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Title: In Ghostly Japan
Author: Hearn, Lafcadio
Language: English
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In Ghostly Japan
by Lafcadio Hearn
Contents
FRAGMENT
FURISODÉ
INCENSE
A STORY OF DIVINATION
SILKWORMS
A PASSIONAL KARMA
FOOTPRINTS OF THE BUDDHA
ULULATION
BITS OF POETRY
JAPANESE BUDDHIST PROVERBS
SUGGESTION
INGWA-BANASHI
STORY OF A TENGU
AT YAIDZU
List of Illustrations
The Mountain of Skulls
The Magical Incense
The Peony Lantern
The Lights of the Dead
S’rîpâda-tracing at Dentsu-In, Koishikawa, Tōkyō
Shō-Ekō-Hō-Kwan
Square and Triangle
Jizō
Emma Dai-ō
[Illustration: The Mountain of Skulls]
Fragment
And it was at the hour of sunset that they came to the foot of the
mountain. There was in that place no sign of life,—neither token of
water, nor trace of plant, nor shadow of flying bird,—nothing but
desolation rising to desolation. And the summit was lost in heaven.
Then the Bodhisattva said to his young companion:—“What you have asked
to see will be shown to you. But the place of the Vision is far; and
the way is rude. Follow after me, and do not fear: strength will be
given you.”
Twilight gloomed about them as they climbed. There was no beaten path,
nor any mark of former human visitation; and the way was over an
endless heaping of tumbled fragments that rolled or turned beneath the
foot. Sometimes a mass dislodged would clatter down with hollow
echoings;—sometimes the substance trodden would burst like an empty
shell….Stars pointed and thrilled; and the darkness deepened.
“Do not fear, my son,” said the Bodhisattva, guiding: “danger there is
none, though the way be grim.”
Under the stars they climbed,—fast, fast,—mounting by help of power
superhuman. High zones of mist they passed; and they saw below them,
ever widening as they climbed, a soundless flood of cloud, like the
tide of a milky sea.
Hour after hour they climbed;—and forms invisible yielded to their
tread with dull soft crashings;—and faint cold fires lighted and died
at every breaking.
And once the pilgrim-youth laid hand on a something smooth that was not
stone,—and lifted it,—and dimly saw the cheekless gibe of death.
“Linger not thus, my son!” urged the voice of the teacher;—“the summit
that we must gain is very far away!”
On through the dark they climbed,—and felt continually beneath them the
soft strange breakings,—and saw the icy fires worm and die,—till the
rim of the night turned grey, and the stars began to fail, and the east
began to bloom.
Yet still they climbed,—fast, fast,—mounting by help of power
superhuman. About them now was frigidness of death,—and silence
tremendous….A gold flame kindled in the east.
Then first to the pilgrim’s gaze the steeps revealed their
nakedness;—and a trembling seized him,—and a ghastly fear. For there
was not any ground,—neither beneath him nor about him nor above
him,—but a heaping only, monstrous and measureless, of skulls and
fragments of skulls and dust of bone,—with a shimmer of shed teeth
strown through the drift of it, like the shimmer of scrags of shell in
the wrack of a tide.
“Do not fear, my son!” cried the voice of the Bodhisattva;—“only the
strong of heart can win to the place of the Vision!”
Behind them the world had vanished. Nothing remained but the clouds
beneath, and the sky above, and the heaping of skulls
between,—up-slanting out of sight.
Then the sun climbed with the climbers; and there was no warmth in the
light of him, but coldness sharp as a sword. And the horror of
stupendous height, and the nightmare of stupendous depth, and the
terror of silence, ever grew and grew, and weighed upon the pilgrim,
and held his feet,—so that suddenly all power departed from him, and he
moaned like a sleeper in dreams.
“Hasten, hasten, my son!” cried the Bodhisattva: “the day is brief, and
the summit is very far away.”
But the pilgrim shrieked,—“I fear! I fear unspeakably!—and the power
has departed from me!”
“The power will return, my son,” made answer the Bodhisattva…. “Look
now below you and above you and about you, and tell me what you see.”
“I cannot,” cried the pilgrim, trembling and clinging; “I dare not look
beneath! Before me and about me there is nothing but skulls of men.”
“And yet, my son,” said the Bodhisattva, laughing softly,—“and yet you
do not know of what this mountain is made.”
The other, shuddering, repeated:—“I fear!—unutterably I fear!…there is
nothing but skulls of men!”
“A mountain of skulls it is,” responded the Bodhisattva. “But know, my
son, that all of them ARE YOUR OWN! Each has at some time been the nest
of your dreams and delusions and desires. Not even one of them is the
skull of any other being. All,—all without exception,—have been yours,
in the billions of your former lives.”
Furisodé
Recently, while passing through a little street tenanted chiefly by
dealers in old wares, I noticed a _furisodé_, or long-sleeved robe, of
the rich purple tint called _murasaki_, hanging before one of the
shops. It was a robe such as might have been worn by a lady of rank in
the time of the Tokugawa. I stopped to look at the five crests upon it;
and in the same moment there came to my recollection this legend of a
similar robe said to have once caused the destruction of Yedo.
Nearly two hundred and fifty years ago, the daughter of a rich merchant
of the city of the Shōguns, while attending some temple-festival,
perceived in the crowd a young samurai of remarkable beauty, and
immediately fell in love with him. Unhappily for her, he disappeared in
the press before she could learn through her attendants who he was or
whence he had come. But his image remained vivid in her memory,—even to
the least detail of his costume. The holiday attire then worn by
samurai youths was scarcely less brilliant than that of young girls;
and the upper dress of this handsome stranger had seemed wonderfully
beautiful to the enamoured maiden. She fancied that by wearing a robe
of like quality and color, bearing the same crest, she might be able to
attract his notice on some future occasion.
Accordingly she had such a robe made, with very long sleeves, according
to the fashion of the period; and she prized it greatly. She wore it
whenever she went out; and when at home she would suspend it in her
room, and try to imagine the form of her unknown beloved within it.
Sometimes she would pass hours before it,—dreaming and weeping by
turns. And she would pray to the gods and the Buddhas that she might
win the young man’s affection,—often repeating the invocation of the
Nichiren sect: _Namu myō hō rengé kyō!_
But she never saw the youth again; and she pined with longing for him,
and sickened, and died, and was buried. After her burial, the
long-sleeved robe that she had so much prized was given to the Buddhist
temple of which her family were parishioners. It is an old custom to
thus dispose of the garments of the dead.
The priest was able to sell the robe at a good price; for it was a
costly silk, and bore no trace of the tears that had fallen upon it. It
was bought by a girl of about the same age as the dead lady. She wore
it only one day. Then she fell sick, and began to act strangely,—crying
out that she was haunted by the vision of a beautiful young man, and
that for love of him she was going to die. And within a little while
she died; and the long-sleeved robe was a second time presented to the
temple.
Again the priest sold it; and again it became the property of a young
girl, who wore it only once. Then she also sickened, and talked of a
beautiful shadow, and died, and was buried. And the robe was given a
third time to the temple; and the priest wondered and doubted.
Nevertheless he ventured to sell the luckless garment once more. Once
more it was purchased by a girl and once more worn; and the wearer
pined and died. And the robe was given a fourth time to the temple.
Then the priest felt sure that there was some evil influence at work;
and he told his acolytes to make a fire in the temple-court, and to
burn the robe.
So they made a fire, into which the robe was thrown. But as the silk
began to burn, there suddenly appeared upon it dazzling characters of
flame,—the characters of the invocation, _Namu myō hō rengé kyō;_—and
these, one by one, leaped like great sparks to the temple roof; and the
temple took fire.
Embers from the burning temple presently dropped upon neighbouring
roofs; and the whole street was soon ablaze. Then a sea-wind, rising,
blew destruction into further streets; and the conflagration spread
from street to street, and from district into district, till nearly the
whole of the city was consumed. And this calamity, which occurred upon
the eighteenth day of the first month of the first year of Meiréki
(1655), is still remembered in Tōkyō as the _Furisodé-Kwaji_,—the Great
Fire of the Long-sleeved Robe.
According to a story-book called _Kibun-Daijin_, the name of the girl
who caused the robe to be made was O-Samé; and she was the daughter of
Hikoyemon, a wine-merchant of Hyakushō-machi, in the district of Azabu.
Because of her beauty she was also called Azabu-Komachi, or the Komachi
of Azabu.[1] The same book says that the temple of the tradition was a
Nichiren temple called Hon-myoji, in the district of Hongo; and that
the crest upon the robe was a _kikyō_-flower. But there are many
different versions of the story; and I distrust the _Kibun-Daijin_
because it asserts that the beautiful samurai was not really a man, but
a transformed dragon, or water-serpent, that used to inhabit the lake
at Uyéno,—_Shinobazu-no-Iké_.
[1] After more than a thousand years, the name of Komachi, or
Ono-no-Komachi, is still celebrated in Japan. She was the most
beautiful woman of her time, and so great a poet that she could move
heaven by her verses, and cause rain to fall in time of drought. Many
men loved her in vain; and many are said to have died for love of her.
But misfortunes visited her when her youth had passed; and, after
having been reduced to the uttermost want, she became a beggar, and
died at last upon the public highway, near Kyōto. As it was thought
shameful to bury her in the foul rags found upon her, some poor person
gave a wornout summer-robe (_katabira_) to wrap her body in; and she
was interred near Arashiyama at a spot still pointed out to travellers
as the “Place of the Katabira” (_Katabira-no-Tsuchi_).
Incense
I
I see, rising out of darkness, a lotos in a vase. Most of the vase is
invisible, but I know that it is of bronze, and that its glimpsing
handles are bodies of dragons. Only the lotos is fully illuminated:
three pure white flowers, and five great leaves of gold and green,—gold
above, green on the upcurling under-surface,—an artificial lotos. It is
bathed by a slanting stream of sunshine,—the darkness beneath and
beyond is the dusk of a temple-chamber. I do not see the opening
through which the radiance pours, but I am aware that it is a small
window shaped in the outline-form of a temple-bell.
The reason that I see the lotos—one memory of my first visit to a
Buddhist sanctuary—is that there has come to me an odor of incense.
Often when I smell incense, this vision defines; and usually thereafter
other sensations of my first day in Japan revive in swift succession
with almost painful acuteness.
It is almost ubiquitous,—this perfume of incense. It makes one element
of the faint but complex and never-to-be-forgotten odor of the Far
East. It haunts the dwelling-house not less than the temple,—the home
of the peasant not less than the yashiki of the prince. Shintō shrines,
indeed, are free from it;—incense being an abomination to the elder
gods. But wherever Buddhism lives there is incense. In every house
containing a Buddhist shrine or Buddhist tablets, incense is burned at
certain times; and in even the rudest country solitudes you will find
incense smouldering before wayside images,—little stone figures of
Fudō, Jizō, or Kwannon. Many experiences of travel,—strange impressions
of sound as well as of sight,—remain associated in my own memory with
that fragrance:—vast silent shadowed avenues leading to weird old
shrines;—mossed flights of worn steps ascending to temples that moulder
above the clouds;—joyous tumult of festival nights;—sheeted
funeral-trains gliding by in glimmer of lanterns; murmur of household
prayer in fishermen’s huts on far wild coasts;—and visions of desolate
little graves marked only by threads of blue smoke ascending,—graves of
pet animals or birds remembered by simple hearts in the hour of prayer
to Amida, the Lord of Immeasurable Light.
But the odor of which I speak is that of cheap incense only,—the
incense in general use. There are many other kinds of incense; and the
range of quality is amazing. A bundle of common incense-rods—(they are
about as thick as an ordinary pencil-lead, and somewhat longer)—can be
bought for a few sen; while a bundle of better quality, presenting to
inexperienced eyes only some difference in color, may cost several yen,
and be cheap at the price. Still costlier sorts of incense,—veritable
luxuries,—take the form of lozenges, wafers, pastilles; and a small
envelope of such material may be worth four or five pounds-sterling.
But the commercial and industrial questions relating to Japanese
incense represent the least interesting part of a remarkably curious
subject.
II
Curious indeed, but enormous by reason of it infinity of tradition and
detail. I am afraid even to think of the size of the volume that would
be needed to cover it…. Such a work would properly begin with some
brief account of the earliest knowledge and use of aromatics in Japan.
I would next treat of the records and legends of the first introduction
of Buddhist incense from Korea,—when King Shōmyō of Kudara, in 551 A.
D., sent to the island-empire a collection of sutras, an image of the
Buddha, and one complete set of furniture for a temple. Then something
would have to be said about those classifications of incense which were
made during the tenth century, in the periods of Engi and of
Tenryaku,—and about the report of the ancient state-councillor,
Kimitaka-Sangi, who visited China in the latter part of the thirteenth
century, and transmitted to the Emperor Yomei the wisdom of the Chinese
concerning incense. Then mention should be made of the ancient incenses
still preserved in various Japanese temples, and of the famous
fragments of _ranjatai_ (publicly exhibited at Nara in the tenth year
of Meiji) which furnished supplies to the three great captains,
Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and Iyeyasu. After this should follow an outline
of the history of mixed incenses made in Japan,—with notes on the
classifications devised by the luxurious Takauji, and on the
nomenclature established later by Ashikaga Yoshimasa, who collected one
hundred and thirty varieties of incense, and invented for the more
precious of them names recognized even to this day,—such as
“Blossom-Showering,” “Smoke-of-Fuji,” and “Flower-of-the-Pure-Law.”
Examples ought to be given likewise of traditions attaching to
historical incenses preserved in several princely families, together
with specimens of those hereditary recipes for incense-making which
have been transmitted from generation to generation through hundreds of
years, and are still called after their august inventors,—as “the
Method of Hina-Dainagon,” “the Method of Sentō-In,” etc. Recipes also
should be given of those strange incenses made “_to imitate the perfume
of the lotos, the smell of the summer breeze, and the odor of the
autumn wind_.” Some legends of the great period of incense-luxury
should be cited,—such as the story of Sué Owari-no-Kami, who built for
himself a palace of incense-woods, and set fire to it on the night of
his revolt, when the smoke of its burning perfumed the land to a
distance of twelve miles…. Of course the mere compilation of materials
for a history of mixed-incenses would entail the study of a host of
documents, treatises, and books,—particularly of such strange works as
the _Kun-Shū-Rui-Shō_, or “Incense-Collector’s
Classifying-Manual”;—containing the teachings of the Ten Schools of the
Art of Mixing Incense; directions as to the best seasons for
incense-making; and instructions about the “_different kinds of fire_”
to be used for burning incense—(one kind is called “literary fire,” and
another “military fire”); together with rules for pressing the ashes of
a censer into various artistic designs corresponding to season and
occasion…. A special chapter should certainly be given to the
incense-bags (_kusadama_) hung up in houses to drive away goblins,—and
to the smaller incense-bags formerly carried about the person as a
protection against evil spirits. Then a very large part of the work
would have to be devoted to the religious uses and legends of
incense,—a huge subject in itself. There would also have to be
considered the curious history of the old “incense-assemblies,” whose
elaborate ceremonial could be explained only by help of numerous
diagrams. One chapter at least would be required for the subject of the
ancient importation of incense-materials from India, China, Annam,
Siam, Cambodia, Ceylon, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, and various islands of
the Malay archipelago,—places all named in rare books about incense.
And a final chapter should treat of the romantic literature of
incense,—the poems, stories, and dramas in which incense-rites are
mentioned; and especially those love-songs comparing the body to
incense, and passion to the eating flame:—
Even as burns the perfume lending thy robe its fragance,
Smoulders my life away, consumed by the pain of longing!
….The merest outline of the subject is terrifying! I shall attempt
nothing more than a few notes about the religious, the luxurious, and
the ghostly uses of incense.
III
The common incense everywhere burned by poor people before Buddhist
icons is called _an-soku-kō_. This is very cheap. Great quantities of
it are burned by pilgrims in the bronze censers set before the
entrances of famous temples; and in front of roadside images you may
often see bundles of it. These are for the use of pious wayfarers, who
pause before every Buddhist image on their path to repeat a brief
prayer and, when possible, to set a few rods smouldering at the feet of
the statue. But in rich temples, and during great religious ceremonies,
much more expensive incense is used. Altogether three classes of
perfumes are employed in Buddhist rites: _kō_, or incense-proper, in
many varieties—(the word literally means only “fragrant
substance”);—_dzukō_, an odorous ointment; and _makkō_, a fragrant
powder. _Kō_ is burned; _dzukō_ is rubbed upon the hands of the priest
as an ointment of purification; and _makkō_ is sprinkled about the
sanctuary. This _makkō_ is said to be identical with the
sandalwood-powder so frequently mentioned in Buddhist texts. But it is
only the true incense which can be said to bear an important relation
to the religious service.
“Incense,” declares the _Soshi-Ryaku_,[1] “is the Messenger of Earnest
Desire. When the rich Sudatta wished to invite the Buddha to a repast,
he made use of incense. He was wont to ascend to the roof of his house
on the eve of the day of the entertainment, and to remain standing
there all night, holding a censer of precious incense. And as often as
he did thus, the Buddha never failed to come on the following day at
the exact time desired.”
[1] “Short [or Epitomized] History of Priests.”
This text plainly implies that incense, as a burnt-offering, symbolizes
the pious desires of the faithful. But it symbolizes other things also;
and it has furnished many remarkable similes to Buddhist literature.
Some of these, and not the least interesting, occur in prayers, of
which the following, from the book called _Hōji-san_[2] is a striking
example:—
[2] “The Praise of Pious Observances.”
—“_Let my body remain pure like a censer!—let my thought be ever as a
fire of wisdom, purely consuming the incense of sîla and of dhyâna,_[3]
_that so may I do homage to all the Buddhas in the Ten Directions of
the Past, the Present, and the Future!_”
[3] By _sîla_ is meant the observance of the rules of purity in act
and thought. _Dhyâna_ (called by Japanese Buddhists _Zenjō_) is one of
the higher forms of meditation.
Sometimes in Buddhist sermons the destruction of Karma by virtuous
effort is likened to the burning of incense by a pure flame,—sometimes,
again, the life of man is compared to the smoke of incense. In his
“Hundred Writings “(_Hyaku-tsū-kiri-kami_), the Shinshū priest Myōden
says, quoting from the Buddhist work _Kujikkajō_, or “Ninety Articles
“:—
“In the burning of incense we see that so long as any incense remains,
so long does the burning continue, and the smoke mount skyward. Now the
breath of this body of ours,—this impermanent combination of Earth,
Water, Air, and Fire,—is like that smoke. And the changing of the
incense into cold ashes when the flame expires is an emblem of the
changing of our bodies into ashes when our funeral pyres have burnt
themselves out.”
He also tells us about that Incense-Paradise of which every believer
ought to be reminded by the perfume of earthly incense:—“In the
Thirty-Second Vow for the Attainment of the Paradise of Wondrous
Incense,” he says, “it is written: ‘_That Paradise is formed of
hundreds of thousands of different kinds of incense, and of substances
incalculably precious;—the beauty of it incomparably exceeds anything
in the heavens or in the sphere of man;—the fragrance of it perfumes
all the worlds of the Ten Directions of Space; and all who perceive
that odor practise Buddha-deeds._’ In ancient times there were men of
superior wisdom and virtue who, by reason of their vow, obtained
perception of the odor; but we, who are born with inferior wisdom and
virtue in these later days, cannot obtain such perception. Nevertheless
it will be well for us, when we smell the incense kindled before the
image of Amida, to imagine that its odor is the wonderful fragrance of
Paradise, and to repeat the _Nembutsu_ in gratitude for the mercy of
the Buddha.”
IV
But the use of incense in Japan is not confined to religious rites and
ceremonies: indeed the costlier kinds of incense are manufactured
chiefly for social entertainments. Incense-burning has been an
amusement of the aristocracy ever since the thirteenth century.
Probably you have heard of the Japanese tea-ceremonies, and their
curious Buddhist history; and I suppose that every foreign collector of
Japanese _bric-à-brac_ knows something about the luxury to which these
ceremonies at one period attained,—a luxury well attested by the
quality of the beautiful utensils formerly employed in them. But there
were, and still are, incense-ceremonies much more elaborate and costly
than the tea-ceremonies,—and also much more interesting. Besides music,
embroidery, poetical composition and other branches of the
old-fashioned female education, the young lady of pre-Meiji days was
expected to acquire three especially polite accomplishments,—the art of
arranging flowers, (_ikébana_), the art of ceremonial tea-making
(_cha-no-yu_ or _cha-no-e_),[4] and the etiquette of incense-parties
(_kō-kwai_ or _kō-é_). Incense-parties were invented before the time of
the Ashikaga shōguns, and were most in vogue during the peaceful period
of the Tokugawa rule. With the fall of the shōgunate they went out of
fashion; but recently they have been to some extent revived. It is not
likely, however, that they will again become really fashionable in the
old sense,—partly because they represented rare forms of social
refinement that never can be revived, and partly because of their
costliness.
[4] Girls are still trained in the art of arranging flowers, and in
the etiquette of the dainty, though somewhat tedious, _cha-no-yu_.
Buddhist priests have long enjoyed a reputation as teachers of the
latter. When the pupil has reached a certain degree of proficiency,
she is given a diploma or certificate. The tea used in these
ceremonies is a powdered tea of remarkable fragrance,—the best
qualities of which fetch very high prices.
In translating _kō-kwai_ as “incense-party,” I use the word “party” in
the meaning that it takes in such compounds as “card-party,”
“whist-party,” “chess-party”;—for a _kō-kwai_ is a meeting held only
with the object of playing a game,—a very curious game. There are
several kinds of incense-games; but in all of them the contest depends
upon the ability to remember and to name different kinds of incense by
the perfume alone. That variety of _kō-kwai_ called _Jitchū-kō_
(“ten-burning-incense”) is generally conceded to be the most amusing;
and I shall try to tell you how it is played.
The numeral “ten,” in the Japanese, or rather Chinese name of this
diversion, does not refer to ten kinds, but only to ten packages of
incense; for _Jitchū-kō_, besides being the most amusing, is the very
simplest of incense-games, and is played with only four kinds of
incense. One kind must be supplied by the guests invited to the party;
and three are furnished by the person who gives the entertainment. Each
of the latter three supplies of incense—usually prepared in packages
containing one hundred wafers is divided into four parts; and each part
is put into a separate paper numbered or marked so as to indicate the
quality. Thus four packages are prepared of the incense classed as No.
1, four of incense No. 2, and four of incense No. 3,—or twelve in all.
But the incense given by the guests,—always called “guest-incense”—is
not divided: it is only put into a wrapper marked with an abbreviation
of the Chinese character signifying “guest.” Accordingly we have a
total of thirteen packages to start with; but three are to be used in
the preliminary sampling, or “experimenting”—as the Japanese term
it,—after the following manner.
We shall suppose the game to be arranged for a party of six,—though
there is no rule limiting the number of players. The six take their
places in line, or in a half-circle—if the room be small; but they do
not sit close together, for reasons which will presently appear. Then
the host, or the person appointed to act as incense-burner, prepares a
package of the incense classed as No 1, kindles it in a censer, and
passes the censer to the guest occupying the first seat,[5] with the
announcement—“This is incense No 1” The guest receives the censer
according to the graceful etiquette required in the _kō-kwai_, inhales
the perfume, and passes on the vessel to his neighbor, who receives it
in like manner and passes it to the third guest, who presents it to the
fourth,—and so on. When the censer has gone the round of the party, it
is returned to the incense-burner. One package of incense No. 2, and
one of No. 3, are similarly prepared, announced, and tested. But with
the “guest-incense” no experiment is made. The player should be able to
remember the different odors of the incenses tested; and he is expected
to identify the guest-incense at the proper time merely by the
unfamiliar quality of its fragrance.
[5] The places occupied by guests in a Japanese _zashiki_, or
reception room are numbered from the alcove of the apartment. The
place of the most honored is immediately before the alcove: this is
the first seat, and the rest are numbered from it, usually to the
left.
The original thirteen packages having thus by “experimenting” been
reduced to ten, each player is given one set of ten small
tablets—usually of gold-lacquer,—every set being differently
ornamented. The backs only of these tablets are decorated; and the
decoration is nearly always a floral design of some sort:—thus one set
might be decorated with chrysanthemums in gold, another with tufts of
iris-plants, another with a spray of plum-blossoms, etc. But the faces
of the tablets bear numbers or marks; and each set comprises three
tablets numbered “1,” three numbered “2,” three numbered “3,” and one
marked with the character signifying “guest.” After these tablet-sets
have been distributed, a box called the “tablet-box” is placed before
the first player; and all is ready for the real game.
The incense-burner retires behind a little screen, shuffles the flat
packages like so many cards, takes the uppermost, prepares its contents
in the censer, and then, returning to the party, sends the censer upon
its round. This time, of course, he does not announce what kind of
incense he has used. As the censer passes from hand to hand, each
player, after inhaling the fume, puts into the tablet-box one tablet
bearing that mark or number which he supposes to be the mark or number
of the incense he has smelled. If, for example, he thinks the incense
to be “guest-incense,” he drops into the box that one of his tablets
marked with the ideograph meaning “guest;” or if he believes that he
has inhaled the perfume of No. 2, he puts into the box a tablet
numbered “2.” When the round is over, tablet-box and censer are both
returned to the incense-burner. He takes the six tablets out of the
box, and wraps them up in the paper which contained the incense guessed
about. The tablets themselves keep the personal as well as the general
record,—since each player remembers the particular design upon his own
set.
The remaining nine packages of incense are consumed and judged in the
same way, according to the chance order in which the shuffling has
placed them. When all the incense has been used, the tablets are taken
out of their wrappings, the record is officially put into writing, and
the victor of the day is announced. I here offer the translation of
such a record: it will serve to explain, almost at a glance, all the
complications of the game.
According to this record the player who used the tablets decorated with
the design called “Young Pine,” made but two mistakes; while the holder
of the “White-Lily” set made only one correct guess. But it is quite a
feat to make ten correct judgments in succession. The olfactory nerves
are apt to become somewhat numbed long before the game is concluded;
and, therefore it is customary during the _Kō-kwai_ to rinse the mouth
at intervals with pure vinegar, by which operation the sensitivity is
partially restored.
RECORD OF A KŌ-KWAI.
Order in which the ten packages of incense were used:—
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
No. No. — No. No. No. No. No. No. No.
III I “GUEST” II I III II I III II
Names given to the six sets of tablets used, according to decorative
designs on the back:
“Gold Chrysanthemum” 1 3 1 2* Guest 1 2* 2 3* 3
3
“Young Bamboo” 3* 1* 1 2* 1* Guest 3 2 1 3 4
“Red Peony” Guest 1* 2 2* 3 1 3 2 3* 1 3
“White Lily” 1 3 1 3 2 2 1 3 Guest 2* 1
“Young Pine” 3* 1* Guest* 3 1* 2 2* 1* 3* 2* 8
(Winner)
“Cherry-Blossom-in-a-Mist” 1 3 Guest* 2* 1* 3* 1 2
3* 2* 6
Guesses recorded by numbers on the tablet; correct being marked *
No. of correct guesses
NAMES OF INCENSE USED.
I. “Tasogare” (“Who-Is-there?” I. e. “Evening-Dusk”).
II. “Baikwa” (“Plum Flower”).
III. “Wakakusa” (“Young Grass”).
IV. (“Guest Incense”) “Yamaji-no-Tsuyu” (“Dew-on-the-Mountain-Path”).
To the Japanese original of the foregoing record were appended the
names of the players, the date of the entertainment, and the name of
the place where the party was held. It is the custom In some families
to enter all such records in a book especially made for the purpose,
and furnished with an index which enables the _Kō-kwai_ player to refer
immediately to any interesting fact belonging to the history of any
past game.
The reader will have noticed that the four kinds of incense used were
designated by very pretty names. The incense first mentioned, for
example, is called by the poets’ name for the gloaming,—_Tasogaré_
(lit: “Who is there?” or “ Who is it?”)—a word which in this relation
hints of the toilet-perfume that reveals some charming presence to the
lover waiting in the dusk. Perhaps some curiosity will be felt
regarding the composition of these incenses. I can give the Japanese
recipes for two sorts; but I have not been able to identify all of the
materials named:—
_Recipe for Yamaji-no-Tsuyu._
Ingredients Proportions.
about Jinkō (aloes-wood)
4 _mommé_
(½ oz.) Cōoji (cloves)
4 ”
” Kunroku
(olibanum)
4 ” ” Hakkō
(artemisia Schmidtiana)
4 ” ” Jakō
(musk)
1 _bu_ (⅛ oz.)
Kōkō(?)
4 _mommé_ (½
oz.)
_To 21 pastilles_
_Recipe for Baikwa._
Ingredients Proportions.
about Jinkō (aloes)
20 _mommé_
(2 1/2 oz.) Chōji
(cloves)
12 “ (1 1/2 oz.)
Kōkō(?)
8 1/3 “ (1
1/40 oz.) Byakudan
(sandal-wood)
4 “ (1/2 oz.)
Kanshō (spikenard)
2 _bu_
(1/4 oz.) Kwakkō
(Bishop’s-wort?) 1
_bu_ 2 _shu_ (3/16 oz.)
Kunroku (olibanum)
3 ” 3 ”
(15/22 oz.) Shōmokkō (?)
2 ”
(1/4 oz.) Jakō
(musk)
3 ” 2 _shu_ (7/16
oz.) Ryūnō (refined
Borneo Camphor) 3
_shu_ (3/8 oz.)
_To 50 pastilles_
The incense used at a _Kō-kwai_ ranges in value, according to the style
of the entertainment, from $2.50 to $30.00 per envelope of 100
wafers—wafers usually not more than one-fourth of an inch in diameter.
Sometimes an incense is used worth even more than $30.00 per envelope:
this contains _ranjatai_, an aromatic of which the perfume is compared
to that of “musk mingled with orchid-flowers.” But there is some
incense,—never sold,—which is much more precious than
_ranjatai_,—incense valued less for its composition than for its
history: I mean the incense brought centuries ago from China or from
India by the Buddhist missionaries, and presented to princes or to
other persons of high rank. Several ancient Japanese temples also
include such foreign incense among their treasures. And very rarely a
little of this priceless material is contributed to an
incense-party,—much as in Europe, on very extraordinary occasions, some
banquet is glorified by the production of a wine several hundred years
old.
Like the tea-ceremonies, the _Kō-kwai_ exact observance of a very
complex and ancient etiquette. But this subject could interest few
readers; and I shall only mention some of the rules regarding
preparations and precautions. First of all, it is required that the
person invited to an incense-party shall attend the same in as
_odorless_ a condition as possible: a lady, for instance, must not use
hair-oil, or put on any dress that has been kept in a perfumed
chest-of-drawers. Furthermore, the guest should prepare for the contest
by taking a prolonged hot bath, and should eat only the lightest and
least odorous kind of food before going to the rendezvous. It is
forbidden to leave the room during the game, or to open any door or
window, or to indulge in needless conversation. Finally I may observe
that, while judging the incense, a player is expected to take not less
than three inhalations, or more than five.
In this economical era, the _Kō-kwai_ takes of necessity a much humbler
form than it assumed in the time of the great daimyō, of the princely
abbots, and of the military aristocracy. A full set of the utensils
required for the game can now be had for about $50.00; but the
materials are of the poorest kind. The old-fashioned sets were
fantastically expensive. Some were worth thousands of dollars. The
incense-burner’s desk,—the writing-box, paper-box, tablet-box,
etc.,—the various stands or _dai_,—were of the costliest
gold-lacquer;—the pincers and other instruments were of gold, curiously
worked;—and the censer—whether of precious metal, bronze, or
porcelain,—was always a _chef-d’œuvre_, designed by some artist of
renown.
V
Although the original signification of incense in Buddhist ceremonies
was chiefly symbolical, there is good reason to suppose that various
beliefs older than Buddhism,—some, perhaps, peculiar to the race;
others probably of Chinese or Korean derivation,—began at an early
period to influence the popular use of incense in Japan. Incense is
still burned in the presence of a corpse with the idea that its
fragrance shields both corpse and newly-parted soul from malevolent
demons; and by the peasants it is often burned also to drive away
goblins and the evil powers presiding over diseases. But formerly it
was used to summon spirits as well as to banish them. Allusions to its
employment in various weird rites may be found in some of the old
dramas and romances. One particular sort of incense, imported from
China, was said to have the power of calling up human spirits. This was
the wizard-incense referred to in such ancient love-songs as the
following:—
“I have heard of the magical incense that summons the souls of the
absent:
Would I had some to burn, in the nights when I wait alone!”
There is an interesting mention of this incense in the Chinese book,
_Shang-hai-king_. It was called _Fwan-hwan-hiang_ (by Japanese
pronunciation, _Hangon-kō_), or “Spirit-Recalling-Incense;” and it was
made in Tso-Chau, or the District of the Ancestors, situated by the
Eastern Sea. To summon the ghost of any dead person—or even that of a
living person, according to some authorities,—it was only necessary to
kindle some of the incense, and to pronounce certain words, while
keeping the mind fixed upon the memory of that person. Then, in the
smoke of the incense, the remembered face and form would appear.
[Illustration: The Magical Incense]
In many old Japanese and Chinese books mention is made of a famous
story about this incense,—a story of the Chinese Emperor Wu, of the Han
dynasty. When the Emperor had lost his beautiful favorite, the Lady Li,
he sorrowed so much that fears were entertained for his reason. But all
efforts made to divert his mind from the thought of her proved
unavailing. One day he ordered some Spirit-Recalling-Incense to be
procured, that he might summon her from the dead. His counsellors
prayed him to forego his purpose, declaring that the vision could only
intensify his grief. But he gave no heed to their advice, and himself
performed the rite,—kindling the incense, and keeping his mind fixed
upon the memory of the Lady Li. Presently, within the thick blue smoke
arising from the incense, the outline, of a feminine form became
visible. It defined, took tints of life, slowly became luminous, and
the Emperor recognized the form of his beloved At first the apparition
was faint; but it soon became distinct as a living person, and seemed
with each moment to grow more beautiful. The Emperor whispered to the
vision, but received no answer. He called aloud, and the presence made
no sign. Then unable to control himself, he approached the censer. But
the instant that he touched the smoke, the phantom trembled and
vanished.
Japanese artists are still occasionally inspired by the legends of the
Hangon-ho. Only last year, in Tōkyō, at an exhibition of new kakemono,
I saw a picture of a young wife kneeling before an alcove wherein the
smoke of the magical incense was shaping the shadow of the absent
husband.[6]
[6] Among the curious Tōkyō inventions of 1898 was a new variety of
cigarettes called _Hangon-sō_, or “Herb of Hangon,”—a name suggesting
that their smoke operated like the spirit-summoning incense. As a
matter of fact, the chemical action of the tobacco-smoke would define,
upon a paper fitted into the mouth-piece of each cigarette, the
photographic image of a dancing-girl.
Although the power of making visible the forms of the dead has been
claimed for one sort of incense only, the burning of any kind of
incense is supposed to summon viewless spirits in multitude. These come
to devour the smoke. They are called _Jiki-kō-ki_, or “incense-eating
goblins;” and they belong to the fourteenth of the thirty-six classes
of Gaki (_prêtas_) recognized by Japanese Buddhism. They are the ghosts
of men who anciently, for the sake of gain, made or sold bad incense;
and by the evil karma of that action they now find themselves in the
state of hunger-suffering spirits, and compelled to seek their only
food in the smoke of incense.
A Story of Divination
I once knew a fortune-teller who really believed in the science that he
professed. He had learned, as a student of the old Chinese philosophy,
to believe in divination long before he thought of practising it.
During his youth he had been in the service of a wealthy daimyō, but
subsequently, like thousands of other samurai, found himself reduced to
desperate straits by the social and political changes of Meiji. It was
then that he became a fortune-teller,—an itinerant
_uranaiya_,—travelling on foot from town to town, and returning to his
home rarely more than once a year with the proceeds of his journey. As
a fortune-teller he was tolerably successful,—chiefly, I think, because
of his perfect sincerity, and because of a peculiar gentle manner that
invited confidence. His system was the old scholarly one: he used the
book known to English readers as the _Yî-King_,—also a set of ebony
blocks which could be so arranged as to form any of the Chinese
hexagrams;—and he always began his divination with an earnest prayer to
the gods.
The system itself he held to be infallible in the hands of a master. He
confessed that he had made some erroneous predictions; but he said that
these mistakes had been entirely due to his own miscomprehension of
certain texts or diagrams. To do him justice I must mention that in my
own case—(he told my fortune four times),—his predictions were
fulfilled in such wise that I became afraid of them. You may disbelieve
in fortune-telling,—intellectually scorn it; but something of inherited
superstitious tendency lurks within most of us; and a few strange
experiences can so appeal to that inheritance as to induce the most
unreasoning hope or fear of the good or bad luck promised you by some
diviner. Really to see our future would be a misery. Imagine the result
of knowing that there must happen to you, within the next two months,
some terrible misfortune which you cannot possibly provide against!
He was already an old man when I first saw him in Izumo,—certainly more
than sixty years of age, but looking very much younger. Afterwards I
met him in Ōsaka, in Kyōto, and in Kobé. More than once I tried to
persuade him to pass the colder months of the winter-season under my
roof,—for he possessed an extraordinary knowledge of traditions, and
could have been of inestimable service to me in a literary way. But
partly because the habit of wandering had become with him a second
nature, and partly because of a love of independence as savage as a
gipsy’s, I was never able to keep him with me for more than two days at
a time.
Every year he used to come to Tōkyō,—usually in the latter part of
autumn. Then, for several weeks, he would flit about the city, from
district to district, and vanish again. But during these fugitive trips
he never failed to visit me; bringing welcome news of Izumo people and
places,—bringing also some queer little present, generally of a
religious kind, from some famous place of pilgrimage. On these
occasions I could get a few hours’ chat with him. Sometimes the talk
was of strange things seen or heard during his recent journey;
sometimes it turned upon old legends or beliefs; sometimes it was about
fortune-telling. The last time we met he told me of an exact Chinese
science of divination which he regretted never having been able to
learn.
“Any one learned in that science,” he said, “would be able, for
example, not only to tell you the exact time at which any post or beam
of this house will yield to decay, but even to tell you the direction
of the breaking, and all its results. I can best explain what I mean by
relating a story.
“The story is about the famous Chinese fortune-teller whom we call in
Japan Shōko Setsu, and it is written in the book _Baikwa-Shin-Eki_,
which is a book of divination. While still a very young man, Shōko
Setsu obtained a high position by reason of his learning and virtue;
but he resigned it and went into solitude that he might give his whole
time to study. For years thereafter he lived alone in a hut among the
mountains; studying without a fire in winter, and without a fan in
summer; writing his thoughts upon the wall of his room—for lack of
paper;—and using only a tile for his pillow.
“One day, in the period of greatest summer heat, he found himself
overcome by drowsiness; and he lay down to rest, with his tile under
his head. Scarcely had he fallen asleep when a rat ran across his face
and woke him with a start. Feeling angry, he seized his tile and flung
it at the rat; but the rat escaped unhurt, and the tile was broken.
Shōko Setsu looked sorrowfully at the fragments of his pillow, and
reproached himself for his hastiness. Then suddenly he perceived, upon
the freshly exposed clay of the broken tile, some Chinese
characters—between the upper and lower surfaces. Thinking this very
strange, he picked up the pieces, and carefully examined them. He found
that along the line of fracture seventeen characters had been written
within the clay before the tile had been baked; and the characters read
thus: ‘_In the Year of the Hare, in the fourth month, on the
seventeenth day, at the Hour of the Serpent, this tile, after serving
as a pillow, will be thrown at a rat and broken._’ Now the prediction
had really been fulfilled at the Hour of the Serpent on the seventeenth
day of the fourth month of the Year of the Hare. Greatly astonished,
Shōko Setsu once again looked at the fragments, and discovered the seal
and the name of the maker. At once he left his hut, and, taking with
him the pieces of the tile, hurried to the neighboring town in search
of the tilemaker. He found the tilemaker in the course of the day,
showed him the broken tile, and asked him about its history.
“After having carefully examined the shards, the tilemaker said: —‘This
tile was made in my house; but the characters in the clay were written
by an old man—a fortune-teller,—who asked permission to write upon the
tile before it was baked.’ ‘Do you know where he lives?’ asked Shōko
Setsu. ‘He used to live,’ the tilemaker answered, ‘not very far from
here; and I can show you the way to the house. But I do not know his
name.’
“Having been guided to the house, Shōko Setsu presented himself at the
entrance, and asked for permission to speak to the old man. A
serving-student courteously invited him to enter, and ushered him into
an apartment where several young men were at study. As Shōko Setsu took
his seat, all the youths saluted him. Then the one who had first
addressed him bowed and said: ‘We are grieved to inform you that our
master died a few days ago. But we have been waiting for you, because
he predicted that you would come to-day to this house, at this very
hour. Your name is Shōko Setsu. And our master told us to give you a
book which he believed would be of service to you. Here is the
book;—please to accept it.’
“Shōko Setsu was not less delighted than surprised; for the book was a
manuscript of the rarest and most precious kind,—containing all the
secrets of the science of divination. After having thanked the young
men, and properly expressed his regret for the death of their teacher,
he went back to his hut, and there immediately proceeded to test the
worth of the book by consulting its pages in regard to his own fortune.
The book suggested to him that on the south side of his dwelling, at a
particular spot near one corner of the hut, great luck awaited him. He
dug at the place indicated, and found a jar containing gold enough to
make him a very wealthy man.”
My old acquaintance left this world as lonesomely as he had lived in
it. Last winter, while crossing a mountain-range, he was overtaken by a
snowstorm, and lost his way. Many days later he was found standing
erect at the foot of a pine, with his little pack strapped to his
shoulders: a statue of ice—arms folded and eyes closed as in
meditation. Probably, while waiting for the storm to pass, he had
yielded to the drowsiness of cold, and the drift had risen over him as
he slept. Hearing of this strange death I remembered the old Japanese
saying,—_Uranaiya minouyé shiradzu:_ “The fortune-teller knows not his
own fate.”
Silkworms
I
I was puzzled by the phrase, “silkworm-moth eyebrow,” in an old
Japanese, or rather Chinese proverb:—_The silkworm-moth eyebrow of a
woman is the axe that cuts down the wisdom of man._ So I went to my
friend Niimi, who keeps silkworms, to ask for an explanation.
“Is it possible,” he exclaimed, “that you never saw a silkworm-moth?
The silkworm-moth has very beautiful eyebrows.”
“Eyebrows?” I queried, in astonishment. “Well, call them what you
like,” returned Niimi;—“the poets call them eyebrows…. Wait a moment,
and I will show you.”
He left the guest-room, and presently returned with a white paper-fan,
on which a silkworm-moth was sleepily reposing.
“We always reserve a few for breeding,” he said;—“this one is just out
of the cocoon. It cannot fly, of course: none of them can fly…. Now
look at the eyebrows.”
I looked, and saw that the antennae, very short and feathery, were so
arched back over the two jewel-specks of eyes in the velvety head, as
to give the appearance of a really handsome pair of eyebrows.
Then Niimi took me to see his worms.
In Niimi’s neighborhood, where there are plenty of mulberrytrees, many
families keep silkworms;—the tending and feeding being mostly done by
women and children. The worms are kept in large oblong trays, elevated
upon light wooden stands about three feet high. It is curious to see
hundreds of caterpillars feeding all together in one tray, and to hear
the soft papery noise which they make while gnawing their
mulberry-leaves. As they approach maturity, the creatures need almost
constant attention. At brief intervals some expert visits each tray to
inspect progress, picks up the plumpest feeders, and decides, by gently
rolling them between forefinger and thumb, which are ready to spin.
These are dropped into covered boxes, where they soon swathe themselves
out of sight in white floss. A few only of the best are suffered to
emerge from their silky sleep,—the selected breeders. They have
beautiful wings, but cannot use them. They have mouths, but do not eat.
They only pair, lay eggs, and die. For thousands of years their race
has been so well-cared for, that it can no longer take any care of
itself.
It was the evolutional lesson of this latter fact that chiefly occupied
me while Niimi and his younger brother (who feeds the worms) were
kindly explaining the methods of the industry. They told me curious
things about different breeds, and also about a wild variety of
silkworm that cannot be domesticated:—it spins splendid silk before
turning into a vigorous moth which can use its wings to some purpose.
But I fear that I did not act like a person who felt interested in the
subject; for, even while I tried to listen, I began to muse.
II
First of all, I found myself thinking about a delightful revery by M.
Anatole France, in which he says that if he had been the Demiurge, he
would have put youth at the end of life instead of at the beginning,
and would have otherwise so ordered matters that every human being
should have three stages of development, somewhat corresponding to
those of the lepidoptera. Then it occurred to me that this fantasy was
in substance scarcely more than the delicate modification of a most
ancient doctrine, common to nearly all the higher forms of religion.
Western faiths especially teach that our life on earth is a larval
state of greedy helplessness, and that death is a pupa-sleep out of
which we should soar into everlasting light. They tell us that during
its sentient existence, the outer body should be thought of only as a
kind of caterpillar, and thereafter as a chrysalis;—and they aver that
we lose or gain, according to our behavior as larvæ, the power to
develop wings under the mortal wrapping. Also they tell us not to
trouble ourselves about the fact that we see no Psyché-imago detach
itself from the broken cocoon: this lack of visual evidence signifies
nothing, because we have only the purblind vision of grubs. Our eyes
are but half-evolved. Do not whole scales of colors invisibly exist
above and below the limits of our retinal sensibility? Even so the
butterfly-man exists,—although, as a matter of course, we cannot see
him.
But what would become of this human imago in a state of perfect bliss?
From the evolutional point of view the question has interest; and its
obvious answer was suggested to me by the history of those
silkworms,—which have been domesticated for only a few thousand years.
Consider the result of our celestial domestication for—let us
say—several millions of years: I mean the final consequence, to the
wishers, of being able to gratify every wish at will.
Those silkworms have all that they wish for,—even considerably more.
Their wants, though very simple, are fundamentally identical with the
necessities of mankind,—food, shelter, warmth, safety, and comfort. Our
endless social struggle is mainly for these things. Our dream of heaven
is the dream of obtaining them free of cost in pain; and the condition
of those silkworms is the realization, in a small way, of our imagined
Paradise. (I am not considering the fact that a vast majority of the
worms are predestined to torment and the second death; for my theme is
of heaven, not of lost souls. I am speaking of the elect—those worms
preördained to salvation and rebirth.) Probably they can feel only very
weak sensations: they are certainly incapable of prayer. But if they
were able to pray, they could not ask for anything more than they
already receive from the youth who feeds and tends them. He is their
providence,—a god of whose existence they can be aware in only the
vaguest possible way, but just such a god as they require. And we
should foolishly deem ourselves fortunate to be equally well cared-for
in proportion to our more complex wants. Do not our common forms of
prayer prove our desire for like attention? Is not the assertion of our
“need of divine love” an involuntary confession that we wish to be
treated like silkworms,—to live without pain by the help of gods? Yet
if the gods were to treat us as we want, we should presently afford
fresh evidence,—in the way of what is called “the evidence from
degeneration,”—that the great evolutional law is far above the gods.
An early stage of that degeneration would be represented by total
incapacity to help ourselves;—then we should begin to lose the use of
our higher sense-organs;—later on, the brain would shrink to a
vanishing pin-point of matter;—still later we should dwindle into mere
amorphous sacs, mere blind stomachs. Such would be the physical
consequence of that kind of divine love which we so lazily wish for.
The longing for perpetual bliss in perpetual peace might well seem a
malevolent inspiration from the Lords of Death and Darkness. All life
that feels and thinks has been, and can continue to be, only as the
product of struggle and pain,—only as the outcome of endless battle
with the Powers of the Universe. And cosmic law is uncompromising.
Whatever organ ceases to know pain,—whatever faculty ceases to be used
under the stimulus of pain,—must also cease to exist. Let pain and its
effort be suspended, and life must shrink back, first into protoplasmic
shapelessness, thereafter into dust.
Buddhism—which, in its own grand way, is a doctrine of
evolution—rationally proclaims its heaven but a higher stage of
development through pain, and teaches that even in paradise the
cessation of effort produces degradation. With equal reasonableness it
declares that the capacity for pain in the superhuman world increases
always in proportion to the capacity for pleasure. (There is little
fault to be found with this teaching from a scientific
standpoint,—since we know that higher evolution must involve an
increase of sensitivity to pain.) In the Heavens of Desire, says the
_Shōbō-nen-jō-kyō_, the pain of death is so great that all the agonies
of all the hells united could equal but one-sixteenth part of such
pain.[1]
[1] This statement refers only to the Heavens of Sensuous
Pleasure,—not to the Paradise of Amida, nor to those heavens into
which one enters by the Apparitional Birth. But even in the highest
and most immaterial zones of being,—in the Heavens of
Formlessness,—the cessation of effort and of the pain of effort,
involves the penalty of rebirth in a lower state of existence.
The foregoing comparison is unnecessarily strong; but the Buddhist
teaching about heaven is in substance eminently logical. The
suppression of pain—mental or physical,—in any conceivable state of
sentient existence, would necessarily involve the suppression also of
pleasure;—and certainly all progress, whether moral or material,
depends upon the power to meet and to master pain. In a
silkworm-paradise such as our mundane instincts lead us to desire, the
seraph freed from the necessity of toil, and able to satisfy his every
want at will, would lose his wings at last, and sink back to the
condition of a grub….
III
I told the substance of my revery to Niimi. He used to be a great
reader of Buddhist books.
“Well,” he said, “I was reminded of a queer Buddhist story by the
proverb that you asked me to explain,—_The silkworm-moth eyebrow of a
woman is the axe that cuts down the wisdom of man._ According to our
doctrine, the saying would be as true of life in heaven as of life upon
earth…. This is the story:—
“When Shaka[2] dwelt in this world, one of his disciples, called Nanda,
was bewitched by the beauty of a woman; and Shaka desired to save him
from the results of this illusion. So he took Nanda to a wild place in
the mountains where there were apes, and showed him a very ugly female
ape, and asked him: ‘Which is the more beautiful, Nanda, —the woman
that you love, or this female ape?’ ‘Oh, Master!’ exclaimed Nanda, ‘how
can a lovely woman be compared with an ugly ape?’ ‘Perhaps you will
presently find reason to make the comparison yourself,’ answered the
Buddha;—and instantly by supernatural power he ascended with Nanda to
the _San-Jūsan-Ten_, which is the Second of the Six Heavens of Desire.
There, within a palace of jewels, Nanda saw a multitude of heavenly
maidens celebrating some festival with music and dance; and the beauty
of the least among them incomparably exceeded that of the fairest woman
of earth. ‘O Master,’ cried Nanda, ‘what wonderful festival is this?’
‘Ask some of those people,’ responded Shaka. So Nanda questioned one of
the celestial maidens; and she said to him:—‘This festival is to
celebrate the good tidings that have been brought to us. There is now
in the human world, among the disciples of Shaka, a most excellent
youth called Nanda, who is soon to be reborn into this heaven, and to
become our bridegroom, because of his holy life. We wait for him with
rejoicing.’ This reply filled the heart of Nanda with delight. Then the
Buddha asked him: ‘Is there any one among these maidens, Nanda, equal
in beauty to the woman with whom you have been in love?’ ‘Nay, Master!’
answered Nanda; ‘even as that woman surpassed in beauty the female ape
that we saw on the mountain, so is she herself surpassed by even the
least among these.’
[2] Sâkyamuni.
“Then the Buddha immediately descended with Nanda to the depths of the
hells, and took him into a torture-chamber where myriads of men and
women were being boiled alive in great caldrons, and otherwise horribly
tormented by devils. Then Nanda found himself standing before a huge
vessel which was filled with molten metal;—and he feared and wondered
because this vessel had as yet no occupant. An idle devil sat beside
it, yawning. ‘Master,’ Nanda inquired of the Buddha, ‘for whom has this
vessel been prepared?’ ‘Ask the devil,’ answered Shaka. Nanda did so;
and the devil said to him: ‘There is a man called Nanda,—now one of
Shaka’s disciples,—about to be reborn into one of the heavens, on
account of his former good actions. But after having there indulged
himself, he is to be reborn in this hell; and his place will be in that
pot. I am waiting for him.’”[3]
[3] I give the story substantially as it was told to me; but I have
not been able to compare it with any published text. My friend says
that he has seen two Chinese versions,—one in the _Hongyō-kyō_ (?),
the other in the _Zōichi-agon-kyō_ (Ekôttarâgamas). In Mr. Henry
Clarke Warren’s _Buddhism in Translations_ (the most interesting and
valuable single volume of its kind that I have ever seen), there is a
Pali version of the legend, which differs considerably from the
above.—This Nanda, according to Mr. Warren’s work, was a prince, and
the younger half-brother of Sâkyamuni.
A Passional Karma
One of the never-failing attractions of the Tōkyō stage is the
performance, by the famous Kikugorō and his company, of the
_Botan-Dōrō_, or “Peony-Lantern.” This weird play, of which the scenes
are laid in the middle of the last century, is the dramatization of a
romance by the novelist Encho, written in colloquial Japanese, and
purely Japanese in local color, though inspired by a Chinese tale. I
went to see the play; and Kikugorō made me familiar with a new variety
of the pleasure of fear. “Why not give English readers the ghostly part
of the story?”—asked a friend who guides me betimes through the mazes
of Eastern philosophy. “It would serve to explain some popular ideas of
the supernatural which Western people know very little about. And I
could help you with the translation.”
I gladly accepted the suggestion; and we composed the following summary
of the more extraordinary portion of Enchō’s romance. Here and there we
found it necessary to condense the original narrative; and we tried to
keep close to the text only in the conversational passages,—some of
which happen to possess a particular quality of psychological interest.
—_This is the story of the Ghosts in the Romance of the
Peony-Lantern:_—
I
There once lived in the district of Ushigomé, in Yedo, a _hatamoto_[1]
called Iijima Heizayémon, whose only daughter, Tsuyu, was beautiful as
her name, which signifies “Morning Dew.” Iijima took a second wife when
his daughter was about sixteen; and, finding that O-Tsuyu could not be
happy with her mother-in-law, he had a pretty villa built for the girl
at Yanagijima, as a separate residence, and gave her an excellent
maidservant, called O-Yoné, to wait upon her.
[1] The _hatamoto_ were samurai forming the special military force of
the Shōgun. The name literally signifies “Banner-Supporters.” These
were the highest class of samurai,—not only as the immediate vassals
of the Shōgun, but as a military aristocracy.
O-Tsuyu lived happily enough in her new home until one day when the
family physician, Yamamoto Shijō, paid her a visit in company with a
young samurai named Hagiwara Shinzaburō, who resided in the Nedzu
quarter. Shinzaburō was an unusually handsome lad, and very gentle; and
the two young people fell in love with each other at sight. Even before
the brief visit was over, they contrived,—unheard by the old doctor,—to
pledge themselves to each other for life. And, at parting, O-Tsuyu
whispered to the youth,—“_Remember! If you do not come to see me again,
I shall certainly die!_”
Shinzaburō never forgot those words; and he was only too eager to see
more of O-Tsuyu. But etiquette forbade him to make the visit alone: he
was obliged to wait for some other chance to accompany the doctor, who
had promised to take him to the villa a second time. Unfortunately the
old man did not keep this promise. He had perceived the sudden
affection of O-Tsuyu; and he feared that her father would hold him
responsible for any serious results. Iijima Heizayémon had a reputation
for cutting off heads. And the more Shijō thought about the possible
consequences of his introduction of Shinzaburō at the Iijima villa, the
more he became afraid. Therefore he purposely abstained from calling
upon his young friend.
Months passed; and O-Tsuyu, little imagining the true cause of
Shinzaburō’s neglect, believed that her love had been scorned. Then she
pined away, and died. Soon afterwards, the faithful servant O-Yoné also
died, through grief at the loss of her mistress; and the two were
buried side by side in the cemetery of Shin-Banzui-In,—a temple which
still stands in the neighborhood of Dango-Zaka, where the famous
chrysanthemum-shows are yearly held.
II
Shinzaburō knew nothing of what had happened; but his disappointment
and his anxiety had resulted in a prolonged illness. He was slowly
recovering, but still very weak, when he unexpectedly received another
visit from Yamamoto Shijō. The old man made a number of plausible
excuses for his apparent neglect. Shinzaburō said to him:—“I have been
sick ever since the beginning of spring;—even now I cannot eat
anything…. Was it not rather unkind of you never to call? I thought
that we were to make another visit together to the house of the Lady
Iijima; and I wanted to take to her some little present as a return for
our kind reception. Of course I could not go by myself.”
Shijō gravely responded,—“I am very sorry to tell you that the young
lady is dead!”
“Dead!” repeated Shinzaburō, turning white,—“did you say that she is
dead?”
The doctor remained silent for a moment, as if collecting himself: then
he resumed, in the quick light tone of a man resolved not to take
trouble seriously:—
“My great mistake was in having introduced you to her; for it seems
that she fell in love with you at once. I am afraid that you must have
said something to encourage this affection—when you were in that little
room together. At all events, I saw how she felt towards you; and then
I became uneasy,—fearing that her father might come to hear of the
matter, and lay the whole blame upon me. So—to be quite frank with
you,—I decided that it would be better not to call upon you; and I
purposely stayed away for a long time. But, only a few days ago,
happening to visit Iijima’s house, I heard, to my great surprise, that
his daughter had died, and that her servant O-Yoné had also died. Then,
remembering all that had taken place, I knew that the young lady must
have died of love for you…. [_Laughing_] Ah, you are really a sinful
fellow! Yes, you are! [_Laughing_] Isn’t it a sin to have been born so
handsome that the girls die for love of you?[2] [_Seriously_] Well, we
must leave the dead to the dead. It is no use to talk further about the
matter;—all that you now can do for her is to repeat the Nembutsu[3]….
Good-bye.”
[2] Perhaps this conversation may seem strange to the Western reader;
but it is true to life. The whole of the scene is characteristically
Japanese.
[3] The invocation _Namu Amida Butsu!_ (“Hail to the Buddha
Amitâbha!”),—repeated, as a prayer, for the sake of the dead.
And the old man retired hastily,—anxious to avoid further converse
about the painful event for which he felt himself to have been
unwittingly responsible.
III
Shinzaburō long remained stupefied with grief by the news of O-Tsuyu’s
death. But as soon as he found himself again able to think clearly, he
inscribed the dead girl’s name upon a mortuary tablet, and placed the
tablet in the Buddhist shrine of his house, and set offerings before
it, and recited prayers. Every day thereafter he presented offerings,
and repeated the _Nembutsu;_ and the memory of O-Tsuyu was never absent
from his thought.
Nothing occurred to change the monotony of his solitude before the time
of the Bon,—the great Festival of the Dead,—which begins upon the
thirteenth day of the seventh month. Then he decorated his house, and
prepared everything for the festival;—hanging out the lanterns that
guide the returning spirits, and setting the food of ghosts on the
_shōryōdana_, or Shelf of Souls. And on the first evening of the Bon,
after sun-down, he kindled a small lamp before the tablet of O-Tsuyu,
and lighted the lanterns.
The night was clear, with a great moon,—and windless, and very warm.
Shinzaburō sought the coolness of his veranda. Clad only in a light
summer-robe, he sat there thinking, dreaming, sorrowing;—sometimes
fanning himself; sometimes making a little smoke to drive the
mosquitoes away. Everything was quiet. It was a lonesome neighborhood,
and there were few passers-by. He could hear only the soft rushing of a
neighboring stream, and the shrilling of night-insects.
But all at once this stillness was broken by a sound of women’s
_geta_[4] approaching—_kara-kon, kara-kon;_—and the sound drew nearer
and nearer, quickly, till it reached the live-hedge surrounding the
garden. Then Shinzaburö, feeling curious, stood on tiptoe, so as to
look over the hedge; and he saw two women passing. One, who was
carrying a beautiful lantern decorated with peony-flowers,[5] appeared
to be a servant;—the other was a slender girl of about seventeen,
wearing a long-sleeved robe embroidered with designs of
autumn-blossoms. Almost at the same instant both women turned their
faces toward Shinzaburō;—and to his utter astonishment, he recognized
O-Tsuyu and her servant O-Yoné.
[4] _Komageta_ in the original. The geta is a wooden sandal, or clog,
of which there are many varieties,—some decidedly elegant. The
_komageta_, or “pony-geta” is so-called because of the sonorous
hoof-like echo which it makes on hard ground.
[5] The sort of lantern here referred to is no longer made; and its
shape can best be understood by a glance at the picture accompanying
this story. It was totally unlike the modern domestic band-lantern,
painted with the owner’s crest; but it was not altogether unlike some
forms of lanterns still manufactured for the Festival of the Dead, and
called _Bon-dōrō_. The flowers ornamenting it were not painted: they
were artificial flowers of crêpe-silk, and were attached to the top of
the lantern.
[Illustration: The Peony Lantern]
They stopped immediately; and the girl cried out,—“Oh, how strange!…
Hagiwara Sama!”
Shinzaburō simultaneously called to the maid:—“O-Yoné! Ah, you are
O-Yoné!—I remember you very well.”
“Hagiwara Sama!” exclaimed O-Yoné in a tone of supreme amazement.
“Never could I have believed it possible!… Sir, we were told that you
had died.”
“How extraordinary!” cried Shinzaburō. “Why, I was told that both of
you were dead!”
“Ah, what a hateful story!” returned O-Yoné. “Why repeat such unlucky
words?… Who told you?”
“Please to come in,” said Shinzaburō;—“here we can talk better. The
garden-gate is open.”
So they entered, and exchanged greeting; and when Shinzaburō had made
them comfortable, he said:—
“I trust that you will pardon my discourtesy in not having called upon
you for so long a time. But Shijō, the doctor, about a month ago, told
me that you had both died.”
“So it was he who told you?” exclaimed O-Yoné. “It was very wicked of
him to say such a thing. Well, it was also Shijō who told us that _you_
were dead. I think that he wanted to deceive you,—which was not a
difficult thing to do, because you are so confiding and trustful.
Possibly my mistress betrayed her liking for you in some words which
found their way to her father’s ears; and, in that case, O-Kuni—the new
wife—might have planned to make the doctor tell you that we were dead,
so as to bring about a separation. Anyhow, when my mistress heard that
you had died, she wanted to cut off her hair immediately, and to become
a nun. But I was able to prevent her from cutting off her hair; and I
persuaded her at last to become a nun only in her heart. Afterwards her
father wished her to marry a certain young man; and she refused. Then
there was a great deal of trouble,—chiefly caused by O-Kuni;—and we
went away from the villa, and found a very small house in
Yanaka-no-Sasaki. There we are now just barely able to live, by doing a
little private work…. My mistress has been constantly repeating the
_Nembutsu_ for your sake. To-day, being the first day of the Bon, we
went to visit the temples; and we were on our way home—thus late—when
this strange meeting happened.”
“Oh, how extraordinary!” cried Shinzaburō. “Can it be true?-or is it
only a dream? Here I, too, have been constantly reciting the _Nembutsu_
before a tablet with her name upon it! Look!” And he showed them
O-Tsuyu’s tablet in its place upon the Shelf of Souls.
“We are more than grateful for your kind remembrance,” returned O-Yoné,
smiling…. “Now as for my mistress,”—she continued, turning towards
O-Tsuyu, who had all the while remained demure and silent, half-hiding
her face with her sleeve,—“as for my mistress, she actually says that
she would not mind being disowned by her father for the time of seven
existences,[6] or even being killed by him, for your sake! Come! will
you not allow her to stay here to-night?”
[6] “For the time of seven existences,”—that is to say, for the time
of seven successive lives. In Japanese drama and romance it is not
uncommon to represent a father as disowning his child “for the time of
seven lives.” Such a disowning is called _shichi-shō madé no mandō_, a
disinheritance for seven lives,—signifying that in six future lives
after the present the erring son or daughter will continue to feel the
parental displeasure.
Shinzaburō turned pale for joy. He answered in a voice trembling with
emotion:—
“Please remain; but do not speak loud—because there is a troublesome
fellow living close by,—a _ninsomi_[7] called Hakuōdō Yusai, who tells
peoples fortunes by looking at their faces. He is inclined to be
curious; and it is better that he should not know.”
[7] The profession is not yet extinct. The _ninsomi_ uses a kind of
magnifying glass (or magnifying-mirror sometimes), called _tengankyō_
or _ninsomégané_.
The two women remained that night in the house of the young samurai,
and returned to their own home a little before daybreak. And after that
night they came every nighht for seven nights,—whether the weather were
foul or fair,—always at the same hour. And Shinzaburō became more and
more attached to the girl; and the twain were fettered, each to each,
by that bond of illusion which is stronger than bands of iron.
IV
Now there was a man called Tomozō, who lived in a small cottage
adjoining Shinzaburō’s residence, Tomozō and his wife O-Miné were both
employed by Shinzaburō as servants. Both seemed to be devoted to their
young master; and by his help they were able to live in comparative
comfort.
One night, at a very late hour, Tomozō heard the voice of a woman in
his master’s apartment; and this made him uneasy. He feared that
Shinzaburō, being very gentle and affectionate, might be made the dupe
of some cunning wanton,—in which event the domestics would be the first
to suffer. He therefore resolved to watch; and on the following night
he stole on tiptoe to Shinzaburō’s dwelling, and looked through a chink
in one of the sliding shutters. By the glow of a night-lantern within
the sleeping-room, he was able to perceive that his master and a
strange woman were talking together under the mosquito-net. At first he
could not see the woman distinctly. Her back was turned to him;—he only
observed that she was very slim, and that she appeared to be very
young,—judging from the fashion of her dress and hair.[8] Putting his
ear to the chink, he could hear the conversation plainly. The woman
said:—
“And if I should be disowned by my father, would you then let me come
and live with you?”
[8] The color and form of the dress, and the style of wearing the
hair, are by Japanese custom regulated according to the age of the
woman.
Shinzaburō answered:—
“Most assuredly I would—nay, I should be glad of the chance. But there
is no reason to fear that you will ever be disowned by your father; for
you are his only daughter, and he loves you very much. What I do fear
is that some day we shall be cruelly separated.”
She responded softly:—
“Never, never could I even think of accepting any other man for my
husband. Even if our secret were to become known, and my father were to
kill me for what I have done, still—after death itself—I could never
cease to think of you. And I am now quite sure that you yourself would
not be able to live very long without me.”… Then clinging closely to
him, with her lips at his neck, she caressed him; and he returned her
caresses.
Tomozō wondered as he listened,—because the language of the woman was
not the language of a common woman, but the language of a lady of
rank.[9] Then he determined at all hazards to get one glimpse of her
face; and he crept round the house, backwards and forwards, peering
through every crack and chink. And at last he was able to see;—but
therewith an icy trembling seized him; and the hair of his head stood
up.
[9] The forms of speech used by the samurai, and other superior
classes, differed considerably from those of the popular idiom; but
these differences could not be effectively rendered into English.
For the face was the face of a woman long dead,—and the fingers
caressing were fingers of naked bone,—and of the body below the waist
there was not anything: it melted off into thinnest trailing shadow.
Where the eyes of the lover deluded saw youth and grace and beauty,
there appeared to the eyes of the watcher horror only, and the
emptiness of death. Simultaneously another woman’s figure, and a
weirder, rose up from within the chamber, and swiftly made toward the
watcher, as if discerning his presence. Then, in uttermost terror, he
fled to the dwelling of Hakuōdō Yusai, and, knocking frantically at the
doors, succeeded in arousing him.
V
Hakuōdō Yusai, the _ninsomi_, was a very old man; but in his time he
had travelled much, and he had heard and seen so many things that he
could not be easily surprised. Yet the story of the terrified Tomozō
both alarmed and amazed him. He had read in ancient Chinese books of
love between the living and the dead; but he had never believed it
possible. Now, however, he felt convinced that the statement of Tomozō
was not a falsehood, and that something very strange was really going
on in the house of Hagiwara. Should the truth prove to be what Tomozō
imagined, then the young samurai was a doomed man.
“If the woman be a ghost,”—said Yusai to the frightened servant, “—if
the woman be a ghost, your master must die very soon,—unless something
extraordinary can be done to save him. And if the woman be a ghost, the
signs of death will appear upon his face. For the spirit of the living
is _yōki_, and pure;—the spirit of the dead is _inki_, and unclean: the
one is Positive, the other Negative. He whose bride is a ghost cannot
live. Even though in his blood there existed the force of a life of one
hundred years, that force must quickly perish…. Still, I shall do all
that I can to save Hagiwara Sama. And in the meantime, Tomozō, say
nothing to any other person,—not even to your wife,—about this matter.
At sunrise I shall call upon your master.”
VI
When questioned next morning by Yusai, Shinzaburō at first attempted to
deny that any women had been visiting the house; but finding this
artless policy of no avail, and perceiving that the old man’s purpose
was altogether unselfish, he was finally persuaded to acknowledge what
had really occurred, and to give his reasons for wishing to keep the
matter a secret. As for the lady Iijima, he intended, he said, to make
her his wife as soon as possible.
“Oh, madness!” cried Yusai,—losing all patience in the intensity of his
alarm. “Know, sir, that the people who have been coming here, night
after night, are dead! Some frightful delusion is upon you!… Why, the
simple fact that you long supposed O-Tsuyu to be dead, and repeated the
_Nembutsu_ for her, and made offerings before her tablet, is itself the
proof!… The lips of the dead have touched you!—the hands of the dead
have caressed you!… Even at this moment I see in your face the signs of
death—and you will not believe!… Listen to me now, sir,—I beg of
you,—if you wish to save yourself: otherwise you have less than twenty
days to live. They told you—those people—that they were residing in the
district of Shitaya, in Yanaka-no-Sasaki. Did you ever visit them at
that place? No!—of course you did not! Then go to-day,—as soon as you
can,—to Yanaka-no-Sasaki, and try to find their home!…”
And having uttered this counsel with the most vehement earnestness,
Hakuōdō Yusai abruptly took his departure.
Shinzaburō, startled though not convinced, resolved after a moment’s
reflection to follow the advice of the _ninsomi_, and to go to Shitaya.
It was yet early in the morning when he reached the quarter of
Yanaka-no-Sasaki, and began his search for the dwelling of O-Tsuyu. He
went through every street and side-street, read all the names inscribed
at the various entrances, and made inquiries whenever an opportunity
presented itself. But he could not find anything resembling the little
house mentioned by O-Yoné; and none of the people whom he questioned
knew of any house in the quarter inhabited by two single women. Feeling
at last certain that further research would be useless, he turned
homeward by the shortest way, which happened to lead through the
grounds of the temple Shin-Banzui-In.
Suddenly his attention was attracted by two new tombs, placed side by
side, at the rear of the temple. One was a common tomb, such as might
have been erected for a person of humble rank: the other was a large
and handsome monument; and hanging before it was a beautiful
peony-lantern, which had probably been left there at the time of the
Festival of the Dead. Shinzaburō remembered that the peony-lantern
carried by O-Yoné was exactly similar; and the coincidence impressed
him as strange. He looked again at the tombs; but the tombs explained
nothing. Neither bore any personal name,—only the Buddhist _kaimyō_, or
posthumous appellation. Then he determined to seek information at the
temple. An acolyte stated, in reply to his questions, that the large
tomb had been recently erected for the daughter of Iijima Heizayémon,
the _hatamoto_ of Ushigomé; and that the small tomb next to it was that
of her servant O-Yoné, who had died of grief soon after the young
lady’s funeral.
Immediately to Shinzaburö’s memory there recurred, with another and
sinister meaning, the words of O-Yoné:—“_We went away, and found a very
small house in Yanaka-no-Sasaki. There we are now just barely able to
live—by doing a little private work_….” Here was indeed the very small
house,—and in Yanaka-no-Sasaki. But the little _private work…?_
Terror-stricken, the samurai hastened with all speed to the house of
Yusai, and begged for his counsel and assistance. But Yusai declared
himself unable to be of any aid in such a case. All that he could do
was to send Shinzaburō to the high-priest Ryōseki, of Shin-Banzui-In,
with a letter praying for immediate religious help.
VII
The high-priest Ryōseki was a learned and a holy man. By spiritual
vision he was able to know the secret of any sorrow, and the nature of
the karma that had caused it. He heard unmoved the story of Shinzaburō,
and said to him:—
“A very great danger now threatens you, because of an error committed
in one of your former states of existence. The karma that binds you to
the dead is very strong; but if I tried to explain its character, you
would not be able to understand. I shall therefore tell you only
this,—that the dead person has no desire to injure you out of hate,
feels no enmity towards you: she is influenced, on the contrary, by the
most passionate affection for you. Probably the girl has been in love
with you from a time long preceding your present life,—from a time of
not less than three or four past existences; and it would seem that,
although necessarily changing her form and condition at each succeeding
birth, she has not been able to cease from following after you.
Therefore it will not be an easy thing to escape from her influence….
But now I am going to lend you this powerful _mamori_.[10] It is a pure
gold image of that Buddha called the Sea-Sounding
Tathâgata—_Kai-On-Nyōrai_,—because his preaching of the Law sounds
through the world like the sound of the sea. And this little image is
especially a _shiryō-yoké_,[11]—which protects the living from the
dead. This you must wear, in its covering, next to your body,—under the
girdle…. Besides, I shall presently perform in the temple, a
_segaki_-service[12] for the repose of the troubled spirit…. And here
is a holy sutra, called _Ubō-Darani-Kyō_, or “Treasure-Raining
Sûtra”[13] you must be careful to recite it every night in your
house—without fail…. Furthermore I shall give you this package of
_o-fuda_;[14]—you must paste one of them over every opening of your
house,—no matter how small. If you do this, the power of the holy texts
will prevent the dead from entering. But—whatever may happen—do not
fail to recite the sutra.”
[10] The Japanese word _mamori_ has significations at least as
numerous as those attaching to our own term “amulet.” It would be
impossible, in a mere footnote, even to suggest the variety of
Japanese religious objects to which the name is given. In this
instance, the _mamori_ is a very small image, probably enclosed in a
miniature shrine of lacquer-work or metal, over which a silk cover is
drawn. Such little images were often worn by _samurai_ on the person.
I was recently shown a miniature figure of Kwannon, in an iron case,
which had been carried by an officer through the Satsuma war. He
observed, with good reason, that it had probably saved his life; for
it had stopped a bullet of which the dent was plainly visible.
[11] From _shiryō_, a ghost, and _yokeru_, to exclude. The Japanese
have, two kinds of ghosts proper in their folk-lore: the spirits of
the dead, _shiryō_; and the spirits of the living, _ikiryō_. A house
or a person may be haunted by an _ikiryō_ as well as by a _shiryō_.
[12] A special service,—accompanying offerings of food, etc., to those
dead having no living relatives or friends to care for them,—is thus
termed. In this case, however, the service would be of a particular
and exceptional kind.
[13] The name would be more correctly written _Ubō-Darani-Kyō_. It is
the Japanese pronunciation of the title of a very short sutra
translated out of Sanscrit into Chinese by the Indian priest
Amoghavajra, probably during the eighth century. The Chinese text
contains transliterations of some mysterious Sanscrit
words,—apparently talismanic words,—like those to be seen in Kern’s
translation of the Saddharma-Pundarîka, ch. xxvi.
[14] _O-fuda_ is the general name given to religious texts used as
charms or talismans. They are sometimes stamped or burned upon wood,
but more commonly written or printed upon narrow strips of paper.
_O-fuda_ are pasted above house-entrances, on the walls of rooms, upon
tablets placed in household shrines, etc., etc. Some kinds are worn
about the person;—others are made into pellets, and swallowed as
spiritual medicine. The text of the larger _o-fuda_ is often
accompanied by curious pictures or symbolic illustrations.
Shinzaburō humbly thanked the high-priest; and then, taking with him
the image, the sutra, and the bundle of sacred texts, he made all haste
to reach his home before the hour of sunset.
VIII
With Yusai’s advice and help, Shinzaburō was able before dark to fix
the holy texts over all the apertures of his dwelling. Then the
_ninsomi_ returned to his own house,—leaving the youth alone.
Night came, warm and clear. Shinzaburō made fast the doors, bound the
precious amulet about his waist, entered his mosquito-net, and by the
glow of a night-lantern began to recite the _Ubō-Darani-Kyō_. For a
long time he chanted the words, comprehending little of their
meaning;—then he tried to obtain some rest. But his mind was still too
much disturbed by the strange events of the day. Midnight passed; and
no sleep came to him. At last he heard the boom of the great
temple-bell of Dentsu-In announcing the eighth hour.[15]
[15] According to the old Japanese way of counting time, this
_yatsudoki_ or eighth hour was the same as our two o’clock in the
morning. Each Japanese hour was equal to two European hours, so that
there were only six hours instead of our twelve; and these six hours
were counted backwards in the order,—9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4. Thus the ninth
hour corresponded to our midday, or midnight; half-past nine to our
one o’clock; eight to our two o’clock. Two o’clock in the morning,
also called “the Hour of the Ox,” was the Japanese hour of ghosts and
goblins.
It ceased; and Shinzaburō suddenly heard the sound of _geta_
approaching from the old direction,—but this time more slowly:
_karan-koron, karan-koron!_ At once a cold sweat broke over his
forehead. Opening the sutra hastily, with trembling hand, he began
again to recite it aloud. The steps came nearer and nearer,—reached the
live hedge,—stopped! Then, strange to say, Shinzaburō felt unable to
remain under his mosquito-net: something stronger even than his fear
impelled him to look; and, instead of continuing to recite the
_Ubō-Darani-Kyō_, he foolishly approached the shutters, and through a
chink peered out into the night. Before the house he saw O-Tsuyu
standing, and O-Yoné with the peony-lantern; and both of them were
gazing at the Buddhist texts pasted above the entrance. Never
before—not even in what time she lived—had O-Tsuyu appeared so
beautiful; and Shinzaburō felt his heart drawn towards her with a power
almost resistless. But the terror of death and the terror of the
unknown restrained; and there went on within him such a struggle
between his love and his fear that he became as one suffering in the
body the pains of the Shō-netsu hell.[16]
[16] _En-netsu_ or _Shō-netsu_ (Sanscrit “Tapana”) is the sixth of the
Eight Hot Hells of Japanese Buddhism. One day of life in this hell is
equal in duration to thousands (some say millions) of human years.
Presently he heard the voice of the maid-servant, saying:—
“My dear mistress, there is no way to enter. The heart of Hagiwara Sama
must have changed. For the promise that he made last night has been
broken; and the doors have been made fast to keep us out…. We cannot go
in to-night…. It will be wiser for you to make up your mind not to
think any more about him, because his feeling towards you has certainly
changed. It is evident that he does not want to see you. So it will be
better not to give yourself any more trouble for the sake of a man
whose heart is so unkind.”
But the girl answered, weeping:—
“Oh, to think that this could happen after the pledges which we made to
each other!… Often I was told that the heart of a man changes as
quickly as the sky of autumn;—yet surely the heart of Hagiwara Sama
cannot be so cruel that he should really intend to exclude me in this
way!… Dear Yone, please find some means of taking me to him…. Unless
you do, I will never, never go home again.”
Thus she continued to plead, veiling her face with her long
sleeves,—and very beautiful she looked, and very touching; but the fear
of death was strong upon her lover.
O-Yoné at last made answer,—“My dear young lady, why will you trouble
your mind about a man who seems to be so cruel?… Well, let us see if
there be no way to enter at the back of the house: come with me!”
And taking O-Tsuyu by the hand, she led her away toward the rear of the
dwelling; and there the two disappeared as suddenly as the light
disappears when the flame of a lamp is blown out.
IX
Night after night the shadows came at the Hour of the Ox; and nightly
Shinzaburō heard the weeping of O-Tsuyu. Yet he believed himself
saved,—little imagining that his doom had already been decided by the
character of his dependents.
Tomozō had promised Yusai never to speak to any other person—not even
to O-Miné—of the strange events that were taking place. But Tomozō was
not long suffered by the haunters to rest in peace. Night after night
O-Yoné entered into his dwelling, and roused him from his sleep, and
asked him to remove the _o-fuda_ placed over one very small window at
the back of his master’s house. And Tomozō, out of fear, as often
promised her to take away the _o-fuda_ before the next sundown; but
never by day could he make up his mind to remove it,—believing that
evil was intended to Shinzaburō. At last, in a night of storm, O-Yoné
startled him from slumber with a cry of reproach, and stooped above his
pillow, and said to him: “Have a care how you trifle with us! If, by
to-morrow night, you do not take away that text, you shall learn how I
can hate!” And she made her face so frightful as she spoke that Tomozō
nearly died of terror.
O-Miné, the wife of Tomozō, had never till then known of these visits:
even to her husband they had seemed like bad dreams. But on this
particular night it chanced that, waking suddenly, she heard the voice
of a woman talking to Tomozō. Almost in the same moment the talk-ing
ceased; and when O-Miné looked about her, she saw, by the light of the
night-lamp, only her husband,—shuddering and white with fear. The
stranger was gone; the doors were fast: it seemed impossible that
anybody could have entered. Nevertheless the jealousy of the wife had
been aroused; and she began to chide and to question Tomozō in such a
manner that he thought himself obliged to betray the secret, and to
explain the terrible dilemma in which he had been placed.
Then the passion of O-Miné yielded to wonder and alarm; but she was a
subtle woman, and she devised immediately a plan to save her husband by
the sacrifice of her master. And she gave Tomozō a cunning
counsel,—telling him to make conditions with the dead.
They came again on the following night at the Hour of the Ox; and
O-Miné hid herself on hearing the sound of their coming,—_karan-koron,
karan-koron!_ But Tomozō went out to meet them in the dark, and even
found courage to say to them what his wife had told him to say:—
“It is true that I deserve your blame;—but I had no wish to cause you
anger. The reason that the _o-fuda_ has not been taken away is that my
wife and I are able to live only by the help of Hagiwara Sama, and that
we cannot expose him to any danger without bringing misfortune upon
ourselves. But if we could obtain the sum of a hundred _ryō_ in gold,
we should be able to please you, because we should then need no help
from anybody. Therefore if you will give us a hundred _ryō_, I can take
the _o-fuda_ away without being afraid of losing our only means of
support.”
When he had uttered these words, O-Yoné and O-Tsuyu looked at each
other in silence for a moment. Then O-Yoné said:—
“Mistress, I told you that it was not right to trouble this man, —as we
have no just cause of ill will against him. But it is certainly useless
to fret yourself about Hagiwara Sama, because his heart has changed
towards you. Now once again, my dear young lady, let me beg you not to
think any more about him!”
But O-Tsuyu, weeping, made answer:—
“Dear Yone, whatever may happen, I cannot possibly keep myself from
thinking about him! You know that you can get a hundred _ryō_ to have
the _o-fuda_ taken off…. Only once more, I pray, dear Yone!—only once
more bring me face to face with Hagiwara Sama,—I beseech you!” And
hiding her face with her sleeve, she thus continued to plead.
“Oh! why will you ask me to do these things?” responded O-Yoné. “You
know very well that I have no money. But since you will persist in this
whim of yours, in spite of all that I can say, I suppose that I must
try to find the money somehow, and to bring it here to-morrow night….”
Then, turning to the faithless Tomozō, she said:—“Tomozō, I must tell
you that Hagiwara Sama now wears upon his body a _mamori_ called by the
name of _Kai-On-Nyōrai_, and that so long as he wears it we cannot
approach him. So you will have to get that _mamori_ away from him, by
some means or other, as well as to remove the _o-fuda_.”
Tomozō feebly made answer:—
“That also I can do, if you will promise to bring me the hundred
_ryō_.”
“Well, mistress,” said O-Yoné, “you will wait,—will you not,—until
to-morrow night?”
“Oh, dear Yoné!” sobbed the other,—“have we to go back to-night again
without seeing Hagiwara Sama? Ah! it is cruel!”
And the shadow of the mistress, weeping, was led away by the shadow of
the maid.
X
Another day went, and another night came, and the dead came with it.
But this time no lamentation was heard without the house of Hagiwara;
for the faithless servant found his reward at the Hour of the Ox, and
removed the _o-fuda_. Moreover he had been able, while his master was
at the bath, to steal from its case the golden _mamori_, and to
substitute for it an image of copper; and he had buried the
_Kai-On-Nyōrai_ in a desolate field. So the visitants found nothing to
oppose their entering. Veiling their faces with their sleeves they rose
and passed, like a streaming of vapor, into the little window from over
which the holy text had been torn away. But what happened thereafter
within the house Tomozō never knew.
The sun was high before he ventured again to approach his master’s
dwelling, and to knock upon the sliding-doors. For the first time in
years he obtained no response; and the silence made him afraid.
Repeatedly he called, and received no answer. Then, aided by O-Miné, he
succeeded in effecting an entrance and making his way alone to the
sleeping-room, where he called again in vain. He rolled back the
rumbling shutters to admit the light; but still within the house there
was no stir. At last he dared to lift a corner of the mosquito-net. But
no sooner had he looked beneath than he fled from the house, with a cry
of horror.
Shinzaburō was dead—hideously dead;—and his face was the face of a man
who had died in the uttermost agony of fear;—and lying beside him in
the bed were the bones of a woman! And the bones of the arms, and the
bones of the hands, clung fast about his neck.
XI
Hakuōdō Yusai, the fortune-teller, went to view the corpse at the
prayer of the faithless Tomozō. The old man was terrified and
astonished at the spectacle, but looked about him with a keen eye. He
soon perceived that the _o-fuda_ had been taken from the little window
at the back of the house; and on searching the body of Shinzaburō, he
discovered that the golden _mamori_ had been taken from its wrapping,
and a copper image of Fudō put in place of it. He suspected Tomozō of
the theft; but the whole occurrence was so very extraordinary that he
thought it prudent to consult with the priest Ryōseki before taking
further action. Therefore, after having made a careful examination of
the premises, he betook himself to the temple Shin-Banzui-In, as
quickly as his aged limbs could bear him.
Ryōseki, without waiting to hear the purpose of the old man’s visit, at
once invited him into a private apartment.
“You know that you are always welcome here,” said Ryōseki. “Please seat
yourself at ease…. Well, I am sorry to tell you that Hagiwara Sama is
dead.”
Yusai wonderingly exclaimed:—“Yes, he is dead;—but how did you learn of
it?”
The priest responded:—
“Hagiwara Sama was suffering from the results of an evil karma; and his
attendant was a bad man. What happened to Hagiwara Sama was
unavoidable;—his destiny had been determined from a time long before
his last birth. It will be better for you not to let your mind be
troubled by this event.”
Yusai said:—
“I have heard that a priest of pure life may gain power to see into the
future for a hundred years; but truly this is the first time in my
existence that I have had proof of such power…. Still, there is another
matter about which I am very anxious….”
“You mean,” interrupted Ryōseki, “the stealing of the holy _mamori_,
the _Kai-On-Nyōrai_. But you must not give yourself any concern about
that. The image has been buried in a field; and it will be found there
and returned to me during the eighth month of the coming year. So
please do not be anxious about it.”
More and more amazed, the old _ninsomi_ ventured to observe:—
“I have studied the _In-Yō_,[17] and the science of divination; and I
make my living by telling peoples’ fortunes;—but I cannot possibly
understand how you know these things.”
[17] The Male and Female principles of the universe, the Active and
Passive forces of Nature. Yusai refers here to the old Chinese
nature-philosophy,—better known to Western readers by the name
FENG-SHUI.
Ryōseki answered gravely:—
“Never mind how I happen to know them…. I now want to speak to you
about Hagiwara’s funeral. The House of Hagiwara has its own
family-cemetery, of course; but to bury him there would not be proper.
He must be buried beside O-Tsuyu, the Lady Iijima; for his
karma-relation to her was a very deep one. And it is but right that you
should erect a tomb for him at your own cost, because you have been
indebted to him for many favors.”
Thus it came to pass that Shinzaburō was buried beside O-Tsuyu, in the
cemetery of Shin-Banzui-In, in Yanaka-no-Sasaki.
—_Here ends the story of the Ghosts in the Romance of the
Peony-Lantern._—
My friend asked me whether the story had interested me; and I answered
by telling him that I wanted to go to the cemetery of
Shin-Banzui-In,—so as to realize more definitely the local color of the
author’s studies.
“I shall go with you at once,” he said. “But what did you think of the
personages?”
“To Western thinking,” I made answer, “Shinzaburō is a despicable
creature. I have been mentally comparing him with the true lovers of
our old ballad-literature. They were only too glad to follow a dead
sweetheart into the grave; and nevertheless, being Christians, they
believed that they had only one human life to enjoy in this world. But
Shinzaburō was a Buddhist,—with a million lives behind him and a
million lives before him; and he was too selfish to give up even one
miserable existence for the sake of the girl that came back to him from
the dead. Then he was even more cowardly than selfish. Although a
samurai by birth and training, he had to beg a priest to save him from
ghosts. In every way he proved himself contemptible; and O-Tsuyu did
quite right in choking him to death.”
“From the Japanese point of view, likewise,” my friend responded,
“Shinzaburō is rather contemptible. But the use of this weak character
helped the author to develop incidents that could not otherwise,
perhaps, have been so effectively managed. To my thinking, the only
attractive character in the story is that of O-Yoné: type of the
old-time loyal and loving servant,—intelligent, shrewd, full of
resource,—faithful not only unto death, but beyond death…. Well, let us
go to Shin-Banzui-In.”
We found the temple uninteresting, and the cemetery an abomination of
desolation. Spaces once occupied by graves had been turned into
potato-patches. Between were tombs leaning at all angles out of the
perpendicular, tablets made illegible by scurf, empty pedestals,
shattered water-tanks, and statues of Buddhas without heads or hands.
Recent rains had soaked the black soil,—leaving here and there small
pools of slime about which swarms of tiny frogs were hopping.
Everything—excepting the potato-patches—seemed to have been neglected
for years. In a shed just within the gate, we observed a woman cooking;
and my companion presumed to ask her if she knew anything about the
tombs described in the Romance of the Peony-Lantern.
“Ah! the tombs of O-Tsuyu and O-Yoné?” she responded, smiling;—“you
will find them near the end of the first row at the back of the
temple—next to the statue of Jizo.”
Surprises of this kind I had met with elsewhere in Japan.
We picked our way between the rain-pools and between the green ridges
of young potatoes,—whose roots were doubtless feeding on the sub-stance
of many another O-Tsuyu and O-Yoné;—and we reached at last two
lichen-eaten tombs of which the inscriptions seemed almost obliterated.
Beside the larger tomb was a statue of Jizo, with a broken nose.
“The characters are not easy to make out,” said my friend—“but wait!”….
He drew from his sleeve a sheet of soft white paper, laid it over the
inscription, and began to rub the paper with a lump of clay. As he did
so, the characters appeared in white on the blackened surface.
“_Eleventh day, third month—Rat, Elder Brother, Fire—Sixth year of
Horéki_ [A. D. 1756].’… This would seem to be the grave of some
innkeeper of Nedzu, named Kichibei. Let us see what is on the other
monument.”
With a fresh sheet of paper he presently brought out the text of a
kaimyō, and read,—
“_En-myō-In, Hō-yō-I-tei-ken-shi, Hō-ni’:—‘Nun-of-the-Law, Illustrious,
Pure-of-heart-and-will, Famed-in-the-Law,—inhabiting the
Mansion-of-the-Preaching-of-Wonder._’…. The grave of some Buddhist
nun.”
“What utter humbug!” I exclaimed. “That woman was only making fun of
us.”
“Now,” my friend protested, “you are unjust to the, woman! You came
here because you wanted a sensation; and she tried her very best to
please you. You did not suppose that ghost-story was true, did you?”
Footprints of the Buddha
I
I was recently surprised to find, in Anderson’s catalogue of Japanese
and Chinese paintings in the British Museum, this remarkable
statement:—“It is to be noted that in Japan the figure of the Buddha is
never represented by the feet, or pedestal alone, as in the Amravati
remains, and many other Indian art-relics.” As a matter of fact the
representation is not even rare in Japan. It is to be found not only
upon stone monuments, but also in religious paintings,—especially
certain kakemono suspended in temples. These kakemono usually display
the footprints upon a very large scale, with a multitude of mystical
symbols and characters. The sculptures may be less common; but in Tōkyō
alone there are a number of _Butsu-soku-séki_, or “Buddha-foot stones,”
which I have seen,—and probably several which I have not seen. There is
one at the temple of Ekō-In, near Ryōgoku-bashi; one at the temple of
Denbō-In, in Koishikawa; one at the temple of Denbō-In, in Asakusa; and
a beautiful example at Zōjōji in Shiba. These are not cut out of a
single block, but are composed of fragments cemented into the irregular
traditional shape, and capped with a heavy slab of Nebukawa granite, on
the polished surface of which the design is engraved in lines about
one-tenth of an inch in depth. I should judge the average height of
these pedestals to be about two feet four inches, and their greatest
diameter about three feet. Around the footprints there are carved (in
most of the examples) twelve little bunches of leaves and buds of the
_Bodai-jū_ (“Bodhidruma”), or Bodhi-tree of Buddhist legend. In all
cases the footprint design is about the same; but the monuments are
different in quality and finish. That of Zōjōji,—with figures of
divinities cut in low relief on its sides,—is the most ornate and
costly of the four. The specimen at Ekō-In is very poor and plain.
The first _Butsu-soku-séki_ made in Japan was that erected at Tōdaiji,
in Nara. It was designed after a similar monument in China, said to be
the faithful copy of an Indian original. Concerning this Indian
original, the following tradition is given in an old Buddhist
book:[1]—“In a temple of the province of Makada [_Maghada_] there is a
great stone. The Buddha once trod upon this stone; and the prints of
the soles of his feet remain upon its surface. The length of the
impressions is one foot and eight inches,[2] and the width of them a
little more than six inches. On the sole-part of each footprint there
is the impression of a wheel; and upon each of the prints of the ten
toes there is a flower-like design, which sometimes radiates light.
When the Buddha felt that the time of his Nirvâna was approaching, he
went to Kushina [_Kusinârâ_], and there stood upon that stone. He stood
with his face to the south. Then he said to his disciple Anan
[_Ânanda_]: ‘In this place I leave the impression of my feet, to remain
for a last token. Although a king of this country will try to destroy
the impression, it can never be entirely destroyed.’ And indeed it has
not been destroyed unto this day. Once a king who hated Buddhism caused
the top of the stone to be pared off, so as to remove the impression;
but after the surface had been removed, the footprints reappeared upon
the stone.”
[1] The Chinese title is pronounced by Japanese as _Sei-iki-ki_.
“Sei-iki”(the Country of the West) was the old Japanese name for
India; and thus the title might be rendered, “The Book about India.” I
suppose this is the work known to Western scholars as _Si-yu-ki_.
[2] “One _shaku_ and eight _sun_.” But the Japanese foot and inch are
considerably longer than the English.
Concerning the virtue of the representation of the footprints of the
Buddha, there is sometimes quoted a text from the
_Kwan-butsu-sanmai-kyō_ [“Buddha-dhyâna-samâdhi-sâgara-sûtra”], thus
translated for me:—“In that time Shaka [“Sâkyamuni”] lifted up his
foot…. When the Buddha lifted up his foot all could perceive upon the
sole of it the appearance of a wheel of a thousand spokes…. And Shaka
said: ‘Whosoever beholds the sign upon the sole of my foot shall be
purified from all his faults. Even he who beholds the sign after my
death shall be delivered from all the evil results of all his errors.”
Various other texts of Japanese Buddhism affirm that whoever looks upon
the footprints of the Buddha “shall be freed from the bonds of error,
and conducted upon the Way of Enlightenment.”
[Illustration: S’rîpâda-tracing at Dentsu-In, Koishikawa, Tōkyō]
An outline of the footprints as engraved on one of the Japanese
pedestals[3] should have some interest even for persons familiar with
Indian sculptures of the S’rîpâda. The double-page drawing,
accompanying this paper, and showing both footprints, has been made
after the tracing at Dentsu-In, where the footprints have the full
legendary dimension, It will be observed that there are only seven
emblems: these are called in Japan the _Shichi-Sō_, or “Seven
Appearances.” I got some information about them from the
_Shō-Ekō-Hō-Kwan_,—a book used by the Jodo sect. This book also
contains rough woodcuts of the footprints; and one of them I reproduce
here for the purpose of calling attention to the curious form of the
emblems upon the toes. They are said to be modifications of the
_manji_, or svastikâ, but I doubt it. In the
_Butsu-soku-séki_-tracings, the corresponding figures suggest the
“flower-like design” mentioned in the tradition of the Maghada stone;
while the symbols in the book-print suggest fire. Indeed their outline
so much resembles the conventional flamelet-design of Buddhist
decoration, that I cannot help thinking them originally intended to
indicate the traditional luminosity of the footprints. Moreover, there
is a text in the book called _Hō-Kai-Shidai_ that lends support to this
supposition:—“The sole of the foot of the Buddha is flat,—like the base
of a toilet-stand…. Upon it are lines forming the appearance of a wheel
of a thousand spokes…. The toes are slender, round, long, straight,
graceful, _and somewhat luminous_.”
[3] A monument at Nara exhibits the _S’rîpâda_ in a form differing
considerably from the design upon the Tōkyō pedestals.
[Illustration: Left: S’rîpâda showing the svastikâ (From the
Bukkyō-Hyakkwa-Zensho)
Right: (From the Shō-Ekō-Hō-Kwan)]
The explanation of the Seven Appearances which is given by the
_Shō-Ekō-Hō-Kwan_ cannot be called satisfactory; but it is not without
interest in relation to Japanese popular Buddhism. The emblems are
considered in the following order:—
I.—_The Svastikâ_. The figure upon each toe is said to be a
modification of the _manji_;[4] and although I doubt whether this is
always the case, I have observed that on some of the large kakémono
representing the footprints, the emblem really _is_ the svastikâ,—not a
flamelet nor a flower-shape.[5] The Japanese commentator explains the
svastikâ as a symbol of “everlasting bliss.”
[4] Lit.: “The thousand-character” sign.
[5] On some monuments and drawings there is a sort of disk made by a
single line in spiral, on each toe,—together with the image of a small
wheel.
II.—_The Fish_ (_Gyo_). The fish signifies freedom from all restraints.
As in the water a fish moves easily in any direction, so in the
Buddha-state the fully-emancipated knows no restraints or obstructions.
III.—_The Diamond-Mace_ (Jap. _Kongō-sho;_—Sansc. “Vadjra”). Explained
as signifying the divine force that “strikes and breaks all the lusts
(_bonnō_) of the world.”
IV.—_The Conch-Shell_ (Jap. “_Hora_”) or _Trumpet_. Emblem of the
preaching of the Law. The book _Shin-zoku-butsu-ji-hen_ calls it the
symbol of the voice of the Buddha. The _Dai-hi-kyō_ calls it the token
of the preaching and of the power of the Mahayana doctrine. The
_Dai-Nichi-Kyō_ says:—” At the sound of the blowing of the shell, all
the heavenly deities are filled with delight, and come to hear the
Law.”
V.—_The Flower-Vase_ (Jap. “_Hanagamé_”). Emblem of _murō_,—a mystical
word which might be literally rendered as “not-leaking,”—signifying
that condition of supreme intelligence triumphant over birth and death.
VI.—_The Wheel-of-a-Thousand-Spokes_ (Sansc. “Tchakra “). This emblem,
called in Japanese _Senfuku-rin-sō_, is curiously explained by various
quotations. The _Hokké-Monku_ says:—“The effect of a wheel is to crush
something; and the effect of the Buddha’s preaching is to crush all
delusions, errors, doubts, and superstitions. Therefore preaching the
doctrine is called, ‘turning the Wheel.’”… The _Sei-Ri-Ron_ says: “Even
as the common wheel has its spokes and its hub, so in Buddhism there
are many branches of the _Hasshi Shōdo_ (‘Eight-fold Path,’ or eight
rules of conduct).”
VII.—_The Crown of Brahmâ_. Under the heel of the Buddha is the
Treasure-Crown (_Hō-Kwan_) of Brahmâ (_Bon-Ten-O_),—in symbol of the
Buddha’s supremacy above the gods.
But I think that the inscriptions upon any of these _Butsu-soku-séki_
will be found of more significance than the above imperfect attempts at
an explanation of the emblems. The inscriptions upon the monument at
Dentsu-In are typical. On different sides of the structure,—near the
top, and placed by rule so as to face certain points of the
compass,—there are engraved five Sanscrit characters which are symbols
of the Five Elemental Buddhas, together with scriptural and
commemorative texts. These latter have been translated for me as
follows:—
The HO-KO-HON-NYO-KYO says:—“In that time, from beneath his feet, the
Buddha radiated a light having the appearance of a wheel of a thousand
spokes. And all who saw that radiance became strictly upright, and
obtained the Supreme Enlightenment.”
The KWAN-BUTSU-SANMAI-KYO says:—“Whosoever looks upon the footprints of
the Buddha shall be freed from the results even of innumerable
thousands of imperfections.”
The BUTSU-SETSU-MU-RYO-JU-KYO says:—“In the land that the Buddha treads
in journeying, there is not even one person in all the multitude of the
villages who is not benefited. Then throughout the world there is peace
and good will. The sun and the moon shine clear and bright. Wind and
rain come only at a suitable time. Calamity and pestilence cease. The
country prospers; the people are free from care. Weapons become
useless. All men reverence religion, and regulate their conduct in all
matters with earnestness and modesty.”
[Commemorative Text.]
—The Fifth Month of the Eighteenth Year of Meiji, all the priests of
this temple made and set up this pedestal-stone, bearing the likeness
of the footprints of the Buddha, and placed the same within the main
court of Dentsu-In, in order that the seed of holy enlightenment might
be sown for future time, and for the sake of the advancement of
Buddhism.
TAIJO, priest,—being the sixty-sixth chief-priest by succession of this
temple,—has respectfully composed.
JUNYU, the minor priest, has reverentially inscribed.
II
Strange facts crowd into memory as one contemplates those graven
footprints,—footprints giant-seeming, yet less so than the human
personality of which they remain the symbol. Twenty-four hundred years
ago, out of solitary meditation upon the pain and the mystery of being,
the mind of an Indian pilgrim brought forth the highest truth ever
taught to men, and in an era barren of science anticipated the
uttermost knowledge of our present evolutional philosophy regarding the
secret unity of life, the endless illusions of matter and of mind, and
the birth and death of universes. He, by pure reason,—and he alone
before our time,—found answers of worth to the questions of the Whence,
the Whither, and the Why;—and he made with these answers another and a
nobler faith than the creed of his fathers. He spoke, and returned to
his dust; and the people worshipped the prints of his dead feet,
because of the love that he had taught them. Thereafter waxed and waned
the name of Alexander, and the power of Rome and the might of
Islam;—nations arose and vanished;—cities grew and were not;—the
children of another civilization, vaster than Romes, begirdled the
earth with conquest, and founded far-off empires, and came at last to
rule in the land of that pilgrim’s birth. And these, rich in the wisdom
of four and twenty centuries, wondered at the beauty of his message,
and caused all that he had said and done to be written down anew in
languages unborn at the time when he lived and taught. Still burn his
footprints in the East; and still the great West, marvelling, follows
their gleam to seek the Supreme Enlightenment. Even thus, of old,
Milinda the king followed the way to the house of Nagasena,—at first
only to question, after the subtle method of the Greeks; yet, later, to
accept with noble reverence the nobler method of the Master.
Ululation
She is lean as a wolf, and very old,—the white bitch that guards my
gate at night. She played with most of the young men and women of the
neighborhood when they were boys and girls. I found her in charge of my
present dwelling on the day that I came to occupy it. She had guarded
the place, I was told, for a long succession of prior
tenants—apparently with no better reason than that she had been born in
the woodshed at the back of the house. Whether well or ill treated she
had served all occupants faultlessly as a watch. The question of food
as wages had never seriously troubled her, because most of the families
of the street daily contributed to her support.
She is gentle and silent,—silent at least by day; and in spite of her
gaunt ugliness, her pointed ears, and her somewhat unpleasant eyes,
everybody is fond of her. Children ride on her back, and tease her at
will; but although she has been known to make strange men feel
uncomfortable, she never growls at a child. The reward of her patient
good-nature is the friendship of the community. When the dog-killers
come on their bi-annual round, the neighbors look after her interests.
Once she was on the very point of being officially executed when the
wife of the smith ran to the rescue, and pleaded successfully with the
policeman superintending the massacres. “Put somebody’s name on the
dog,” said the latter: “then it will be safe. Whose dog is it?” That
question proved hard to answer. The dog was everybody’s and
nobody’s—welcome everywhere but owned nowhere. “But where does it
stay?” asked the puzzled constable. “It stays,” said the smith’s wife,
“in the house of the foreigner.” “Then let the foreigner’s name be put
upon the dog,” suggested the policeman.
Accordingly I had my name painted on her back in big Japanese
characters. But the neighbors did not think that she was sufficiently
safeguarded by a single name. So the priest of Kobudera painted the
name of the temple on her left side, in beautiful Chinese text; and the
smith put the name of his shop on her right side; and the
vegetable-seller put on her breast the ideographs for
“eight-hundred,”—which represent the customary abbreviation of the word
yaoya (vegetable-seller),—any yaoya being supposed to sell eight
hundred or more different things. Consequently she is now a very
curious-looking dog; but she is well protected by all that calligraphy.
I have only one fault to find with her: she howls at night. Howling is
one of the few pathetic pleasures of her existence. At first I tried to
frighten her out of the habit; but finding that she refused to take me
seriously, I concluded to let her howl. It would have been monstrous to
beat her.
Yet I detest her howl. It always gives me a feeling of vague disquiet,
like the uneasiness that precedes the horror of nightmare. It makes me
afraid,—indefinably, superstitiously afraid. Perhaps what I am writing
will seem to you absurd; but you would not think it absurd if you once
heard her howl. She does not howl like the common street-dogs. She
belongs to some ruder Northern breed, much more wolfish, and retaining
wild traits of a very peculiar kind.
And her howl is also peculiar. It is incomparably weirder than the howl
of any European dog; and I fancy that it is incomparably older. It may
represent the original primitive cry of her species,—totally unmodified
by centuries of domestication. It begins with a stifled moan, like the
moan of a bad dream,—mounts into a long, long wail, like a wailing of
wind,—sinks quavering into a chuckle,—rises again to a wail, very much
higher and wilder than before,—breaks suddenly into a kind of atrocious
laughter,—and finally sobs itself out in a plaint like the crying of a
little child. The ghastliness of the performance is chiefly—though not
entirely—in the goblin mockery of the laughing tones as contrasted with
the piteous agony of the wailing ones: an incongruity that makes you
think of madness. And I imagine a corresponding incongruity in the soul
of the creature. I know that she loves me,—that she would throw away
her poor life for me at an instant’s notice. I am sure that she would
grieve if I were to die. But she would not think about the matter like
other dogs,—like a dog with hanging ears, for example. She is too
savagely close to Nature for that. Were she to find herself alone with
my corpse in some desolate place, she would first mourn wildly for her
friend; but, this duty performed, she would proceed to ease her sorrow
in the simplest way possible,—by eating him,—by cracking his bones
between those long wolf’s-teeth of hers. And thereafter, with spotless
conscience, she would sit down and utter to the moon the funeral cry of
her ancestors.
It fills me, that cry, with a strange curiosity not less than with a
strange horror,—because of certain extraordinary vowellings in it which
always recur in the same order of sequence, and must represent
particular forms of animal speech,—particular ideas. The whole thing is
a song,—a song of emotions and thoughts not human, and therefore
humanly unimaginable. But other dogs know what it means, and make
answer over the miles of the night,—sometimes from so far away that
only by straining my hearing to the uttermost can I detect the faint
response. The words—(if I may call them words)—are very few; yet, to
judge by their emotional effect, they must signify a great deal.
Possibly they mean things myriads of years old,—things relating to
odors, to exhalations, to influences and effluences inapprehensible by
duller human sense,—impulses also, impulses without name, bestirred in
ghosts of dogs by the light of great moons.
Could we know the sensations of a dog,—the emotions and the ideas of a
dog, we might discover some strange correspondence between their
character and the character of that peculiar disquiet which the howl of
the creature evokes. But since the senses of a dog are totally unlike
those of a man, we shall never really know. And we can only surmise, in
the vaguest way, the meaning of the uneasiness in ourselves. Some notes
in the long cry,—and the weirdest of them,—oddly resemble those tones
of the human voice that tell of agony and terror. Again, we have reason
to believe that the sound of the cry itself became associated in human
imagination, at some period enormously remote, with particular
impressions of fear. It is a remarkable fact that in almost all
countries (including Japan) the howling of dogs has been attributed to
their perception of things viewless to man, and awful,—especially gods
and ghosts;—and this unanimity of superstitious belief suggests that
one element of the disquiet inspired by the cry is the dread of the
supernatural. To-day we have ceased to be consciously afraid of the
unseen;—knowing that we ourselves are supernatural,—that even the
physical man, with all his life of sense, is more ghostly than any
ghost of old imagining: but some dim inheritance of the primitive fear
still slumbers in our being, and wakens perhaps, like an echo, to the
sound of that wail in the night.
Whatever thing invisible to human eyes the senses of a dog may at times
perceive, it can be nothing resembling our idea of a ghost. Most
probably the mysterious cause of start and whine is not anything
_seen_. There is no anatomical reason for supposing a dog to possess
exceptional powers of vision. But a dog’s organs of scent proclaim a
faculty immeasurably superior to the sense of smell in man. The old
universal belief in the superhuman perceptivities of the creature was a
belief justified by fact; but the perceptivities are not visual. Were
the howl of a dog really—as once supposed—an outcry of ghostly terror,
the meaning might possibly be, “_I smell Them!_”—but not, “_I see
Them!_” No evidence exists to support the fancy that a dog can see any
forms of being which a man cannot see.
But the night-howl of the white creature in my close forces me to
wonder whether she does not _mentally_ see something really
terrible,—something which we vainly try to keep out of moral
consciousness: the ghoulish law of life. Nay, there are times when her
cry seems to me not the mere cry of a dog, but the voice of the law
itself,—the very speech of that Nature so inexplicably called by poets
the loving, the merciful, the divine! Divine, perhaps, in some
unknowable ultimate way,—but certainly not merciful, and still more
certainly not loving. Only by eating each other do beings exist!
Beautiful to the poet’s vision our world may seem,—with its loves, its
hopes, its memories, its aspirations; but there is nothing beautiful in
the fact that life is fed by continual murder,—that the tenderest
affection, the noblest enthusiasm, the purest idealism, must be
nourished by the eating of flesh and the drinking of blood. All life,
to sustain itself, must devour life. You may imagine yourself divine if
you please,—but you have to obey that law. Be, if you will, a
vegetarian: none the less you must eat forms that have feeling and
desire. Sterilize your food; and digestion stops. You cannot even drink
without swallowing life. Loathe the name as we may, we are
cannibals;—all being essentially is One; and whether we eat the flesh
of a plant, a fish, a reptile, a bird, a mammal, or a man, the ultimate
fact is the same. And for all life the end is the same: every creature,
whether buried or burnt, is devoured,—and not only once or twice,—nor a
hundred, nor a thousand, nor a myriad times! Consider the ground upon
which we move, the soil out of which we came;—think of the vanished
billions that have risen from it and crumbled back into its latency to
feed what becomes our food! Perpetually we eat the dust of our
race,—_the substance of our ancient selves_.
But even so-called inanimate matter is self-devouring. Substance preys
upon substance. As in the droplet monad swallows monad, so in the vast
of Space do spheres consume each other. Stars give being to worlds and
devour them; planets assimilate their own moons. All is a ravening that
never ends but to recommence. And unto whomsoever thinks about these
matters, the story of a divine universe, made and ruled by paternal
love, sounds less persuasive than the Polynesian tale that the souls of
the dead are devoured by the gods.
Monstrous the law seems, because we have developed ideas and sentiments
which are opposed to this demoniac Nature,—much as voluntary movement
is opposed to the blind power of gravitation. But the possession of
such ideas and sentiments does but aggravate the atrocity of our
situation, without lessening in the least the gloom of the final
problem.
Anyhow the faith of the Far East meets that problem better than the
faith of the West. To the Buddhist the Cosmos is not divine at
all—quite the reverse. It is Karma;—it is the creation of thoughts and
acts of error;—it is not governed by any providence;—it is a
ghastliness, a nightmare. Likewise it is an illusion. It seems real
only for the same reason that the shapes and the pains of an evil dream
seem real to the dreamer. Our life upon earth is a state of sleep. Yet
we do not sleep utterly. There are gleams in our darkness,—faint
auroral wakenings of Love and Pity and Sympathy and Magnanimity: these
are selfless and true;—these are eternal and divine;—these are the Four
Infinite Feelings in whose after-glow all forms and illusions will
vanish, like mists in the light of the sun. But, except in so far as we
wake to these feelings, we are dreamers indeed,—moaning unaided in
darkness,—tortured by shadowy horror. All of us dream; none are fully
awake; and many, who pass for the wise of the world, know even less of
the truth than my dog that howls in the night.
Could she speak, my dog, I think that she might ask questions which no
philosopher would be able to answer. For I believe that she is
tormented by the pain of existence. Of course I do not mean that the
riddle presents itself to her as it does to us,—nor that she can have
reached any abstract conclusions by any mental processes like our own.
The external world to her is “a continuum of smells.” She thinks,
compares, remembers, reasons by smells. By smell she makes her
estimates of character: all her judgments are founded upon smells.
Smelling thousands of things which we cannot smell at all, she must
comprehend them in a way of which we can form no idea. Whatever she
knows has been learned through mental operations of an utterly
unimaginable kind. But we may be tolerably sure that she thinks about
most things in some odor-relation to the experience of eating or to the
intuitive dread of being eaten. Certainly she knows a great deal more
about the earth on which we tread than would be good for us to know;
and probably, if capable of speech, she could tell us the strangest
stories of air and water. Gifted, or afflicted, as she is with such
terribly penetrant power of sense, her notion of apparent realities
must be worse than sepulchral. Small wonder if she howl at the moon
that shines upon such a world!
And yet she is more awake, in the Buddhist meaning, than many of us.
She possesses a rude moral code—inculcating loyalty, submission,
gentleness, gratitude, and maternal love; together with various minor
rules of conduct;—and this simple code she has always observed. By
priests her state is termed a state of darkness of mind, because she
cannot learn all that men should learn; but according to her light she
has done well enough to merit some better condition in her next
rebirth. So think the people who know her. When she dies they will give
her an humble funeral, and have a sutra recited on behalf of her
spirit. The priest will let a grave be made for her somewhere in the
temple-garden, and will place over it a little sotoba bearing the
text,—_Nyo-zé chikushō hotsu Bodai-shin_:[1] “Even within such as this
animal, the Knowledge Supreme will unfold at last.”
[1] Lit., “the Bodhi-mind;”—that is to say, the Supreme Enlightenment,
the intelligence of Buddhahood itself.
Bits of Poetry
I
Among a people with whom poetry has been for centuries a universal
fashion of emotional utterance, we should naturally suppose the common
ideal of life to be a noble one. However poorly the upper classes of
such a people might compare with those of other nations, we could
scarcely doubt that its lower classes were morally and otherwise in
advance of our own lower classes. And the Japanese actually present us
with such a social phenomenon.
Poetry in Japan is universal as the air. It is felt by everybody. It is
read by everybody. It is composed by almost everybody,—irrespective of
class and condition. Nor is it thus ubiquitous in the mental atmosphere
only: it is everywhere to be heard by the ear, and _seen by the eye!_
As for audible poetry, wherever there is working there is singing. The
toil of the fields and the labor of the streets are performed to the
rhythm of chanted verse; and song would seem to be an expression of the
life of the people in about the same sense that it is an expression of
the life of cicadæ…. As for visible poetry, it appears everywhere,
written or graven,—in Chinese or in Japanese characters,—as a form of
decoration. In thousands and thousands of dwellings, you might observe
that the sliding-screens, separating rooms or closing alcoves, have
Chinese or Japanese decorative texts upon them;—and these texts are
poems. In houses of the better class there are usually a number of
_gaku_, or suspended tablets to be seen,—each bearing, for all design,
a beautifully written verse. But poems can be found upon almost any
kind of domestic utensil,—for example upon braziers, iron kettles,
vases, wooden trays, lacquer ware, porcelains, chopsticks of the finer
sort,—even toothpicks! Poems are painted upon shop-signs, panels,
screens, and fans. Poems are printed upon towels, draperies, curtains,
kerchiefs, silk-linings, and women’s crêpe-silk underwear. Poems are
stamped or worked upon letter-paper, envelopes, purses, mirror-cases,
travelling-bags. Poems are inlaid upon enamelled ware, cut upon
bronzes, graven upon metal pipes, embroidered upon tobacco-pouches. It
were a hopeless effort to enumerate a tithe of the articles decorated
with poetical texts. Probably my readers know of those social
gatherings at which it is the custom to compose verses, and to suspend
the compositions to blossoming trees,—also of the Tanabata festival in
honor of certain astral gods, when poems inscribed on strips of colored
paper, and attached to thin bamboos, are to be seen even by the
roadside,—all fluttering in the wind like so many tiny flags…. Perhaps
you might find your way to some Japanese hamlet in which there are
neither trees nor flowers, but never to any hamlet in which there is no
visible poetry. You might wander,—as I have done,—into a settlement so
poor that you could not obtain there, for love or money, even a cup of
real tea; but I do not believe that you could discover a settlement in
which there is nobody capable of making a poem.
II
Recently while looking over a manuscript-collection of verses,—mostly
short poems of an emotional or descriptive character,—it occurred to me
that a selection from them might serve to illustrate certain Japanese
qualities of sentiment, as well as some little-known Japanese theories
of artistic expression,—and I ventured forthwith, upon this essay. The
poems, which had been collected for me by different persons at many
different times and places, were chiefly of the kind written on
particular occasions, and cast into forms more serried, if not also
actually briefer, than anything in Western prosody. Probably few of my
readers are aware of two curious facts relating to this order of
composition. Both facts are exemplified in the history and in the texts
of my collection,—though I cannot hope, in my renderings, to reproduce
the original effect, whether of imagery or of feeling.
The first curious fact is that, from very ancient times, the writing of
short poems has been practised in Japan even more as a moral duty than
as a mere literary art. The old ethical teaching was somewhat like
this:—“Are you very angry?—do not say anything unkind, but compose a
poem. Is your best-beloved dead?—do not yield to useless grief, but try
to calm your mind by making a poem. Are you troubled because you are
about to die, leaving so many things unfinished?—be brave, and write a
poem on death! Whatever injustice or misfortune disturbs you, put aside
your resentment or your sorrow as soon as possible, and write a few
lines of sober and elegant verse for a moral exercise.” Accordingly, in
the old days, every form of trouble was encountered with a poem.
Bereavement, separation, disaster called forth verses in lieu of
plaints. The lady who preferred death to loss of honor, composed a poem
before piercing her throat The samurai sentenced to die by his own
hand, wrote a poem before performing _hara-kiri_. Even in this less
romantic era of Meiji, young people resolved upon suicide are wont to
compose some verses before quitting the world. Also it is still the
good custom to write a poem in time of ill-fortune. I have frequently
known poems to be written under the most trying circumstances of misery
or suffering,—nay even upon a bed of death;-and if the verses did not
display any extraordinary talent, they at least afforded extraordinary
proof of self-mastery under pain…. Surely this fact of composition as
ethical practice has larger interest than all the treatises ever
written about the rules of Japanese prosody.
The other curious fact is only a fact of aesthetic theory. The common
art-principle of the class of poems under present consideration is
identical with the common principle of Japanese pictorial illustration.
By the use of a few chosen words the composer of a short poem endeavors
to do exactly what the painter endeavors to do with a few strokes of
the brush,—to evoke an image or a mood,—to revive a sensation or an
emotion. And the accomplishment of this purpose,—by poet or by
picture-maker,—depends altogether upon capacity to _suggest_, and only
to suggest. A Japanese artist would be condemned for attempting
elaboration of detail in a sketch intended to recreate the memory of
some landscape seen through the blue haze of a spring morning, or under
the great blond light of an autumn after-noon. Not only would he be
false to the traditions of his art: he would necessarily defeat his own
end thereby. In the same way a poet would be condemned for attempting
any _completeness_ of utterance in a very short poem: his object should
be only to stir imagination without satisfying it. So the term
_ittakkiri_—meaning “all gone,” or “entirely vanished,” in the sense of
“all told,”—is contemptuously applied to verses in which the
verse-maker has uttered his whole thought;—praise being reserved for
compositions that leave in the mind the thrilling of a something
unsaid. Like the single stroke of a temple-bell, the perfect short poem
should set murmuring and undulating, in the mind of the hearer, many a
ghostly aftertone of long duration.
III
But for the same reason that Japanese short poems may be said to
resemble. Japanese pictures, a full comprehension of them requires an
intimate knowledge of the life which they reflect. And this is
especially true of the emotional class of such poems,—a literal
translation of which, in the majority of cases, would signify almost
nothing to the Western mind. Here, for example, is a little verse,
pathetic enough to Japanese comprehension:—
Chōchō ni!..
Kyonen shishitaru
Tsuma koishi!
Translated, this would appear to mean only,—“_Two butterflies!… Last
year my dear wife died!_” Unless you happen to know the pretty Japanese
symbolism of the butterfly in relation to happy marriage, and the old
custom of sending with the wedding-gift a large pair of
paper-butterflies (_ochō-mechō_), the verse might well seem to be less
than commonplace. Or take this recent composition, by a University
student, which has been praised by good judges:—
Furusato ni
Fubo ari—mushi no
Koë-goë![1]
—“_In my native place the old folks [or, my parents] are—clamor of
insect-voices!_”
[1] I must observe, however, that the praise was especially evoked by
the use of the term _koë-goë_—(literally meaning “voice after voice”
or a crying of many voices);—and the special value of the syllables
here can be appreciated only by a Japanese poet.
The poet here is a country-lad. In unfamiliar fields he listens to the
great autumn chorus of insects; and the sound revives for him the
memory of his far-off home and of his parents. But here is something
incomparably more touching,—though in literal translation probably more
obscure,—than either of the preceding specimens;—
Mi ni shimiru
Kazé ya!
Shōji ni
Yubi no ato!
—“_Oh, body-piercing wind!—that work of little fingers in the
shōji!_”[2]…. What does this mean? It means the sorrowing of a mother
for her dead child. _Shōji_ is the name given to those light
white-paper screens which in a Japanese house serve both as windows and
doors, admitting plenty of light, but concealing, like frosted glass,
the interior from outer observation, and excluding the wind. Infants
delight to break these by poking their fingers through the soft paper:
then the wind blows through the holes. In this case the wind blows very
cold indeed,—into the mother’s very heart;—for it comes through the
little holes that were made by the fingers of her dead child.
[2] More literally:—“body-through-pierce wind—ah!—_shōji_ in the
traces of [viz.: holes made by] fingers!”
The impossibility of preserving the inner quality of such poems in a
literal rendering, will now be obvious. Whatever I attempt in this
direction must of necessity be _ittakkiri;_—for the unspoken has to be
expressed; and what the Japanese poet is able to say in seventeen or
twenty-one syllables may need in English more than double that number
of words. But perhaps this fact will lend additional interest to the
following atoms of emotional expression:—
A MOTHER’S REMEMBRANCE
_Sweet and clear in the night, the voice of a boy at study,
Reading out of a book…. I also once had a boy!_
A MEMORY IN SPRING
_She, who, departing hence, left to the flowers of the plum-tree,
Blooming beside our eaves, the charm of her youth and beauty,
And maiden pureness of heart, to quicken their flush and fragrance,—
Ah! where does she dwell to-day, our dear little vanished sister?_
FANCIES OF ANOTHER FAITH
_(1) I sought in the place of graves the tomb of my vanished friend:
From ancient cedars above there rippled a wild doves cry._
_(2) Perhaps a freak of the wind-yet perhaps a sign of remembrance,—
This fall of a single leaf on the water I pour for the dead._
_(3)I whispered a prayer at the grave: a butterfly rose and fluttered—
Thy spirit, perhaps, dear friend!…_
IN A CEMETERY AT NIGHT
_This light of the moon that plays on the water I pour for the dead,
Differs nothing at all from the moonlight of other years._
AFTER LONG ABSENCE
_The garden that once I loved, and even the hedge of the garden,—
All is changed and strange: the moonlight only is faithful;—
The moon alone remembers the charm of the time gone by!_
MOONLIGHT ON THE SEA
_O vapory moon of spring!—would that one plunge into ocean
Could win me renewal of life as a part of thy light on the waters!_
AFTER FAREWELL
_Whither now should! look?—where is the place of parting?
Boundaries all have vanished;—nothing tells of direction:
Only the waste of sea under the shining moon!_
HAPPY POVERTY
_Wafted into my room, the scent of the flowers of the plum-tree
Changes my broken window into a source of delight._
AUTUMN FANCIES
_(1) Faded the clover now;—sere and withered the grasses:
What dreams the matsumushi_[3] _in the desolate autumn-fields?_
_(2) Strangely sad, I thought, sounded the bell of evening;—
Haply that tone proclaimed the night in which autumn dies!_
_(3) Viewing this autumn-moon, I dream of my native village
Under the same soft light,—and the shadows about my home._
[3] A musical cricket—_calyptotryphus marmoratus_.
IN TIME OF GRIEF, HEARING A SÉMI (CICADA)
_Only “I,” “I,”—the cry of the foolish semi!
Any one knows that the world is void as its cast-off shell._
ON THE CAST-OFF SHELL OF A SÉMI
_Only the pitiful husk!… O poor singer of summer,
Wherefore thus consume all thy body in song?_
SUBLIMITY OF INTELLECTUAL POWER
_The mind that, undimmed, absorbs the foul and the pure together—
Call it rather a sea one thousand fathoms deep!_[4]
[4] This is quite novel in its way,—a product of the University: the
original runs thus:—
Nigoréru mo
Suméru mo tomo ni
Iruru koso
Chi-hiro no umi no
Kokoro nari-keré!
SHINTŌ REVERY
_Mad waves devour The rocks: I ask myself in the darkness,
“Have I become a god?” Dim is The night and wild!_
“Have I become a god?”—that is to say, “Have I died?—am I only a ghost
in this desolation?” The dead, becoming _kami_ or gods, are thought to
haunt wild solitudes by preference.
IV
The poems above rendered are more than pictorial: they suggest
something of emotion or sentiment. But there are thousands of pictorial
poems that do not; and these would seem mere insipidities to a reader
ignorant of their true purpose. When you learn that some exquisite text
of gold means only, “_Evening-sunlight on the wings of the
water-fowl_,”—or,”_Now in my garden the flowers bloom, and the
butterflies dance_,”—then your first interest in decorative poetry is
apt to wither away. Yet these little texts have a very real merit of
their own, and an intimate relation to Japanese aesthetic feeling and
experience. Like the pictures upon screens and fans and cups, they give
pleasure by recalling impressions of nature, by reviving happy
incidents of travel or pilgrimage, by evoking the memory of beautiful
days. And when this plain fact is fully understood, the persistent
attachment of modern Japanese poets—notwithstanding their University
training—to the ancient poetical methods, will be found reasonable
enough.
I need offer only a very few specimens of the purely pictorial poetry.
The following—mere thumb-nail sketches in verse—are of recent date.
LONESOMENESS
Furu-dera ya:
Kané mono iwazu;
Sakura chiru.
—“_Old temple: bell voiceless; cherry-flowers fall_.”
MORNING AWAKENING AFTER A NIGHT’S REST IN A TEMPLE
Yamadera no
Shichō akéyuku:
Taki no oto.
—“_In the mountain-temple the paper mosquito-curtain is lighted by the
dawn: sound of water-fall_.”
WINTER-SCENE
Yuki no mura;
Niwatori naité;
Aké shiroshi.
“_Snow-village;—cocks crowing;—white dawn_.”
Let me conclude this gossip on poetry by citing from another group of
verses—also pictorial, in a certain sense, but chiefly remarkable for
ingenuity—two curiosities of impromptu. The first is old, and is
attributed to the famous poetess Chiyo. Having been challenged to make
a poem of seventeen syllables referring to a square, a triangle, and a
circle, she is said to have immediately responded,—
Kaya no té wo
Hitotsu hazushité,
Tsuki-mi kana!
—“_Detaching one corner of the mosquito-net, lo! I behold the moon!_”
The top of the mosquito-net, suspended by cords at each of its four
corners, represents the square;—letting down the net at one corner
converts the square into a triangle;—and the moon represents the
circle.
[Illustration: Square Triangle]
The other curiosity is a recent impromptu effort to portray, in one
verse of seventeen syllables, the last degree of
devil-may-care-poverty,—perhaps the brave misery of the wandering
student;—and I very much doubt whether the effort could be improved
upon:—
Nusundaru
Kagashi no kasa ni
Amé kyū nari.
—“_Heavily pours the rain on the hat that I stole from the scarecrow!_”
Japanese Buddhist Proverbs
As representing that general quality of moral experience which remains
almost unaffected by social modifications of any sort, the proverbial
sayings of a people must always possess a special psychological
interest for thinkers. In this kind of folklore the oral and the
written literature of Japan is rich to a degree that would require a
large book to exemplify. To the subject as a whole no justice could be
done within the limits of a single essay. But for certain classes of
proverbs and proverbial phrases something can be done within even a few
pages; and sayings related to Buddhism, either by allusion or
derivation, form a class which seems to me particularly worthy of
study. Accordingly, with the help of a Japanese friend, I have selected
and translated the following series of examples,—choosing the more
simple and familiar where choice was possible, and placing the
originals in alphabetical order to facilitate reference. Of course the
selection is imperfectly representative; but it will serve to
illustrate certain effects of Buddhist teaching upon popular thought
and speech.
1.—_Akuji mi ni tomaru._
All evil done clings to the body.[1]
[1] The consequence of any evil act or thought never,—so long as karma
endures,—will cease to act upon the existence of the person guilty of
it.
2.—_Atama soru yori kokoro wo soré._
Better to shave the heart than to shave the head.[2]
[2] Buddhist nuns and priests have their heads completely shaven. The
proverb signifies that it is better to correct the heart,—to conquer
all vain regrets and desires,—than to become a religious. In common
parlance the phrase “to shave the head” means to become a monk or a
nun.
3.—_Au wa wakaré no hajimé._
Meeting is only the beginning of separation.[3]
[3] Regret and desire are equally vain in this world of impermanency;
for all joy is the beginning of an experience that must have its pain.
This proverb refers directly to the sutra-text,—_Shōja hitsumetsu
é-sha-jori_,—” All that live must surely die; and all that meet will
surely part.”
4.—_Banji wa yumé._
All things[4] are merely dreams.
[4] Literally, “ten thousand things.”
5.—_Bonbu mo satoréba hotoké nari._
Even a common man by obtaining knowledge becomes a Buddha.[5]
[5] The only real differences of condition are differences in
knowledge of the highest truth.
6.—_Bonnō kunō._
All lust is grief.[6]
[6] All sensual desire invariably brings sorrow.
7—_Buppō to wara-ya no amé, dété kiké._
One must go outside to hear Buddhist doctrine or the sound of rain on a
straw roof.[7]
[7] There is an allusion here to the condition of the _shukké_
(priest): literally, “one who has left his house.” The proverb
suggests that the higher truths of Buddhism cannot be acquired by
those who continue to live in the world of follies and desires.
8.—_Busshō en yori okoru._
Out of karma-relation even the divine nature itself grows.[8]
[8] There is good as well as bad karma. Whatever hap-piness we enjoy
is not less a consequence of the acts and thoughts of previous lives,
than is any misfortune that comes to us. Every good thought and act
contributes to the evolution of the Buddha-nature within each of us.
Another proverb [No. 10],—_En naki shujō wa doshi gatashi_,—further
illustrates the meaning of this one.
9.—_Enkō ga tsuki wo toran to suru ga gotoshi._
Like monkeys trying to snatch the moon’s reflection on water.[9]
[9] Allusion to a parable, said to have been related by the Buddha
himself, about some monkeys who found a well under a tree, and mistook
for reality the image of the moon in the water. They resolved to seize
the bright apparition. One monkey suspended himself by the tail from a
branch overhanging the well, a second monkey clung to the first, a
third to the second, a fourth to the third, and so on,—till the long
chain of bodies had almost reached the water. Suddenly the branch
broke under the unaccustomed weight; and all the monkeys were drowned.
10.—_En naki shujō wa doshi gatashi._
To save folk having no karma-relation would be difficult indeed![10]
[10] No karma-relation would mean an utter absence of merit as well as
of demerit.
11.—_Fujō seppō suru hōshi wa, birataké ni umaru._
The priest who preaches foul doctrine shall be reborn as a fungus.
12.—_Gaki mo ninzu._
Even gaki (_prêtas_) can make a crowd.[11]
[11] Literally: “Even gaki are a multitude (or, ‘population’).” This
is a popular saying used in a variety of ways. The ordinary meaning is
to the effect that no matter how poor or miserable the individuals
composing a multitude, they collectively represent a respectable
force. Jocosely the saying is sometimes used of a crowd of wretched or
tired-looking people,—sometimes of an assembly of weak boys desiring
to make some demonstration,—sometimes of a miserable-looking company
of soldiers.—Among the lowest classes of the people it is not uncommon
to call a deformed or greedy person a “gaki.”
13.—_Gaki no mé ni midzu miézu._
To the eyes of gaki water is viewless.[12]
[12] Some authorities state that those _prêtas_ who suffer especially
from thirst, as a consequence of faults committed in former lives, are
unable to see water.—This proverb is used in speaking of persons too
stupid or vicious to perceive a moral truth.
14.—_Goshō wa daiji._
The future life is the all-important thing.[13]
[13] The common people often use the curious expression
“_gosho-daiji_” as an equivalent for “extremely important.”
15.—_Gun-mō no tai-zō wo saguru ga gotoshi._
Like a lot of blind men feeling a great elephant.[14]
[14] Said of those who ignorantly criticise the doctrines of
Buddhism.—The proverb alludes to a celebrated fable in the _Avadânas_,
about a number of blind men who tried to decide the form of an
elephant by feeling the animal. One, feeling the leg, declared the
elephant to be like a tree; another, feeling the trunk only, declared
the elephant to be like a serpent; a third, who felt only the side,
said that the elephant was like a wall; a fourth, grasping the tail,
said that the elephant was like a rope, etc.
16.—_Gwai-men nyo-Bosatsu; nai shin nyo-Yasha._
In outward aspect a Bodhisattva; at innermost heart a demon.[15]
[15] _Yasha_ (Sanscrit _Yaksha_), a man-devouring demon.
17.—_Hana wa né ni kaeru._
The flower goes back to its root.[16]
[16] This proverb is most often used in reference to death,—signifying
that all forms go back into the nothingness out of which they spring.
But it may also be used in relation to the law of cause-and-effect.
18.—_Hibiki no koë ni ozuru ga gotoshi._
Even as the echo answers to the voice.[17]
[17] Referring to the doctrine of cause-and-effect. The philosophical
beauty of the comparison will be appreciated only if we bear in mind
that even the _tone_ of the echo repeats the tone of the voice.
19.—_Hito wo tasukéru ga shukhé no yuku._
The task of the priest is to save mankind.
20.—_Hi wa kiyurédomo tō-shin wa kiyédzu._
Though the flame be put out, the wick remains.[18]
[18] Although the passions may be temporarily overcome, their sources
remain. A proverb of like meaning is, _Bonnō no inu oëdomo sarazu:_
“Though driven away, the Dog of Lust cannot be kept from coming back
again.”
21.—_Hotoké mo motowa bonbu._
Even the Buddha was originally but a common man.
22.—_Hotoké ni naru mo shami wo beru._
Even to become a Buddha one must first become a novice.
23.—_Hotoké no kao mo sando._
Even a Buddha’s face,—only three times.[19]
[19] This is a short popular form of the longer proverb, _Hotoké no
kao mo sando nazuréba, hara wo tatsu:_ “Stroke even the face of a
Buddha three times, and his anger will be roused.”
24.—_Hotoké tanondé Jigoku é yuku._
Praying to Buddha one goes to hell.[20]
[20] The popular saying, _Oni no Nembutsu_,—“a devil’s praying,”—has a
similar meaning.
25.—_Hotoké tsukutté tamashii irédzu._
Making a Buddha without putting in the soul.[21]
[21] That is to say, making an image of the Buddha without giving it a
soul. This proverb is used in reference to the conduct of those who
undertake to do some work, and leave the most essential part of the
work unfinished. It contains an allusion to the curious ceremony
called _Kai-gen_, or “Eye-Opening.” This _Kai-gen_ is a kind of
consecration, by virtue of which a newly-made image is supposed to
become animated by the real presence of the divinity represented.
26.—_Ichi-ju no kagé, ichi-ga no nagaré, tashō no en._
Even [the experience of] a single shadow or a single flowing of water,
is [made by] the karma-relations of a former life.[22]
[22] Even so trifling an occurrence as that of resting with another
person under the shadow of a tree, or drinking from the same spring
with another person, is caused by the karma-relations of some previous
existence.
27.—_Ichi-mō shū-mō wo hiku._
One blind man leads many blind men.[23]
[23] From the Buddhist work _Dai-chi-dō-ron_.—The reader will find a
similar proverb in Rhys-David’s “_Buddhist Suttas_” (Sacred Books of
the East), p. 173,—together with a very curious parable, cited in a
footnote, which an Indian commentator gives in explanation.
28.—_Ingwa na ko._
A karma-child.[24]
[24] A common saying among the lower classes in reference to an
unfortunate or crippled child. Here the word _ingwa_ is used
especially in the retributive sense. It usually signifies evil karma;
_kwahō_ being the term used in speaking of meritorious karma and its
results. While an unfortunate child is spoken of as “a child of
_ingwa_,” a very lucky person is called a “_kwahō-mono_,”—that is to
say, an instance, or example of _kwahō_.
29.—_Ingwa wa, kuruma no wa._
Cause-and-effect is like a wheel.[25]
[25] The comparison of _karma_ to the wheel of a wagon will be
familiar to students of Buddhism. The meaning of this proverb is
identical with that of the _Dhammapada_ verse:—“If a man speaks or
acts with an evil thought, pain follows him as the wheel follows the
foot of the ox that draws the carriage.”
30.—_Innen ga fukai._
The karma-relation is deep.[26]
[26] A saying very commonly used in speaking of the attachment of
lovers, or of the unfortunate results of any close relation between
two persons.
31.—_Inochi wa fū-zen no tomoshibi._
Life is a lamp-flame before a wind.[27]
[27] Or, “like the flame of a lamp exposed to the wind.” A frequent
expression in Buddhist literature is “the Wind of Death.”
32.—_Issun no mushi ni mo, gobu no tamashii._
Even a worm an inch long has a soul half-an-inch long.[28]
[28] Literally, “has a soul of five _bu_,”—five _bu_ being equal to
half of the Japanese inch. Buddhism forbids all taking of life, and
classes as _living_ things (_Ujō_) all forms having sentiency. The
proverb, however,—as the use of the word “soul” (_tamashii_)
implies,—reflects popular belief rather than Buddhist philosophy. It
signifies that any life, however small or mean, is entitled to mercy.
33.—_Iwashi[29] no atama mo shinjin kara._
Even the head of an _iwashi_, by virtue of faith, [will have power to
save, or heal].
[29] The _iwashi_ is a very small fish, much resembling a sardine. The
proverb implies that the object of worship signifies little, so long
as the prayer is made with perfect faith and pure intention.
34.—_Jigō-jitoku._[30]
The fruit of ones own deeds [in a previous state of existence].
[30] Few popular Buddhist phrases are more often used than this.
_Jigō_ signifies ones own acts or thoughts; _jitoku_, to bring upon
oneself,—nearly always in the sense of misfortune, when the word is
used in the Buddhist way. “Well, it is a matter of _Jigō-jitoku_,”
people will observe on seeing a man being taken to prison; meaning,
“He is reaping the consequence of his own faults.”
35.—_Jigoku dé hotoké._
Like meeting with a Buddha in hell.[31]
[31] Refers to the joy of meeting a good friend in time of misfortune.
The above is an abbreviation. The full proverb is, _Jigoku dé hotoké
hotoke ni ōta yo da_.
36.—_Jigoku Gokuraku wa kokoro ni ari._
Hell and Heaven are in the hearts of men.[32]
[32] A proverb in perfect accord with the higher Buddhism.
37.—_Jigoku mo sumika._
Even Hell itself is a dwelling-place.[33]
[33] Meaning that even those obliged to live in hell must learn to
accommodate themselves to the situation. One should always try to make
the best of circumstances. A proverb of kindred signification is,
_Sumeba, Miyako:_ “Wheresoever ones home is, that is the Capital [or,
imperial City].”
38.—_Jigoku ni mo shiru bito._
Even in hell old acquaintances are welcome.
39.—_Kagé no katachi ni shitagau gotoshi._
Even as the shadow follows the shape.[34]
[34] Referring to the doctrine of cause-and-effect. Compare with verse
2 of the _Dhammapada_.
40.—_Kané wa Amida yori bikaru._
Money shines even more brightly than Amida.[35]
[35] Amitâbha, the Buddha of Immeasurable Light. His image in the
temples is usually gilded from head to foot.—There are many other
ironical proverbs about the power of wealth,—such as _Jigoku no sata
mo kané shidai:_ “Even the Judgments of Hell may be influenced by
money.”
41.—_Karu-toki no Jizō-gao; nasu-toki no Emma-gao._
Borrowing-time, the face of Jizō; repaying-time, the face of Emma.[36]
[36] Emma is the Chinese and Japanese Yama,—in Buddhism the Lord of
Hell, and the Judge of the Dead. The proverb is best explained by the
accompanying drawings, which will serve to give an idea of the
commoner representations of both divinities.
[Illustration: Jizō]
[Illustration: Emma Dai-ō]
42.—_Kiité Gokuraku, mité Jigoku._
Heard of only, it is Paradise; seen, it is Hell.[37]
[37] Rumor is never trustworthy.
43.—_Kōji mon wo idézu: akuji sen ni wo hashiru._
Good actions go not outside of the gate: bad deeds travel a thousand
_ri_.
44.—_Kokoro no koma ni tadzuna wo yuru-suna._
Never let go the reins of the wild colt of the heart.
45.—_Kokoro no oni ga mi wo séméru._
The body is tortured only by the demon of the heart.[38]
[38] Or “mind.” That is to say that we suffer only from the
consequences of our own faults.—The demon-torturer in the Buddhist
hell says to his victim:—“Blame not me!—I am only the creation of your
own deeds and thoughts: you made me for this!”—Compare with No. 36.
46.—_Kokoro no shi to wa naré; kokoro wo shi to sezaré._
Be the teacher of your heart: do not allow your heart to become your
teacher.
47.—_Kono yo wa kari no yado._
This world is only a resting-place.[39]
[39] “This world is but a travellers’ inn,” would be an almost equally
correct translation. _Yado_ literally means a lodging, shelter, inn;
and the word is applied often to those wayside resting-houses at which
Japanese travellers halt during a journey. _Kari_ signifies temporary,
transient, fleeting,—as in the common Buddhist saying, _Kono yo kari
no yo:_ “This world is a fleeting world.” Even Heaven and Hell
represent to the Buddhist only halting places upon the journey to
Nirvâna.
48.—_Kori wo chiribamé; midzu ni égaku._
To inlay ice; to paint upon water.[40]
[40] Refers to the vanity of selfish effort for some merely temporary
end.
49.—_Korokoro to
Naku wa yamada no
Hototogisu,
Chichi nitéya aran,
Haha nitéya aran._
The bird that cries _korokoro_ in the mountain rice-field I know to be
a _hototogisu;_—yet it may have been my father; it may have been my
mother.[41]
[41] This verse-proverb is cited in the Buddhist work _Wōjō Yōshū_,
with the following comment:—“Who knows whether the animal in the
field, or the bird in the mountain-wood, has not been either his
father or his mother in some former state of existence?”—The
_hototogisu_ is a kind of cuckoo.
50.—_Ko wa Sangai no kubikase._
A child is a neck-shackle for the Three States of Existence.[42]
[42] That is to say, The love of parents for their child may impede
their spiritual progress—not only in this world, but through all their
future states of being,—just as a _kubikasé_, or Japanese cangue,
impedes the movements of the person upon whom it is placed. Parental
affection, being the strongest of earthly attachments, is particularly
apt to cause those whom it enslaves to commit wrongful acts in the
hope of benefiting their offspring.—The term Sangai here signifies the
three worlds of Desire, Form, and Formlessness,—all the states of
existence below Nirvâna. But the word is sometimes used to signify the
Past, the Present, and the Future.
51.—_Kuchi wa wazawai no kado._
The mouth is the front-gate of all misfortune.[43]
[43] That is to say, The chief cause of trouble is unguarded speech.
The word Kado means always the main entrance to a residence.
52.—_Kwahō wa, nété maté._
If you wish for good luck, sleep and wait.[44]
[44] _Kwahō_, a purely Buddhist term, signifying good fortune as the
result of good actions in a previous life, has come to mean in common
parlance good fortune of any kind. The proverb is often used in a
sense similar to that of the English saying: “Watched pot never
boils.” In a strictly Buddhist sense it would mean, “Do not be too
eager for the reward of good deeds.”
53.—_Makanu tané wa haënu._
Nothing will grow, if the seed be not sown.[45]
[45] Do not expect harvest, unless you sow the seed. Without earnest
effort no merit can be gained.
54.—_Matéba, kanrō no hiyori._
If you wait, ambrosial weather will come.[46]
[46] _Kanrō_, the sweet dew of Heaven, or _amrita_. All good things
come to him who waits.
55.—_Meidō no michi ni Ō wa nashi._
There is no King on the Road of Death.[47]
[47] Literally, “on the Road of Meidō.” The _Meidō_ is the Japanese
Hades,—the dark under-world to which all the dead must journey.
56.—_Mekura hebi ni ojizu._
The blind man does not fear the snake.[48]
[48] The ignorant and the vicious, not understanding the law of
cause-and-effect, do not fear the certain results of their folly.
57.—_Mitsuréba, hakuru._
Having waxed, wanes.[49]
[49] No sooner has the moon waxed full than it begins to wane. So the
height of prosperity is also the beginning of fortunes decline.
58.—_Mon zen no kozō narawanu kyō wo yomu._
The shop-boy in front of the temple-gate repeats the sutra which he
never learned.[50]
[50] _Kozō_ means “acolyte” as well as “shop-boy,”“errand-boy,” or
“apprentice;” but in this case it refers to a boy employed in a shop
situated near or before the gate of a Buddhist temple. By constantly
hearing the sutra chanted in the temple, the boy learns to repeat the
words. A proverb of kindred meaning is, _Kangaku-In no suzumé wa,
Mōgyū wo sayézuru:_ “The sparrows of Kangaku-In [an ancient seat of
learning] chirp the Mōgyū,”—a Chinese text formerly taught to young
students. The teaching of either proverb is excellently expressed by a
third:—_Narau yori wa naréro:_ “Rather than study [an art], get
accustomed to it,”—that is to say, “keep constantly in contact with
it.” Observation and practice are even better than study.
59.—_Mujō no kazé wa, toki erabazu._
The Wind of Impermanency does not choose a time.[51]
[51] Death and Change do not conform their ways to human expectation.
60.—_Neko mo Busshō ari._
In even a cat the Buddha-nature exists.[52]
[52] Notwithstanding the legend that only the cat and the _mamushi_ (a
poisonous viper) failed to weep for the death of the Buddha.
61.—_Néta ma ga Gokuraku._
The interval of sleep is Paradise.[53]
[53] Only during sleep can we sometimes cease to know the sorrow and
pain of this world. (Compare with No. 83.)
62.—_Nijiu-go Bosatsu mo soré-soré no yaku._
Even each of the Twenty-five Bodhisattvas has his own particular duty
to perform.
63.—_Nin mité, hō toké._
[First] see the person, [then] preach the doctrine.[54]
[54] The teaching of Buddhist doctrine should always be adapted to the
intelligence of the person to be instructed. There is another proverb
of the same kind,—_Ki ni yorité, hō wo toké:_ “According to the
understanding [of the person to be taught], preach the Law.”
64.—_Ninshin ukégataku Buppoō aigatashi._
It is not easy to be born among men, and to meet with [the good fortune
of hearing the doctrine of] Buddhism.[55]
[55] Popular Buddhism teaches that to be born in the world of mankind,
and especially among a people professing Buddhism, is a very great
privilege. However miserable human existence, it is at least a state
in which some knowledge of divine truth may be obtained; whereas the
beings in other and lower conditions of life are relatively incapable
of spiritual progress.
65.—_Oni mo jiu-hachi._
Even a devil [is pretty] at eighteen.[56]
[56] There are many curious sayings and proverbs about the oni, or
Buddhist devil,—such as _Oni no mé ni mo namida_, “tears in even a
devil’s eyes;”—Oni no kakuran, “devil’s cholera” (said of the
unexpected sickness of some very strong and healthy person), etc.,
etc.—The class of demons called _Oni_, properly belong to the Buddhist
hells, where they act as torturers and jailers. They are not to be
confounded with the _Ma, Yasha, Kijin_, and other classes of evil
spirits. In Buddhist art they are represented as beings of enormous
strength, with the heads of bulls and of horses. The bull-headed
demons are called _Go-zu;_ the horse-headed _Mé-zu_.
66.—_Oni mo mi, narétaru ga yoshi._
Even a devil, when you become accustomed to the sight of him, may prove
a pleasant acquaintance.
67.—_Oni ni kanabō._
An iron club for a demon.[57]
[57] Meaning that great power should be given only to the strong.
68.—_Oni no nyōbo ni kijin._
A devil takes a goblin to wife.[58]
[58] Meaning that a wicked man usually marries a wicked woman.
69.—_Onna no ké ni wa dai-zō mo tsunagaru._
With one hair of a woman you can tether even a great elephant.
70.—_Onna wa Sangai ni iyé nashi._
Women have no homes of their own in the Three States of Existence.
71.—_Oya no ingwa ga ko ni mukuü._
The karma of the parents is visited upon the child.[59]
[59] Said of the parents of crippled or deformed children. But the
popular idea here expressed is not altogether in accord with the
teachings of the higher Buddhism.
72.—_Rakkwa éda ni kaerazu._
The fallen blossom never returns to the branch.[60]
[60] That which has been done never can be undone: the past cannot be
recalled.—This proverb is an abbreviation of the longer Buddhist text:
_Rakkwa éda ni kaerazu; ha-kyō futatabi terasazu:_ “The fallen blossom
never returns to the branch; the shattered mirror never again
reflects.”
73.—_Raku wa ku no tané; ku wa raku no tané._
Pleasure is the seed of pain; pain is the seed of pleasure.
74.—_Rokudō wa, mé no maë._
The Six Roads are right before your eyes.[61]
[61] That is to say, Your future life depends upon your conduct in
this life; and you are thus free to choose for yourself the place of
your next birth.
75.—_Sangai mu-an._
There is no rest within the Three States of Existence.
76.—_Sangai ni kaki nashi;—Rokudō ni hotori nashi._
There is no fence to the Three States of Existence;—there is no
neighborhood to the Six Roads.[62]
[62] Within the Three States (Sangai), or universes, of Desire, Form,
and Formlessness; and within the Six Worlds, or conditions of
being,—_Jigokudō_ (Hell), _Gakidō_ (Pretas), _Chikushōdō_ (Animal
Life), _Shuradō_ (World of Fighting and Slaughter), _Ningendō_
(Mankind), _Tenjōdō_ (Heavenly Spirits)—all existence is included.
Beyond there is only Nirvâna. “There is no fence,” “no
neighborhood,”—that is to say, no limit beyond which to escape,—no
middle-path between any two of these states. We shall be reborn into
some one of them according to our karma.—Compare with No. 74.
77.—_Sangé ni wa sannen no tsumi mo hōrobu._
One confession effaces the sins of even three years.
78.—_San nin yoréba, kugai._
Where even three persons come together, there is a world of pain.[63]
[63] _Kugai_ (lit.: “bitter world”) is a term often used to describe
the life of a prostitute.
79.—_San nin yoréba, Monjū no chié._
Where three persons come together, there is the wisdom of _Monjū_.[64]
[64] Monjū Bosatsu [_Mañdjus’ri Bodhisattva_] figures in Japanese
Buddhism as a special divinity of wisdom.—The proverb signifies that
three heads are better than one. A saying of like meaning is,_ Hiza to
mo dankō:_ “Consult even with your own knee;” that is to say, Despise
no advice, no matter how humble the source of it.
80.—_Shaka ni sekkyō._
Preaching to Sâkyamuni.
81.—_Shami kara chōrō._
To become an abbot one must begin as a novice.
82.—_Shindaréba, koso ikitaré._
Only by reason of having died does one enter into life.[65]
[65] I never hear this singular proverb without being re-minded of a
sentence in Huxley’s famous essay, _On the Physical Basis of
Life:_—“The living protoplasm not only ultimately dies and is resolved
into its mineral and lifeless constituents, but is always dying, and,
strange as the paradox may sound, _could not live unless it died_.”
83.—_Shiranu ga, hotoké; minu ga, Gokuraku._
Not to know is to be a Buddha; not to see is Paradise.
84.—_Shōbo ni kidoku nashi._
There is no miracle in true doctrine.[66]
[66] Nothing can happen except as a result of eternal and irrevocable
law.
85.—_Shō-chié wa Bodai no samatagé._
A little wisdom is a stumbling-block on the way to Buddhahood.[67]
[67] _Bodai_ is the same word as the Sanscrit _Bodhi_, signifying the
supreme enlightenment,—the knowledge that leads to Buddhahood; but it
is often used by Japanese Buddhists in the sense of divine bliss, or
the Buddha-state itself.
86.—_Shōshi no kukai hetori nashi._
There is no shore to the bitter Sea of Birth and Death.[68]
[68] Or, “the Pain-Sea of Life and Death.”
87.—_Sodé no furi-awasé mo tashō no en._
Even the touching of sleeves in passing is caused by some relation in a
former life.
88.—_Sun zen; shaku ma._
An inch of virtue; a foot of demon.[69]
[69] _Ma_ (Sanscrit, _Mârakâyikas_) is the name given to a particular
class of spirits who tempt men to evil. But in Japanese folklore the
_Ma_ have a part much resembling that occupied in Western popular
superstition by goblins and fairies.
89.—_Tanoshimi wa hanasimi no motoi._
All joy is the source of sorrow.
90.—_Tondé hi ni iru natsu no mushi._
So the insects of summer fly to the flame.[70]
[70] Said especially in reference to the result of sensual indulgence.
91.—_Tsuchi-botoké no midzu-asobi._
Clay-Buddha’s water-playing.[71]
[71] That is to say, “As dangerous as for a clay Buddha to play with
water.” Children often amuse themselves by making little Buddhist
images of mud, which melt into shapelessness, of course, if placed in
water.
92.—_Tsuki ni murakumo, hana ni kazé._
Cloud-wrack to the moon; wind to flowers.[72]
[72] The beauty of the moon is obscured by masses of clouds; the trees
no sooner blossom than their flowers are scattered by the wind. All
beauty is evanescent.
93.—_Tsuyu no inochi._
Human life is like the dew of morning.
94.—_U-ki wa, kokoro ni ari._
Joy and sorrow exist only in the mind.
95.—_Uri no tsuru ni nasubi wa naranu._
Egg-plants do not grow upon melon-vines.
96.—_Uso mo hōben._
Even an untruth may serve as a device.[73]
[73] That is, a pious device for effecting conversion. Such a device
is justified especially by the famous parable of the third chapter of
the _Saddharma Pundarîka_.
97.—_Waga ya no hotoké tattoshi._
My family ancestors were all excellent Buddhas.[74]
[74] Meaning that one most reveres the _hotoké_—the spirits of the
dead regarded as Buddhas—in one’s own household-shrine. There is an
ironical play upon the word _hotoké_, which may mean either a dead
person simply, or a Buddha. Perhaps the spirit of this proverb may be
better explained by the help of another: _Nigéta sakana ni chisai wa
nai; shinda kodomo ni warui ko wa nai_—“Fish that escaped was never
small; child that died was never bad.”
98.—_Yuki no haté wa, Nehan._
The end of snow is Nirvâna.[75]
[75] This curious saying is the only one in my collection containing
the word _Nehan_ (Nirvâna), and is here inserted chiefly for that
reason. The common people seldom speak of _Nehan_, and have little
knowledge of those profound doctrines to which the term is related.
The above phrase, as might be inferred, is not a popular expression:
it is rather an artistic and poetical reference to the aspect of a
landscape covered with snow to the horizon-line,—so that beyond the
snow-circle there is only the great void of the sky.
99.—_Zen ni wa zen no mukui; aku ni wa aku no mukui._
Goodness [or, virtue] is the return for goodness; evil is the return
for evil.[76]
[76] Not so commonplace a proverb as might appear at first sight; for
it refers especially to the Buddhist belief that every kindness shown
to us in this life is a return of kindness done to others in a former
life, and that every wrong inflicted upon us is the reflex of some
injustice which we committed in a previous birth.
100.—_Zensé no yakusoku-goto._
Promised [or, destined] from a former birth.[77]
[77] A very common saying,—often uttered as a comment upon the
unhappiness of separation, upon sudden misfortune, upon sudden death,
etc. It is used especially in relation to _shinjū_, or lovers’
suicide. Such suicide is popularly thought to be a result of cruelty
in some previous state of being, or the consequence of having broken,
in a former life, the mutual promise to become husband and wife.
Suggestion
I had the privilege of meeting him in Tōkyō, where he was making a
brief stay on his way to India;—and we took a long walk together, and
talked of Eastern religions, about which he knew incomparably more than
I. Whatever I could tell him concerning local beliefs, he would comment
upon in the most startling manner,—citing weird correspondences in some
living cult of India, Burmah, or Ceylon. Then, all of a sudden, he
turned the conversation into a totally unexpected direction.
“I have been thinking,” he said, “about the constancy of the relative
proportion of the sexes, and wondering whether Buddhist doctrine
furnishes an explanation. For it seems to me that, under ordinary
conditions of karma, human rebirth would necessarily proceed by a
regular alternation.”
“Do you mean,” I asked, “that a man would be reborn as a woman, and a
woman as a man?”
“Yes,” he replied, “because desire is creative, and the desire of
either sex is towards the other.”
“And how many men,” I said, “would want to be reborn as women?”
“Probably very few,” he answered. “But the doctrine that desire is
creative does not imply that the individual longing creates its own
satisfaction,—quite the contrary. The true teaching is that the result
of every selfish wish is in the nature of a penalty, and that what the
wish creates must prove—to higher knowledge at least—the folly of
wishing.”
“There you are right,” I said; “but I do not yet understand your
theory.”
“Well,” he continued, “if the physical conditions of human rebirth are
all determined by the karma of the will relating to physical
conditions, then sex would be determined by the will in relation to
sex. Now the will of either sex is towards the other. Above all things
else, excepting life, man desires woman, and woman man. Each
individual, moreover, independently of any personal relation, feels
perpetually, you say, the influence of some inborn feminine or
masculine ideal, which you call ‘a ghostly reflex of countless
attachments in countless past lives.’ And the insatiable desire
represented by this ideal would of itself suffice to create the
masculine or the feminine body of the next existence.”
“But most women,” I observed, “would like to be reborn as men; and the
accomplishment of that wish would scarcely be in the nature of a
penalty.”
“Why not?” he returned. “The happiness or unhappiness of the new
existence would not be decided by sex alone: it would of necessity
depend upon many conditions in combination.”
“Your theory is interesting,” I said;—“but I do not know how far it
could be made to accord with accepted doctrine…. And what of the person
able, through knowledge and practice of the higher law, to remain
superior to all weaknesses of sex?”
“Such a one,” he replied, “would be reborn neither as man nor as
woman,—providing there were no pre-existent karma powerful enough to
check or to weaken the results of the self-conquest.”
“Reborn in some one of the heavens?” I queried,—“by the
Apparitional Birth?”
“Not necessarily,” he said. “Such a one might be reborn in a world of
desire,—like this,—but neither as man only, nor as woman only.”
“Reborn, then, in what form?” I asked.
“In that of a perfect being,” he responded. “A man or a woman is
scarcely more than half-a-being,—because in our present imperfect state
either sex can be evolved only at the cost of the other. In the mental
and the physical composition of every man, there is undeveloped woman;
and in the composition of every woman there is undeveloped man. But a
being complete would be both perfect man and perfect woman, possessing
the highest faculties of both sexes, with the weaknesses of neither.
Some humanity higher than our own,—in other worlds,—might be thus
evolved.”
“But you know,” I observed, “that there are Buddhist texts,—in the
_Saddharma Pundarîka_, for example, and in the _Vinayas_,—which
forbid….”
“Those texts,” he interrupted, “refer to imperfect beings—less than man
and less than woman: they could not refer to the condition that I have
been supposing…. But, remember, I am not preaching a doctrine;—I am
only hazarding a theory.”
“May I put your theory some day into print?” I asked.
“Why, yes,” he made answer,—“if you believe it worth thinking about.”
And long afterwards I wrote it down thus, as fairly as I was able, from
memory.
Ingwa-banashi[1]
[1] Lit., “a tale of _ingwa_.” _Ingwa_ is a Japanese Buddhist term for
evil karma, or the evil consequence of faults committed in a former
state of existence. Perhaps the curious title of the narrative is best
explained by the Buddhist teaching that the dead have power to injure
the living only in consequence of evil actions committed by their
victims in some former life. Both title and narrative may be found in
the collection of weird stories entitled _Hyaku-Monogatari_.
The daimyō’s wife was dying, and knew that she was dying. She had not
been able to leave her bed since the early autumn of the tenth Bunsei.
It was now the fourth month of the twelfth Bunsei,—the year 1829 by
Western counting; and the cherry-trees were blossoming. She thought of
the cherry-trees in her garden, and of the gladness of spring. She
thought of her children. She thought of her husband’s various
concubines,—especially the Lady Yukiko, nineteen years old.
“My dear wife,” said the daimyō, “you have suffered very much for three
long years. We have done all that we could to get you well,—watching
beside you night and day, praying for you, and often fasting for your
sake, But in spite of our loving care, and in spite of the skill of our
best physicians, it would now seen that the end of your life is not far
off. Probably we shall sorrow more than you will sorrow because of your
having to leave what the Buddha so truly termed ‘this burning-house of
the world. I shall order to be performed—no matter what the cost—every
religious rite that can serve you in regard to your next rebirth; and
all of us will pray without ceasing for you, that you may not have to
wander in the Black Space, but may quickly enter Paradise, and attain
to Buddha-hood.”
He spoke with the utmost tenderness, pressing her the while. Then, with
eyelids closed, she answered him in a voice thin as the voice of in
insect:—
“I am grateful—most grateful—for your kind words…. Yes, it is true, as
you say, that I have been sick for three long years, and that I have
been treated with all possible care and affection…. Why, indeed, should
I turn away from the one true Path at the very moment of my death?…
Perhaps to think of worldly matters at such a time is not right;—but I
have one last request to make,—only one…. Call here to me the Lady
Yukiko;—you know that I love her like a sister. I want to speak to her
about the affairs of this household.”
Yukiko came at the summons of the lord, and, in obedience to a sign
from him, knelt down beside the couch. The daimyō’s wife opened her
eyes, and looked at Yukiko, and spoke:—“Ah, here is Yukiko!… I am so
pleased to see you, Yukiko!… Come a little closer,—so that you can hear
me well: I am not able to speak loud…. Yukiko, I am going to die. I
hope that you will be faithful in all things to our dear lord;—for I
want you to take my place when I am gone…. I hope that you will always
be loved by him,—yes, even a hundred times more than I have been,—and
that you will very soon be promoted to a higher rank, and become his
honored wife…. And I beg of you always to cherish our dear lord: never
allow another woman to rob you of his affection…. This is what I wanted
to say to you, dear Yukiko…. Have you been able to understand?”
“Oh, my dear Lady,” protested Yukiko, “do not, I entreat you, say such
strange things to me! You well know that I am of poor and mean
condition:—how could I ever dare to aspire to become the wife of our
lord!”
“Nay, nay!” returned the wife, huskily,—“this is not a time for words
of ceremony: let us speak only the truth to each other. After my death,
you will certainly be promoted to a higher place; and I now assure you
again that I wish you to become the wife of our lord—yes, I wish this,
Yukiko, even more than I wish to become a Buddha!… Ah, I had almost
forgotten!—I want you to do something for me, Yukiko. You know that in
the garden there is a _yaë-zakura_,[2] which was brought here, the year
before last, from Mount Yoshino in Yamato. I have been told that it is
now in full bloom;—and I wanted so much to see it in flower! In a
little while I shall be dead;—I must see that tree before I die. Now I
wish you to carry me into the garden—at once, Yukiko,—so that I can see
it…. Yes, upon your back, Yukiko;—take me upon your back….”
[2] _Yaë-zakura, yaë-no-sakura_, a variety of Japanese cherry-tree
that bears double-blossoms.
While thus asking, her voice had gradually become clear and strong,—as
if the intensity of the wish had given her new force: then she suddenly
burst into tears. Yukiko knelt motionless, not knowing what to do; but
the lord nodded assent.
“It is her last wish in this world,” he said. “She always loved
cherry-flowers; and I know that she wanted very much to see that
Yamato-tree in blossom. Come, my dear Yukiko, let her have her will.”
As a nurse turns her back to a child, that the child may cling to it,
Yukiko offered her shoulders to the wife, and said:—
“Lady, I am ready: please tell me how I best can help you.”
“Why, this way!”—responded the dying woman, lifting herself with an
almost superhuman effort by clinging to Yukiko’s shoulders. But as she
stood erect, she quickly slipped her thin hands down over the
shoulders, under the robe, and clutched the breasts of the girl,, and
burst into a wicked laugh.
“I have my wish!” she cried—“I have my wish for the
cherry-bloom,[3]—but not the cherry-bloom of the garden!… I could not
die before I got my wish. Now I have it!—oh, what a delight!”
[3] In Japanese poetry and proverbial phraseology, the physical beauty
of a woman is compared to the cherry-flower; while feminine moral
beauty is compared to the plum-flower.
And with these words she fell forward upon the crouching girl, and
died.
The attendants at once attempted to lift the body from Yukiko’s
shoulders, and to lay it upon the bed. But—strange to say!—this
seemingly easy thing could not be done. The cold hands had attached
themselves in some unaccountable way to the breasts of the
girl,—appeared to have grown into the quick flesh. Yukiko became
senseless with fear and pain.
Physicians were called. They could not understand what had taken place.
By no ordinary methods could the hands of the dead woman be unfastened
from the body of her victim;—they so clung that any effort to remove
them brought blood. This was not because the fingers held: it was
because the flesh of the palms had united itself in some inexplicable
manner to the flesh of the breasts!
At that time the most skilful physician in Yedo was a foreigner,—a
Dutch surgeon. It was decided to summon him. After a careful
examination he said that he could not understand the case, and that for
the immediate relief of Yukiko there was nothing to be done except to
cut the hands from the corpse. He declared that it would be dangerous
to attempt to detach them from the breasts. His advice was accepted;
and the hands’ were amputated at the wrists. But they remained clinging
to the breasts; and there they soon darkened and dried up,—like the
hands of a person long dead.
Yet this was only the beginning of the horror.
Withered and bloodless though they seemed, those hands were not dead.
At intervals they would stir—stealthily, like great grey spiders. And
nightly thereafter,—beginning always at the Hour of the Ox,[4]—they
would clutch and compress and torture. Only at the Hour of the Tiger
the pain would cease.
[4] In ancient Japanese time, the Hour of the Ox was the special hour
of ghosts. It began at 2 A.M., and lasted until 4 A.M.—for the old
Japanese hour was double the length of the modern hour. The Hour of
the Tiger began at 4 A.M.
Yukiko cut off her hair, and became a mendicant-nun,—taking the
religious name of Dassetsu. She had an _ihai_ (mortuary tablet) made,
bearing the _kaimyō_ of her dead mistress,—“_Myō-Kō-In-Den
Chizan-Ryō-Fu Daishi_”;—and this she carried about with her in all her
wanderings; and every day before it she humbly besought the dead for
pardon, and performed a Buddhist service in order that the jealous
spirit might find rest. But the evil karma that had rendered such an
affliction possible could not soon be exhausted. Every night at the
Hour of the Ox, the hands never failed to torture her, during more than
seventeen years,—according to the testimony of those persons to whom
she last told her story, when she stopped for one evening at the house
of Noguchi Dengozayémon, in the village of Tanaka in the district of
Kawachi in the province of Shimotsuké. This was in the third year of
Kōkwa (1846). Thereafter nothing more was ever heard of her.
Story of a Tengu[1]
[1] This story may be found in the curious old Japanese book called
_Jikkun-Shō_. The same legend has furnished the subject of an
interesting _Nō_-play, called _Dai-É_ (“The Great Assembly”).
In Japanese popular art, the Tengu are commonly represented either
as winged men with beak-shaped noses, or as birds of prey. There
are different kinds of Tengu; but all are supposed to be
mountain-haunting spirits, capable of assuming many forms, and
occasionally appearing as crows, vultures, or eagles. Buddhism
appears to class the Tengu among the Mârakâyikas.
In the days of the Emperor Go-Reizei, there was a holy priest living in
the temple of Saito, on the mountain called Hiyei-Zan, near Kyōto. One
summer day this good priest, after a visit to the city, was returning
to his temple by way of Kita-no-Ōji, when he saw some boys ill-treating
a kite. They had caught the bird in a snare, and were beating it with
sticks. “Oh, the, poor creature!” compassionately exclaimed the
priest;—“why do you torment it so, children?” One of the boys made
answer:—“We want to kill it to get the feathers.” Moved by pity, the
priest persuaded the boys to let him have the kite in exchange for a
fan that he was carrying; and he set the bird free. It had not been
seriously hurt, and was able to fly away.
Happy at having performed this Buddhist act of merit, the priest then
resumed his walk. He had not proceeded very far when he saw a strange
monk come out of a bamboo-grove by the road-side, and hasten towards
him. The monk respectfully saluted him, and said:—“Sir, through your
compassionate kindness my life has been saved; and I now desire to
express my gratitude in a fitting manner.” Astonished at hearing
himself thus addressed, the priest replied:—“Really, I cannot remember
to have ever seen you before: please tell me who you are.” “It is not
wonderful that you cannot recognize me in this form,” returned the
monk: “I am the kite that those cruel boys were tormenting at
Kita-no-Ōji. You saved my life; and there is nothing in this world more
precious than life. So I now wish to return your kindness in some way
or other. If there be anything that you would like to have, or to know,
or to see,—anything that I can do for you, in short,—please to tell me;
for as I happen to possess, in a small degree, the Six Supernatural
Powers, I am able to gratify almost any wish that you can express.” On
hearing these words, the priest knew that he was speaking with a Tengu;
and he frankly made answer:—“My friend, I have long ceased to care for
the things of this world: I am now seventy years of age; neither fame
nor pleasure has any attraction for me. I feel anxious only about my
future birth; but as that is a matter in which no one can help me, it
were useless to ask about it. Really, I can think of but one thing
worth wishing for. It has been my life-long regret that I was not in
India in the time of the Lord Buddha, and could not attend the great
assembly on the holy mountain Gridhrakûta. Never a day passes in which
this regret does not come to me, in the hour of morning or of evening
prayer. Ah, my friend! if it were possible to conquer Time and Space,
like the Bodhisattvas, so that I could look upon that marvellous
assembly, how happy should I be!”
“Why,” the Tengu exclaimed, “that pious wish of yours can easily be
satisfied. I perfectly well remember the assembly on the Vulture Peak;
and I can cause everything that happened there to reappear before you,
exactly as it occurred. It is our greatest delight to represent such
holy matters…. Come this way with me!”
And the priest suffered himself to be led to a place among pines, on
the slope of a hill. “Now,” said the Tengu, “you have only to wait here
for awhile, with your eyes shut. Do not open them until you hear the
voice of the Buddha preaching the Law. Then you can look. But when you
see the appearance of the Buddha, you must not allow your devout
feelings to influence you in any way;—you must not bow down, nor pray,
nor utter any such exclamation as, ‘_Even so, Lord!_’ or ‘_O thou
Blessed One!_’ You must not speak at all. Should you make even the
least sign of reverence, something very unfortunate might happen to
me.” The priest gladly promised to follow these injunctions; and the
Tengu hurried away as if to prepare the spectacle.
The day waned and passed, and the darkness came; but the old priest
waited patiently beneath a tree, keeping his eyes closed. At last a
voice suddenly resounded above him,—a wonderful voice, deep and clear
like the pealing of a mighty bell,—the voice of the Buddha Sâkyamuni
proclaiming the Perfect Way. Then the priest, opening his eyes in a
great radiance, perceived that all things had been changed: the place
was indeed the Vulture Peak,—the holy Indian mountain Gridhrakûta; and
the time was the time of the Sûtra of the Lotos of the Good Law. Now
there were no pines about him, but strange shining trees made of the
Seven Precious Substances, with foliage and fruit of gems;—and the
ground was covered with Mandârava and Manjûshaka flowers showered from
heaven;—and the night was filled with fragrance and splendour and the
sweetness of the great Voice. And in mid-air, shining as a moon above
the world, the priest beheld the Blessed One seated upon the
Lion-throne, with Samantabhadra at his right hand, and Manjusri at his
left,—and before them assembled—immeasurably spreading into Space, like
a flood Of stars—the hosts of the Mahâsattvas and the Bodhisattvas with
their countless following: “gods, demons, Nâgas, goblins, men, and
beings not human.” Sâriputra he saw, and Kâsyapa, and Ânanda, with all
the disciples of the Tathâgata,—and the Kings of the Devas,—and the
Kings of the Four Directions, like pillars of fire,—and the great
Dragon-Kings,—and the Gandharvas and Garudas,—and the Gods of the Sun
and the Moon and the Wind,—and the shining myriads of Brahmâ’s heaven.
And incomparably further than even the measureless circling of the
glory of these, he saw—made visible by a single ray of light that shot
from the forehead of the Blessed One to pierce beyond uttermost
Time—the eighteen hundred thousand Buddha-fields of the Eastern Quarter
with all their habitants,—and the beings in each of the Six States of
Existence,—and even the shapes of the Buddhas extinct, that had entered
into Nirvâna. These, and all the gods, and all the demons, he saw bow
down before the Lion-throne; and he heard that multitude incalculable
of beings praising the Sûtra of the Lotos of the Good Law,—like the
roar of a sea before the Lord. Then forgetting utterly his
pledge,—foolishly dreaming that he stood in the very presence of the
very Buddha,—he cast himself down in worship with tears of love and
thanksgiving; crying out with a loud voice, “_O thou Blessed One!_”…
Instantly with a shock as of earthquake the stupendous spectacle
disappeared; and the priest found himself alone in the dark, kneeling
upon the grass of the mountain-side. Then a sadness unspeakable fell
upon him, because of the loss of the vision, and because of the
thoughtlessness that had caused him to break his word. As he
sorrowfully turned his steps homeward, the goblin-monk once more
appeared before him, and said to him in tones of reproach and
pain:—“Because you did not keep the promise which you made to me, and
heedlessly allowed your feelings to overcome you, the Gohotendó, who is
the Guardian of the Doctrine, swooped down suddenly from heaven upon
us, and smote us in great anger, crying out, ‘_How do ye dare thus to
deceive a pious person?_’ Then the other monks, whom I had assembled,
all fled in fear. As for myself, one of my wings has been broken,—so
that now I cannot fly.” And with these words the Tengu vanished
forever.
At Yaidzu
I
Under a bright sun the old fishing-town of Yaidzu has a particular
charm of neutral color. Lizard-like it takes the grey tints of the rude
grey coast on which it rests,—curving along a little bay. It is
sheltered from heavy seas by an extraordinary rampart of boulders. This
rampart, on the water-side, is built in the form of terrace-steps;—the
rounded stones of which it is composed being kept in position by a sort
of basket-work woven between rows of stakes driven deeply into the
ground,—a separate row of stakes sustaining each of the grades. Looking
landward from the top of the structure, your gaze ranges over the whole
town,—a broad space of grey-tiled roofs and weather-worn grey timbers,
with here and there a pine-grove marking the place of a temple-court.
Seaward, over leagues of water, there is a grand view,—a jagged blue
range of peaks crowding sharply into the horizon, like prodigious
amethysts,—and beyond them, to the left, the glorious spectre of Fuji,
towering enormously above everything. Between sea-wall and sea there is
no sand,—only a grey slope of stones, chiefly boulders; and these roll
with the surf so that it is ugly work trying to pass the breakers on a
rough day. If you once get struck by a stone-wave,—as I did several
times,—you will not soon forget the experience.
At certain hours the greater part of this rough slope is occupied by
ranks of strange-looking craft,—fishing-boats of a form peculiar to the
locality. They are very large,—capable of carrying forty or fifty men
each;—and they have queer high prows, to which Buddhist or Shintō
charms (_mamori_ or _shugo_) are usually attached. A common form of
Shintō written charm (_shugo_) is furnished for this purpose from the
temple of the Goddess of Fuji: the text reads:—_Fuji-san chōjō
Sengen-gu dai-gyō manzoku_,—meaning that the owner of the boat pledges
himself, in case of good-fortune at fishing, to perform great
austerities in honor of the divinity whose shrine is upon the summit of
Fuji.
In every coast-province of Japan,—and even at different
fishing-settlements of the same province,—the forms of boats and
fishing-implements are peculiar to the district or settlement. Indeed
it will sometimes be found that settlements, within a few miles of each
other, respectively manufacture nets or boats as dissimilar in type as
might be the inventions of races living thousands of miles apart. This
amazing variety may be in some degree due to respect for local
tradition,—to the pious conservatism that preserves ancestral teaching
and custom unchanged through hundreds of years: but it is better
explained by the fact that different communities practise different
kinds of fishing; and the shapes of the nets or the boats made, at any
one place, are likely to prove, on investigation, the inventions of a
special experience. The big Yaidzu boats illustrate this fact. They
were devised according to the particular requirements of the
Yaidzu-fishing-industry, which supplies dried _katsuo_ (bonito) to all
parts of the Empire; and it was necessary that they should be able to
ride a very rough sea. To get them in or out of the water is a heavy
job; but the whole village helps. A kind of slipway is improvised in a
moment by laying flat wooden frames on the slope in a line; and over
these frames the flat-bottomed vessels are hauled up or down by means
of long ropes. You will see a hundred or more persons thus engaged in
moving a single boat,—men, women, and children pulling together, in
time to a curious melancholy chant. At the coming of a typhoon, the
boats are moved far back into the streets. There is plenty of fun in
helping at such work; and if you are a stranger, the fisher-folk will
perhaps reward your pains by showing you the wonders of their sea:
crabs with legs of astonishing length, balloon-fish that blow
themselves up in the most absurd manner, and various other creatures of
shapes so extraordinary that you can scarcely believe them natural
without touching them.
The big boats with holy texts at their prows are not the strangest
objects on the beach. Even more remarkable are the bait-baskets of
split bamboo,—baskets six feet high and eighteen feet round, with one
small hole in the dome-shaped top. Ranged along the sea-wall to dry,
they might at some distance be mistaken for habitations or huts of some
sort. Then you see great wooden anchors, shaped like ploughshares, and
shod with metal; iron anchors, with four flukes; prodigious wooden
mallets, used for driving stakes; and various other implements, still
more unfamiliar, of which you cannot even imagine the purpose. The
indescribable antique queerness of everything gives you that weird
sensation of remoteness,—of the far away in time and place,—which makes
one doubt the reality of the visible. And the life of Yaidzu is
certainly the life of many centuries ago. The people, too, are the
people of Old Japan: frank and kindly as children—good children,—honest
to a fault, innocent of the further world, loyal to the ancient
traditions and the ancient gods.
II
I happened to be at Yaidzu during the three days of the _Bon_ or
Festival of the Dead; and I hoped to see the beautiful farewell
ceremony of the third and last day. In many parts of Japan, the ghosts
are furnished with miniature ships for their voyage,—little models of
junks or fishing-craft, each containing offerings of food and water and
kindled incense; also a tiny lantern or lamp, if the ghost-ship be
despatched at night. But at Yaidzu lanterns only are set afloat; and I
was told that they would be launched after dark. Midnight being the
customary hour elsewhere, I supposed that it was the hour of farewell
at Yaidzu also, and I rashly indulged in a nap after supper, expecting
to wake up in time for the spectacle. But by ten o’clock, when I went
to the beach again, all was over, and everybody had gone home. Over the
water I saw something like a long swarm of fire-flies,—the lanterns
drifting out to sea in procession; but they were already too far to be
distinguished except as points of colored light. I was much
disappointed: I felt that I had lazily missed an opportunity which
might never again return,—for these old Bon-customs are dying rapidly.
But in another moment it occurred to me that I could very well venture
to swim out to the lights. They were moving slowly. I dropped my robe
on the beach, and plunged in. The sea was calm, and beautifully
phosphorescent. Every stroke kindled a stream of yellow fire. I swam
fast, and overtook the last of the lantern-fleet much sooner than I had
hoped. I felt that it would be unkind to interfere with the little
embarcations, or to divert them from their silent course: so I
contented myself with keeping close to one of them, and studying its
details.
[Illustration: The Lights of the Dead]
The structure was very simple. The bottom was a piece of thick plank,
perfectly square, and measuring about ten inches across. Each one of
its corners supported a slender slick about sixteen inches high; and
these four uprights, united above by cross-pieces, sustained the paper
sides. Upon the point of a long nail, driven up through the centre of
the bottom, was fixed a lighted candle. The top was left open. The four
sides presented five different colors,—blue, yellow, red, white, and
black; these five colors respectively symbolizing Ether, Wind, Fire,
Water, and Earth,—the five Buddhist elements which are metaphysically
identified with the Five Buddhas. One of the paper-panes was red, one
blue, one yellow; and the right half of the fourth pane was black,
while the left half, uncolored, represented white. No _kaimyō_ was
written upon any of the transparencies. Inside the lantern there was
only the flickering candle.
I watched those frail glowing shapes drifting through the night, and
ever as they drifted scattering, under impulse of wind and wave, more
and more widely apart. Each, with its quiver of color, seemed a life
afraid,—trembling on the blind current that was bearing it into the
outer blackness…. Are not we ourselves as lanterns launched upon a
deeper and a dimmer sea, and ever separating further and further one
from another as we drift to the inevitable dissolution? Soon the
thought-light in each burns itself out: then the poor frames, and all
that is left of their once fair colors, must melt forever into the
colorless Void.
Even in the moment of this musing I began to doubt whether I was really
alone,—to ask myself whether there might not be something more than a
mere shuddering of light in the thing that rocked beside me: some
presence that haunted the dying flame, and was watching the watcher. A
faint cold thrill passed over me,—perhaps some chill uprising from the
depths,—perhaps the creeping only of a ghostly fancy. Old superstitions
of the coast recurred to me,—old vague warnings of peril in the time of
the passage of Souls. I reflected that were any evil to befall me out
there in the night,—meddling, or seeming to meddle, with the lights of
the Dead,—I should myself furnish the subject of some future weird
legend…. I whispered the Buddhist formula of farewell—to the
lights,—and made speed for shore.
As I touched the stones again, I was startled by seeing two white
shadows before me; but a kindly voice, asking if the water was cold,
set me at ease. It was the voice of my old landlord, Otokichi the
fishseller, who had come to look for me, accompanied by his wife.
“Only pleasantly cool,” I made answer, as I threw on my robe to go home
with them.
“Ah,” said the wife, “it is not good to go out there on the night of
the Bon!”
“I did not go far,” I replied;—“I only wanted to look at the lanterns.”
“Even a Kappa gets drowned sometimes,”[1] protested Otokichi. “There
was a man of this village who swam home a distance of seven ri, in bad
weather, after his boat had been broken. But he was drowned
afterwards.”
[1] This is a common proverb:—_Kappa mo oboré-shini_. The Kappa is a
water-goblin, haunting rivers especially.
Seven _ri_ means a trifle less than eighteen miles. I asked if any of
the young men now in the settlement could do as much.
“Probably some might,” the old man replied. “There are many strong
swimmers. All swim here,—even the little children. But when fisher-folk
swim like that, it is only to save their lives.”
“Or to make love,” the wife added,—“like the Hashima girl.”
“Who?” queried I.
“A fisherman’s daughter,” said Otokichi. “She had a lover in Ajiro,
several _ri_ distant; and she used to swim to him at night, and swim
back in the morning. He kept a light burning to guide her. But one dark
night the light was neglected—or blown out; and she lost her way, and
was drowned…. The story is famous in Idzu.”
—“So,” I said to myself, “in the Far East, it is poor Hero that does
the swimming. And what, under such circumstances, would have been the
Western estimate of Leander?”
III
Usually about the time of the Bon, the sea gets rough; and I was not
surprised to find next morning that the surf was running high. All day
it grew. By the middle of the afternoon, the waves had become
wonderful; and I sat on the sea-wall, and watched them until sundown.
It was a long slow rolling,—massive and formidable. Sometimes, just
before breaking, a towering swell would crack all its green length with
a tinkle as of shivering glass; then would fall and flatten with a peal
that shook the wall beneath me…. I thought of the great dead Russian
general who made his army to storm as a sea,—wave upon wave of
steel,—thunder following thunder…. There was yet scarcely any wind; but
there must have been wild weather elsewhere,—and the breakers were
steadily heightening. Their motion fascinated. How indescribably
complex such motion is,—yet how eternally new! Who could fully describe
even five minutes of it? No mortal ever saw two waves break in exactly
the same way.
And probably no mortal ever watched the ocean-roll or heard its thunder
without feeling serious. I have noticed that even animals,—horses and
cows,—become meditative in the presence of the sea: they stand and
stare and listen as if the sight and sound of that immensity made them
forget all else in the world.
There is a folk-saying of the coast:—“_The Sea has a soul and hears_.”
And the meaning is thus explained: Never speak of your fear when you
feel afraid at sea;—if you say that you are afraid, the waves will
suddenly rise higher. Now this imagining seems to me absolutely
natural. I must confess that when I am either in the sea, or upon it, I
cannot fully persuade myself that it is not alive,—a conscious and a
hostile power. Reason, for the time being, avails nothing against this
fancy. In order to be able to think of the sea as a mere body of water,
I must be upon some height from whence its heaviest billowing appears
but a lazy creeping of tiny ripples.
But the primitive fancy may be roused even more strongly in darkness
than by daylight. How living seem the smoulderings and the flashings of
the tide on nights of phosphorescence!—how reptilian the subtle
shifting of the tints of its chilly flame! Dive into such a
night-sea;—open your eyes in the black-blue gloom, and watch the weird
gush of lights that follow your every motion: each luminous point, as
seen through the flood, like the opening and closing of an eye! At such
a moment, one feels indeed as if enveloped by some monstrous
sentiency,—suspended within some vital substance that feels and sees
and wills alike in every part, an infinite soft cold Ghost.
IV
Long I lay awake that night, and listened to the thunder-rolls and
crashings of the mighty tide. Deeper than these distinct shocks of
noise, and all the storming of the nearer waves, was the bass of the
further surf,—a ceaseless abysmal muttering to which the building
trembled,—a sound that seemed to imagination like the sound of the
trampling of infinite cavalry, the massing of incalculable
artillery,—some rushing, from the Sunrise, of armies wide as the world.
Then I found myself thinking of the vague terror with which I had
listened, when a child, to the voice of the sea;—and I remembered that
in after-years, on different coasts in different parts of the world,
the sound of surf had always revived the childish emotion. Certainly
this emotion was older than I by thousands of thousands of
centuries,—the inherited sum of numberless terrors ancestral. But
presently there came to me the conviction that fear of the sea alone
could represent but one element of the multitudinous awe awakened by
its voice. For as I listened to that wild tide of the Suruga coast, I
could distinguish nearly every sound of fear known to man: not merely
noises of battle tremendous,—of interminable volleying,—of immeasurable
charging,—but the roaring of beasts, the crackling and hissing of fire,
the rumbling of earthquake, the thunder of ruin, and, above all these,
a clamor continual as of shrieks and smothered shoutings,—the Voices
that are said to be the voices of the drowned., Awfulness supreme of
tumult,—combining all imaginable echoings of fury and destruction and
despair!
And to myself I said:—Is it wonderful that the voice of the sea should
make us serious? Consonantly to its multiple utterance must respond all
waves of immemorial fear that move in the vaster sea of
soul-experience. Deep calleth unto deep. The visible abyss calls to
that abyss invisible of elder being whose flood-flow made the ghosts of
us.
Wherefore there is surely more than a little truth in the ancient
belief that the speech of the dead is the roar of the sea. Truly the
fear and the pain of the dead past speak to us in that dim deep awe
which the roar of the sea awakens.
But there are sounds that move us much more profoundly than the voice
of the sea can do, and in stranger ways,—sounds that also make us
serious at times, and very serious,—sounds of music.
Great music is a psychical storm, agitating to unimaginable depth the
mystery of the past within us. Or we might say that it is a prodigious
incantation, every different instrument and voice making separate
appeal to different billions of prenatal memories. There are tones that
call up all ghosts of youth and joy and tenderness;—there are tones
that evoke all phantom pain of perished passion;—there are tones that
resurrect all dead sensations of majesty and might and glory,—all
expired exultations,—all forgotten magnanimities. Well may the
influence of music seem inexplicable to the man who idly dreams that
his life began less than a hundred years ago! But the mystery lightens
for whomsoever learns that the substance of Self is older than the sun.
He finds that music is a Necromancy;—he feels that to every ripple of
melody, to every billow of harmony, there answers within him, out of
the Sea of Death and Birth, some eddying immeasurable of ancient
pleasure and pain.
Pleasure and pain: they commingle always in great music; and therefore
it is that music can move us more profoundly than the voice of ocean or
than any other voice can do. But in music’s larger utterance it is ever
the sorrow that makes the undertone,—the surf-mutter of the Sea of
Soul…. Strange to think how vast the sum of joy and woe that must have
been experienced before the sense of music could evolve in the brain of
man!
Somewhere it is said that human life is the music of the Gods,—that its
sobs and laughter, its songs and shrieks and orisons, its outcries of
delight and of despair, rise never to the hearing of the Immortals but
as a perfect harmony…. Wherefore they could not desire to hush the
tones of pain: it would spoil their music! The combination, without the
agony-tones, would prove a discord unendurable to ears divine.
And in one way we ourselves are as Gods,—since it is only the sum of
the pains and the joys of past lives innumerable that makes for us,
through memory organic, the ecstasy of music. All the gladness and the
grief of dead generations come back to haunt us in countless forms of
harmony and of melody. Even so,—a million years after we shall have
ceased to view the sun,—will the gladness and the grief of our own
lives pass with richer music into other hearts—there to bestir, for one
mysterious moment, some deep and exquisite thrilling of voluptuous
pain.
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