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 Fractured Minds:
A Case-Study Approach
to Clinical Neuropsychology,
Second Edition

Jenni A. Ogden

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

 PREFACE

The second edition of Fractured Minds follows the same format as the previous edi-
tion, with two introductory chapters followed by 17 chapters that each focus on a
different neurological disorder. In each of these chapters a theoretical section precedes
an illustrative case study. All the chapters from the first edition have been revised to
include pertinent new research findings, new treatments, and further discussion of
many issues important to the discipline and profession of clinical neuropsychology.
The original cases have, with one exception, been retained, and for some cases ad-
ditional recent case material has been added. Thus the reader can discover what has
happened to Rangi, following many years free of epilepsy, and Mark, the (now middle-
aged) man with visual object agnosia and prosopagnosia. A new case has replaced
the original case in the subarachnoid hemorrhage chapter, allowing the inclusion of
an illustrative neuropsychological assessment report that includes the latest Wechsler
scales.
Three entirely new chapters on multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, and
Huntington’s disease have been added. These not only make the range of neurological
disorders covered much broader but also provide a vehicle for describing and explor-
ing motor disorders, neurosurgical treatment to alleviate motor symptoms, genetically
inherited disorders, genetic counseling, gene therapy, and some of the many difficult
ethical issues that go hand-in-hand with new technology and knowledge.
Throughout, my aim has been to reveal the people who stand behind each disorder:
patients, families, clinicians, support groups, and researchers. I hope that their cou-
rageous and sad stories will enhance the reader’s understanding of neurological disease
processes and modern treatments, as well as add depth and color to my descriptions
of how clinical neuropsychologists go about their business of unraveling the mysteries
of brain–behavior relationships.
This page intentionally left blank
 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

I wrote this book for two reasons. My first reason was to relate the stories of some
of the neurological patients who, over the years, have graciously admitted me into
their lives, albeit in most cases for a brief time. The primary reason for my acquain-
tance with these people was either to assess their cognitive and psychological func-
tioning and assist them with rehabilitation or to involve them in research projects with
the goal of increasing our understanding of higher-level brain functioning.
My personal gain from contact with neurological patients is immeasurable. I have
not only been privileged with intriguing glimpses into the human mind, but these
people have also humbled me with their courage, humor, generosity of spirit, and
determination to triumph over their illnesses, and for some, their uncomplaining ac-
ceptance of irretrievable losses and the certainty of an untimely death. As a PhD
student new to neurosurgery and neurology ward rounds, I sometimes had to turn
away from the bed so that the patient (and doctors) would not notice the tears in my
eyes. Over the years I have conquered this “unprofessional” behavior and replaced it
with a more subtle lump in my throat in response to the tragic stories, often masked
by the brisk medical protocol that is commonplace in these wards. By sharing my
experiences of how these “ordinary” folk cope with the extraordinary stress of a brain
disorder, I hope to pass on something of their lives to the readers of this book.
My second reason for writing this book was to satisfy a need for an introductory
text in clinical neuropsychology that would capture the attention of students and other
health professionals interested in gaining a broad understanding of clinical neuro-
psychology, but without being required to learn “how to do it.” The experiences of
people with damaged brains and disordered minds seem to be intrinsically interesting
to most people, perhaps because we can all relate in some small way to forgetting
important information, not being able to say a word although we know we know it,
or becoming clumsy and inefficient when we are overtired or intoxicated. Neurological
disorders of one sort or another are common, and few people reach midlife without
being touched by a family member or close friend with a head injury, dementia, stroke,
or other neurological problem.
My own university teaching has convinced me that relating stories about real
people as a pathway into the mysteries of neurological disorders and how they affect
the mind generally works better than describing complex research studies and force-
feeding facts about neuroanatomy and neuropathology. For example, an excursion into
the world of patient H.M. not only results in an “emotional” understanding of what
it might be like to have no memory but also introduces the reader or listener to the
medial temporal lobes, epilepsy, and the many ways memory can be categorized.
x PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

Important theories and research studies pertinent to H.M.’s amnesia and other memory
impairments can be included to give a general overview of the area and to encourage
the interested reader to pursue them in more detail. Some of the neuropsychological
tests commonly used to assess memory and other cognitive impairments can be de-
scribed in general terms, and ethical, cultural, and other issues that are part and parcel
of the clinical neuropsychologist’s practice can be presented and discussed when they
arise in the “natural” course of the case presentation.
This book thus represents a series of readings in introductory clinical neuropsy-
chology. I hope that by the end of the book, the reader will have a broad view of
clinical neuropsychology that will be sufficient in itself for many readers and that will
encourage and prepare others for more advanced study. Each chapter includes a mod-
erate number of references so that students can use the book as a springboard for
further serious study. Chapters can be read (or used as a basis for a lecture, laboratory,
or tutorial) in any order. However, for those new to this field, reading Chapters 1 and
2 first will provide a basis for understanding the following 14 chapters, each of which
is centered around a particular neuropsychological disorder as experienced by one or
two patients. Chapter 1 provides an overview of many different aspects of neuropsy-
chology, including basic neuroanatomy, important assumptions and concepts under-
stood by neuropsychologists, and a demystification of the “jargon” used in this field.
Chapter 2 takes the reader through the steps of a neuropsychological assessment and
briefly describes the more common tests referred to in the case studies.
Each case study is preceded by a section covering the main theoretical and neu-
ropathological aspects of the disorder that often includes a sample of the relevant
research in the area. Some chapters focus on the clinical assessment, treatment, and
rehabilitation of common disorders, such as head injury, epilepsy, and dementia; others
describe in straightforward language the research that is conducted to understand less
common but fascinating disorders, such as the inability to recognize faces and objects
by sight.
Although this book was written primarily for college and university students, it
may also be of interest to health professionals who work with neurological patients.
For example, practicing as well as student clinical psychologists; physical, speech,
and occupational therapists; nurses; and junior doctors who work with neurological
patients need to understand the kinds of cognitive impairments and other difficulties
experienced by these people without needing to know in detail how to assess and
rehabilitate the problems themselves. Increasingly, a multidisciplinary approach is
taken in the assessment, treatment, and rehabilitation of neurological patients. For such
an approach to work effectively, it is important that each professional understands, at
least in a general way, the concepts and assessment measures used by other profes-
sionals. In addition, many of the ethical and professional issues discussed in the book
are common to all health professionals. Sometimes patients (and their families) ask
for books they can read to help them better understand their disorders. I hope one or
more of the chapters in this book will assist in fulfilling that need for some people.
This is not a test manual or a text to prepare the reader to practice as a clinical
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION xi

neuropsychologist, but its breadth and detail may be sufficient to convey the richness
and fascination of working with this population. Individual cases are of real people
whose names and other personal details have been changed to protect their identity.
In no specific case has the patient or client’s gender been changed, as this is often an
important factor in that patient’s assessment and rehabilitation. When writing in gen-
eral terms about patients, clients, and health professionals, however, to avoid the
clumsy and impersonal use of she/he and her/his, I have used one or the other pronoun
in a fairly random manner. Of course, generally speaking, in all these instances I could
have used the alternative pronoun just as easily.
I must accept responsibility for the ways in which I have expressed the different
aspects of neuropsychology in this book, and I am sure many readers will disagree
with me on a number of issues. Indeed, given the ever-increasing body of neuropsy-
chological knowledge that pours out of scientific journals every month, many of the
ideas expressed in this book may well be outdated by the time it appears on the shelf.
That aside, I could not have written this book without the massed wisdom and help
of numerous people over the years.
This page intentionally left blank
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am indebted to all the patients and their families who willingly gave up their time
and cooperated with my tests and interviews, often when they themselves were going
through one of the most significant crises of their lives. Although I am especially
grateful to the 18 people and their families whose particular stories I have told here,
I also thank the hundreds of patients who have, over the years, taught me much of
what I know. I especially thank my own academic teachers and mentors, Michael
Corballis and Suzanne Corkin, and Dorothy Gronwall, whose death in 2001 was a
sad occasion, but whose legacy lives on. My mentors have supported me as well as
taught me, and have even put up with my argumentative nature with good grace.
Every clinical neuropsychologist needs a neurosurgeon or neurologist alongside, and
Edward Mee has fulfilled that role for me. Not only has he taught me much about
neuroanatomy, neuropathology, neurology, and even neurosurgery, but he has also
maintained my belief that all health professionals, even busy surgeons, can take the
time to care about the whole person, and not just the disorder that person endures.
I thank the staffs of the University of Auckland Department of Psychology, the
Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery of Auckland Hospital, and the Clinical
Research Center at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, all of whom have assisted
my clinical, academic, and research endeavors in numerous ways over the years. The
New Zealand Neurological Foundation, Inc., and the Health Research Council of New
Zealand have supported many of my research projects, some of which have found
their way into this book. Many of my colleagues and students have in various ways
influenced and guided my neuropsychological thinking and clinical practice, encour-
aged me to write this book, and read drafts of chapters. In particular, I acknowledge
Joe Bogen, Edith Kaplan, Muriel Lezak, Garry McFarlane-Nathan, Anne Aimola Da-
vies (nee Maguire), Erana Cooper, Jennifer Hume, Laurie Miller, Gill Rhodes, Fred
Seymour, Jon Simcock, Lynette Tippett, Guy Von Sturmer, and Kevin Walsh. I thank
Meryl Hawkins, who drew the brains in Chapters 1 and 5, and my editor at Oxford
University Press, Jeffrey House, who took a punt on a new author who wanted to
write a novel disguised as a textbook, and who then asked for a second edition. I
thank Fiona Stevens for all her guidance in the production of the second edition.
Finally, I thank my husband, John, and my children, Caroline, Jonathan, Josie, and
Joachim, who have been listening to my stories about H.M., Michael, and others over
the dinner table for more years than they care to remember. They may not feel obliged
to take the second edition of the book to bed, but perhaps they will read it to my
grandchildren to put them to sleep!
This page intentionally left blank
 CONTENTS

1 Introduction to Clinical Neuropsychology 3

2 The Neuropsychological Assessment 28

3 Marooned in the Moment: H.M., a Case of Global Amnesia 46

4 Out of Control: The Consequences and Treatment of Epilepsy 64

5 The Breakdown of Language: Case Studies of Aphasia 83

6 A Body in the Mind: A Case of Autotopagnosia 99

7 Out of Mind, Out of Sight: A Case of Hemineglect 113

8 Vision Without Knowledge: Visual Object Agnosia and

Prosopagnosia 137

9 The Impaired Executive: A Case of Frontal-Lobe Dysfunction 158

10 Beating the Odds: Severe Traumatic Brain Injury and the Importance of
Ongoing Rehabilitation 171

11 The Unseen Injury: Mild Traumatic Brain Injury 193

12 Explosions in the Mind: A Case of Subarachnoid Hemorrhage 204

13 Twenty Years Too Late: Organic Solvent Neurotoxicity 222

14 Tomorrow Is Another Day: Living with Multiple Sclerosis 237

15 Mind Over Matter: Coping with Parkinson’s Disease 254

16 Huntington’s Disease: A Family Challenged 276

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xvi CONTENTS

17 Dementia: A Family Tragedy 304

18 Split Brain, Split Mind? Case L.B. 328

19 A Whole Life with Half a Brain: Kate’s Story 348

References 363

Index 393
FRACTURED
MINDS
This page intentionally left blank
 1
쎱

INTRODUCTION TO CLINICAL NEUROPSYCHOLOGY

A Definition of Clinical Neuropsychology and Its Aims

This book is concerned with the lives of real people whose behavior, emotions, or
thinking abilities have become disordered, disrupted, or unusual as a result of some
type of brain disorder or damage. The study of human behaviors, emotions, and
thoughts and how they relate to the brain, particularly the damaged brain, is the subject
matter of clinical neuropsychology.
Clinical neuropsychology has both applied and academic aims. Applied aims in-
clude learning more about neurological disorders and diseases so that we can more
accurately and usefully diagnose, treat, and rehabilitate people who suffer such dis-
orders and, along with other disciplines, ultimately find ways to prevent their occur-
rence. The primary academic aim is to learn more about how the undamaged or
“normal” human brain and mind work by carrying out experiments, usually in the
form of cognitive tests, on brain-damaged people.
This introductory chapter describes the similarities and differences between clin-
ical neuropsychology and other related disciplines. It then touches on functional neu-
roanatomy, important neuropsychological terms and concepts, the interaction of clin-
ical practice and research, the roles of a clinical neuropsychologist, and cross-cultural
issues in neuropsychology. Each of these topics demands a chapter or book to itself,
and a few paragraphs on each will act only as a reminder of knowledge you already
have or provide just enough material to help you understand most of the information
in the case studies. To provide a general sense of the basic tools the neuropsychologist
uses to understand what is going on in the minds of brain-damaged patients or clients,
Chapter 2 describes the different aspects of the neuropsychological assessment. Chap-
ters 3 to 19 each present one or two case studies chosen to illustrate particular neu-
ropsychological disorders, such as aphasia, visual agnosia, and dementia. A number
of other issues important to the clinical neuropsychologist are raised throughout the
case studies. At the end of this introductory chapter is a list of topics keyed to the
chapters that provide further information about them.

3
4 FRACTURED MINDS

Relationship of Clinical Neuropsychology to Other Disciplines

A number of disciplines are closely related to clinical neuropsychology and overlap
with it (Fig. 1-1). The main ones can best be conceptualized as a continuum with the
brain at one end (neurology) and the mind at the other (cognitive psychology). Neu-
rology is the study of the medical aspects of central nervous system disorders and
treatments. Compared with neuropsychologists, neurologists tend to be more con-
cerned with clinical symptoms and signs as indications of underlying neuropathology
in the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system and less concerned with the
details of the higher behaviors and cognitions mediated by the brain and how the
detailed study of their breakdown can inform us about normal higher cognitive pro-
cesses.
At the other, more academic, end of the spectrum lies cognitive psychology, a
popular subdiscipline of academic psychology. Its aim is to understand the workings
of the human mind by analyzing the higher cognitive functions and their components.
Participants in cognitive psychology experiments are unimpaired people (usually un-
dergraduate university students) rather than brain-damaged patients, and cognitive psy-
chologists have developed many important experimental paradigms that allow mea-
surement of minute differences in cognitive performance under controlled conditions.
For example, the time required to perform different tasks or a single task under dif-
ferent conditions might be measured in milliseconds, and from these results inferences
can be made about the cognitive processes underlying the behaviors.
Cognitive neuropsychology is a relatively recent label for a type of research that
many neuropsychologists have been conducting for years. It is, as the name suggests,
a hybrid of cognitive psychology and clinical neuropsychology. It concentrates on the
detailed analysis of higher cognitive functions, often using similar paradigms to those
used in cognitive psychology, but it studies brain-damaged patients rather than “nor-
mals” (McCarthy and Warrington 1990). In their hypotheses and analyses of deficits
and their implications for the normal functioning of the brain, cognitive neuropsy-

Figure 1-1 The discipline of clinical neuropsychology in relation to neu-

rology and psychology.
INTRODUCTION TO CLINICAL NEUROPSYCHOLOGY 5

chologists, although certainly not ignoring the brain entirely, tend to be less interested
than clinical neuropsychologists in where the damage is and how it might be related
to the impairment. Similarly, they are not interested in brain pathology, disease, and
treatment on their own per se, but only as a means to the end of understanding the
workings of the normal mind.
Thus, clinical neuropsychology positions itself between neurology and cognitive
neuropsychology. It has a neurological interest in brain pathology and the resulting
symptoms and a psychological interest in the analysis of higher cognitive functions,
both to understand the workings of the normal mind and to develop better rehabili-
tation methods for patients. In practice, all the disciplines in Figure 1-1 overlap con-
siderably, and many practitioners and researchers straddle two or more of these. Some
neurologists specialize in clinical neuropsychology, and they are often known as be-
havioral neurologists. Clinical neuropsychologists who have an affiliation with a uni-
versity psychology department as well as a hospital often carry out research that would
best fit into the cognitive neuropsychology category. This is well illustrated by some
of the case studies in this book that are more closely aligned with cognitive neuro-
psychology than clinical neuropsychology (see Chapters 3, 6, 8, and 19).
Other important areas that contribute to clinical neuropsychology include animal
psychology and neuroscience, neuropharmacology, and human neurophysiology. This
latter discipline measures the electrical brain waves of patients using electroenceph-
alographs (EEG) and evoked potentials. In recent years rapidly developing neuroim-
aging technology has changed the face of neuroscience, and clinical neuropsychology
has been one of the greatest beneficiaries. Computed tomography (CT) (see Chapters
6, 7, and 19 for examples) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) (see Chapter 8
and 14 for examples) permit us to visualize the anatomic structures and damage in
the living brain, while cerebral blood flow techniques, positron emission tomography
(PET), and functional MRI allow us to visualize the changing metabolism of the
working brain. The relevance of these latter techniques lies in their potential to confirm
and extend our hypotheses about brain–behavior relations. That is, when a non-brain-
damaged person is speaking, does Broca’s area (hypothesized to mediate speech) “light
up” on a PET scan? Alternatively, when a patient has a large lesion in Broca’s area
(as confirmed on a CT brain scan) but still manages to speak, what area of the brain
“lights up” when a PET scan is carried out on this patient?
Finally, but importantly, a practicing clinical neuropsychologist should first be an
accomplished clinical psychologist, as will become evident in many of the case studies
that follow. Even clinical neuropsychologists who restrict themselves to assessment
and do not take an active part in rehabilitation and therapy require some clinical skills
to enable them to build the rapport necessary to achieve a valid and useful assessment
and to discuss in a sensitive manner the often distressing information about a patient’s
performance. In addition, patients often express strong emotions about their illness
and their wider situation during their assessment, especially during the initial inter-
view, and the clinical neuropsychologist should be able to respond professionally and
sensitively. People with stable, long-term lesions who have volunteered as research
6 FRACTURED MINDS

subjects are also entitled to sensitive treatment that does not exploit or disempower
them.

Functional Neuroanatomy
The human brain is the most complex system in the animal kingdom, and it is well
beyond the scope of this book to cover neuroanatomy in any detail. This section
provides a brief, simplistic overview of the cortical areas and other neuroanatomical
structures that are most closely related to the disorders of higher cortical functioning
covered in this book. This section should serve as a reminder for readers who have
studied neuroanatomy and provide some background for those who have not. For
readers who wish to learn more about this important area, the neuropsychology texts
by Lezak (1995) and Walsh (1994) have excellent, easy-to-read sections on neuro-
atomy for neuropsychologists; more detailed descriptions of neuroanatomy can be
found in Mesulam (1985).

Gross Structure of the Brain

The brain has three major divisions: the cerebral hemispheres, the cerebellum, and the
brain stem. Neuropsychology is most concerned with the cerebral hemispheres. Figure
1-2 shows lateral (from the side) and medial (split down the middle from front to
back) views of the human brain. The brain stem, an upward extension of the spinal
cord, consists of four parts: the medulla oblongata, pons, midbrain, and diencephalon.
It is the life-support part of the brain as it controls respiration, cardiovascular function,
and gastrointestinal function. It also contains the nuclei for the cranial nerves con-
nected with the special senses, but it is not directly concerned with higher cognitive
function. The cerebellar hemispheres are paired structures at the base of the cerebral
hemispheres and are concerned mainly with motor coordination, muscle tone, and
balance.
The cerebral hemispheres are paired structures above the midbrain and pons. They
are covered by a highly convoluted layer of nerve cells called the cerebral cortex, or
grey matter. The “hills” of the cortex are called gyri (singular, gyrus) and the “valleys”
are called sulci (singular, sulcus). The axons or fiber tracts that connect the nerve cells
to the rest of the brain form a layer directly below the cortex called the white matter.
Deep within the hemispheres are further paired structures of grey matter called the
basal ganglia. Chapter 15, which describes Parkinson’s disease, provides more detail
about the basal ganglia and their connections. The two hemispheres are separated by
the longitudinal fissure, a deep groove that runs from the anterior frontal lobes to the
posterior occipital lobes. The other main fissures are the central (or rolandic) fissure
or sulcus, which separates the frontal from the parietal lobe, and the lateral (or sylvian)
fissure or sulcus, which separates the temporal lobe from the frontal and parietal lobes.
A tough band of interhemispheric fibers called the corpus callosum forms the major
Figure 1-2 The upper figure is a lateral view of the left hemisphere; the
lower figure a medial view of the right hemisphere of the human brain.

7
8 FRACTURED MINDS

functional connection between the two hemispheres. Within each hemisphere, fiber
tracts connect different parts of the hemisphere.
A system called the ascending reticular formation (RF) controls the overall arousal
level of the cortex. The RF is a diffuse system of multisynaptic neuron chains traveling
up through the brain stem. All the major sensory pathways send impulses via collateral
axons to the RF, which relays them to a group of nuclei in the thalamus, paired grey
matter structures deep in the brain on either side of the midline at the upper end of
the brain stem. The thalamus serves as a relay center for motor pathways, many
sensory pathways, and the RF. On reaching the thalamus, the impulses are relayed to
the cerebral cortex, where they influence the level of mental alertness or sleep.
Within the brain lies the limbic system, which includes the hippocampus and amyg-
dala, which lie medially to the temporal lobes; the cingulate gyrus, which lies along
the medial surface of the frontal and parietal lobes; and some deep, midline structures
in the brain, including the mamillary bodies. The limbic system is involved in emotion,
motivation, and memory.
The brain has three coverings, called the meninges. The outermost thick, tough,
covering is called the dura mater (“tough mother”), which adheres to the inner surface
of the skull. The delicate, filamentous middle membrane, called the arachnoid mater
(“spider mother”), is attached by cobweb-like strands of tissue to the fine pia mater
(“little mother”), which adheres closely to the cortex. The subarachnoid space lies
between the arachnoid mater and the pia mater and is filled with cerebrospinal fluid
(CSF). Blood vessels also lie within the subarachnoid space and dip down in the sulci
to supply deeper parts of the brain.
An inflammation of the meninges is called meningitis; one symptom of meningitis
is a stiff neck, caused by the muscles of the neck contracting strongly (called guarding)
to prevent bending of the neck and the subsequent painful stretching of the inflamed
meninges.
The ventricles are lakes of CSF located deep within the hemispheres. The lateral
ventricles, large paired structures in the center of each hemisphere, connect in the
middle to form the third ventricle and, below that, the fourth ventricle. The CSF is
continually formed by the choroid plexus within the ventricles and circulates through
the ventricles and around the outside of the brain and spinal cord within the subar-
achnoid space. Excess CSF drains into the venous system from the subarachnoid
space. If one of the small apertures between the ventricles becomes blocked, the CSF
cannot flow out and the ventricles increase in size, causing increased intracranial
pressure. This condition, known as hydrocephalus, can be corrected by a neurosurgeon
placing a valve, or shunt, into the blocked ventricle to allow the CSF to flow through
a tube into a body cavity.
The cerebrovascular system is too complex to describe in detail here, but in simple
terms it involves two pairs of cerebral arteries: the internal carotid arteries, which
supply the anterior parts of the brain, and the vertebral arteries, which supply the
posterior parts of the brain. The two internal carotid arteries enter the skull and ascend
on either side of the optic chiasm, where each artery branches to form the anterior
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of fifteen miles. We desired to reach Station Eight by four o’clock;
either to sleep there until three o’clock the next morning, or to push
on to the tenth and last station, rest there, and see the sun rise, from
the door-way of that summit rest-house. Our two Colorado
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After we had passed the third station, the scudding clouds closed
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the open lava slope. Station Number Four was closed and its roof in
partial ruins, where a rolling stone had crashed in during the winter,
but at the next two huts we rested, in company with a sturdy
mountaineer, his wife and baby, who were going up to open Station
Number Nine for the summer. The baby was strapped on its father’s
back, its little bare toes sticking out from its tight swaddling-gown
and curling up in comical balls as the wind grew colder. Our two
veterans of Pike’s Peak were far ahead, merely white spots on the
dark, chocolate-brown slope, but we all intended to overtake them
and come in with them at the end of the day.
Suddenly the drifting clouds swept down, curling along the dark
lava, like steam, and wrapping us in a gray mist that blotted out
everything. Another gust of wind brought a dash of rain, and hurried
us to the lee wall of a closed hut for shelter. The shower came
harder and faster, and the baggage-coolies with water-proofs and
umbrellas were far in advance, invisible in the mist. We pushed on,
and after climbing a hundred yards in loose ashes, found ourselves
on the sliding track of the descent. We struck away blindly to the
right and mounted straight upward. A seam of hard lava soon gave
us secure foothold, but presently became a net-work of tiny
cascades. My cheerful little coolie, in his saturated cotton suit, tried
to encourage me, and passing the rope around a horn of lava at one
breathing-stop, pointed upward, and assured me that there was clear
sunshine above. Glancing along the sloping lava-track, we saw a
foaming crest of water descending from those sunny uplands, and
had barely time to cross its path before the roaring stream came on
and cut off retreat.
After two hours of hard climbing in the blinding rain and driving
wind, we reached the shelter of Station Number Eight, chilled and
exhausted. This hut, a log-cabin faced with huge lava blocks, its low
roof held down by many bowlders, and its walls five feet in thickness,
consists of one room about twelve by thirty feet in size. Two doors
looked sheer down the precipitous mountain-slope, and a deep
window, like that of a fortress, was set in the end wall. The square
fireplace, sunken in the floor, had its big copper kettle swinging from
a crane, and the usual stone frame for the rice-kettle. When the
doors were barred and braced with planks against the fury of the
storm, the smoke, unable to escape, nearly blinded us. Our dripping
garments and the coolies’ wet cotton clothes were hung to dry on the
rafters over the fireplace, where they slowly dripped. The master of
Number Eight had opened his rest-house only five days before, and
with his young son and two servants found himself called on to
provide for us with our retinue of seventeen servants, for four young
cadets from the naval college in Tokio, storm-bound on their way
down the mountain, and a dozen pilgrims—forty-two people in all.
Warmed, and comforted with a stray sandwich, we were glad
enough to go to bed. Each of us received two futons, one of which
made the mattress and the other the covering, while basket-lids
served for pillows. The floor was cold as well as hard, and the rows
of cotton towels hung on the walls by preceding pilgrims fluttered in
the draughts from the howling blasts that shook the solid little hut.
The shriek and roar and mad rushes of wind were terrifying, and we
were by no means certain that the little stone box would hold
together until morning. One hanging-lamp shed a fantastic light on
the rows of heads under the blue futons, and the stillness of the
Seven Sleepers presently befell the lonely shelter.
 CHAPTER XVIII
THE DESCENT OF FUJIYAMA

From Saturday until Tuesday, three endless days and as many

nights, the whirling storm kept us prisoners in the dark, smoke-filled
rest-house. What had been the amusing incidents of one stormy
night became our intolerable routine of life. Escape was impossible,
even for the hardy mountaineers and pilgrims at the other end of the
hut, and to unbar the door for a momentary outlook threatened the
demolition of the shelter. A tempest at sea was not more awful in its
fury, but our ears became finally accustomed to the roar and hiss of
the wind, and the persistent blows it dealt the structure. The grave
problem of provisioning the place in time confronted us, and after our
one day’s luncheon was exhausted, it became a question how long
the master of the station could provide even fish and rice for forty
people.
The two boys, or valets, brought by their sybarite masters, like all
Japanese servants out of their grooves, were utterly helpless, and
lay supine in their corners, covered, head and all, with futons. The
altitude, the cold, or the dilemma paralyzed their usually nimble
faculties, and our coolies were far more useful. We could not stand
upright under the heavy beams of the roof, and as the floor planks
had been taken up here and there to brace the doors with, walking
was difficult in that dark abode. While we grew impatient in our cage,
the four little naval cadets sat, or lay, quietly in their futons, hour after
hour, talking as cheerfully as if the sun were shining, their prospects
hopeful, and their summer suits of white duck designed for the
Eighth Station’s phenomenal climate. Throughout our incarceration
the coolies dozed and waked under their futons, sitting up only long
enough to eat, or play some childish game, and dropping back to
reckon how much per diem would accrue to them without an
equivalent of work. When we found that the smoky fireplace offered
some warmth, we sat around the sunken box with our feet in the
ashes and handkerchiefs to our eyes to keep out the blinding smoke.
In that intimate circle we learned the cook’s secrets, and watched
him shaving off his billets of dried fish with a plane, stewing them
with mushrooms and seasoning with soy and saké. This compound
we found so good that our flattered landlord brought out hot saké
and insisted on an exchange of healths. We noticed that in the midst
of this hospitality he went and made some offering or other at his
little household altar, and, writing something in a book, returned
more benign and friendly than ever. The preparation of red bean and
barley soups, two sweetened messes that only a Japanese could
eat, and the boiling of rice seemed never to stop. Twice a day the big
copper caldron was set on its stone frame half full of boiling water.
When it bubbled most furiously over a brushwood fire, a basketful of
freshly washed and soaked rice was poured in. In a half-hour the
caldron was filled to the top with the full, snowy grains, ready for the
chopsticks of the waiting company.
Each night the master of the hut prophesied clear weather at five
o’clock in the morning, and each morning he prophesied clear
weather for five o’clock in the afternoon, but the wind howled, the
sleet swept by in clouds, and hail rattled noisily on roof and walls.
The second afternoon the master of the summit rest-hut appeared at
the window, and, more dead than alive, was drawn in by the excited
coolies, who helped chafe his limbs and pour cups of hot saké
between his lips. The story of his battle with the storm on the open,
wind-swept cone satisfied us all to wait for the clearing. An empty
rice-box had forced him to attempt the journey to revictual his
station, and we wondered how soon our landlord would be
compelled to the same desperate effort.
On the third morning the visiting boniface and four wood-choppers
decided to attempt the descent, and when the door was unbarred,
the pale daylight and a changed wind, that entered the dim cave
where we had been imprisoned, foretold a clearing sky. As the
clouds lifted, we could see for miles down the wet and glistening
mountain to a broad, green plain, sparkling with flashing diamonds of
lakes, and gaze down a sheer ten thousand feet to the level of the
sea. It was a view worth the three days of waiting. The summit
loomed clear and close at hand, and our western mountaineers
made two thousand feet of ascent in thirty minutes, the rest of us
following in a more deliberate procession, as befitted the altitude.
The coolies, in bright yellow oil-paper capes and hats, trooped after
us like a flock of canaries, gayly decorating the dark lava paths. At
the edge of the summit, on the rim of the crater, we passed under a
torii, climbed steep lava steps and entered the last station—a low,
dark, wretched, little wind-swept cabin, with one small door and a
ten-inch fireplace, where saké was warming for us.
Hardly had we arrived when the wind rose, the clouds shut down,
and again the rain drove in dense and whirling sheets. The
adventurous ones, who had pushed on to the edge of the crater to
look in, were obliged to creep back to safety on their hands and
knees, for fear of being swept over into that cauldron of boiling
clouds and mist. It was no time to make the circuit of the crater’s rim
with its many shrines, or descend the path-way, guarded by torii, to
the crater’s bed. We hurried through the formalities at the temple,
where the benumbed priest branded the alpenstocks, stamped our
handkerchiefs and clothing, and gave us pictured certificates of our
ascent to that point. Then began a wild sliding and plunging down a
shoot of loose cinders to Station Number Eight, where the landlord
produced a book and read our three-days’ board bill from a record of
many pages. Everything was chanted out by items, even to the saké
and mushrooms that had been pressed upon us as a courtesy, and it
was only after many appeals for the sum total that he instinctively
ducked his head and named fifty-eight dollars for the seven of us.
Then ensued a deafening attack of remonstrances from men and
valets, threats and invectives in Japanese and English, lasting until
the inn-keeping Shylock agreed to take thirty dollars, received this
moiety cheerfully, and bade us adieu with many protestations of
esteem.
Rubber and gossamer rain-cloaks were worse than useless in that
whirlwind, and haste was our one necessity. Dress skirts were
sodden and leaden masses, and mine being hung as an offering to
Fuji-san, a red Navajo blanket replaced it, and enveloped me
completely. A yellow-clad coolie securely fastened his rope, and we
slipped, and plunged, and rolled down a shoot of loose cinders.
Sinking ankle-deep, we travelled as if on runners through the wet
ashes, sliding down in minutes stretches that it had taken us as
many hours to ascend, and stopping only at one or two rest-houses
for cups of hot tea, while we staggered and stumbled on through rain
that came ever harder and faster.
At Umagayeshi, where the dripping party waited for more tea, the
sun came gayly out and seemed to laugh at our plight. The sudden
warmth, the greenhouse steam and softness, were most grateful to
us after our hardships in the clouds. At Subashiri we put on the few
dry garments we had been fortunate enough to leave behind us. The
tea-house windows framed vignettes of Fuji, a clear blue and purple
cone in a radiant, cloud-dappled sky. With the prospect of a hot day
to follow, it was decided to push on to Miyanoshita, travelling all
night, the kagos being as comfortable as the flea-infested tea-house,
and the men of our party being obliged to walk on until they reached
dry boots and clothes. Though the coolies grumbled, stormed, and
appealed, they had enjoyed three days of absolute rest and full pay
at Number Eight, and the walk of forty-five miles, from the summit to
Miyanoshita, is not an unusual jaunt for them to make.
At Gotemba’s tea-house we found our companions in misfortune—
the little midshipmen—whom we joined in feasting on what the
house could offer. The old women in attendance, yellow and wrinkled
as the crones of ivory netsukes, were vastly interested in our Fuji
experiences and dilapidated costumes, and gave us rice, fish,
sponge-cake, tea, and saké. At midnight we roused the coolies from
their five-hour rest, and prepared for the fifteen-mile journey over O
Tomi Toge pass. The little midshipmen slid the screens and
beckoned us up to the liliputian balcony again. “It is the night Fuji,”
said one of them, softly, pointing to the dark violet cone, striped with
its ghostly snow, and illuminated by a shrunken yellow moon that
hung fantastic above O Tomi Toge’s wall.
With our commander-in-chief perched high on a pack-horse,
whose chair-like saddle left his rider’s heels resting on the neck of
the animal, and the kago coolies slipping and floundering through the
bottomless mud of the roads, we once more started on our way. The
whole country was dark, silent, and deserted, and the only audible
sound was the chatter of our army of coolies, who chirped and
frolicked like boys out of school. The night air over the rice-fields was
warm and heavy, and seemed to suffocate us, and fire-flies drifted in
and out among the rushes and bamboos. Deep, roaring streams
filled the channels that had been mere silver threads of water a few
days before. The coolies could barely keep their footing as they
waded waist-deep in the rushing water, and at every ford we half
expected to be drowned.
At the summit of the pass we dismounted, and the coolies
scattered for a long rest. The sacred mountain was clear and
exquisite in the pale gray of dawn; and while we waited to see the
sun rise on Fuji, a dirty-brown fog scudded in from the sea, crossed
the high moon, and instantly the plain faded from view and we were
left, isolated Brocken figures, to eat our four-o’clock breakfast of dry
bread and chocolate, and return to the kagos. Everywhere we
encountered traces of a heavy storm, the path being gullied and
washed into a deep ditch with high banks, whose heavy-topped,
white lilies brushed into the kagos as we passed. Half asleep, we
watched the green panorama unfolding as we descended, and at
eight o’clock we were set down in Miyanoshita. Nesans ran hither
and thither excitedly, to bring coffee and toast, to prepare baths,
produce the luggage we had left behind, and mildly rehearse to the
other domestics the astonishing story of our adventures. By noon,
when we came forth arrayed in the garb of civilization, we were
heroes.
For weeks after we returned to the plain, the treacherous Fujiyama
stood unusually clear and near at hand. “The summer Fuji,” its dark-
brown slopes only touched with a fine line or two of snow, is less
beautiful than “the winter Fuji,” with its glistening crown; and our
Mount Rainier, whose snows are eternal, whose wooded slopes
shadow the dark-green waters of Puget Sound, is lovelier still. But
though we have the more glorious mountain, the snow, the rocks, the
forest, we have not the people instinct with love of poetry and nature;
we have not the race-refinement, and the race-traditions, that would
make of it another Fuji, invested with the light of dream and legend,
dear and near to every heart.
 CHAPTER XIX
THE TOKAIDO—I

As the kago gave way to the jinrikisha, the jinrikisha disappears

before the steam-engine, which reduces a ri to a cho, and extends
the empire of the commonplace. The first railroads, built by English
engineers and equipped with English rolling-stock, have been copied
by the Japanese engineers, who have directed the later works. The
Tokaido railway line, built from both ends, put Tokio and Kioto within
twenty-four hours of each other. The forty miles of railroad between
Yokohama and Kodzu were completed in 1887, bringing
Miyanoshita, a long day’s journey distant, within three hours of the
great seaport. The long tunnels and difficult country around
Fujiyama, and the expensive engineering work at each river delayed
the opening of the whole line until 1889. Before the iron horse had
cleared all picturesqueness from the region three of us made the
jinrikisha journey down the Tokaido.
The Tokaido having been the great post-road and highway of the
empire for centuries, with daimios and their trains constantly
travelling between the two capitals, its villages and towns were most
important, and each supplied accommodations for every class of
travellers. All the world knew the names of the fifty-three post
stations on the route, and there is a common game, which consists
in quickly repeating them in their order backward or forward. As the
railroad touched or left them, some of the towns grew, others
dwindled, and new places sprang up. Each village used to have its
one special occupation, and to ride down the Tokaido was to behold
in succession the various industries of the empire. In one place only
silk cords were made, in another the finely-woven straw coverings of
saké cups and lacquer bowls; a third produced basket-work of
wistaria fibres, and a fourth shaped ink-stones for writing-boxes.
Increased trade and steam communication have interfered with
these local monopolies, and one town is fast becoming like another
in its industrial displays.
May is one of the best months for such overland trips in Japan, as
the weather is perfect, pilgrims and fleas are not yet on the road, and
the rainy season is distant. The whole country is like a garden, with
its fresh spring crops, and the long, shaded avenue of trees is
everywhere touched with flaming azaleas and banks of snowy
blackberry blossoms. The tea-house and the tateba everywhere
invite one to rest and watch the unique processions of the highway,
and away from foreign settlements much of the old Japan is left. Tea
is everywhere in evidence in May. It is being picked in the fields,
carted along the roads, sold, sorted, and packed in every town, while
charming nesans with trays of tiny cups fairly line the road.
From Miyanoshita’s comfortable hotel the two foreign women and
the Japanese guide started on the first stage of the Tokaido trip in
pole-chairs, carried by four coolies each. The danna san, or master
of the party, scorning such effeminate devices, strode ahead with an
alpenstock, a pith helmet, and russet shoes, while the provision-box
and general luggage, filling a kago, followed after us. We were soon
up the hill in a bamboo-shaded lane, and then out over the grassy
uplands to the lake of Hakone. The singing coolies strode along,
keeping even step on the breathless ascents, past the sulphur baths
of Ashinoyu and to the Hakone Buddha—a giant bass-relief of Amida
sculptured on the face of a wall of rock niched among the hills. The
lonely Buddha occupies a fit place for a contemplative deity—
summer suns scorching and winter snows drifting over the stony
face unhindered. A heap of pebbles in Buddha’s lap is the register of
pilgrims’ prayers.
At Hakone village, a single street of thatched houses bordering the
shore of Hakone lake, the narrow foot-path over the hills joins the
true Tokaido, a stone-paved highway shaded by double rows of
ancient trees, a forest aisle recalling, for a brief journey, the avenue
to Nikko. The chrysanthemum-crested gates of the Emperor’s island
palace were fast shut, and Fuji’s cone peeped over the shoulders of
encircling mountains, and reflected its image in the almost
bottomless lake—an ancient crater, whose fires are forever
extinguished. Here we tied straw sandals over our shoes and tried to
walk along the smooth flat stones of the Tokaido, but soon submitted
to be carried again up the ascent to Hakone pass, which looks
southward over a broad valley to the ocean. Pack-horses, with their
clumsy feet tied in straw shoes, were led by blue-bloused peasants,
their heads wrapped in the inevitable blue-and-white cotton towel,
along the stony road, that has been worn smooth and slippery by the
straw-covered feet of generations of men and horses.
From the Fuji no taira (terrace for viewing Fuji), in the village of
Yamanaka, we looked sheer down to the plain of Mishima and saw,
almost beneath us, the town that would mark the end of our day’s
journey. The villages of Sasabara and Mitsuya have each a single
row of houses on either side of the road replacing the shade-trees of
the Tokaido, and, like all Japanese villages, they overflow with
children, to whom Ijin san, the foreigner, is still a marvel.
Mishima is a busy, prosperous little town, with a gay main street
and shops overflowing with straw hats, baskets, matting, rain-coats,
umbrellas, tourist and pilgrim necessities. Shops for the sale of
foreign goods are numerous, and besides the familiar cases of
“Devoe’s Brilliant Oil for Japan, 150° test,” American trade is
advertised by pictures of the Waterbury watch, and long hanging
signs declaring the merits of the American time-keepers sold at three
yen apiece. Even the chief of the jinrikisha men, who came to make
the bargain for wheeling us down the Tokaido, pulled out such a
watch to tell us the time of day.
Mishima’s best tea-house, where daimios rested in the olden time,
is a most perfect specimen of Japanese architecture, full of darkly-
shining woods, fantastic windows, and tiny courts. In one of our
rooms the tokonoma held a kakemono, with a poem written on it in
giant characters, and three tall pink peonies springing from an
exquisite bronze vase. In another, smiled a wooden image of old
Hokorokojin, one of the household gods of luck, and on a low
lacquer table rested a large lacquer box containing a roll of writing-
paper, the ink-box, and brushes. These, with the soft mats, a few silk
cushions, a tea-tray, and tabako bon, were all that the rooms
contained, until our incongruous bags and bundles marred their
exquisite simplicity. The landlord, with many bows and embarrassed
chucklings, greeted us there, and presented a most superb, long-
stemmed Jacqueminot rose, whose fragrance soon filled the whole
place.
When we went out for a walk all Mishima joined us; and with a
following of two hundred children and half as many elders, we turned
into the grounds of an old temple shaded by immense trees and
protected by an ancient moat. The brigade clattered after us across
the stone bridge of a great lotus pond, where the golden carp are as
large and as old as the mossy-backed patriarchs at Fontainebleau
and Potsdam, and snapped and fought for the rice-cakes we threw
them as if it were their first feast. Farther in the temple grounds
gorgeously-colored cocks with trailing tails, and pretty pigeons are
kept as messengers of the gods, and a toothless old man makes a
slender living by selling popped beans to feed them. Prayers for rain
offered up at this temple always prevail, and we had barely returned
to the tea-house before a soaking storm set in and restricted us to
our inn for entertainment.
The large matted room, or space at the front of the tea-house, was
at once office, hall, vestibule, pantry, and store-room. At one side
opened a stone-floored kitchen with rows of little stone braziers for
charcoal fires, on which something was always steaming and
sputtering. Chief-cook, under-cooks, and gay little maids pattered
around on their clogs, their sleeves tied up, hoisting water from the
well, and setting out trays with the various dishes of a Japanese
dinner. There is no general dining-room, nor any fixed hour for meals
in a Japanese inn. At any moment, day or night, the guest may clap
his hands and order his food, which is brought to his room on a tray
and set on the floor, or on the ozen, a table about four inches high.
Rice is boiled in quantities large enough to last for one, or even two
days. It is heated over when wanted, or hot tea is poured over the
cold rice after it is served. Our guide cooked all our food, laid our
high table with its proper furnishings, and was assisted by the
nesans in carrying things up and down the stairs. In a small room
opening from the office two girls were sorting the landlord’s new tea
just brought in from the country. They sat before a large table raised
only a few inches from the floor, and, from a heap of the fragrant
leaves at one end, scattered little handfuls thinly over the lacquer
top. With their deft fingers they slid to one side the smallest and
finest leaves from the tips of the new shoots of the plant, and to the
other side the larger and coarser growth, doing it all so quickly and
surely that it was a pleasure to watch them. In another corner of the
office two other little maids were putting clean cases on all the
pillows of the house. The Japanese pillow is a wooden box, with a
little padded roll on top, which is covered with a fresh bit of soft,
white mulberry-paper each day. The bath-room was as accessible as
the kitchen, without a door, but with glass screens, and one large
tank in which three or four could sociably dip together. Here were
splashing and talking until midnight, and steam issued forth
continually, as guests and the household staff took their turn. The
landlord requested the masculine head of our party to use a special
tub that stood in an alcove of the office, a folding-screen about three
feet high being set up to conceal him from the populous precincts of
office, corridor, garden, and main street. A too vigorous sweep of his
stalwart arm, however, knocked down his defence, and dropping to
his chin in the water, he called for help; whereupon the two maids,
who were sorting tea, ran over and set the barrier up again, as
naturally as a foreign servant would place the fire-screen before a
grate.
In old Tokaido days the home bath-tub was often set beside the
door-step, that bathers might lose nothing that was going on.
Government regulations and stern policemen have interfered with
this primitive innocency, except in the most remote districts, and
these Oriental Arcadians are obliged to wear certain prescribed fig-
leaves, although they curtail them as much as possible in warm
weather, and dispense with them when beating out wheat ears in
their own farm-yards, and treading the rice-mill in-doors. Privacy is
unknown to the lower classes, and in warm weather their whole life
is lived out-of-doors. With their open-fronted houses, they are hardly
in-doors even when under their own roofs. On pleasant mornings
women wash and cook, mend, spin, reel, and set up the threads for
the loom on the open road-side, and often bring the clumsy wooden
loom out-of-doors, throwing the bobbins back and forth, while
keeping an eye on their neighbors’ doings and the travelling public.
One runs past miles of such groups along the Tokaido, and the
human interest is never wanting in any landscape picture.
From Mishima southward the country is most beautiful, Fujiyama
standing at the end of the broad valley with the spurs of its foot-hills
running down to the sea. This Yoshiwara plain is one wide wheat-
field, golden in May-time with its first crop, and the Tokaido’s line
marked with rows of picturesque pine-trees rising from low
embankments brilliant with blooming bushes. In the villages each
little thatched house is fenced with braided reeds, enclosing a few
peonies, iris-beds, and inevitable chrysanthemum plants. The
children, with smaller children on their backs, chase, tumble, and
play, cage fire-flies, and braid cylinders and hexagonal puzzles of
wheat straws; and in sunshine or in rain, indifferently stroll along the
road in the aimless, uncertain way of chickens.
Beyond the poor, unfragrant town of Yoshiwara, a creaking,
springing bridge leaped the torrent of a river fed by Fuji’s snows and
clouds. In the good old days, when the traveller sat on a small
square platform, carried high above the shoulders of four men, to be
ferried over, these bearers often stopped in the most dangerous
place to extort more pay—which was never refused. Above the river
bank the road climbs a ridge, traverses the tiniest of rice valleys, and
then follows the ocean cliffs for hours. This Corniche road,
overhanging the sea, presents a succession of pictures framed by
the arching branches of ancient pine-trees, and the long Pacific
rollers, pounding on the beach and rocks, fill the air with their loud
song. At sunset we came to the old monastery of Kiomiidera, high on
the terraced front of a bold cliff. Climbing to a gate-way and bell
tower worthy of a fortress, we roused the priests from their calm
meditations. An active young brother in a white gown flew to show us
the famous garden with its palm-trees and azaleas reflected in a tiny
lake, a small water-fall descending musically from the high mountain
wall of foliage behind it. Superbly decorated rooms, where Shoguns
and daimios used to rest from their journeys, look out on this green
shade. The main temple is a lofty chamber with stone flooring and
gorgeous altar, shady, quiet, and cool, and a corner of the temple
yard has been filled by pious givers with hundreds upon hundreds of
stone Buddhas, encrusted with moss and lichens, and pasted bits of
paper prayers.
All through those first provinces around Fuji the garden fences,
made of bamboo, rushes, twigs, or coarse straw, are braided,
interlaced, woven and tied in ingenious devices, the fashion and
pattern often changing completely in a few hours’ ride. This region is
the happy hunting-ground of the artist and photographer, where
everything is so beautiful, so picturesque, and so artistic that even
the blades of grass and ears of millet “compose,” and every pine-tree
is a kakemono study. Thatched roofs, and arching, hump-backed
bridges made of branches, twigs, and straw seem only to exist for
landscape effects; but, unhappily, the old bridges, like the lumbering
junks with their laced and shirred sails, are disappearing, and, in a
generation or two, will be as unfamiliar to the natives as they now
are to foreigners.
 CHAPTER XX
THE TOKAIDO—II

Great once was Shidzuoka, which now is only a busy commercial

town of an agricultural province. The old castle has been razed, its
martial quadrangle is a wheat field; and the massive walls, the
creeping and overhanging pine-trees and deep moats are the only
feudal relics. Keiki, the last of the Tokugawa Shoguns, lived in a
black walled enclosure beyond the outer moat, but the modern spirit
paid no heed to his existence, and his death, in 1883, was hardly an
incident in the routine of its commercial progress.
The great Shinto temple at the edge of the town is famous for the
dragons in its ceiling. The old priest welcomed us with smiles, led us
in, shoeless, over the mats, and bade us look up, first at the Dragon
of the Four Quarters, and then at the Dragon of the Eight Quarters,
the eyes of the monster strangely meeting ours, as we changed our
various points of view.
At the archery range behind the temple our danna san proved
himself a new William Tell with the bow and arrows. The attendant
idlers cheered his shots, and a wrinkled old woman brought us
dragon candies on a dark-red lacquer tray, under whose transparent
surface lay darker shadows of cherry blossoms. The eye of the
connoisseur was quick to descry the tray, and when the woman said
it had been bought in the town, we took jinrikishas and hurried to the
address she gave. The guide explained minutely, the shopkeeper
brought out a hundred other kinds and colors of lacquer, and children
ran in from home workshops with hardly dried specimens to show
us. All the afternoon we searched through lacquer and curio shops,
and finally despatched a coolie to the temple to buy the old woman’s
property. Hours afterwards he returned with a brand-new, bright red
horror, and the message that “the mistress could not send the
honorable foreigner such a poor old tray as that.”
 The fine Shidzuoka baskets, which are so famed elsewhere, were
not to be found in Shidzuoka; our tea-house was uninteresting, and
so we set forth in the rain, unfurling big flat umbrellas of oil-paper,
and whirling away through a dripping landscape. Rice and wheat
alternated with dark-green tea-bushes, and cart-loads of tea-chests
were bearing the first season’s crop to market. The rain did not
obscure the lovely landscape, as the plain we followed turned to a
valley, the valley narrowed to a ravine, and we began climbing
upward, while a mountain-torrent raced down beside us. One
picturesque little village in a shady hollow gave us glimpses of silk-
worm trays in the houses as we went whirling through it. The road,
winding by zigzags up Utsonomiya pass, suddenly entered a tunnel
six hundred feet in length, where the jinrikisha wheels rumbled
noisily. On cloudy days the place is lighted by lamps, but on sunny
days by the sun’s reflection from two black lacquer boards at the
entrances. The device is an old one in Japan, but an American
patent has recently been issued for the same thing, as a cheap
means of lighting ships’ holds while handling cargo.
On the other side of Utsonomiya pass the road winds down by
steep zigzags to the village of Okabe, noted for its trays and boxes
made of the polished brown stem of a coarse fern. We bought our
specimens from an oracular woman, who delivered her remarks like
the lines of a part, her husband meekly echoing what she said in the
same dramatic tones, and the whole scene being as stagey as if it
had been well rehearsed beforehand.
From the mountains the road drops to a rich tea country, where
every hill-side is green with the thick-set little bushes. At harvest-time
cart-loads of basket-fired, or country-dried, tea fill the road to the
ports, to be toasted finally in iron pans, and coated with indigo and
gypsum to satisfy the taste of American tea-drinkers. In every town
farmers may be seen dickering with the merchants over the tough
paper sacks of tea that they bring in, and within the houses groups
sitting at low tables sort the leaves into grades with swift fingers.
At Fujiyeda, where we took refuge from the increasing rain, the
splashing in the large bath-room of the tea-house was kept up from
afternoon to midnight by the guests, and continued by the family and
tea-house maids until four o’clock, when the early risers began their
ablutions. A consumptive priest on the other side of our thin paper
walls had a garrulous shampooer about midnight and a refection
later, and we were glad to resume the ride between tea fields at the
earliest possible hour.
At Kanaya, at the foot of Kanaya mountain, the tea-house adjoined
a school-house. The school-room had desks and benches but no
walls, the screens being all removed. The teacher called the pupils in
by clapping two sticks together, as in a French theatre. Spying the
foreigners, the children stared, oblivious of teacher and blackboard,
and the teacher, after one good look at the itinerants, bowed a
courteous good-morning, and let the offenders go unpunished.
Up over Kanaya pass we toiled slowly, reaching at last a little eyrie
of a tea-house, where the landlord pointed with equal pride to the
view and to several pairs of muddy shoes belonging, he said, to the
honorable gentlemen who were about piercing the mountain under
us with a railway tunnel. Under a shady arbor is a huge, round
bowlder, fenced in carefully and regarded reverently by humble
travellers. According to the legend it used to cry at night like a child
until Kobo Daishi, the inventor of the Japanese syllabary, wrote an
inscription on it and quieted it forever. No less famous than Kobo
Daishi’s rock is the midzu ame of this Kanaya tea-house, and the
dark brown sweet is put in dainty little boxes that are the souvenirs
each pilgrim carries away with him.
Farther along the main road, with its arching shade-trees, the
glossy dark tea-bushes gave way to square miles of rice and wheat
fields. Here and there a patch of intense green verdure showed the
young blades of rice almost ready to be transplanted to the fields,
whence the wheat had just been garnered, the rice giving way in turn
to some other cereal, all farming land in this fertile region bearing
three annual crops.
A few villages showed the projecting roofs peculiar to the province
of Totomi, and then the pretty tea-house at Hamamatsu quite
enchanted us after our experiences with the poor accommodations
of some of the provincial towns. A rough curbed well in the court-
yard, with a queer parasol of a roof high over the sweep, a pretty
garden all cool, green shade, a stair-way, steep and high, and at the
top a long, dim corridor, with a floor of shining, dark keyaki wood.
This was the place that made us welcome; even stocking-footed we
half feared to tread on those brilliantly-polished boards. Our balcony
overlooked a third charming garden, and each little room had a
distinctive beauty of wooden ceilings, recesses, screens, and fanciful
windows.
The most enviable possession of Hamamatsu, however, was
O’Tatsu, and on our arrival O’Tatsu helped to carry our traps up-
stairs, falling into raptures over our rings, pins, hair-pins, watches,
and beaded trimmings. She clapped her hands in ecstasy, her bright
eyes sparkled, and her smile displayed the most dazzling teeth.
When we ate supper, sitting on the floor around an eight-inch high
table, with little O’Tatsu presiding and waiting on us, not only her
beauty but her charming frankness, simplicity, quickness, and grace
made further conquest of us all. The maiden enjoyed our admiration
immensely, arrayed herself in her freshest blue-and-white cotton
kimono, and submitted her head to the best hair-dresser in town,
returning with gorgeous bits of crape and gold cord tied in with the
butterfly loops of her blue-black tresses. At her suggestion we sent
for a small dancing-girl to entertain us, who, with a wand and masks,
represented Suzume and other famous characters in legend and
melodramas. When we left Hamamatsu, affectionate little O’Tatsu
begged me to send her my photograph, and lest I should not have
understood her excited flow of Japanese sentences, illuminated,
however, by her great pleading eyes, she ran off, and, coming back,
slipped up to me and held out a cheap, colored picture of some
foreign beauty in the costume of 1865. When at last we rode away
from the tea-house, O’Tatsu followed my jinrikisha for a long way,
holding my hand, with tears in her lovely eyes, and her last sayonara
broke in a sob.
A hard shell-road winds down to the shores of Hamana Lake and
across its long viaduct. The jinrikishas run, as if on rubber tires, for
nearly three miles over an embankment crossing the middle of the
great lake, which at one side admits the curling breakers of the great
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