, 1890-10-01
A Japanese Health Resort.
From the Daily Telegraph.

ma, atOnS Ln6 sea SnOro, ana linen by q sharp
turn into the highlands which are grouped
around Fuli.San, lies embosomed the lovely
and salubrious Japanese health resort,
whence ! am writing this. Fifteen hundred
feet above the Pacific and the hot plains, we
have escaped 'hlther, for a time, the now
somewhat sultry weather Of the capital and
it's ubiquitous mosquitoes, which are more
bloodthirsty and importunate in Tokyo than
anywhere. The Ka, bred in the rice fields
and bitches of Nippon, is truly d most relent-
less and unsuitable little pest, against which
natives and foreigners equally defend them
selves with 'kaya" or nets of green muslin,
made either large enough to cover a.Euro-
pean four-poster, or small enough to place
over a sleeping baby. At this season of the
year you may indeed see hundreds Of
tiny brown Japanese infants sleeping, stark
naked, beneath what looks like a green meat
safe, where the flies and mosquitoes cannot
get at them. Not only the babies, moreover,
but their fathers, mothers, ~"sisters, cousins,
and aunts,' and the Japanese world in gene
raj, largely discard clothing as the July heats
come on, and, in the country especially, one
sees at this time more of the people-in a
very literal sense-than during the cooler
weather. One result is to disclose the really
splendid illustrations with which q great
many of the men are adorned by the tatooer.
The ~jinrikisha pullers in particular are
oftimes gorgeously pictorial from nape to
heel, and you may study for an hour the
~volutes, arabesques, flowers, gods, dragons,
and poetical inscriptions on the back Of your
coolie as you bowl along wi thout exhausting
the wealth of design and colourin9 upon the
saffron surface of his skin.
The journey hither from Yokohama leads by
IL - - C11 l. -
between the hills and the sea, all the square
patches now green as grass with the
sprouting roots of the inc. Last year Inar6
the deity of the rice plant-who has The fox
for his attendant-gave Japan a bad harvest,
and the poor are greatly suffering in conao,
quence. But this year all looks we'll ioI a
bumper crop, and the purple and silver Of
the iris and lily clumps-eyerywhere at pre-
sent bl~ooming-fringe verdant squares Of
exuberant promised plenty, where the great
dragon-tiies buzz, and the frogs croak all
day long. A run of two hours brings you
past Kamakura, the region of the old glories
of the Minanisto House-which ruled Japan
from 1892 I'D. 10 the middle Of the fifteenth
.century,-past Enoshima, the ever-beautiful
Isle Of Dragons, 10 Kodzu, where you take
a tramcar, and b4pp through the town Of
Odawara to Yumoto village, whence the as
cent to Miyanoshita commences. The ladies
and the luggage ride up the three miles OF
billy road in kWrum0 drawn by two men,
ni-mim-b iki. The gentlemen, glad of a little
rural walk after the hot streets of Toxic,
breast the ascent Oh foot. We reach Miya-
noshlta just as the lights begin totwinkIe in
the windows &. the two hotels which receive
the innumerable visitors to this green ard
pleasant glen. A hot spring, slightly mine-
raj, has created Miyanoshita, affording per-
petual and pleasapt bathing, and the air,
whether it breathes from the sea below or
from the ~thicklywooded hills above, is al
ways fresh and pleasant.
To inhale this air and to battle in the soft
wa tiers heated for you in subterranean fur
naces are the main business of life in this hill
village. The only industry of the place,
apart from guides, tea-houses, and waiting
musumes, is the manufacture of all kinds Of
small articles from the wood of the various
timber trees growing on the hills around.
Some of these are of incredible ingenuity in
construction and neatneSs of finish, making
the most elaborate work Of Tunbridgewells
utterly commonplace. Many of the woods
employed, such as the camphor, tho ivy, the
kaki, kari, and sendan are of great beauty,
and there seems to be almost nothing that. a
Japan turner cannot produce from them.
He sells you, for a few sen a box of ivy-wood
delicately grained and polished, containing q
dozen lovely little saucers of the same material,
or lunch box which folds into next to nothing
until YOU want it. and then expands into a