VIII

I had tea, with a priest named Daitetsu, the abbot of Kaikanji temple, and a lay-youth of about twenty-four years, as my fellow-guests, and Nami-san’s father, of course as mine host, in his own room. Nami-san is the name of the O-Jo-san of Shiota.

The room was one of about six mats, but looked rather small and narrow, with a large square short-legged rosewood table in the centre. The table stood partly on a Chinese rug and partly on a tiger skin, which together nearly filled the floor of the room. The youth and I squatted cross-legged on the rug, and the priest and the host on the skin. There was something undeniably continental in the rug, with a crazy sort of appearance in its figures, as is the case with most things Chinese. But that is where their value resides. You gaze at Chinese furniture and ornaments. You think they are dull or grotesque; but presently you become conscious that there is in that dullness or grotesqueness something that has a power of fascinating you irresistibly, and that is what makes them precious. Japan produces her art goods with the attitude of a pickpocket; and the West is large in scale and fine in execution, but inalterably worldly and practical. A train of thought of some such trend was coursing in me as I sat down, with the youth sharing the rug.

The tiger skin, on which the priest sat, had its tail stretched out near my knees, and its head under mine host, who seemed to have had all his grey hair pulled out of his head and planted in his cheeks and chin. Whiskers and beard were growing rampantly in a striking contrast to the shiny smoothness of his uppermost regions. He, the host, lay on the table tea things, not the paraphernalia for stiff ceremonial powdered tea drinking, but just for sipping clear green tea.

“We have a guest in the house⁠—we haven’t had one for quite a while⁠—and I thought, we should have a quiet tea party.⁠ ⁠…” said the old man turning toward the priest.

“Thank you for your invitation. I have not called on you for weeks, and was thinking I should come down to see you today.” The priest looked about sixty years old, with a rotund face, that would do credit to a picture of Bodhidharma in a congenial mood. He seemed to be a friend of mine host of long standing.

“Is this gentleman your guest?”

Nodding his head in acknowledgment, the old gentleman took up a kyusu teapot and poured⁠—no⁠—permitted a few drops of yellowish green liquid to trickle, in turns, into four tea cups, producing faint echoes of pure sweet flavour on my olfactory organ.

“You must feel lonesome, alone in a country place like this?” The priest began to speak to me.

“Haa,” I answered in a most equivocal sort of way; for a “yes” would have told a lie; but if I said “no,” it would have required a long string of explanations.

“No, Osho-san,” interposed my host “this gentleman has come out here for painting. He is even keeping himself busy.”

“Oh, so, that is good. Of the Nanso school?”

“No, Osho-san,” I replied this time. I thought he would not understand, if I said oil painting, and I did not say so.

“No,” the old one again took it upon himself to complete information, “his is that oil painting.”

“Ah, I see, the Western painting, which Kyuichi-san, here works at? I saw the kind, for the first time, in his production; it was very beautifully done.”

The young one opened his mouth at length and most diffidently asserted that “It was a poor affair.”

“You showed some of your stuff to Osho-san?” asked the old man. Judging by the tone in which this was said and the attitude assumed by the old one towards the young, they would seem to be relatives.

“No, it was only that I was caught painting by the Osho-sama at Kagamiga Ike pond, the other day.”

“Hum, is that so? Well, here is a cup of tea for you,” said the host, placing a cup each before his guests. There were a few drops of tea in, though the cups were quite large. They were dark grey in colour outside, with a yellowish picture or design on them, delightfully tasteful, but the name of their maker was quite undecipherable.

“It is Mokubey’s,” briefly explained the old gentleman.

“This is very interesting,” I complimented briefly also.

“There are many imitations in Mokubeys. These have the inscription; look at the base,” says the host.

I took up my cup and held it towards the semitransparent shoji. On the screen was seen a potted haran plant casting its shadow warmly. I looked into the base twisting my head, and saw there “Mokubey” burnt in diminutively. Inscriptions are not indispensables for real connoisseurs; but amateurs seem, generally, very sensitively particular about them. I brought the cup to my lips, instead of putting it back on the table. Leisurely lovers of real good tea rise to the seventh heaven, when, drop, drop, they let the correctly drawn aromatic liquid roll on the tip of their tongues. Ordinarily, people think that tea is to be drunk; but that is not correct. A drop on your tongue; something refreshing spreads over it, you have practically nothing more to send down your throat, except that a delightfully soothing flavour travels down the alimentary canal into the stomach. It is vulgar to bring the teeth to service; but pure fresh water is too light. Gyokuro tea is thicker than water, but not heavy enough for the molar action. It is a fine beverage. If the objection be that tea robs one of sleep, then I should say “better be without sleep than be without tea.” In the midst of my usual philosophical musing, the priest spoke to me again.

“Can you paint in oil on fusuma?43 If you can, I should like to have some painted.”

If the priest would have me do it, I may not refuse; but that it would please him was not at all certain, and I should hate to retire crestfallen, by having it declared that an oil painting is no good, after I had spared no labour for its execution.

“I do not think oil paintings will go well on a fusuma.”

“You do not think so? You are probably right. What I have seen of Kyuichi-san’s production will make me think that it will look perhaps too gay on a fusuma.”

“Mine is no good. It was an idle piece of work,” says the youth with a stress on his words, apologetically and abashedly.

“Where is that what-do-you-call-it pond?” I asked the youth for my information.

“In the hollow of valley just in the rear of Kaikanji temple. It is a quiet lonely place. That picture.⁠ ⁠… I took lessons in school⁠ ⁠… I just tried it to while away the time.”

“And that Kaikanji?”

“Kaikanji is the name of a temple in my charge. It is a fine place, with the sea stretching from right under you. You must come and see me, while you are here. It is not more than a mile from here. From that verandah⁠ ⁠… there you can see its stone steps.”

“Won’t I make myself unwelcome by calling on you any time to please myself?”

“Decidedly not; you will always find me in. O-Jo-san of this house pays me visits quite often. Speaking of the O-Jo-san, O-Nami-san does not seem to be around, today. Anything the matter with her, Shiota-san?”

“Has she gone out? Has she been your way, Kyuichi?”

“No, uncle; we haven’t seen her around.”

“Out on one of her solitary walks, again, perhaps. Ha, ha, ha. O-Nami-san is pretty strong-legged. A clerical business took me down to Tonami the other day. About Sugatami bridge I thought I saw one very like her, and it was she. She almost sprang on me, taking me by surprise, with one of her outbursts: ‘Why are you dragging along, so, Osho-san? Where are you going?’ She was in her pair of straw sandals, with her skirt tucked up. ‘Where have you been in that attire?’ I asked her. ‘I have been picking marsh-parsley; you shall have some.’ Saying this, she took out a handful of unwashed mud-covered plants and pushed it down my sleeve. Ha, ha, ha.”

“That girl did!” said that girl’s father with one of the grimmest of smiles, and seized the first opportunity to change the topic, by taking down from rosewood book case something heavy looking in a damask silk bag. He informed us that the bag contained an ink-stone, that once belonged to Rai Sanyo, as one of desk stationeries most treasured by that famous poet-historian and scholar-calligrapher of generations ago. This naturally led to a critical discussion of autographs of Shunsui, Kyohei, Sanyo, Sorai, etc. The ink-stone brought to view at last drew forth admiration from the priest, who was infatuated with the “eyes” and the irridescent colour of the stone. It went without saying that the ink-stone was originally imported from China.

“A stone like this must be rare even in China, Shiota-san?”

“Yes.”

“I should like to have one like this. May I ask you to get me one, Kyuichi-san?” ventured the abbot.

“He, he, he, I might be killed before I found one,” retorted the youth.

“Hoi, I am forgetting, it is no time to talk of getting an ink-stone and things of that kind. By the by, when do you start?”

“I leave here in a few days, Osho-sama.”

“You should go down to Yoshida, to see him off, old man.”

“I am getting on in years and ordinarily I should excuse myself. But this time we may part never to meet again, and I am resolved to go down to see him off.”

“No, uncle, you must not take trouble to go down to Yoshida for me.”

I now felt sure that the youth was really a nephew of mine host. I even saw some resemblance between them.

“You must not say so. You should let your uncle see you off. A river-boat will take him down there in no time. Isn’t that so Shiota-san?”

“Yes. Crossing the mountain will be some job, but by taking a boat, though a little detour.⁠ ⁠…”

The youth did not decline this time; but remained silent.

“Are you going to China?” I ventured to ask.

“Yes.”

The monosyllable left me musing that he might not be the worse for a few more; but I felt no particular necessity to dig, and I held my peace. I noticed that the shadow of haran had changed its position.

“Well, gentleman, you see the present war⁠—he was formerly with the colours in one year service⁠—and he has been called out to join his old regiment.”

My old host volunteered in his nephew’s place to let me understand that the youth was destined to leave for Manchuria in a day or two. I had thought that there was only feathered songsters to listen to, only flowers to see fall, only hot spring to warble forth in this dreamy land of poetry in a mountain bosom, in peaceful Spring. Alas, the living world had come crossing the sea and mountain and oozing into this home of a forgotten tribe, and the time may come when a small fraction of blood making a crimson sea of bleak Manchuria may flow from this youth’s arteries. This very youth is sitting next to an artist who sees nothing worth seeing in human life but dreaming. He sits so near that the artist may hear his heart throb. In that throb may be resounding even now, the tide rolling high in a plain hundreds of miles away. Fate has accidentally brought these two together in a room, but tells nothing else, nor gives the reason why.