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In the morning every mountain had disappeared; not one of the hills that they loved was to be seen. A blue lake lay before them. It was none other than the lute-shaped Lake Biwa. The mountains had, in truth, traveled under the earth for more than a hundred miles, and now form the sacred Fuji-yama. As Tsunu stepped out of his hut in the morning, his eyes sought the Mountain of the Gods.
O, honorable One, whose wisdom surveys the world, is there in any place near or far in heaven or in earth, such a one that I may seek and find?" And Semimaru, still making a very low music on his biwa, said this; "Supreme Master, where the Shiobara River breaks away through the gorges to the sea, dwelt a poor couple the husband a wood-cutter.
One hundred and thirty miles to the west as the crane wings her flight, in the heart of Omi, is Biwa Ko, the lake of the lute. It is sixty miles long and as blue as the sky whose mirror it is. Along its banks rise white-walled castles and stretch mulberry plantations.
One can imagine Kobe being a very pleasant and desirable place to live; the foreign settlement is quite extensive, the surroundings attractive, and the climate mild and healthful. Pleasant days are spent at Kobe and Ozaka. Twenty-seven miles of level road from the latter city, following the course of the Yodo-gawa, a broad shallow stream that flows from Lake Biwa to the sea, brings me to Kioto.
He sought also the free air and the sound of falling water, yet dearer to him than the plucked strings of sho and biwa. For he said; "Where and how shall We find peace even for a moment, and afford Our heart refreshment even for a single second?" And it seemed to him that he found such moments at Shiobara.
To these questions the Japanese legend gives answer. When Heaven and earth were first created, there was neither Lake of Biwa nor Mountain of Fuji. Suruga and Omi were both plains. Even for long after men inhabited Japan and the Mikados had ruled for centuries there was neither earth so nigh to heaven nor water so close to the Under-world as the peaks of Fuji and the bottom of Biwa.
The largest lake in Japan is that of Biwa, a very fine sheet of water, nearly fifty miles long, but rather narrow, probably not exceeding an average width of more than ten miles. It is situated about eight miles from Kioto, and thither we went in jinrikishas.
Okkasan no O-nak ni Oru toku ni, BiWa no ha, Sasa no ha, Tabeta sona; Sore de O-mimi ga Nagai e sona. The air was singularly sweet and plaintive, quite different from that to which the same words are sung in Izumo, and in other parts of Japan.
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