolling stone had crashed in during the winter, but at the next two huts we rested, in company with a sturdy mountaineer, his wife and baby, who were going up to open Station Number Nine for the summer. The baby was strapped on its father’s back, its little bare toes sticking out from its tight swaddling-gown and curling up in comical balls as the wind grew colder. Our two veterans of Pike’s Peak were far ahead, merely white spots on the dark, chocolate-brown slope, but we all intended to overtake them and come in with them at the end of the day.
Suddenly the drifting clouds swept down, curling along the dark lava, like steam, and wrapping us in a gray mist that blotted out everything. Another gust of wind brought a dash of rain, and hurried us to the lee wall of a closed hut for shelter. The shower came harder and faster, and the baggage-coolies with water-proofs and umbrellas were far in advance, invisible in the mist. We pushed on, and after climbing a hundred yards in loose ashes, found ourselves on the sliding track of the descent. We struck away blindly to the right and mounted straight upward. A seam of hard lava soon gave us secure foothold, but presently became a net-work of tiny cascades. My cheerful little coolie, in his saturated cotton suit, tried to encourage me, and passing the rope around a horn of lava at one breathing-stop, pointed upward, and assured me that there was clear sunshine above. Glancing along the sloping lava-track, we saw a foaming crest of water descending from those sunny up lands, and had barely time to cross its path before the roaring stream came on and cut off retreat.
After two hours of hard climbing in the blinding rain and driving wind, we reached the shelter of Station Number Eight, chilled and exhausted. This hut, a log-cabin faced with huge lava blocks, its low roof held down by many bowlders, and its walls five feet in thickness, consists of one room about twelve by thirty feet in size. Two doors looked sheer down the precipitous mountain-slope, and a deep window, like that of a fortress, was set in the end wall. The square fireplace, sunken in the floor, had its big copper kettle swinging from a crane, and the usual stone frame for the rice-kettle. When the doors were barred and braced with planks against the fury of the storm, the smoke, unable to escape, nearly blinded us. Our dripping garments and the coolies’ wet cotton clothes were hung to dry on the rafters over the fireplace, where they slowly dripped. The master of Number Eight had opened his rest-house only five days before, and with his young son and two servants found himself called on to provide for us with our retinue of seventeen servants, for four young cadets from the naval college in Tokio, storm-bound on their way down the mountain, and a dozen pilgrims—forty-two people in all.
Warmed, and comforted with a stray sandwich, we were glad enough to go to bed. Each of us received two futons, one of which made the mattress and the Other the covering, while basket-lids served for pillows. The floor was cold as well as hard, and the rows of cotton towels hung on the walls by preceding pilgrims fluttered in the draughts from the howling blasts that shook the solid little hut. The shriek and roar and mad rushes of wind were terrifying, and we were by no means certain that the little stone box would hold together until morning. One hanging-lamp shed a fantastic light on the rows of heads under the blue futons, and the stillness of the Seven Sleepers presently befell the lonely shelter.