Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, Isabella Lucy Bird [learn to read books TXT] 📗

in my honour, is slow and mournful, and their songs are chants or recitative. They have a musical instrument, something like a guitar, with three, five, or six strings, which are made from sinews of whales cast up on the shore. They have another, which is believed to be peculiar to themselves, consisting of a thin piece of wood, about five inches long and two and a half inches broad, with a pointed wooden tongue, about two lines in breadth and sixteen in length, fixed in the middle, and grooved on three sides. The wood is held before the mouth, and the tongue is set in motion by the vibration of the breath in singing. Its sound, though less penetrating, is as discordant as that of a Jew's harp, which it somewhat resembles. One of the men used it as an accompaniment of a song; but they are unwilling to part with them, as they say that it is very seldom that they can find a piece of wood which will bear the fine splitting necessary for the tongue.

They are a most courteous people among each other. The salutations are frequent--on entering a house, on leaving it, on meeting on the road, on receiving anything from the hand of another, and on receiving a kind or complimentary speech. They do not make any acknowledgments of this kind to the women, however. The common salutation consists in extending the hands and waving them inwards, once or oftener, and stroking the beard; the formal one in raising the hands with an inward curve to the level of the head two or three times, lowering them, and rubbing them together; the ceremony concluding with stroking the beard several times. The latter and more formal mode of salutation is offered to the chief, and by the young to the old men. The women have no "manners!"

They have no "medicine men," and, though they are aware of the existence of healing herbs, they do not know their special virtues or the manner of using them. Dried and pounded bear's liver is their specific, and they place much reliance on it in colic and other pains. They are a healthy race. In this village of 300 souls, there are no chronically ailing people; nothing but one case of bronchitis, and some cutaneous maladies among children. Neither is there any case of deformity in this and five other large villages which I have visited, except that of a girl, who has one leg slightly shorter than the other.

They ferment a kind of intoxicating liquor from the root of a tree, and also from their own millet and Japanese rice, but Japanese sake is the one thing that they care about. They spend all their gains upon it, and drink it in enormous quantities. It represents to them all the good of which they know, or can conceive. Beastly intoxication is the highest happiness to which these poor savages aspire, and the condition is sanctified to them under the fiction of "drinking to the gods." Men and women alike indulge in this vice. A few, however, like Pipichari, abstain from it totally, taking the bowl in their hands, making the libations to the gods, and then passing it on. I asked Pipichari why he did not take sake, and he replied with a truthful terseness, "Because it makes men like dogs."

Except the chief, who has two horses, they have no domestic animals except very large, yellow dogs, which are used in hunting, but are never admitted within the houses.

The habits of the people, though by no means destitute of decency and propriety, are not cleanly. The women bathe their hands once a day, but any other washing is unknown. They never wash their clothes, and wear the same by day and night. I am afraid to speculate on the condition of their wealth of coal-black hair. They may be said to be very dirty--as dirty fully as masses of our people at home. Their houses swarm with fleas, but they are not worse in this respect than the Japanese yadoyas. The mountain villages have, however, the appearance of extreme cleanliness, being devoid of litter, heaps, puddles, and untidiness of all kinds, and there are no unpleasant odours inside or outside the houses, as they are well ventilated and smoked, and the salt fish and meat are kept in the godowns. The hair and beards of the old men, instead of being snowy as they ought to be, are yellow from smoke and dirt.

They have no mode of computing time, and do not know their own ages. To them the past is dead, yet, like other conquered and despised races, they cling to the idea that in some far-off age they were a great nation. They have no traditions of internecine strife, and the art of war seems to have been lost long ago. I asked Benri about this matter, and he says that formerly Ainos fought with spears and knives as well as with bows and arrows, but that Yoshitsune, their hero god, forbade war for ever, and since then the two-edged spear, with a shaft nine feet long, has only been used in hunting bears.

The Japanese Government, of course, exercises the same authority over the Ainos as over its other subjects, but probably it does not care to interfere in domestic or tribal matters, and within this outside limit despotic authority is vested in the chiefs. The Ainos live in village communities, and each community has its own chief, who is its lord paramount. It appears to me that this chieftainship is but an expansion of the paternal relation, and that all the village families are ruled as a unit. Benri, in whose house I am, is the chief of Biratori, and is treated by all with very great deference of manner. The office is nominally for life; but if a chief becomes blind, or too infirm to go about, he appoints a successor. If he has a "smart" son, who he thinks will command the respect of the people, he appoints him; but if not, he chooses the most suitable man in the village. The people are called upon to approve the choice, but their ratification is never refused. The office is not hereditary anywhere.

Benri appears to exercise the authority of a very strict father. His manner to all the men is like that of a master to slaves, and they bow when they speak to him. No one can marry without his approval. If any one builds a house he chooses the site. He has absolute jurisdiction in civil and criminal cases, unless (which is very rare) the latter should be of sufficient magnitude to be reported to the Imperial officials. He compels restitution of stolen property, and in all cases fixes the fines which are to be paid by delinquents. He also fixes the hunting arrangements and the festivals. The younger men were obviously much afraid of incurring his anger in his absence.

An eldest son does not appear to be, as among the Japanese, a privileged person. He does not necessarily inherit the house and curios. The latter are not divided, but go with the house to the son whom the father regards as being the "smartest." Formal adoption is practised. Pipichari is an adopted son, and is likely to succeed to Benri's property to the exclusion of his own children. I cannot get at the word which is translated "smartness," but I understand it as meaning general capacity. The chief, as I have mentioned before, is allowed three wives among the mountain Ainos, otherwise authority seems to be his only privilege.

The Ainos have a singular dread of snakes. Even their bravest fly from them. One man says that it is because they know of no cure for their bite; but there is something more than this, for they flee from snakes which they know to be harmless.

They have an equal dread of their dead. Death seems to them very specially "the shadow fear'd of man." When it comes, which it usually does from bronchitis in old age, the corpse is dressed in its best clothing, and laid upon a shelf for from one to three days. In the case of a woman her ornaments are buried with her, and in that of a man his knife and sake-stick, and, if he were a smoker, his smoking apparatus. The corpse is sewn up with these things in a mat, and, being slung on poles, is carried to a solitary grave, where it is laid in a recumbent position. Nothing will induce an Aino to go near a grave. Even if a valuable bird or animal falls near one, he will not go to pick it up. A vague dread is for ever associated with the departed, and no dream of Paradise ever lights for the Aino the "Stygian shades."

Benri is, for an Aino, intelligent. Two years ago Mr. Dening of Hakodate came up here and told him that there was but one God who made us all, to which the shrewd old man replied, "If the God who made you made us, how is it that you are so different--you so rich, we so poor?" On asking him about the magnificent pieces of lacquer and inlaying which adorn his curio shelf, he said that they were his father's, grandfather's, and great-grandfather's at least, and he thinks they were gifts from the daimiyo of Matsumae soon after the conquest of Yezo. He is a grand-looking man, in spite of the havoc wrought by his intemperate habits. There is plenty of room in the house, and this morning, when I asked him to show me the use of the spear, he looked a truly magnificent savage, stepping well back with the spear in rest, and then springing forward for the attack, his arms and legs turning into iron, the big muscles standing out in knots, his frame quivering with excitement, the thick hair falling back in masses from his brow, and the fire of the chase in his eye. I trembled for my boy, who was the object of the imaginary onslaught, the passion of sport was so admirably acted.

As I write, seven of the older men are sitting by the fire. Their grey beards fall to their waists in rippled masses, and the slight baldness of age not only gives them a singularly venerable appearance, but enhances the beauty of their lofty brows. I took a rough sketch of one of the handsomest, and, showing it to him, asked if he would have it, but instead of being amused or pleased he showed symptoms of fear, and asked me to burn it, saying it would bring him bad luck and he should die. However, Ito pacified him, and he accepted it, after a Chinese character, which is understood to mean good luck, had been written upon it; but all the others begged me not to "make pictures" of them, except Pipichari, who lies at my feet like a staghound.

The profusion of black hair, and a curious intensity about their eyes, coupled with the hairy limbs and singularly vigorous physique, give them a formidably savage appearance; but the smile, full of "sweetness and light," in which both eyes and mouth bear part, and the low, musical voice, softer and sweeter than anything I have previously heard, make me at times forget that they are savages