The Tokaido
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 alpen-stock, 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 footpath 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
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