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After I left for Saigo, the people must have found out that a foreigner the very first ever seen in Dozen had actually been in Urago without their knowledge; for my second visit made a sensation such as I had never been the cause of anywhere else, except at Kaka-ura. I had barely time to enter the hotel, before the street became entirely blockaded by an amazing crowd desirous to see.
And over the black-blue bay we glide to the rocky beach of Kaka-ura. As at Mitsu-ura, the water's edge is occupied by a serried line of fishing-boats, each with its nose to the sea; and behind these are ranks of others; and it is only just barely possible to squeeze one's way between them over the beach to the drowsy, pretty, quaint little streets behind them.
There is no hotel; but I find hospitality in a fisherman's dwelling, while my kurumaya goes somewhere to hire a boat for Kaka-ura. In less than ten minutes there is a crowd of several hundred people about the house, half-clad adults and perfectly naked boys. They blockade the building; they obscure the light by filling up the doorways and climbing into the windows to look at the foreigner.
But of all places, Kaka-ura! Assuredly I must go to Kaka. Few pilgrims go thither by sea, and boatmen are forbidden to go there if there be even wind enough 'to move three hairs. So that whosoever wishes to visit Kaka must either wait for a period of dead calm very rare upon the coast of the Japanese Sea or journey thereunto by land; and by land the way is difficult and wearisome.
And as the scene, too swiftly receding, diminishes to the width of a kakemono, I vainly wish that I could buy this last vision of it, to place it in my toko, and delight my soul betimes with gazing thereon. Yet another moment, and we round a rocky point; and Kaka-ura vanishes from my sight for ever. So all things pass away.
Kitzuki, founded by the ancient gods, who 'made stout the pillars upon the nethermost rock bottom, and made high the cross-beams to the Plain of High Heaven' Kitzuki, the Holy of Holies, whose high-priest claims descent from the Goddess of the Sun; and Ichibata, famed shrine of Yakushi-Nyorai, who giveth sight to the blind Ichibata-no-Yakushi, whose lofty temple is approached by six hundred and forty steps of stone; and Kiomidzu, shrine of Kwannon of the Eleven Faces, before whose altar the sacred fire has burned without ceasing for a thousand years; and Sada, where the Sacred Snake lies coiled for ever on the sambo of the gods; and Oba, with its temples of Izanami and Izanagi, parents of gods and men, the makers of the world; and Yaegaki, whither lovers go to pray for unions with the beloved; and Kaka, Kaka-ura, Kaka-noKukedo San -all these I hope to see.
When we do finally discover the hotel, we have to wait quite a good while before going in; for nothing is ready; everybody is asleep or away, though all the screens and sliding-doors are open. Evidently there are no thieves in Kaka-ura. Immediately across the way I see a Zen temple and a Shinto temple, almost side by side.
'Returning-time-in-to-look-at-as-for-is-good. As we descend to the bay, the whole of Kaka-ura, including even the long-invisible ancients of the village, accompanies us; making no sound except the pattering of geta. Thus we are escorted to our boat.
The room is neat and spacious; Shinto kakemono from Kitzuki are suspended in the toko and upon the walls; and in one corner I see a very handsome Zen-but-sudan, or household shrine. I could not have believed there were so many people in Kaka-ura. In a Japanese house, during the hot season, everything is thrown open to the breeze.
In remoter Japan, as in certain islands of the West Indies, particular physical types are developed apparently among communities but slightly isolated; on one side of a mountain a population may be remarkably attractive, while upon the other you may find a hamlet whose inhabitants are decidedly unprepossessing. But nowhere in this country have I seen a prettier jeunesse than that of Kaka-ura.
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