High above the thronging and the clamour and the myriad fires of the
merchants, the great Shingon temple at the end of the radiant street
towers upon its hill against the starry night, weirdly, like a
dream--strangely illuminated by rows of paper lanterns hung all along
its curving eaves; and the flowing of the crowd bears me thither. Out
of the broad entrance, over a dark gliding mass which I know to be heads
and shoulders of crowding worshippers, beams a broad band of yellow
light; and before reaching the lion-guarded steps I hear the continuous
clanging of the temple gong, each clang the signal of an offering and
a prayer. Doubtless a cataract of cash is pouring into the great
alms-chest; for to-night is the Festival of Yakushi-Nyorai, the
Physician of Souls. Borne to the steps at last, I find myself able to
halt a moment, despite the pressure of the throng, before the stand of
a lantern-seller selling the most beautiful lanterns that I have ever
seen. Each is a gigantic lotus-flower of paper, so perfectly made in
every detail as to seem a great living blossom freshly plucked; the
petals are crimson at their bases, paling to white at their tips; the
calyx is a faultless mimicry of nature, and beneath it hangs a beautiful
fringe of paper cuttings, coloured with the colours of the flower, green
below the calyx, white in the middle, crimson at the ends. In the heart
of the blossom is set a microscopic oil-lamp of baked clay; and this
being lighted, all the flower becomes luminous, diaphanous--a lotus of
white and crimson fire. There is a slender gilded wooden hoop by which
to hang it up, and the price is four cents! How can people afford to
make such things for four cents, even in this country of astounding
cheapness?
Akira is trying to tell me something about the hyaku-hachino-mukaebi,
the Hundred and Eight Fires, to be lighted to-morrow evening, which bear
some figurative relation unto the Hundred and Eight Foolish Desires;
but I cannot hear him for the clatter of the geta and the komageta,
the wooden clogs and wooden sandals of the worshippers ascending to the
shrine of Yakushi-Nyorai. The light straw sandals of the poorer men, the
zori and the waraji, are silent; the great clatter is really made by the
delicate feet of women and girls, balancing themselves carefully upon
their noisy geta. And most of these little feet are clad with spotless
tabi, white as a white lotus. White feet of little blue-robed mothers
they mostly are--mothers climbing patiently and smilingly, with pretty
placid babies at their backs, up the hill to Buddha.
And while through the tinted lantern light I wander on with the gentle
noisy people, up the great steps of stone, between other displays
of lotus-blossoms, between other high hedgerows of paper flowers, my
thought suddenly goes back to the little broken shrine in the poor
woman's room, with the humble playthings hanging before it, and the
laughing, twirling mask of Otafuku. I see the happy, funny little eyes,
oblique and silky-shadowed like Otafuku's own, which used to look at
those toys,--toys in which the fresh child-senses found a charm that
I can but faintly divine, a delight hereditary, ancestral. I see the
tender little creature being borne, as it was doubtless borne many
times, through just such a peaceful throng as this, in just such a
lukewarm, luminous night, peeping over the mother's shoulder, softly
clinging at her neck with tiny hands.
Somewhere among this multitude she is--the mother. She will feel again
to-night the faint touch of little hands, yet will not turn her head to
look and laugh, as in other days.