----------------------------book club
Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan
by Lafcadio Hearn (1894)
Chapter 9: In the Cave of the Children’s Ghosts
1
It is forbidden to go to Kaka if there be wind enough ‘to move three
hairs.’
Now an absolutely windless day is rare on this wild western coast. Over
the Japanese Sea, from Korea, or China, or boreal Siberia, some west or
north-west breeze is nearly always blowing. So that I have had to wait
many long months for a good chance to visit Kaka.
Taking the shortest route, one goes first to Mitsu-ura from Matsue,
either by kuruma or on foot. By kuruma this little journey occupies
nearly two hours and a half, though the distance is scarcely seven
miles, the road being one of the worst in all Izumo. You leave Matsue to
enter at once into a broad plain, level as a lake, all occupied by rice-
fields and walled in by wooded hills. The path, barely wide enough for a
single vehicle, traverses this green desolation, climbs the heights
beyond it, and descends again into another and a larger level of rice-
fields, surrounded also by hills. The path over the second line of hills
is much steeper; then a third rice-plain must be crossed and a third
chain of green altitudes, lofty enough to merit the name of mountains.
Of course one must make the ascent on foot: it is no small labour for a
kurumaya to pull even an empty kuruma up to the top; and how he manages
to do so without breaking the little vehicle is a mystery, for the path
is stony and rough as the bed of a torrent. A tiresome climb I find it;
but the landscape view from the summit is more than compensation.
Then descending, there remains a fourth and last wide level of rice-fields
to traverse. The absolute flatness of the great plains between
the ranges, and the singular way in which these latter ‘fence off’ the
country into sections, are matters for surprise even in a land of
surprises like Japan. Beyond the fourth rice-valley there is a fourth
hill-chain, lower and richly wooded, on reaching the base of which the
traveller must finally abandon his kuruma, and proceed over the hills on
foot. Behind them lies the sea. But the very worst bit of the journey
now begins. The path makes an easy winding ascent between bamboo growths
and young pine and other vegetation for a shaded quarter of a mile,
passing before various little shrines and pretty homesteads surrounded
by high-hedged gardens. Then it suddenly breaks into steps, or rather
ruins of steps — partly hewn in the rock, partly built, everywhere
breached and worn which descend, all edgeless, in a manner amazingly
precipitous, to the village of Mitsu-ura. With straw sandals, which
never slip, the country folk can nimbly hurry up or down such a path;
but with foreign footgear one slips at nearly every step; and when you
reach the bottom at last, the wonder of how you managed to get there,
even with the assistance of your faithful kurumaya, keeps you for a
moment quite unconscious of the fact that you are already in Mitsu-ura.
2
Mitsu-ura stands with its back to the mountains, at the end of a small
deep bay hemmed in by very high cliffs. There is only one narrow strip
of beach at the foot of the heights; and the village owes its existence
to that fact, for beaches are rare on this part of the coast. Crowded
between the cliffs and the sea, the houses have a painfully compressed
aspect; and somehow the greater number give one the impression of things
created out of wrecks of junks. The little streets, or rather alleys,
are full of boats and skeletons of boats and boat timbers; and
everywhere, suspended from bamboo poles much taller than the houses,
immense bright brown fishing-nets are drying in the sun. The whole curve
of the beach is also lined with boats, lying side by side so that I
wonder how it will be possible to get to the water's edge without
climbing over them. There is no hotel; but I find hospitality in a
fisherman's dwelling, while my kurumaya goes somewhere to hire a boat
for Kaka-ura.
In less than ten minutes there is a crowd of several hundred people
about the house, half-clad adults and perfectly naked boys. They
blockade the building; they obscure the light by filling up the doorways
and climbing into the windows to look at the foreigner. The aged
proprietor of the cottage protests in vain, says harsh things; the crowd
only thickens. Then all the sliding screens are closed. But in the paper
panes there are holes; and at all the lower holes the curious take
regular turns at peeping. At a higher hole I do some peeping myself. The
crowd is not prepossessing: it is squalid, dull-featured, remarkably
ugly. But it is gentle and silent; and there are one or two pretty faces
in it which seem extraordinary by reason of the general homeliness of
the rest.
At last my kurumaya has succeeded in making arrangements for a boat; and
I effect a sortie to the beach, followed by the kurumaya and by all my
besiegers. Boats have been moved to make a passage for us, and we embark
without trouble of any sort. Our crew consists of two scullers — an old
man at the stem, wearing only a rokushaku about his loins, and an old
woman at the bow, fully robed and wearing an immense straw hat shaped
like a mushroom. Both of course stand to their work and it would be hard
to say which is the stronger or more skilful sculler. We passengers
squat Oriental fashion upon a mat in the centre of the boat, where a
hibachi, well stocked with glowing charcoal, invites us to smoke.
3
The day is clear blue to the end of the world, with a faint wind from
the east, barely enough to wrinkle the sea, certainly more than enough
to ‘move three hairs.’ Nevertheless the boatwoman and the boatman do not
seem anxious; and I begin to wonder whether the famous prohibition is
not a myth. So delightful the transparent water looks, that before we
have left the bay I have to yield to its temptation by plunging in and
swimming after the boat. 
When I climb back on board we are rounding the
promontory on the right; and the little vessel begins to rock. Even
under this thin wind the sea is moving in long swells. And as we pass
into the open, following the westward trend of the land, we find
ourselves gliding over an ink-black depth, in front of one of the very
grimmest coasts I ever saw.
A tremendous line of dark iron-coloured cliffs, towering sheer from the
sea without a beach, and with never a speck of green below their
summits; and here and there along this terrible front, monstrous
beetlings, breaches, fissures, earthquake rendings, and topplings-down.
Enormous fractures show lines of strata pitched up skyward, or plunging
down into the ocean with the long fall of cubic miles of cliff. Before
fantastic gaps, prodigious masses of rock, of all nightmarish shapes,
rise from profundities unfathomed. And though the wind to-day seems
trying to hold its breath, white breakers are reaching far up the
cliffs, and dashing their foam into the faces of the splintered crags.
We are too far to hear the thunder of them; but their ominous sheet-
lightning fully explains to me the story of the three hairs. Along this
goblin coast on a wild day there would be no possible chance for the
strongest swimmer, or the stoutest boat; there is no place for the foot,
no hold for the hand, nothing but the sea raving against a precipice of
iron. Even to-day, under the feeblest breath imaginable, great swells
deluge us with spray as they splash past. And for two long hours this
jagged frowning coast towers by; and, as we toil on, rocks rise around
us like black teeth; and always, far away, the foam-bursts gleam at the
feet of the implacable cliffs. But there are no sounds save the lapping
and plashing of passing swells, and the monotonous creaking of the
sculls upon their pegs of wood.
At last, at last, a bay — a beautiful large bay, with a demilune of soft
green hills about it, overtopped by far blue mountains — and in the very
farthest point of the bay a miniature village, in front of which many
junks are riding at anchor: Kaka-ura.
But we do not go to Kaka-ura yet; the Kukedo are not there. We cross the
broad opening of the bay, journey along another half-mile of ghastly
sea-precipice, and finally make for a lofty promontory of naked Plutonic
rock. We pass by its menacing foot, slip along its side, and lo! at an
angle opens the arched mouth of a wonderful cavern, broad, lofty, and
full of light, with no floor but the sea. Beneath us, as we slip into
it, I can see rocks fully twenty feet down. The water is clear as air.
This is the Shin-Kukedo, called the New Cavern, though assuredly older
than human record by a hundred thousand years.
4
A more beautiful sea-cave could scarcely be imagined. The sea,
tunnelling the tall promontory through and through, has also, like a
great architect, ribbed and groined and polished its mighty work. The
arch of the entrance is certainly twenty feet above the deep water, and
fifteen wide; and trillions of wave tongues have licked the vault and
walls into wondrous smoothness. As we proceed, the rock-roof steadily
heightens and the way widens. Then we unexpectedly glide under a heavy
shower of fresh water, dripping from overhead. This spring is called the
o-chozubachi or mitarashi (1) of Shin-Kukedo-San. From the high vault
at this point it is believed that a great stone will detach itself and
fall upon any evil-hearted person who should attempt to enter the cave.
I safely pass through the ordeal!
Suddenly as we advance the boatwoman takes a stone from the bottom of
the boat, and with it begins to rap heavily on the bow; and the hollow
echoing is reiterated with thundering repercussions through all the
cave. And in another instant we pass into a great burst of light, coming
from the mouth of a magnificent and lofty archway on the left, opening
into the cavern at right angles. This explains the singular illumination
of the long vault, which at first seemed to come from beneath; for while
the opening was still invisible all the water appeared to be suffused
with light. Through this grand arch, between outlying rocks, a strip of
beautiful green undulating coast appears, over miles of azure water. We
glide on toward the third entrance to the Kukedo, opposite to that by
which we came in; and enter the dwelling-place of the Kami and the
Hotoke, for this grotto is sacred both to Shinto and to Buddhist faith.
Here the Kukedo reaches its greatest altitude and breadth. Its vault is
fully forty feet above the water, and its walls thirty feet apart. Far
up on the right, near the roof, is a projecting white rock, and above
the rock an orifice wherefrom a slow stream drips, seeming white as the
rock itself.
This is the legendary Fountain of Jizo, the fountain of milk at which
the souls of dead children drink. Sometimes it flows more swiftly,
sometimes more slowly; but it never ceases by night or day. And mothers
suffering from want of milk come hither to pray that milk may be given
unto them; and their prayer is heard. And mothers having more milk than
their infants need come hither also, and pray to Jizo that so much as
they can give may be taken for the dead children; and their prayer is
heard, and their milk diminishes.
At least thus the peasants of Izumo say.
(1) Such are the names given to the water-vessels or cisterns at which Shinto worshippers must wash their hands and rinse their mouths ere praying to the Kami. A mitarashi or o-chozubachi is placed before every Shinto temple. The pilgrim to Shin-Kukedo-San should perform this ceremonial ablution at the little rock-spring above described, before entering the sacred cave. Here even the gods of the cave are said to wash after having passed through the seawater. [back]