'Tera?' once more queries Cha.
'Tera, no--it is getting late. Hotel, Cha.'
But Cha, turning the corner of a narrow street, on our homeward route,
halts the jinricksha before a shrine or tiny temple scarcely larger than
the smallest of Japanese shops, yet more of a surprise to me than any of
the larger sacred edifices already visited. For, on either side of
the entrance, stand two monster-figures, nude, blood-red, demoniac,
fearfully muscled, with feet like lions, and hands brandishing gilded
thunderbolts, and eyes of delirious fury; the guardians of holy things,
the Ni-O, or "Two Kings." [4] And right between these crimson monsters
a young girl stands looking at us; her slight figure, in robe of
silver grey and girdle of iris-violet, relieved deliciously against the
twilight darkness of the interior. Her face, impassive and curiously
delicate, would charm wherever seen; but here, by strange contrast with
the frightful grotesqueries on either side of her, it produces an
effect unimaginable. Then I find myself wondering whether my feeling
of repulsion toward those twin monstrosities be altogether lust, seeing
that so charming a maiden deems them worthy of veneration. And they even
cease to seem ugly as I watch her standing there between them, dainty
and slender as some splendid moth, and always naively gazing at the
foreigner, utterly unconscious that they might have seemed to him both
unholy and uncomely.
What are they? Artistically they are Buddhist transformations of Brahma
and of Indra. Enveloped by the absorbing, all-transforming magical
atmosphere of Buddhism, Indra can now wield his thunderbolts only in
defence of the faith which has dethroned him: he has become a keeper
of the temple gates; nay, has even become a servant of Bosatsu
(Bodhisattvas), for this is only a shrine of Kwannon, Goddess of Mercy,
not yet a Buddha.
'Hotel, Cha, hotel!' I cry out again, for the way is long, and the sun
sinking,--sinking in the softest imaginable glow of topazine light.
I have not seen Shaka (so the Japanese have transformed the name
Sakya-Muni); I have not looked upon the face of the Buddha. Perhaps I
may be able to find his image to-morrow, somewhere in this wilderness of
wooden streets, or upon the summit of some yet unvisited hill.
The sun is gone; the topaz-light is gone; and Cha stops to light his
lantern of paper; and we hurry on again, between two long lines of
painted paper lanterns suspended before the shops: so closely set, so
level those lines are, that they seem two interminable strings of pearls
of fire. And suddenly a sound--solemn, profound, mighty--peals to my
ears over the roofs of the town, the voice of the tsurigane, the great
temple-bell of Nogiyama.
All too short the day seemed. Yet my eyes have been so long dazzled
by the great white light, and so confused by the sorcery of that
interminable maze of mysterious signs which made each street vista seem
a glimpse into some enormous grimoire, that they are now weary even
of the soft glowing of all these paper lanterns, likewise covered with
characters that look like texts from a Book of Magic. And I feel at last
the coming of that drowsiness which always follows enchantment.