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As the jinricksha rattles on, the hills dominating the road grow higher. All at once Cha halts again before the steepest and loftiest flight of temple steps I have yet seen.
There are no roads, properly speaking, in all Oki, only mountain paths; and consequently there are no jinricksha, with the exception of one especially imported by the leading physician of Saigo, and available for use only in the streets. There are not even any kago, or palanquins, except one for the use of the same physician.
And while I am looking at it, I become for the first time conscious that a crowd has gathered about me, -tanned kindly-faced labourers from the fields, and mothers with their babies on their backs, and school children, and jinricksha men, all wondering that a stranger should be thus interested in their gods.
Whoever was the individual responsible for the invention of the jinricksha, he certainly conferred a great boon on all foreigners resident in Japan before railways and tramways and other means of communication became as prevalent as they now are.
For a while the way winds through a long narrow winding valley between wooded hills: the whole extent of bottom-land is occupied by rice-farms; the air has a humid coolness, and one hears only the chanting of frogs, like a clattering of countless castanets, as the jinricksha jolts over the rugged elevated paths separating the flooded rice-fields.
There was such a difference between the service of the coolie Jinricksha men in Hong Kong and in Japan. They did not seem so weak or travel-weary, and yet they had often to take people on much harder journeys. Tokio, the capital, with a population almost equal to New York, looks like a caricature, a miniature cast such as one sees of the Holy Land.
The moving throng resembled a great bouquet swayed by a friendly breeze, so bright in coloring with the flower-sellers, white-garbed jinricksha men, vegetable vendors, and troops of butterfly children that any tone of softer hue attracted immediate attention. This led me to a discovery one day when I caught sight of a dark-brown velvet dress, and I knew that my promised pupil was inside it.
But it will be light and hollow empty like a long-dried gourd. Betimes, as we journey on, the monotony of undulating blue on the left, or the monotony of billowing green upon the right, is broken by the grey apparition of a cemetery a cemetery so long that our jinricksha men, at full run, take a full quarter of an hour to pass the huge congregation of its perpendicular stones.
'Tera? queries Cha, with his immense white hat in his hand, as I resume my seat in the jinricksha at the foot of the steps. Which no doubt means, do I want to see any more temples? Most certainly I do: I have not yet seen Buddha. 'Yes, tera, Cha. And again begins the long panorama of mysterious shops and tilted eaves, and fantastic riddles written over everything.
I cannot leave a consideration of the means of communication in Japan without making some reference to that somewhat peculiar vehicle which is by so many persons deemed to be essentially characteristic of the country, although, as a matter of fact, I believe it is of comparatively recent introduction, having been introduced either by a European or an American; I refer, of course, to the jinricksha.
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