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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.
The adults seemed to me of a taller and more powerful type than the men of the Izumo coast; and not a few of those brown backs and shoulders displayed, in the motion of sculling what is comparatively rare in Japan, even among men picked for heavy labour a magnificent development of muscles. As the steamer stopped an hour at Urago, we had time to dine ashore in the chief hotel.
He told them most effectually, speaking in a very low voice. During all the rest of the time I was in Urago, no one dared to go near the awnings. A Japanese policeman never speaks more than once about anything new, and always speaks to the purpose. The public curiosity, however, lasted without abate for three days, and would have lasted longer if I had not fled from Urago.
Upon inquiry I learned that it was an Urago custom to place these banners every year above the graves during one whole month preceding the Festival of the Dead, together with various other ornamental or symbolic things. The water was full of naked swimmers, who shouted laughing welcomes; and a host of light, swift boats, sculled by naked fishermen, darted out to look for passengers and freight.
Urago boasts the best hotel in all Oki; and it has two new temples one a Buddhist temple of the Zen sect, one a Shinto temple of the Izumo Taisha faith, each the gift of a single person. A rich widow, the owner of the hotel, built the Buddhist temple; and the wealthiest of the merchants contributed the other one of the handsomest miya for its size that I ever saw.
At Hishi-ura the same impression prevailed for a time; and even after the fact of my being a foreigner had become generally known, the population caused me no annoyance whatever: they had already become accustomed to see me walking about the streets or swimming across the bay. But it was quite otherwise at Urago.
Not until we reached Hishi-ura did the horizon reappear; and even then it was visible only between two lofty headlands, as if seen through a river's mouth. Hishi-ura is far prettier than Urago, but it is much less populous, and has the aspect of a prosperous agricultural town, rather than of a fishing station.
The country stillness is broken only by the shrilling of the semi and the tintinnabulation of that strange little insect, the suzumushi, whose calling sounds just like the tinkling of the tiny bells which are shaken by the miko in her sacred dance. I remained nearly eight days at Hishi-ura on the occasion of my second visit there, but only three at Urago.
The face of the woman you may forget soon, because it is only beautiful. But the face of Endo you will not forget, because it is naked hell. Urago is a queer little town, perhaps quite as large as Mionoseki, and built, like Mionoseki, on a narrow ledge at the base of a steep semicircle of hills.
We made for it immediately after leaving Urago; passing to the open through a narrow and fantastic strait between Nakanoshima and Nishinoshima, where the cliffs take the form of enormous fortifications bastions and ramparts, rising by tiers.
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