VIII THE BLACK CANAL The handle of the Japanese guitar, from which Lake Biwa takes its name, is at Otsu, six miles from Kyoto and three hundred feet above it. Between stands all the thickness of Kyoto’s girdle of mountains. Built in the flat bottom of an immense bowl, dark green with pine-clad hills, Kyoto, the ancient capital, is still the artistic centre of Japan. It is a city of 350,000 inhabitants, and many manufactories, but with little water or water transit, while only six miles away, beyond the mountains and above the town, Lake Biwa stretches a long arm from the ports of the west coast towards the city. It was in 1890 that Tanabe Sakuro, piercing the heart of the mountains, brought the waters of Lake Biwa, running swiftly under the hills, into Kyoto. And the Black Canal begins at Otsu. Deep down in the last of the rampart of locks which shuts out the lake lies the long narrow _sampan_, a white gondola, carpeted and cushioned, a large torch flames on either side, and the boatman stands ready behind. We sit on the cushions on the carpet, for the canal is but just the height of a man, and but just the width of two _sampan_. The cement sides of the lock rise up like walls; in front is the black arch of a tunnel, cut like a tiny doorway in the base of the great green mountain. A moment, and we are inside, in the pitch blackness; rushing swiftly, silently along in the freshness of a subterranean night. The two huge torches that we carry show the darkness falling like a thick curtain before, behind us; and the silence is the silence of infinite ages asleep. The rhythm of the rushing water passes like a breath through the darkness, but the speed is unfelt. Move your hand beyond the side of the boat, and the contact of the wall will tear all the skin from the knuckles in one swift scrape. For the water rushes, rushes silent in the darkness, not a current but a force. Suddenly in the blackness there is a light; three nude figures poised, their muscles strained, human strength pitted against the water’s force. Their boat moves but slowly, we are by in a flash. The naked orange figures form but one picture, one posture against the blackness, a living red group from the black urns of Greece; seen, gone; and the darkness drops down in thick curtains all around. Swiftly the water rushes, silent, the rhythmic breathing of black night. The darkness deepens, deepens; then cracks. A thin, thin slit parts black from black, and slowly grows a narrow streak of faintest grey.