From the caves of the Kami we retrace our course for about a quarter of
a mile; then make directly for an immense perpendicular wrinkle in the
long line of black cliffs. Immediately before it a huge dark rock towers
from the sea, whipped by the foam of breaking swells. Rounding it, we
glide behind it into still water and shadow, the shadow of a monstrous
cleft in the precipice of the coast. And suddenly, at an unsuspected
angle, the mouth of another cavern yawns before us; and in another
moment our boat touches its threshold of stone with a little shock that
sends a long sonorous echo, like the sound of a temple drum, booming
through all the abysmal place. A single glance tells me whither we have
come. Far within the dusk I see the face of a Jizo, smiling in pale
stone, and before him, and all about him, a weird congregation of grey
shapes without shape--a host of fantasticalities that strangely suggest
the wreck of a cemetery. From the sea the ribbed floor of the cavern
slopes high through deepening shadows back to the black mouth of
a farther grotto; and all that slope is covered with hundreds and
thousands of forms like shattered haka. But as the eyes grow accustomed
to the gloaming it becomes manifest that these were never haka; they
are only little towers of stone and pebbles deftly piled up by long and
patient labour.
'Shinda kodomo no shigoto,' my kurumaya murmurs with a compassionate
smile; 'all this is the work of the dead children.'
And we disembark. By counsel, I take off my shoes and put on a pair
of zori, or straw sandals provided for me, as the rock is extremely
slippery. The others land barefoot. But how to proceed soon becomes a
puzzle: the countless stone-piles stand so close together that no space
for the foot seems to be left between them.
'Mada michiga arimasu!' the boatwoman announces, leading the way. There
is a path.
Following after her, we squeeze ourselves between the wall of the cavern
on the right and some large rocks, and discover a very, very narrow
passage left open between the stone-towers. But we are warned to be
careful for the sake of the little ghosts: if any of their work be
overturned, they will cry. So we move very cautiously and slowly across
the cave to a space bare of stone-heaps, where the rocky floor is
covered with a thin layer of sand, detritus of a crumbling ledge above
it. And in that sand I see light prints of little feet, children's feet,
tiny naked feet, only three or four inches long--the footprints of the
infant ghosts.
Had we come earlier, the boatwoman says, we should have seen many more.
For 'tis at night, when the soil of the cavern is moist with dews and
drippings from the roof, that They leave Their footprints upon it; but
when the heat of the day comes, and the sand and the rocks dry up, the
prints of the little feet vanish away.
There are only three footprints visible, but these are singularly
distinct. One points toward the wall of the cavern; the others toward
the sea. Here and there, upon ledges or projections of the rock, all
about the cavern, tiny straw sandals--children's zori--are lying:
offerings of pilgrims to the little ones, that their feet may not be
wounded by the stones. But all the ghostly footprints are prints of
naked feet.
Then we advance, picking our way very, very carefully between the
stone-towers, toward the mouth of the inner grotto, and reach the statue
of Jizo before it. A seated Jizo carven in granite, holding in one hand
the mystic jewel by virtue of which all wishes may be fulfilled; in the
other his shakujo, or pilgrim's staff. Before him (strange condescension
of Shinto faith!) a little torii has been erected, and a pair of gohei!
Evidently this gentle divinity has no enemies; at the feet of the lover
of children's ghosts, both creeds unite in tender homage.
I said feet. But this subterranean Jizo has only one foot. The carven
lotus on which he reposes has been fractured and broken: two great
petals are missing; and the right foot, which must have rested upon one
of them, has been knocked off at the ankle. This, I learn upon inquiry,
has been done by the waves. In times of great storm the billows rush
into the cavern like raging Oni, and sweep all the little stone towers
into shingle as they come, and dash the statues against the rocks.
But always during the first still night after the tempest the work is
reconstructed as before!
Hotoke ga shimpai shite: naki-naki tsumi naoshi-masu.' They make
mourning, the hotoke; weeping, they pile up the stones again, they
rebuild their towers of prayer.
All about the black mouth of the inner grotto the bone-coloured rock
bears some resemblance to a vast pair of yawning jaws. Downward from
this sinister portal the cavern-floor slopes into a deeper and darker
aperture. And within it, as one's eyes become accustomed to the gloom, a
still larger vision of stone towers is disclosed; and beyond them, in a
nook of the grotto, three other statues of Jizo smile, each one with
a torii before it. Here I have the misfortune to upset first one
stone-pile and then another, while trying to proceed. My kurumaya,
almost simultaneously, ruins a third. To atone therefore, we must build
six new towers, or double the number of those which we have cast down.
And while we are thus busied, the boatwoman tells of two fishermen who
remained in the cavern through all one night, and heard the humming
of the viewless gathering, and sounds of speech, like the speech of
children murmuring in multitude.
Only at night do the shadowy children come to build their little
stone-heaps at the feet of Jizo; and it is said that every night the
stones are changed. When I ask why they do not work by day, when there
is none to see them, I am answered: 'O-Hi-San [2] might see them; the
dead exceedingly fear the Lady-Sun.'
To the question, 'Why do they come from the sea?' I can get no
satisfactory answer. But doubtless in the quaint imagination of this
people, as also in that of many another, there lingers still the
primitive idea of some communication, mysterious and awful, between the
world of waters and the world of the dead. It is always over the sea,
after the Feast of Souls, that the spirits pass murmuring back to their
dim realm, in those elfish little ships of straw which are launched for
them upon the sixteenth day of the seventh moon. Even when these are
launched upon rivers, or when floating lanterns are set adrift upon
lakes or canals to light the ghosts upon their way, or when a mother
bereaved drops into some running stream one hundred little prints of
Jizo for the sake of her lost darling, the vague idea behind the pious
act is that all waters flow to the sea and the sea itself unto the
'Nether-distant Land.'
Some time, somewhere, this day will come back to me at night, with
its visions and sounds: the dusky cavern, and its grey hosts of stone
climbing back into darkness, and the faint prints of little naked feet,
and the weirdly smiling images, and the broken syllables of the waters
inward-borne, multiplied by husky echoings, blending into one vast
ghostly whispering, like the humming of the Sai-no-Kawara.
And over the black-blue bay we glide to the rocky beach of Kaka-ura.