Jinrikisha Days in Japan
Near the base of the hill, but high enough to command a wide prospect, runs a narrow road lined with little tea-houses and toy-shops where souvenirs are sold. Nara is famous for its cutlery and its India ink, and swords, daggers, knives and scissors are sold by shopmen who perform extraordinary feats to test the temper of their blades. India ink pressed into fantastic shapes, and writing-brushes made of deer’s hair, are carefully tied up in the pilgrim’s wallets, with the famous little Nara ningio, or images carved in wood. The Nara ningios always represent the legendary priests and people who founded Nara, and in these carvings the rural artists display great talent, giving wonderful expression to the tiny faces that are left rough faceted as first chipped off with the knife.
These tea-houses and shops interpose a neutral and worldly barrier between the cluster of Buddhist establishments at the one side and the region of Shintoism beyond. From the tea-house gates the road makes a curve off into the wistaria-tangled forest to conduct jinrikishas to the lower level, but the pilgrims descend, instead, four long flights of rough stone steps, that are wonderfully picturesque with these quaint moving figures and the queer little shops that hang to the borders of the stairs, climbing up and down the hill with them.
At the foot of the steps the road reappears, crossing a narrow creek-bed on a high bridge that gives one beautiful views of a dark little ravine, across which the trees nearly meet and the ancient creepers are looped and knotted. A little red shrine and a path lined with stone lanterns mark the beginning of the temple enclosure, dense woods rising at one side of the stone lanterns lighting the path to the ancient Shinto sanctuary of Kasuga, and open glades stretching out at the other. A few shops and tea-booths break the line of lanterns on one side; the road is canopied with a great wistaria trel-
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