Jinrikisha Days in Japan

The contemporary Yankee might anticipate the sage reflections of the future New Zealander on London Bridge were there left enough ruins of the once great city of Kamakura to sit upon; but the military capital of the Middle Ages has melted away into rice fields and millet patches. One must wrestle seriously with the polysyllabic guide-book stories of the shoguns, regents, and heroes who made the glory of Kamakura, and attracted to it a population of five hundred thousand, to repeople these lonely tracts with the splendid military pageants of which they were the scene.

The plain of Kamakura is a semicircle, bounded by hills and facing the open Pacific, the surf pounding on its long yellow beach between two noble promontories. The Dai Butsu, the great bronze image of Buddha, which has kept Kamakura from sinking entirely into obscurity during the centuries of its decay, stands in a tiny valley a half-mile back from the shore. The Light of Asia is seated on the lotus flower, his head bent forward in meditation, his thumbs joined, and his face wearing an expression of the most benignant calm. This is one of the few great show-pieces in Japan that is badly placed and lacks a proper approach. Seen, like the temple gate-ways and pagodas of Nikko, at the end of a long avenue of trees, or on some height silhouetted against the sky, Dai Butsu (Great Buddha) would be far more imposing. Within the image is a temple forty-nine feet in height; and through an atmosphere thick with incense may be read the chalked names of ambitious tourists, who have evaded the priests and left their signatures on the irregular bronze walls. An alloy of tin and a little gold is mingled with the copper, and on the joined thumbs and hands, over which visitors climb to sit for their photographs, the bronze is polished enough to show its fine dark tint. The rest of the statue is dull and weather-stained, its rich incrustation disclosing the seams where the huge sections were welded together.