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The room actually proffered us a table and chairs. No one who has not, after a long day's tramp, sought in vain to rest his weary body propped up against a side beam in a Japanese inn can enter into the feeling a chair inspires, even long afterward, by recollection. I cannot say I loved Takasaki in former days.
Viewing the situation in this light, the ludicrousness of the disconnection struck me so forcibly as very nearly to console me for my loss, which was not trifling, since the next train did not leave for above three hours; too late to push on beyond Takasaki that night, a thing I had most firmly purposed to do.
In 1632, Iemitsu confiscated his fief and exiled him to Takasaki in Kotsuke, where he was compelled to undergo confinement in the Yashiki of Ando Shigenaga. Fourteen months later, sentence of death was pronounced against him at the early age of twenty-eight. Other instances might be quoted showing how little mercy the Tokugawa shoguns extended to wrongdoers among their own relatives.
It is then the rays of the house lights wander abroad and appear to beckon the houseless in; and that must be, in truth, a sorry hostelry to seem such to him. Even Takasaki bore a look of welcome alike to the foreign and the native stranger, which was certainly wonderful for Takasaki.
Slowly above them the sun dipped to his setting, straight ahead, burnishing our path as we pursued in two long lines of flashing rail into the west-northwest. Lower he sank, luring us on, and lower yet, and then suddenly disappeared beyond the barrier of peaks. The train drew up, panting. It was Takasaki, now steeped in saffron afterglow.
After I had duly swallowed as much as I could of the doubtful dose supposed to be cafe au lait, the cans were packed up again, and we issued from the inn to walk a stone's throw to the train. Takasaki stands well toward the upper end of the plain, just below where the main body of it thrusts its arms out into the hills. Up one of these we were soon wending.
But chairs, in a land whose people have from time immemorial found their own feet quite good enough to sit on, were so unexpected a luxury, even after our Takasaki experience, that they may be pardoned for suggesting any flight of fancy. The same might formerly have been said of the illumination next introduced. Now, however, common kerosene lamps are no longer so much of a sight even in Japan.
In order, therefore, to anticipate the patronage of unworthy rivals, each inn has felt obliged to be personally represented on the spot. The one for which mine host of Takasaki had, with his blessing, made me a note turned out so poorly prefaced that I hesitated. The extreme zeal on the part of its proprietor to book me made me still more doubtful.
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