Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan | Page 4

loss to account for it, and I can
only explain it now by the fact that the place was so out of the way, and
not very unlike others, after all. Being thus candid, I ought perhaps to
go a step farther and renounce the name. But, on the two great
principles that the pursuit is itself the prize and that the means justifies
the end, I prefer to keep it. For there was much of interest to me by the
way; and I cling to the name out of a kind of loyalty to my own fancy. I
like to think that Xenophon felt as much in his Anabasis, though but
one book out of seven deals with the going up, the other six being
occupied with the getting safely away again. It is not told that
Xenophon regretted his adventure. Certainly I am not sorry I was
wedded to my idea.
To most of my acquaintance Noto was scarcely so much as a name, and
its local habitation was purely cartographic. I found but one man who
had been there, and he had dropped down upon it, by way of harbor,
from a boat. Some sympathetic souls, however, went so far toward it as
to ask where it was.
To the westward of Tokyo, so far west that the setting sun no longer
seems to lose itself among the mountains, but plunges for good and all
straight into the shining Nirvana of the sea, a strangely shaped
promontory makes out from the land. It is the province of Noto,
standing alone in peninsular isolation.

It was partly in this position that the fascination lay. Withdrawn from
its fellows, with its back to the land, it faced the glory of the western
sky, as if in virginal vision gazing out upon the deep. Doubly
withdrawn is it, for that the coast from which it stands apart is itself
almost unvisited by Europeans,--an out-of-the-world state, in marked
contrast to the shore bordering the Pacific, which is now a curbstone on
the great waterway round the earth, and incidentally makes a happy
parenthesis of promenade for the hasty globe-trotter. The form, too, of
the peninsula came in for a share in its attraction. Its coast line was so
coquettishly irregular. If it turned its back on the land, it stretched its
hands out to the sea, only to withdraw them again the next moment,--a
double invitation. Indeed, there is no happier linking of land to water.
The navigator in such parts becomes himself a delightfully amphibious
creature, at home in both elements. Should he tire of the one, he can
always take to the other. Besides, such features in a coast suggest a
certain clean-cut character of profile,--a promise, in Japan at least,
rarely unkept.
To reach this topographically charming province, the main island had
to be crossed at its widest, and, owing to lofty mountain chains, much
tacking to be done to boot. Atmospherically the distance is even greater
than afoot. Indeed, the change in climate is like a change in zone; for
the trend of the main island at this point, being nearly east and west,
gives to the one coast a southerly exposure, and to the other a northerly
one, while the highest wall of peaks in Japan, the Hida-Shinshiu range,
shuts off most meteorological communication. Long after Tokyo is
basking in spring, the west coast still lies buried in deep drifts of snow.
It was my misfortune to go to this out-of-the-way spot alone. I was duly
sensible of my commiserable state at times. Indeed, in those strange
flashes of dual consciousness when a man sees his own condition as if
it were another's, I pitied myself right heartily; for I hold that travel is
like life in this, at least, that a congenial companion divides the troubles
and doubles the joys. To please one's self is so much harder than to be
pleased by another; and when it comes to doubt and difficulty, there are
drawbacks to being one's own guide, philosopher, and friend. The
treatment is too homoeopathic by half.
An excuse for a companion existed in the person of my Japanese boy,
or cook. He had been boy to me years before; and on this return of his

former master to the land of the enlightened, he had come back to his
allegiance, promoting himself to the post of cook. During the journey
he acted in both capacities indifferently,--in one sense, not in the other.
In addition to being capable he was willing and of great endurance.
Besides, he was passionately fond of travel.
He knew no more about Noto than I, and at times, on the road, he could
not make out what the country folk said, for the difference in dialect;
which lack of