Glimpses of Japan and Formosa

It was by mere lucky chance that I happened down to Yamada-Isé on the very day her great celebration began. In theory, as I understand it, Shinto shrines are rebuilt every seven years; in practice, at least in this most venerated center of the cult, as sacred to millions of Japanese as Jerusalem, Mecca, or Benares to men of other faiths, some of the holy edifices are actually reconstructed, and new ones added, every twenty-first year. In the springtime, when sap and pilgrims are on the move, one may expect to find many of the trains of Japan crowded, but I had certainly not looked forward to fighting my way amid such throngs as poured with me down to this chosen terrestrial abode of the gods that watch over the island empire. There had been no warning, so far as I was concerned, that another twenty-one years had passed and that the generation-separated festivities were again on the point of beginning.

The multitude which disgorged through the station exits was a mere handful compared to the endless welter of humanity that already surged along the few streets of the little city, a city as far removed in some respects from westernized Kobe or Yokohama as the moon. Yet every train that arrived as long as I remained was packed beyond anything we of the Occident would believe possible. Pilgrims, devout and otherwise, nearly all in strange, fantastic garb, eddied back and forth through the town, while the keepers and employees of inns, of eating- and drinking-places, of shops crammed with displays of the myriad queer trinkets sold to the pious in holy places, raced up and down along the edges of the human stream frantically shouting the merits of their establishments or their wares. It was not difficult to believe the naïve assertion of the home-made local guide-book that "the occupation of the people of Yamada is to feed peacefully upon pilgrims."