The temple is small, neat, luminous with the sun pouring into its widely
opened shoji; and Akira must know the priests well, so affable their
greeting is. I make a little offering, and Akira explains the purpose of
our visit. Thereupon we are invited into a large bright apartment in a
wing of the building, overlooking a lovely garden. Little cushions are
placed on the floor for us to sit upon; and a smoking-box is brought in,
and a tiny lacquered table about eight inches high. And while one of the
priests opens a cupboard, or alcove with doors, to find the kakemono,
another brings us tea, and a plate of curious confectionery consisting
of various pretty objects made of a paste of sugar and rice flour.
One is a perfect model of a chrysanthemum blossom; another is a lotus;
others are simply large, thin, crimson lozenges bearing admirable
designs--flying birds, wading storks, fish, even miniature landscapes.
Akira picks out the chrysanthemum, and insists that I shall eat it; and
I begin to demolish the sugary blossom, petal by petal, feeling all the
while an acute remorse for spoiling so beautiful a thing.
Meanwhile four kakemono have been brought forth, unrolled, and suspended
from pegs upon the wall; and we rise to examine them.
They are very, very beautiful kakemono, miracles of drawing and of
colour-subdued colour, the colour of the best period of Japanese art;
and they are very large, fully five feet long and more than three broad,
mounted upon silk.
And these are the legends of them:
First kakemono:
In the upper part of the painting is a scene from the Shaba, the world
of men which we are wont to call the Real--a cemetery with trees in
blossom, and mourners kneeling before tombs. All under the soft blue
light of Japanese day.
Underneath is the world of ghosts. Down through the earth-crust
souls are descending. Here they are flitting all white through inky
darknesses; here farther on, through weird twilight, they are wading the
flood of the phantom River of the Three Roads, Sanzu-no-Kawa. And here
on the right is waiting for them Sodzu-Baba, the Old Woman of the Three
Roads, ghastly and grey, and tall as a nightmare. From some she is
taking their garments;--the trees about her are heavily hung with the
garments of others gone before.
Farther down I see fleeing souls overtaken by demons--hideous blood-red
demons, with feet like lions, with faces half human, half bovine, the
physiognomy of minotaurs in fury. One is rending a soul asunder. Another
demon is forcing souls to reincarnate themselves in bodies of horses,
of dogs, of swine. And as they are thus reincarnated they flee away into
shadow.
Second kakemono:
Such a gloom as the diver sees in deep-sea water, a lurid twilight.
In the midst a throne, ebon-coloured, and upon it an awful figure
seated--Emma Dai-O, Lord of Death and Judge of Souls, unpitying,
tremendous. Frightful guardian spirits hover about him--armed goblins.
On the left, in the foreground below the throne, stands the wondrous
Mirror, Tabarino-Kagami, reflecting the state of souls and all the
happenings of the world. A landscape now shadows its surface,--a
landscape of cliffs and sand and sea, with ships in the offing. Upon
the sand a dead man is lying, slain by a sword slash; the murderer is
running away. Before this mirror a terrified soul stands, in the grasp
of a demon, who compels him to look, and to recognise in the murderer's
features his own face. To the right of the throne, upon a tall-stemmed
flat stand, such as offerings to the gods are placed upon in the
temples, a monstrous shape appears, like a double-faced head freshly cut
off, and set upright upon the stump of the neck. The two faces are the
Witnesses: the face of the Woman (Mirume) sees all that goes on in
the Shaba; the other face is the face of a bearded man, the face of
Kaguhana, who smells all odours, and by them is aware of all that human
beings do. Close to them, upon a reading-stand, a great book is open,
the record-book of deeds. And between the Mirror and the Witnesses white
shuddering souls await judgment.
Farther down I see the sufferings of souls already sentenced. One, in
lifetime a liar, is having his tongue torn out by a demon armed with
heated pincers. Other souls, flung by scores into fiery carts, are being
dragged away to torment. The carts are of iron, but resemble in form
certain hand-wagons which one sees every day being pulled and pushed
through the streets by bare-limbed Japanese labourers, chanting always
the same melancholy alternating chorus, Haidak! hei! haidak hei! But
these demon-wagoners--naked, blood-coloured, having the feet of lions
and the heads of bulls--move with their flaming wagons at a run, like
jinricksha-men.
All the souls so far represented are souls of adults.
Third kakemono:
A furnace, with souls for fuel, blazing up into darkness. Demons stir
the fire with poles of iron. Down through the upper blackness other
souls are falling head downward into the flames.
Below this scene opens a shadowy landscape--a faint-blue and faint-grey
world of hills and vales, through which a river serpentines--the
Sai-no-Kawara. Thronging the banks of the pale river are ghosts of
little children, trying to pile up stones. They are very, very pretty,
the child-souls, pretty as real Japanese children are (it is astonishing
how well is child-beauty felt and expressed by the artists of Japan).
Each child has one little short white dress.
In the foreground a horrible devil with an iron club has just dashed
down and scattered a pile of stones built by one of the children. The
little ghost, seated by the ruin of its work, is crying, with both
pretty hands to its eyes. The devil appears to sneer. Other children
also are weeping near by. But, lo! Jizo comes, all light and sweetness,
with a glory moving behind him like a great full moon; and he holds out
his shakujo, his strong and holy staff, and the little ghosts catch it
and cling to it, and are drawn into the circle of his protection. And
other infants have caught his great sleeves, and one has been lifted to
the bosom of the god.
Below this Sai-no-Kawara scene appears yet another shadow-world, a
wilderness of bamboos! Only white-robed shapes of women appear in it.
They are weeping; the fingers of all are bleeding. With finger-nails
plucked out must they continue through centuries to pick the sharp-edged
bamboo-grass.
Fourth kakemono:
Floating in glory, Dai-Nichi-Nyorai, Kwannon-Sama, Amida Buddha. Far
below them as hell from heaven surges a lake of blood, in which souls
float. The shores of this lake are precipices studded with sword-blades
thickly set as teeth in the jaws of a shark; and demons are driving
naked ghosts up the frightful slopes. But out of the crimson lake
something crystalline rises, like a beautiful, clear water-spout; the
stem of a flower,--a miraculous lotus, bearing up a soul to the feet of
a priest standing above the verge of the abyss. By virtue of his prayer
was shaped the lotus which thus lifted up and saved a sufferer.
Alas! there are no other kakemonos. There were several others: they have
been lost!
No: I am happily mistaken; the priest has found, in some mysterious
recess, one more kakemono, a very large one, which he unrolls and
suspends beside the others. A vision of beauty, indeed! but what has
this to do with faith or ghosts? In the foreground a garden by the
waters of the sea, of some vast blue lake,--a garden like that at
Kanagawa, full of exquisite miniature landscape-work: cascades,
grottoes, lily-ponds, carved bridges, and trees snowy with blossom, and
dainty pavilions out-jutting over the placid azure water. Long, bright,
soft bands of clouds swim athwart the background. Beyond and above them
rises a fairy magnificence of palatial structures, roof above roof,
through an aureate haze like summer vapour: creations aerial, blue,
light as dreams. And there are guests in these gardens, lovely beings,
Japanese maidens. But they wear aureoles, star-shining: they are
spirits!
For this is Paradise, the Gokuraku; and all those divine shapes are
Bosatsu. And now, looking closer, I perceive beautiful weird things
which at first escaped my notice.
They are gardening, these charming beings!--they are caressing the
lotus-buds, sprinkling their petals with something celestial, helping
them to blossom. And what lotus-buds with colours not of this world.
Some have burst open; and in their luminous hearts, in a radiance like
that of dawn, tiny naked infants are seated, each with a tiny halo.
These are Souls, new Buddhas, hotoke born into bliss. Some are very,
very small; others larger; all seem to be growing visibly, for their
lovely nurses are feeding them with something ambrosial. I see one which
has left its lotus-cradle, being conducted by a celestial Jizo toward
the higher splendours far away.
Above, in the loftiest blue, are floating tennin, angels of the Buddhist
heaven, maidens with phoenix wings. One is playing with an ivory
plectrum upon some stringed instrument, just as a dancing-girl plays her
samisen; and others are sounding those curious Chinese flutes, composed
of seventeen tubes, which are used still in sacred concerts at the great
temples.
Akira says this heaven is too much like earth. The gardens, he
declares, are like the gardens of temples, in spite of the celestial
lotus-flowers; and in the blue roofs of the celestial mansions he
discovers memories of the tea-houses of the city of Saikyo. [7]
Well, what after all is the heaven of any faith but ideal reiteration
and prolongation of happy experiences remembered--the dream of dead days
resurrected for us, and made eternal? And if you think this Japanese
ideal too simple, too naive, if you say there are experiences of the
material life more worthy of portrayal in a picture of heaven than any
memory of days passed in Japanese gardens and temples and tea-houses,
it is perhaps because you do not know Japan, the soft, sweet blue of its
sky, the tender colour of its waters, the gentle splendour of its sunny
days, the exquisite charm of its interiors, where the least object
appeals to one's sense of beauty with the air of something not made, but
caressed, into existence.