15 It is believed that foxes amuse themselves by causing people to
eat horse-dung in the belief that they are eating mochi, or to enter a
cesspool in the belief they are taking a bath.
16 'In Jigyobamachi, a name signifying 'earthwork-street.' It stands
upon land reclaimed from swamp.
17 This seems to be the immemorial artistic law for the demeanour of
all symbolic guardians of holy places, such as the Karashishi, and the
Ascending and Descending Dragons carved upon panels, or pillars. At
Kumano temple even the Suijin, or warrior-guardians, who frown
behind the gratings of the chambers of the great gateway, are thus
represented--one with mouth open, the other with closed lips.
On inquiring about the origin of this distinction between the two
symbolic figures, I was told by a young Buddhist scholar that the male
figure in such representations is supposed to be pronouncing the
sound 'A,' and the figure with closed lips the sound of nasal
'N'--corresponding to the Alpha and Omega of the Greek alphabet, and
also emblematic of the Beginning and the End. In the Lotos of the Good
Law, Buddha so reveals himself, as the cosmic Alpha and Omega, and the
Father of the World,--like Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita.
18 There is one exception to the general custom of giving the dolls of
dead children, or the wrecks of dolls, to Kojin. Those images of the God
of Calligraphy and Scholarship which are always presented as gifts to
boys on the Boys' Festival are given, when broken, to Tenjin himself,
not to Kojin; at least such is the custom in Matsue.
End of Project Gutenberg's Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan, by Lafcadio
Hearn