I avoided the one usually taken by
Utsunomiya, and by doing so lost the most magnificent of the two
avenues, which extends for nearly fifty miles along the great
highway called the Oshiu-kaido.
Along the Reiheishi-kaido, the
road by which I came, it extends for thirty miles, and the two,
broken frequently by villages, converge upon the village of
Imaichi, eight miles from Nikko, where they unite, and only
terminate at the entrance of the town. They are said to have been
planted as an offering to the buried Shoguns by a man who was too
poor to place a bronze lantern at their shrines. A grander
monument could not have been devised, and they are probably the
grandest things of their kind in the world. The avenue of the
Reiheishi-kaido is a good carriage road with sloping banks eight
feet high, covered with grass and ferns. At the top of these are
the cryptomeria, then two grassy walks, and between these and the
cultivation a screen of saplings and brushwood. A great many of
the trees become two at four feet from the ground. Many of the
stems are twenty-seven feet in girth; they do not diminish or
branch till they have reached a height of from 50 to 60 feet, and
the appearance of altitude is aided by the longitudinal splitting
of the reddish coloured bark into strips about two inches wide.
The trees are pyramidal, and at a little distance resemble cedars.
There is a deep solemnity about this glorious avenue with its broad
shade and dancing lights, and the rare glimpses of high mountains.
Instinct alone would tell one that it leads to something which must
be grand and beautiful like itself. It is broken occasionally by
small villages with big bells suspended between double poles; by
wayside shrines with offerings of rags and flowers; by stone
effigies of Buddha and his disciples, mostly defaced or overthrown,
all wearing the same expression of beatified rest and indifference
to mundane affairs; and by temples of lacquered wood falling to
decay, whose bells sent their surpassingly sweet tones far on the
evening air.
Imaichi, where the two stately aisles unite, is a long uphill
street, with a clear mountain stream enclosed in a stone channel,
and crossed by hewn stone slabs running down the middle. In a room
built over the stream, and commanding a view up and down the
street, two policemen sat writing. It looks a dull place without
much traffic, as if oppressed by the stateliness of the avenues
below it and the shrines above it, but it has a quiet yadoya, where
I had a good night's rest, although my canvas bed was nearly on the
ground. We left early this morning in drizzling rain, and went
straight up hill under the cryptomeria for eight miles. The
vegetation is as profuse as one would expect in so damp and hot a
summer climate, and from the prodigious rainfall of the mountains;
every stone is covered with moss, and the road-sides are green with
the Protococcus viridis and several species of Marchantia.
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