LETTER XI

Summary

Kanaya's, Nikkô, June 21.

I have been at Nikkô for nine days, and am therefore entitled to use the word “Kek'ko!”

Nikkô has a distinct individuality. This consists not so much in its great beauty and variety, as in its solemn grandeur, its profound melancholy, its slow and sure decay, and the historical and religious atmosphere from which one can never altogether escape. It is a place of graves too, of constant rain and strange stillness, and its glories lie in the past. I have paid almost daily visits to the famous shrines; but their decorations are so profuse, and their mythological allusions so complicated, that instead of attempting any detailed description, I must content myself with giving the slightest possible sketch of what I suppose may fairly be ranked among the most beautiful scenes in the world.

Nikkô means “sunny splendour,” and its beauties are celebrated in poetry and art all over Japan. Mountains for a great part of the year clothed or patched with snow, piled in great ranges round Nantaisan their monarch, worshipped as a god; forests of magnificent timber; ravines and passes scarcely explored; dark green lakes sleeping in endless serenity; the deep abyss of Kêgon, into which the waters of Chiuzenjii plunge from a height of 250 feet; the bright beauty of the falls of Kiri Furi, the loveliness of the gardens of Dainichido; the sombre grandeur of the passes through which the Daiyagawa forces its way from the upper regions; a gorgeousness of azaleas and magnolias; and a luxuriousness of vegetation perhaps unequalled in Japan, are only a few of the attractions which surround the shrines of the two greatest Shôguns.