Fujian

“ The most beautiful sight in Japan, and certainly one of the most beautiful in the world, is the distant apparition of Fuji on cloudless days,—more especially days of spring and autumn, when the greater part of the peak is covered with late or with early snows. You can seldom distinguish the snowless base, which remains the same color as the sky: you perceive only the white cone seeming to hang in heaven; and the Japanese comparison of its shape to an inverted half-open fan is made wonderfully exact by the fine streaks that spread downward from the notched top, like shadows of fan-ribs. ”

“ Even here on Fuji you do not escape the all-seeing eye of the Japanese police; your passport is examined by the keepers of the hut, and is copied into a book which gives every night the names and addresses of those who sleep under the roof. About two o’clock in the morning we were wakened by our host, who took us outside, and there at last was Fuji itself, straight over our heads, every detail softened, but clearly visible, and the summit looking ridiculously near in the brilliant moonlight. Below us was the slope of ashes and the moorland over which we had walked ”

“ So in this land named Fuyu, rich in the five grains, wheat, rice, and millet, bean and sugarcane, the new king was joyfully welcomed by his new subjects. The men were tall, brave and courteous. Besides being good archers, they rode horses skilfully. They ate out of bowls with chop-sticks and used round dishes at their feasts. They wore ornaments of large pearls and jewels of red jade cut and polished.
The Fuyu people gave the fairest virgin in their realm to be the bride of King East Light and she became a gracious queen, greatly beloved of her subjects and many children were born to them. ”

“ Every raindrop on the pines was a prism; the mountain a brocade of blossom. To the right Fuji, the graceful, ever lovely Fuji; capricious as a coquette and bewitching in her mystery, with a thumbnail moon over her peak, like a silver tiara on the head of a proud beauty; at her base the last fleecy clouds of the day, gathered like worshipers at the feet of some holy saint. ”

“ It seems such a familiar friend now, this cone of Fuji, for we have seen it depicted upon numberless scrolls and screens, on tea services and china plaques, on cloisonné and lacquer, since we came to Japan.
This view of Fuji is superb. The mountains break away and leave a vast plain, out of which it sweeps up solitary, colossal. The crater at the top looks like the jagged edges of a tooth, down which streams of lava have streaked their course. And as we follow the sweeping lines of the great pyramid up 13,000 feet of height, the [175] clouds that lay half-way down, roll away. ”

“ All my life Japan had been one of the two countries on earth I most wanted to see. No more enthusiastic pro-Japanese ever put foot on the shore of that little island than I was when I swung into Yokohama Harbor nearly seven months before. I had lost much—but I was carrying away in heart and mind the nameless charm of the land and of the people—for the charm of neither has much succumbed to the horrors imported from us; Fujiyama, whose gray head lies close under the Hand of Benediction; among the foot-hills below the Maid of Miyanoshita—may Fuji keep her ever safe from harm ”

“ And, right in front, Fuji appears,—naked to the summit,—stupendous,—startling as if newly risen from the earth. Nothing could be more beautiful. A vast blue cone,—warm-blue, almost violet through the vapors not yet lifted by the sun,—with two white streaklets near the top which are great gullies full of snow, though they look from here scarcely an inch long. But the charm of the apparition is much less the charm of color than of symmetry,—a symmetry of beautiful bending lines with a curve like the curve of a cable stretched over a space too wide to allow of pulling taut. ”

“ In times gone by, there was no mountain where now the sacred peak reaches up to the sky; only a far-stretching plain bathed in sunlight all day. The peasants in the district were astonished, one morning, to behold a mighty hill where before had been the open plain. It had sprung up in a single night, while they slept. Flames and huge stones were hurled from its summit; the peasants feared that the demons from the under-world had come to wreak vengeance upon them. But for many generations there have been peace and silence on the heights. The good Sun-Goddess loves Fuji-yama. ”

“ These gave birth to the Japanese Archipelago, the sun and moon, the mountains and streams, the divine ancestors, etc. According to the teachings of this sect, the peerless mountain, Fuji, ought to be reverenced as the sacred abode of the divine lord, and as "the brains of the whole globe." The believer must make Fuji the example and emblem of his thought and action. He must be plain and simple, as the form of the mountain, making his body and mind pure and serene, as Fuji itself. ”

“ Even the matchless shape of Fuji, that snowy miracle which has been the inspiration of artists for centuries, is said to have been slightly changed since my advent to the country; and not a few other mountains have in the same short time taken totally new forms. Only the general lines of the land, the general aspects of its nature, the general character of the seasons, remain fixed. Even the very beauty of the landscapes is largely illusive,—a beauty of shifting colors and moving mists. ”

“ Philology is the science that can tell us least; for no consensus of opinion has yet been reached as to the origin of the name of Fuji—anciently Fuzi or Fuzhi. Fuji-san, the current popular name, simply means "Mount Fuji," san being Chinese for "mountain." Fuji-no-yama, the form preferred in poetry, means "the mountain of Fuji" in pure Japanese ”

“ The first sight of Fuji, hanging above Yokohama Bay like a snowy ghost in the arch of the infinite day, is a sight never to be forgotten, a vision that, for the years Hearn was yet to traverse before the heavy, folded curtain fell on his stage of life, was destined to form the background of his poetic dreams and imaginings. ”

“ There is not a shop window but has Fuji in some representation; it is found in every house; its contours are engraved on teaspoons, embossed on ash-trays. You cannot escape from its counterfeits; but if you have seen it you do not mind.
When on my way home I found myself in an American picture gallery, either in San Francisco, Chicago, Boston or New York, I lingered longest in the rooms where the coloured prints of the Japanese masters hang—and America has very fine collections, particularly in Boston—and I stood longest before those landscapes by Hokusai and Hiroshige in which Fuji occurs. ”

“ After the landscape with the hundred bridges, a very large sheet of 1823, there appeared until 1829 the celebrated Thirty-six Views of Fuji, the volcano, 3729 metres high, which lies to the west of Yedo, and which may be regarded as a landmark of the country. In this set, which was printed mainly in blue, green, and brown, and gradually increased to forty-six sheets, of medium size and oblong form, he exhibited the mighty mountain now near, now afar, in the reflection of varying hours and seasons. The ever-changing foreground, which differs in each print, in itself awakens our interest ”

“ Sometimes there will break forth, high above all clouds, a patch of deep grey against the blue, the broad head of Fuji. Sometimes you will only know where she sits by the immense collection of cirrus and cirro-cumulus there alone gathered in the sky; and sometimes—principally at dawn and nightfall—she will suddenly manifest herself, from her foot, jewelled with rich harvests, to her brow, bare and lonely as a desert—all violet against the gold of the setting sun, or else all gold and green against the rose and silver of the daybreak.... ”

“ This race-course affords one of the best views of Fuji, and from it curves the road made in early days for the sole use of foreigners to keep them off the Tokaido, where they had more than once come in conflict with trains of travelling nobles. This road leads down to the water’s edge, and, following the shore of Mississippi Bay, where Commodore Perry’s ships anchored in 1858, strikes across a rice valley and climbs to the Bluff again.
The farm-houses it passes are so picturesque that one cannot believe them to have a utilitarian purpose. ”

“ We have heard of Fujisan, the famous mountain; we have talked of tea-houses and temples; and now we must say something about the rickshaw-man or boy, a very important person indeed in Japan. He is not important because of riches or rank, for, as a rule, he is very poor and of the coolie order; he is important because he is so useful. He is at one and the same time the cabman and the cab-horse of Japan. He waits in the street with his little carriage, and when you jump in he takes hold of the shafts himself and trots away with you at a good speed. ”

“ She must never allow it to get choked with the noxious [Pg 69] undergrowth, but lead it up towards light and freedom, towards the pure air and broad space, where it can receive, in the dawn of its day and the darkness of its night, heaven's inspiration. Let the greatness of her ideals become visible to all men like her snow-crowned Fuji rising from the heart of the country into the region of the infinite, supremely distinct from its surroundings, beautiful like a maiden in its magnificent sweep of curve, yet firm and strong and serenely majestic. ”

“ December 22.—The fascination of Tokio streets is upon me. How often does one come out into a lonely country lane, or turn into a gem of a little temple garden so near a busy street!
Coming home down a steep hill at sunset I saw the great Fuji Mountain standing out in all its calm magnificence, black and grey against a crimson sky. The huge single cone, with sweeping curves, was like a silhouette, and below rolled a tumbled wave of smaller hills, while high above the one clear evening star shone over the great peak. ”

“ But the maiden, smiling sweetly upon him, would not tell her name. Still smiling, she swung a branch of camellia in the air, so that it seemed that the fair blossom beckoned to some invisible spirit far away. In answer to the floral summons a cloud came down from Mount Fuji; it enveloped the lovely maiden, and carried her to the sacred mountain from which she had come. Yosoji knew now that his guide was none other than the Goddess of Fuji. ”

“ Here is part of its description of the locality in question:—Whenever we visit the place, the first pleasure to be longed, is the view of Fuji Mountain and its summit is covered with permanent undissolving snow, and its regular configuration hanging down the sky like an opened white fan, may be looked long at equal shape from several regions surrounding it. Every one who saw it ever has nothing but applause. ”

“ There is some charm unutterable in the morning air, cool with the coolness of Japanese spring and wind-waves from the snowy cone of Fuji; a charm perhaps due rather to softest lucidity than to any positive tone—an atmospheric limpidity extraordinary, with only a suggestion of blue in it, through which the most distant objects appear focused with amazing sharpness. The sun is only pleasantly warm ”

“ For it is not only a sacred mountain, but the most sacred mountain of Japan,—the holiest eminence of the land that is called Divine,—the Supreme Altar of the Sun;—and to ascend it at least once in a life-time is the duty of all who reverence the ancient gods. So from every district of the Empire pilgrims annually wend their way to Fuji; and in nearly all the provinces there are pilgrim-societies—Fuji-Kō,—organized for the purpose of aiding those desiring to visit the sacred peak. If this act of faith cannot be performed by everybody in person, it can at least be performed by proxy. ”

“ The Japanese poet's words, "We being round thee forget to die," though written in recent years, seem to reflect the old idea. We have already seen, in the legend of "The Bamboo-cutter and the Moon-Maiden," that Tsuki was commanded by the Lady Kaguya to ascend Fuji and there burn the Elixir of Life, together with a certain scroll.
The fame of Fuji, so an old legend informs us, reached the ears of an Emperor of China. When he was told that this mountain had come into being in a [Pg 133] single night [2] he conjectured that Mount Fuji must needs yield the Elixir of Life itself. ”

“ Tradition is furthermore responsible for the belief that snow disappears entirely from the mountain for a few hours on the fifteenth day of the sixth moon, and begins to fall again during the following night. Formerly an active volcano, Fuji even now emits steam from sundry crevices near the summit, and will some day probably fill the good people at Yoshiwara and adjacent villages with a lively sense of its power. Fuji is the special pride of the Japs, its loveliness appealing strongly to the national sense of landscape beauty. ”

“ Now that we know where to look we see that the white fan part is merely the snow-cap running in large streaks downward, and that this rests upon a base as blue as the sky. Henceforward we shall see Fujiyama at many hours of the day—never a wide-spreading view but Fujiyama will be there, never a long road but Fujiyama at the end of it, never a flat plain without it. So odd is the great mountain, and so much character has it, that we feel inclined to nod good-night or good-morning to it when it greets us. ”