Hibachi

“ The difficulty of providing the ease and comfort that the presence of so honorable a guest demanded taxed to the utmost Yuki San's resourceful nature. Gaily she set her wits and fingers to work—placing a heavy brass hibachi over a black scorch in the matting, fitting new rice- paper into the small wooden squares of the shoji, and hanging kakemono over the ugly holes made by the missing plaster in the wall. ”

“ Tiny silver and brass hibachi, or fire boxes, are there, with their accompanying tongs and charcoal baskets,—whole kitchens, with everything required for cooking the finest of Japanese feasts, as finely made as if for actual use; all the necessary toilet apparatus,—combs, mirrors, utensils for blackening the teeth, for shaving the eyebrows, for reddening the lips and whitening the face,—all these things are there to delight the souls of all the little girls who may have the opportunity to behold them. ”

“ One evening he was making ready to go forth to a great supper of his friends, and as he searched [14] in his chest for certain brave silken hakama which he intended to wear as an honour to the feast, he came upon the little flute, which had lain hidden all this time in the sleeve of his travelling dress. He drew it forth from its red and white handkerchief, and as he did so, felt strangely cold with an icy chill that crept about his heart. He hung over the live charcoal of the hibachi as one in a dream. ”

“ It is in the month of May, 1895, and two men are sitting at a hibachi in an upper room in Shinagawa, formerly a suburb of Yedo, now a part of the city of Tokyo. The men were hale and hearty, but their gray hair, bordering on white, showed that they were beyond middle age. ”

“ Cocoons—Five thousand silk worms eat 125 lbs. of mulberry leaves and yield eight skeins of silk, which make one kimono
For the meal we knelt upon silk cushions laid two or three feet apart around three walls of the room. As the weather was chilly there stood beside each of us a brazier, or hibachi, consisting [pg 119] of a pot of live charcoal standing in a wooden box. The Japanese love of finish in all things is shown in the careful way they have of banking the ashes in a hibachi, and making neat patterns over the top of them. ”

“ The hibachi seems a very inadequate means of warmth on such occasions; a hot bath and whiskey and dry clothes are more effective, and after dinner a bottle of tamago-sake, a hot compound of whipped egg and sake, soon produces a pleasing drowsiness. Since leaving Chūzenji I have recognized the place in many drawings on screens and fans; the artist always gives its main features—the lake, the cryptomerias, the huge bronze torii, and the steep wooded slope of Nantai-zan—but he combines them in one view as you never can see them in reality. The rain had played havoc with the road back to Nikko ”

“ A favourite subject is a branch of blossoming cherry, and this, painted upon white silk, gives an effect of wonderful freshness and beauty.
There is no chimney, for a Japanese house knows nothing of a fireplace. The simple cooking is done over a stove burning charcoal, the fumes of which wander through the house and disperse through the hundred openings afforded by the loosely-fitting paper walls. To keep warm in cold weather the Japanese hug to themselves and hang over smaller stoves, called hibachi, metal vessels containing a handful of smouldering charcoal. ”

“ Nan fell in with alacrity. "We could have a hibachi, too, and we might, on a pinch, arrange a room just as one would look in a Japanese house here."
"And serve tea and rice cakes."
"Yes, and learn exactly the way to present a tray and to make a ceremonial bow. We could wear kimonos, of course, and could try to do our hair in Japanese style. We must get very handsome obis, for they are what determines a Japanese girl's dress." ”

“ The “incense-shop” is one of the choicest and most truly Japanese of curio-shops. It looks, from the street, an every-day affair; but after propitiating the attendants by a purchase of perfume, the inner wealth is revealed in rooms filled with the choicest old wares. The salesmen tempt the visitor with rare koros, or incense-burners, and, in an elementary way, the master plays the daimio’s old game of the Twenty Perfumes. He sprinkles on the hibachi’s glowing coals some little black morsels in the shape of leaves, blossoms, or characters ”

“ There would be the same objection to the use of hibachi ash (charcoal ash) , but there is not enough produced to have any sensible effect. The truth is that there is no lively interest in the question of getting rid Page 375 of the stink for everyone has become accustomed to it. The odour from the benjo—the politer word is habakari—which is always indoors, though at the end of the engawa (verandah) , often penetrates the house. ”

“ Equally important, clogs and shoes are left outside the door of the Japanese house in winter and summer, and as in the winter the house is often very cold, having no cellar and only small braziers, called hibachi, to give warmth, the covering afforded the feet by the skirts of a Japanese costume is very comforting. Moreover, the Japanese themselves declare that European dress is not becoming to their women, being neither suited to their figures nor to the little pigeon-toed shuffle which is so fetching beneath the skirts of a kimono. ”

“ There was not a [20] hair of a badger near it. It was the novices that looked foolish.
“A likely story indeed,” says the priest. “I have heard of the pestle that took wings to itself and flew away, parting company with the mortar. That is easily to be understood by any man. But a kettle that turned into a badger—no, no! To your books, my sons, and pray to be preserved from the perils of illusion.”
That very night the holy man filled the kettle with water from the spring and set it on the hibachi to boil for his cup of tea. When the water began to boil—
“Ai! Ai!” the kettle cried; “Ai! Ai! ”

“ In this city people in wadded clothes, with only their eyes exposed, creep about under the verandahs. The population huddles round hibachis and shivers, for the mercury, which rises to 92 degrees in summer, falls to 15 degrees in winter. ”

“ Dead is the chief! The Spirit of Hiwa comes from the other world for the Spirit of Ii, Ruler of Land and Sea. And, lo! the Spirit of Hiwa prophesies, and her word is the word of a goddess who sees the things that have been and the things that shall be. Aa, The Bloody, shall be a mouse in the day of battle, and shall die a pig’s death, and his bones shall not be hidden in a cave, but shall be put to open shame. And, behold! there shall come a moi, The Chosen of Gods. At his birth the rainbow covered him, and Ku thundered from the mountains. ”

“ No living creature, [Pg 7] save some insect or reptile that clings to the bare face of a rock, could obtain a foothold there. Hiwa was not a lizard to cling to that cliff, and if she were, she would be in plain sight. Neither was she a bird to soar above and beyond it. She was not a fish; if still alive, she must come to the surface. After watching for her long and anxiously, they discovered a few drops of blood. A sharp fin above the waves, slowly moving seaward, afforded a ready explanation.
The high-priest’s face lighted with savage triumph as he cried: “Ukanipo, the Shark-God, hath her! ”

“ Every Japanese whose parents are still living considers this a happy day. People regale themselves and their children with fish. Married sons and daughters, or adopted sons, send presents to their parents. On the evening of the 13th, the ihai are taken from their cases, and a repast set before them of vegetables and the fruits then ripening. In the middle is set a vase, in which perfumes are burnt, and other vases containing flowers. The next day, meals of rice, tea, and other food are regularly served to the ihai, as to living guests. ”

“ We shall have to live up to them now! We heard from the Nippon Yushen Kaisha in London that the Japanese authorities had sent an expedition to look for the Hitachi. The expedition called at the Maldives, and had there found, in the atoll where we had first anchored in the Wolf's company, a door from the Hitachi splintered by shell-fire and a case of cocoanut identified as having been put on board the Hitachi at Colombo. The natives on this atoll could have told the expedition that at any rate the Hitachi was not sunk there, as they saw the Wolf and her prize sail away at different times. ”

“ At any rate, Hiuga, as the region in which he dwelt was called, was not likely to serve the ends of a party of warlike invaders, there being no part of Japan less fertile. So, as the story goes, Jimmu, being then fifty years old, set out to conquer some richer realm. He had only a few followers, some being his brothers, the others his retainers, all of them, in the language of the legends, being kami, or gods. Jimmu was righteous; the savages were wicked, though they too had descended from the gods. These savages dwelt in villages, each governed by a head-man or chief. ”

“ You know our law; the child takes the rank of its mother, instead of the rank of its father, for all men know its mother and no man knows its father. [Pg 14] You yourself take divine rank from your mother, who was my sister.”
Hiwa shuddered, and made no reply.
“Your brother,” continued Papaakahi, “spends his nights drinking awa, and his days in sleep. He will rule in name only. Your uncle will be the real moi. He hates Kaanaana, and, if you marry him and have an heir, he will raise the standard of revolt as soon as I am dead.”
“Then let spears settle it!” cried Hiwa, with flashing eyes. ”

“ Birds, flying across, dropped seeds of vegetables, fruits, shrubs, and trees. The place became a wilderness of luxuriant vegetation. In moist, eternal summer food for a hundred mouths ripened every day in the year. Nor was Hiwa denied her accustomed food from the sea, as well as from the land. The makai or sea entrance to the passage was some three or four fathoms below the ebb and flow of the tide, but after a few rods its roof rose abruptly to a height of several hundred feet, and the passage itself broadened into a large cavern, its bottom [Pg 19] being a salt-water pool swarming with fish. ”

“ Ii worships only awa, and Aa rules the land. One squanders the wealth of the kingdom, and the other is grasping and cruel. The time may come, perhaps too soon, when the chiefs will be ready to fight against them both.”
On this occasion the retainers of the court were too drunk to take note of passers-by, and they had become so habitually turbulent and lawless that honest people avoided that part of the town after nightfall. Hiwa, therefore, had no difficulty in making her way undiscovered to a distant camp. ”

“ Yet, although my bones will be put to shame, I am content, knowing that Ku’s heavy wrath will fall upon my enemies, and that I shall glory in their destruction, and mock them in the other world. If Hiwa had been slain when she committed the unpardonable sin against Ku his anger might have been appeased; but now that it has been growing these sixteen years, the whole people are doomed, for they are her people and her son’s. Behold I, Aa, high-priest of Ku, proclaim that his implacable wrath rests upon the whole kingdom, and shall eat up its inhabitants. ”

“ Often it is loud and shrill, then guttural, at times little more than a sigh. In these yadoyas every sound is audible, and I hear low rumbling of mingled voices, and above all the sharp Hai, Hai of the tea-house girls in full chorus from every quarter of the house. The habit of saying it is so strong that a man roused out of sleep jumps up with Hai, Hai, and often, when I speak to Ito in English, a stupid Hebe sitting by answers Hai. ”

“ And all the beings in each of the Six States of existence became visible,—all without exception. Even the Lord Buddhas in those Buddha fields who had reached final Nirvana, all became visible."
II
The sun is high behind me; the landscape before me as in an old Japanese picture-book. In old Japanese color-prints there are, as a rule, no shadows. And the Plain of Higo, all shadowless, broadens greenly to the horizon, where the blue spectres of the peaks seem to float in the enormous glow. ”

“ Then Hōïchi lifted up his voice, and chanted the chant of the fight on the bitter sea,—wonderfully making his biwa to sound like the straining of oars and the rushing of ships, the whirr and the hissing of arrows, the shouting and trampling of men, the crashing of steel upon helmets, the plunging of slain in the flood. And to left and right of him, in the pauses of his playing, he could hear voices murmuring praise: “How marvelous an artist!”—“Never in our own province was playing heard like this!”—“Not in all the empire is there another singer like Hōïchi!” ”

“ The great chiefs were becoming restive and alarmed. Yet who should take up arms against the Lord of Life and Death, vice-gerent of Ku? Ii and Aa were of the blood of the gods. Hiwa knew how matters stood, and believed the time for action would come soon if the great nobles understood they could have a leader of divine birth.
Aelani had not reached his seventeenth year—a mere smooth-water swimmer. The pool, swarming with sharks, was a fine training school for a boy of twelve; but the ocean was the only proper place for an athletic young man, big, powerful, destined for great deeds. ”