I was too young, alas, to remember her, but my mother spoke often of the delightful teas she and mutual friend Maya Lindley Poole enjoyed with the lovely Countess Iso Mutsu in Kamakura in the twenties, talking about their shared interest in music and the colorful history of the ancient city they loved to explore.
Young Hirokichi Mutsu, born in 1869, followed in the footsteps of his famous parent Munemitsu, the "father of Japanese diplomacy." While preparing for his diplomatic career and studying law at Cambridge in 1888, Hirokichi fell in love with the beautiful and talented Gertrude Ethel Passingham. It was seventeen long years, however, before they were able to marry, following which they spent four years at the Japanese Embassy in London where, as First Secretary and then Counselor, Count Mutsu, who had by then succeeded to the title, helped to organize the highly successful Japan-British Exhibition that ran for six months at London's White City.
The Count retired after their return from London to spend the rest of his life administering a foundation he had created, aimed at social improvements mainly in education and the position of women, while the Countess set about delving into the history of the twelfth-century shogunal capital, Kamakura, where they decided to live, and devoted her considerable literary ability to writing this definitive in-depth work.
They settled near the sea with its peerless view of Mount Fuji across Sagami Bay, particularly lovely in dark relief as the sun goes down, leaving the sea aflame in roseate gold. When she became a Japanese subject on her marriage, Ethel took the name Isoko, "Beach Child," suggested by her husband because she so loved the seashore. She was bathing there when the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 struck, and a vivid description is included in the 1930 edition of this book. Seven years later, "How beautiful! The sunset!" were the last whispered words of this lady who so loved the history and the beauty of Kamakura. Much of that beauty still remains. And what is sadly gone lives on in the pages of this remarkable book.
Hayama, August 1994
We should never write save that which we
love. Forgetfulness and silence are the penalties
we should inflict upon all that we find ugly or
commonplace in our journey through life.
—ERNEST RENAN
ISO MUTSU, an Englishwoman long married to a Japanese diplomat and philanthropist, lay dying. My father sat at her bedside in our home in Kamakura. Her last words softly spoken to him were: "How beautiful! The sunset." Soon afterward she lapsed into final sleep.
My father observed that from her reclining position in bed, with her back to the wall and facing an eastern window, it had been impossible for her to admire the sunset—as she had been wont to do—except in her own mind's eye.
At the time I was in England. Years later, in Japan, I heard my father recount the episode. He thought the last self-created vision most fitting for one who all her life had been deeply devoted to the beauties of Kamakura. One of the sights she loved most was that of the sun setting beyond the bay, in a symphony of changing colors, into the low, pale-blue ridges of the Izu mountains outlined far away in the West.
Kamakura: Fact and Legend is a product of the attachment this Englishwoman, an intense lover of poetry, painting, and music, had for an old Japanese seaside town, where she preferred to live more than in any other place.
During my boyhood days spent in Kamakura, I was frequently a rather bored companion of my mother on her numerous trips to the city's temples and shrines. She would visit them over and over again for the gentle pleasure they gave her and to gather material for her forthcoming book. I was then far too young to share in the quiet enjoyment. Yet I can remember vividly several minor incidents: my mother stopping for several minutes on a winding path, halted by the music of the wind in a thicket of bamboo trees; her pauses on the stone steps of a temple to listen to a group of Buddhist priests chanting a sutra to the accompaniment of poundings on their drum. Often she would tell me stories about the strange legends and exciting events of the remote past attached to these places, and she presented them so well that I still remember them.
The remains of Iso Mutsu repose in our family grave at the temple of Jufuku-ji, which is one of the oldest in Kamakura. The same cavelike sepulcher contains the ashes of her husband, Hirokichi Mutsu, and those of her father-in-law, Count Munemitsu Mutsu, a distinguished Japanese statesman of the Restoration era. Not far away, also in a little cave, stands the ancient tomb of Masako Yoritomo, founder of Jufuku-ji temple. Masako was the consort of Minamoto no Yoritomo, the man who established and ruled Kamakura as the capital of feudal Japan about seven centuries ago.
The death of Iso Mutsu occurred in 1930, during the forenoon of May 12, another reason why she could not have actually seen the sunset. My father wrote in English in his diary: "A peaceful end came at last to the placid life of Iso, at 9:10 A.M., with no suffering in the presence of Death."
The Kamakura temples and environs have changed little to this day and shed the same tranquil charm for those who wish to go to the trouble of visiting them. Kamakura city itself escaped any direct attack in the last war, and subsequently its population has considerably grown. Due to the development of transportation, the city today is far more heavily thronged by sightseers and holiday-makers, particularly during the summer, compared to the times when this book was written. But fortunately most of the places mentioned in it, with the exception of one or two very famous temples, continue to remain off the regular path of the multitudes. Kamakura's physical features are about the same except for the construction of a highway along the northern edge of Yiiigahama Beach, the erection of a steel observation tower which rather mars the distant appearance of picturesque Enoshima island and the opening of a somewhat modernistic art gallery on the grounds of Tsurugaoka Hachiman Shrine. This establishment, along with the Tokyo National Museum, now houses many relics and treasures of art which footnote the history of Kamakura.
Considerable devastation was wrought by the great earthquake of 1923, and some of the geographical changes affect this book. For example, the "Hundred Kannon of Enkaku-ji" are no longer located in caves above the temple, but are now to be found on the temple's grounds. Where changes are considerable, this revised edition has footnoted them for the reader's benefit.
The thrilling history and romantic legends surrounding this ancient feudal capital come alive for the visitor to Kamukura who knows of them. I am pleased to see that yet another generation of readers will enjoy this wondrous experience.
—IAN MUTSU
Tokyo
You doors and ascending steps! you arches!
You grey stones of interminable pavements!
you trodden crossings!
From all that has touch'd you I believe
you have imparted to yourselves,
and now would impart the same secretly to me,
From the living and the dead
you have peopled your impassive surfaces,
and the spirits thereof would be evident
and amicable with me.
—WALT WHITMAN
IN THE PRESENT tranquil days it seems almost incredible to recall that the plain