19003 On the Road to Misaki 



But my preference for mizu (water) over beer seemed My 

 to be wholly outside her experience, and I could not stra s' 



i i i i i \ r preference 



induce her to bring it except in a washbasin. After- 

 ward, to the gracious mistress of the house, who was 

 eager to talk, one word America-jin explained 

 all my eccentricities. 



Leaving Yokosuka in due time, we bowled swiftly 

 along an excellent road toward Misaki. As we 

 passed through a village by the sea and entered a 

 little wood the trees seemed alive with birds calling Kurihama 

 to each other, quail-fashion, something that sounded " birds " 

 like " o-peep, o-peep." Not being able to catch a 

 glimpse of them, I asked my men what they were. 

 They didn't seem to understand but finally answered 

 kurihama, literally "chestnut shore," a name appar- 

 ently not very applicable. But as the accretions of 

 centuries have given most short Japanese words a 

 dozen meanings, hama to my mind could well be a 

 little bird. A few days later I heard the same noisy 

 calls from again invisible kurihama and asked about 

 them. Mitsukuri was much puzzled; there was no 

 such bird, he said, and he himself heard no bird at all. 

 Finally I learned that my songsters were cicadas of a 

 familiar local species. Kurihama, it transpired, is 

 the name of the village where I first heard them. It Perry at 

 was, moreover, the scene of Perry's meeting with the KuTlhama 

 representative of the Shogunate, the turning point 

 in the modern history of Japan, and a monument 

 commemorating the event was to be dedicated there 

 in 1901, fifty years later. To this I was glad to con- 

 tribute. 



Another Japanese cicada seemed equally numer- 

 ous and insistent, though no one would take it for a 

 bird. Starting in loudly with "bees, bees, bees, bees," 



I 73 II 



