Japan and the Japanese

CHAPTER XXXVI.
LAK.t OITZ. MOUNT JESAN. JAPANESE LEGENDS. A JAPANESE PATENt
MEDICINE. QUANO. MIA. ARRAY. POLICY OF THE EMPERORS.
KAKEGAWA. A TOWN ON FIRE. SERUGA. KUNO. PASSAGE OF A
RAPID RIVER. FUSI-NO-JAMA, OR MOUNT FUSI. CROSSING THE PENINSULA
OF IDSU. SECOND SEARCHING PLACE. PURGATORY LAKE. ODAWAR4.
COAST OF THE BAY OF JEUO. A LIVE SAINT. CANAGAWA. SINA-
GAWA. JEDO. IMPERIAL CASTLES AND PALACE.
KAMPFER and his company left Miako Friday, March 2d, and,
after a journey of eight or nine miles, during which they saw a
high mountain towards the south, covered with snow, they reached
Oitz, a town of a thousand houses, where they lodged. This town
lies at the south-western extremity of the large fresh-water lake of
the same name, already mentioned.*
On the south-eastern shore of this lake, which abounds with fish
and fowl, lies the famous mountain Jesan (by interpretation Fair-
hill), covered with Buddhist monasteries, and near it were seen
other mountains, covered with snow, and extending along the lake
shore. Shortly after leaving Oitz, the Jodogawa, one of the outlets
of the lake, was crossed upon a
bridge, supported at the extrem-
ities by stone columns, of which the following legend is told. These
columns were in old times possessed by an evil spirit, which very
much molested travellers, as well as the inhabitants of the village.
It happened one day that the famous saint and apostle, Ki/si,
travelling that way, all the people of the neighborhood earnestly
entreated him to deliver them by his miraculous power from this
insufferable evil, and to cast this devil out of the columns. The
* According to Klaproth, following Japanese authorities, it is seventy-two
and one half English miles long, and twenty-two and one quarter at ita
greatest breadth.