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It goes without saying that I did not arrive in Nikko without a variety of experiences along the way. Two hours out from Yokohama, the train boy came into the coach, and with a smile as cheerful as if he were saying, "Happy New Year," announced that there was a washout in front of us and a landslide at the back of us.
He imagined that the Nikko hotel-keeper looked at his notes suspiciously as though they were endorsed with the seal of the Yoshiwara. Geoffrey was ruined. He was henceforth dependent on what his brain could earn and on what his father would allow him, five hundred pounds a year at the outside.
They came in crowds to the station, at the hour when he was due to enter the royal train. But when the time came for his departure, he did not go. He would tarry awhile longer at Nikko. So the crowds were disappointed and did not understand. Rumour had it that cholera had developed in the royal household itself the Purveyor to the Palace, so it was stated, had contracted the disease.
At the same time Iemitsu petitioned that the Court should send an envoy to worship at Nikko every year on the anniversary of the death of Ieyasu, and this request having been granted, Nikko thenceforth became to the Tokugawa what Ise was to the Imperial Court.
They have education, and their lives are bigger lives more imposing, as it were, and they would safeguard them. Those who are afraid are the foreigners and the officials, yes, even the Emperor himself. Is he afraid, the Emperor? One can but guess. He has spent many weeks of this hot summer, when cholera was ravaging his country, in his summer palace at Nikko. There he was safe.
This was especially notable in the case of the Kwanto, that is to say the eight provinces surrounding the present Tokyo Bay, extending north to the Nikko Mountains. The kebiishi represented the really puissant arm of the law, the provincial governors, originally so powerful, having now degenerated into weaklings. This he effected without difficulty.
These edifices hotels, Government buildings, railway stations and so on, are an attempt to combine Western and Japanese styles. The result is an incongruity, to express it mildly, sufficient to cause the artistic mind to shudder. The men who built the temples at Shiba, at Nikko, and in various other parts of the country, and the pagodas which dot the land, are dead, and have left no successors.
Ancestor-worship is general, of course, and a typical case is that of my young Nikko friend, who tells me that in his home are memorial tablets to six of his most recently deceased ancestors, and that hot rice is placed before these tablets each morning. Now the teaching is that the spirits of the dead need the odor of the rice for nourishment, and also require worship of other kinds.
Every one who has been to Europe will recall the long lines of Lombardy poplars that make the fair vision of many French roads linger long in the memory, and I can never forget the magnificent avenue of cryptomerias gigantic in size, straight as ship masts, fair as the cedars of Lebanon that line the road leading to the great Shogun Iyeyasu's tomb in Nikko.
"I am going to take you to Nikko to spend a few days, and in order to liven up things a bit the boys are coming, too, even old Mr. Buxton." "Is " began Nancy, and checked herself. "Well, Miss Nancy, 'is' what?" asked Mr. Campbell, smiling. Billie knew perfectly well that Nancy was going to say: "Is Yoritomo going?" but had changed her mind, when she asked instead: "Is Nikko a town?"
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