DISCOVERY 



131 



points for the ascent, earnestl\' warned us against the 

 attempt. " For," they suggested, " the goddess of 

 the mountain is not at home to visitors before the 

 official Yama-biraki (mountain-opening), in the middle 

 of July," and with dire forebodings we were warned to 

 " look out for squalls " if we persisted. 



No sooner had we reached our bivouac in the forest 

 on the edge of the snow-line than a typhoon burst 

 over the mountain and kept us prisoners for three 

 ■days. At length, on a cloudless morning we were set 

 free and reached the summit in a climb of seven hours, 

 •deserted b}^ all our coolies sav-e one. Traversing the 

 peak we descended on the opposite side to Gotemba, 

 so that our friends of Omiya saw us no more. A week 

 or two later, the leading Japanese newspaper in Tokyo 

 came out with the following account of a terrible 

 disaster : " The foreigners who recently started to 

 ascend Fuji with four coolies have not since been 

 heard of . . . they were urged to postpone the attempt, 

 but they were determined to go. As the\' have not 

 since been heard of, it is feared they have either suc- 

 cumbed to the fury of the gale, or died of starvation. 

 Their nationality is unknown, but it is surmised that 

 they are British for the reason that the people of that 

 nation like to do that which is distasteful to them 

 and glory in their vigour." 



A possible explanation of the fear of vengeance on 

 the part of the offended divinity of the mountain is 

 suggested by the name " Fuji," which is probably 

 derived either from the Ainu word push, " to burst 

 forth," or from " Huchi," the name of the Ainu 

 Goddess of Fire. Other place-names in the neighbour- 

 hood are also of Ainu origin and take one back to 

 the days when, before they were driven northwards by 

 invaders, those hair}- aborigines dwelt at the foot of 

 the greatest mountain in Japan and, watching its fiery 

 activities with mingled awe and terror, made it the 

 supreme object of their worship. 



The chastisement of sacrilegious and unwelcome 

 visitors as a token of the resentment of the spirits of 

 the greater peaks is at times a forcible proof, in the 

 eyes of the rustics living beneath their shadows, of 

 the need of care in approaching their sacred precincts. 



On the mountain of Hodaka-yama, in the Northern 

 Alps, this was brought home to me with painful force. 

 After making the first ascent by a European 

 traveller, I was attacked on the way down through 

 the depths of a gloomy forest, and badly stung, by 

 angry inhabitants of a wasps' nest. Later in the 

 evening, as I was drying my wet garments at the 

 camp fire, a Japanese traveller also bivouacking there 

 approached me with a request to show him the 

 wounded spots on my " honourable body." Presently 

 I turned round and found him engaged in making a 

 series of mesmeric passes over them. He then 



arose and, standing in the doorway of the hut, clapped 

 his hands and bowed his head in supplication to the 

 spirit of the mountain. He then approached me 

 once more and in a hoarse whisper exclaimed, " This is 

 majinai (" magic ") : you will be all right in the morn- 

 ing." He went on to explain that I — a sacrilegious 

 foreigner — was the object of the resentment of the 

 offended divinity, and that what looked and no doubt 

 felt like wasps were but the embodied spirits of her 

 retribution. This goddess is held to possess special 

 power over wind and storm, and the rite of aniagoi, 

 ("praying for rain ") in times of drought, is believed 

 to be unusually efficacious when performed at the little 

 shrine in her honour at the mountain foot. 



It will be gathered from the foregoing illustrations 

 that it is as true of the rural Japanese as it was of the 

 ancient Greeks that " around their mountains more 

 than all other spots did mythology most closely 

 gather as the home of the gods and as the most 

 frequent scene of their intercourse with men." ^ And 

 just as the Chinese pilgrim to-day wends his toilsome 

 way to the summit of the precipices of Mount Omi, 



Fig. 4.— .\ PILGRIM ox THE SUMMIT OF FUJI-S.\N (i:,4oo 



FEET) WORSHIPPING THE RISING SUN FROM THE PACIFIC, 



BEYOND THE SE.\ OF CLOUDS. 



in the province of Such'uan, where the pure in heart 

 are promised the vision of the " Light of the Glory of 



■■ ' LecUms on the Geography of Greece, by H. F. Tozer. (John 

 Murray.) 



