Perhaps only a Japanese representative of the older culture could fully
inform us to what degree the mental soil of the race has been saturated
and fertilized by Buddhist idealism. At all events, no European could
do so; for to understand the whole relation of Far-Eastern religion
to Far-Eastern life would require, not only such scholarship, but
also such experience as no European could gain in a lifetime. Yet
for even the Western stranger there are everywhere signs of what
Buddhism has been to Japan in the past. All the arts and most of the
industries repeat Buddhist legends to the eye trained in symbolism;
and there is scarcely an object of handiwork possessing any beauty or
significance of form--from the plaything of a child to the heirloom
of a prince--which does not in some way proclaim the ancient debt to
Buddhism of the craft that made it. One may discern Buddhist thoughts
in the cheap cotton prints from an Osaka mill not less than in the
figured silks of Kyoto. The reliefs upon an iron kettle, or the
elephant-heads of bronze making the handles of a shopkeeper's _hibachi_
the patterns of screen-paper, or the commonest ornamental woodwork
of a gateway--the etchings upon a metal pipe, or the enameling upon
a costly vase,--may all relate, with equal eloquence, the traditions
of faith. There are reflections or echoes of Buddhist teaching in the
composition of a garden;--in the countless ideographs of the long
vistas of shop-signs;--in the wonderfully expressive names given to
certain fruits and flowers;--in the appellations of mountains, capes,
waterfalls, villages,--even of modern railway stations. And the new
civilization would not yet seem to have much affected the influence
thus manifested. Trains and steamers now yearly carry to famous shrines
more pilgrims than visited them ever before in a twelvemonth;--the
temple bells still, in despite of clocks and watches, mark the
passing of time for the millions;--the speech of the people is still
poetized with Buddhist utterances;--literature and drama still teem
with Buddhist expressions;--and the most ordinary voices of the
street--songs of children playing, a chorus of laborers at their toil,
even cries of itinerant street-venders--often recall to me some story
of saints and Bodhisattvas, or the text of some sutra.
Such an experience first gave me the idea of making a collection of
songs containing Buddhist expressions or allusions. But in view of
the extent of the subject I could not at once decide where to begin.
A bewildering variety of Japanese songs--a variety of which the mere
nomenclature would occupy pages--offers material of this description.
Among noteworthy kinds may be mentioned the _Utai,_ dramatic songs,
mostly composed by high priests, of which probably no ten lines are
without some allusion to Buddhism;--the _Naga-uta,_ songs often of
extraordinary length;--and the _Jōruri,_ whole romances in verse, with
which professional singers can delight their audiences for five or six
hours at a time. The mere dimension of such compositions necessarily
excluded them from my plan; but there remained a legion of briefer
forms to choose among. I resolved at last to limit my undertaking
mainly to _dodoitsu_,--little songs of twenty-six syllables only,
arranged in four lines (7, 7, 7, 5). They are more regular in
construction than the street-songs treated of in a former paper; but
they are essentially popular, and therefore more widely representative
of Buddhist influences than many superior kinds of composition could
be. Out of a very large number collected for me, I have selected
between forty and fifty as typical of the class.
*
Perhaps those pieces which reflect the ideas of preëxistence and of
future rebirths will prove especially interesting to the Western
reader,--much less because of poetical worth than because of
comparative novelty. We have very little English verse of any class
containing fancies of this kind; but they swarm in Japanese poetry
even as commonplaces and conventionalisms. Such an exquisite thing
as Rossetti's "Sudden Light,"--bewitching us chiefly through the
penetrative subtlety of a thought anathematized by all our orthodoxies
for eighteen hundred years,--could interest a Japanese only as the
exceptional rendering, by an Occidental, of fancies and feelings
familiar to the most ignorant peasant. Certainly no one will be able to
find in these Japanese verses--or, rather, in my own wretchedly prosy
translations of them--even a hint of anything like the ghostly delicacy
of Rossetti's imagining:--
I have been here before,--
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet, keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights along the shore.
You have been mine before,--
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at that swallow's soar
Your neck turned so,
Some veil did fall,--I knew it all of yore.
Yet what a queer _living_ difference between such enigmatically
delicate handling of thoughts classed as forbidden fruit in the Western
Eden of Dreams and the every-day Japanese utterances that spring
directly out of ancient Eastern faith!--
_Love, it is often said, has nothing to do with reason._
_The cause of ours must be some_ En _in a previous birth._[1]
[Footnote 1:
Iro wa shian no
Hoka to-wa iédo,
Koré mo saki-sho no
En de arō.
"En" is a Buddhist word signifying affinity,--relation of cause and
effect from life to life.]
_Even the knot of the rope tying our boats together_
_Knotted was long ago by some love in a former birth._
_If the touching even of sleeves be through En of a former
existence,_
_Very much deeper must be the_ En _that unites us now!_[2]
[Footnote 2:
Sodé suri-ō no mo
Tashō no en yo,
Mashité futari ga
Fukai naka.
Allusion is here made to the old Buddhist proverb: _Sodé no furi-awasé
mo tashō no en,--_"Even the touching of sleeves in passing is caused by
some affinity operating from former lives."]
Kwahō[3] _this life must be,--this dwelling with one so tender;_
_--I am reaping now the reward of deeds in a former birth!_
[Footnote 3: The Buddhist word "Kwahō" is commonly used instead of
other synonyms for Karma (such as ingwa, innen, etc.), to signify the
good, rather than the bad results of action in previous lives. But it
is sometimes used in both meanings. Here there seems to be an allusion
to the proverbial expression, _Kwahō no yoi hito_ (lit.: a person of
good Kwahō), meaning a fortunate individual.]
Many songs of this class refer to the customary vow which lovers
make to belong to each other for more lives than one,--a vow perhaps
originally inspired by the Buddhist aphorism,--
_Oya-ko wa, is-sé;_
_Fūfu wa, ni-sé;_
_Shujū wa, san-zé._
"The relation of parent and child is for one life; that of wife and
husband, for two lives; that of master and servant, for three lives."
Although the tender relation is thus limited to the time of two lives,
the vow--(as Japanese dramas testify, and as the letters of those who
kill themselves for love bear witness)--is often passionately made
for seven. The following selections show a considerable variety of
tone,--ranging from the pathetic to the satirical,--in the treatment of
this topic:
_I have cut my hair for his sake; but the deeper relation between us_
_Cannot be cut in this, nor yet in another life._[4]
[Footnote 4:
Kami wa kitté mo
Ni-sé made kaketa
Fukai enishi wa
Kiru mono ka?
Literally: "Hair have-cut although, two existences until, deep
relation, cut-how-can-it-be?" By the mention of the hair-cutting
we know the speaker is a woman. Her husband, or possibly betrothed
lover, is dead; and, according to the Buddhist custom, she signifies
her desire to remain faithful to his memory by the sacrifice of her
hair. For detailed information on this subject see, in my _Glimpses of
Unfamiliar Japan,_ the chapter, "Of Women's Hair."]
_She looks at the portrait of him to whom for two lives she is
promised:_
_Happy remembrances come, and each brings a smile to her
face._[5]
[Footnote 5:
Ni-sé to chigirishi
Shashin we nagamé
Omoi-idashité
Warai-gao.
Lit.: "Two existences that made alliance, photograph look-at, thinking
bring-out smiling face." The use of the term _shashin,_ photograph,
shows that the poem is not old.]
_If in this present life we never can hope for union,_
_Then we shall first keep house in the Lotos-Palace beyond._[6]
[Footnote 6:
Totémo kono yo dé
Sowaré-nu naraba
Hasu no uténa dé
Ara sėtai.
Lit.: "By-any-means, this-world-in, cannot-live-together if, Lotos-of
Palace-in, new-housekeeping." It is with this thought that lovers
voluntarily die together; and the song might be called a song of
_jōshi._]
_Have we not spoken the vow that binds for a double existence?_
_If we must separate now, I can only wish to die._
_There!--oh, what shall we do?... Pledged for a double
existence,--_
_And now, as we sit together, the string of the samisen snaps!_[7]
[Footnote 7: Among singing-girls it is believed that the snapping of a
samisen-string under such circumstances as those indicated in the above
song is an omen of coming separation.]
_He woos by teaching the Law of Cause and Effect for three lives,_
_And makes a contract for two--the crafty-smiling priest!_[8]
[Footnote 8: This song is of a priest who breaks the vow of celibacy.]
Every mortal has lived and is destined to live countless lives; yet the
happy moments of any single existence are not therefore less precious
in themselves:--
_Not to have met one night is verily cause for sorrow;_
_Since twice in a single birth the same night never comes._
But even as a summer unusually warm is apt to herald a winter of
exceptional severity, so too much happiness in this life may signify
great suffering in the next:--
_Always I suffer thus!... Methinks, in my last existence._
_Too happy I must have been,--did not suffer enough._
Next in point of exotic interest to the songs expressing belief in
preëxistence and rebirth, I think I should place those treating of the
doctrine of _ingwa,_ or Karma. I offer some free translations from
these, together with one selection from a class of compositions more
elaborate and usually much longer than the _dodoitsu,_ called _hauta._
In the original, at least, my selection from the _hauta--_which
contains a charming simile about the firefly--is by far the prettiest:--
_Weep not!--turn to me!... Nay, all my suspicions vanish!_
_Forgive me those words unkind: some_ ingwa _controlled my tongue!_
Evidently this is the remorseful pleading of a jealous lover. The next
might be the answer of the girl whose tears he had caused to flow:
_I cannot imagine at all by what strange manner of ingwa_
_Came I to fall in love with one so unkind as you!_