Gladly we rested at the tea-house on the margin, for hot sun and loud cicada had been fatiguing eye and ear. After lunch I took a bathe from the only boat to be obtained, though its crazy, water-logged condition left much to be desired. However, the boatman did his best to remedy the deficiencies of his craft, and, as I undressed, hung each garment in succession round his neck, to prevent their being soiled and immersed, as they otherwise certainly would have been. Much refreshed, I persuaded my companion to extend our walk to the ancient Shintō temple of Haruna, not more than a mile and a half away. We climbed to the top of Tenjin-toge, at which pass the road becomes too narrow and precipitous for rickshaws, as it plunges suddenly into a curiously imagined glen. Never had I seen such bizarre configuration, such eccentric juxtaposition of tree and stone. Pines darted like dragons from the cliff; rocks started like mammoths from a thicket, or lowered savagely across the torrent, which raced or trickled below. It seemed as though the spirits of water and wood and fire had suddenly been petrified at the supreme moment of a great triangular battle, and waited, weapon in hand, to spring once more each at his adversary’s throat. Evidently the old temple, dedicated to Ho-musubi, the god of fire, and Haniyasu-hime, the goddess of earth, was the citadel, defended and attacked by these weird combatants. Towering cryptomeria stood on guard around it, and huge rocks, tip-toe on tenuous bases, attended the word of command to crush the curving rafters. It needed but one signal from the imprisoned fire-god, one movement of the volcanic earth-goddess, to fill that fantastic glen with the clamour and _débris_ of primæval war. Elsewhere we might have admired the carven serpents, that writhed so realistically about the side-beams of the porch. At Nikkō or the Nishi Hongwanji temple in Kyōto they might have impressed us as masterpieces of creative carpentry, but at Haruna the comparison was too trying. It was hopeless to compete with God’s more monstrous curios.
Here at last was a Shintō stronghold which did not seem abandoned and desolate, but bore traces of frequent worshippers. Above the sacred cisterns waved blue towels, suspended after purification; at the feet of a Shintōised Jizō rose a mound of propitiatory stones; on the _kagura-dō_, or dancing platform, an old woman, the priest’s wife, began her symbolic dance. As she slowly revolved, shaking her bunch of bells or waving her fan, she chanted words so venerable that all clue to their meaning had been lost. Yet, in her faded garb and shrunken person she personified more fitly the solemn contortions of a dying faith than the smart young priestesses of Nara in their red silk trousers and snowy mantles of flowered gauze. When those tripped forward, with thickly-powdered faces and chaplets of artificial wistaria, their garish aspect transformed the temple to a tea-house, but in this sombre fastness at the heart of Haruna we seemed to behold a very sibyl of aboriginal Japan. The assistant priest was affable but ignorant. A copy of the “Kojiki,” earliest of known records of the Way of the Gods, was kept there, he affirmed, but he had never opened it and might not show it to strangers. In winter it was terribly cold, and snow-storms would sometimes cut them off from all communication with the outer world. When floods made the torrent impassable the senior _kannushi’s_ children were obliged to do their lessons at home. But summer brought troops of pilgrims to the valley, and their offerings sufficed to keep the little band of guardians at their posts. “Are you never afraid,” I asked, “of the earth opening and the rocks falling? Only this morning we felt a slight shock of earthquake at Ikao.” The young priest smiled gravely. “No,” he answered. “For more than five hundred years the _kami_ have protected their holy place. Why should we be afraid?”
