_I make my_ hyaku-dō, _traveling Love's dark pathway._
_Ever praying to meet the owner of my heart._[24]
[Footnote 23:
Ekō suru toté
Hotoké no maé yé
Futari mukaité,
Konabé daté.
Lit.: "Repeat prayers saying, dead-of-presence-in twain
facing,--small-pan cooking!" _Hotoké_ means a dead person as well
as a Buddha. (See my _Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan:_ "The Household
Shrine")-_Konabé-daté_ is an idiomatic expression signifying a
lovers' tête-à-tête. It is derived from the phrase, _Chin-chin kamo
nabé_("cooking a wild duck in a pan"),--the idea suggested being that
of the pleasure experienced by an amorous couple in eating out of the
same dish. _Chin-chin,_ an onomatope, expresses the sound of the gravy
boiling.]
[Footnote 24: To perform the rite called "o-hyaku-dō" means to make one
hundred visits to a temple, saying a prayer each time. The expression
"dark way of Love" _(koi no yami_ or _yamiji)_ is a Buddhist phrase;
love, being due to _mayoi,_ or illusion, is a state of spiritual
darkness. The term "owner of my heart" is an attempted rendering of
the Japanese word _nushi,_ signifying "master," "owner,"--often, also,
"landlord,"--and, in love-matters, the lord or master of the affection
inspired.]
The interest attaching to the following typical group of love-songs
will be found to depend chiefly upon the Buddhist allusions:--
_In the bed of the River of Souls, or in waiting alone at evening,_
_The pain differs nothing at all: to a mountain the pebble grows._[25]
_Who furthest after illusion wanders on Love's dark pathway_
_Is ever the clearest-seeing,[26] not the simple or dull._
[Footnote 25:
Sai-no-kawara to
Nushi matsu yoi wa
Koishi, koishi ga
Yama to naru.
A more literal translation would be: "In the Sai-no-Kawara ('Dry bed
of the River of Souls') and in the evening when waiting for the loved
one, '_Koishi, Koishi_' becomes a mountain." There is a delicate pun
here,--a play on the word _Koishi,_ which, as pronounced, though not
as written, may mean either "a small stone," or "longing to see." In
the bed of the phantom river, Sai-no-Kawa, the ghosts of children are
obliged to pile up little stones, the weight of which increases so as
to tax their strength to the utmost. There is a reference here also
to a verse in the Buddhist _wasan_ of Jizō, describing the crying of
the children for their parents: _"Chichi koishi! haha koishi!_" (See
_Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan,_ vol. i. pp. 59-61.)]
[Footnote 26: Clearest-sighted,--that is, in worldly matters.]
_Coldly seen from without our love looks utter folly:_
_Who never has felt_ mayoi _never could understand!_
_Countless the men must be who dwell in three thousand worlds;_
_Yet among them all is none worthy to change for mine._[27]
_However fickle I seem, my heart is never unfaithful:_
_Out of the slime itself, spotless the lotos grows._[28]
_So that we stay together, even the Hell of the Blood Lake--_
_Even the Mountain of Swords--will signify nothing at all?_[29]
[Footnote 27:
San-zen sékai ni
Otoko wa arédo,
Nushi ni mi-kayeru
Hito wa nai.
"San-zen sékai," the three thousand worlds, is a common
Buddhist expression. Literally translated, the above song runs:
"Three-thousand-worlds-in men are, but lover-to-exchange person is
not."]
[Footnote 28: The familiar Buddhist simile is used more significantly
here than the Western reader might suppose from the above rendering.
These are supposed to be the words either of a professional
singing-girl or of a _jorō_. Her calling is derisively termed a
_doro-midzu kagyō_ ("foul-water occupation"); and her citation of
the famous Buddhist comparison in self-defense is particularly, and
pathetically, happy.]
[Footnote 29:
Chi-no-Iké-Jigoku mo,
Tsurugi-no-Yama mo,
Futari-dzuré nara
Itoi 'a sénu.
The Hell of the Blood-Lake is a hell for women; and the Mountain of
Swords is usually depicted in Buddhist prints as a place of infernal
punishment for men in especial.]
_Not yet indeed is my body garbed in the ink-black habit;_
_--But as for this heart bereaved, already it is a nun._[30]
_My hair, indeed, is uncut; but my heart has become a religious;_
_A nun it shall always be till the hour I meet him again._
But even the priest or nun is not always exempt from the power of
_mayoi_:--
_I am wearing the sable garb,--and yet, through illusion of longing,_
_Ever I lose my way,--knowing not whither or where!_
So far, my examples have been principally chosen from the more serious
class of _dodoitsu._ But in _dodoitsu_ of a lighter class the Buddhist
allusions are perhaps even more frequent. The following group of five
will serve for specimens of hundreds:--
[Footnote 30: In the original much more pretty and much more simple:--
Sumi no koromo ni
Mi wa yatsusanedo,
Kokoro hitotsu wa
Ama-hōshi.
"Ink-black-_koromo_ [priest's or nun's outer robe] in, body not clad,
but heart-one nun." _Hitotsu,_ "one," also means "solitary," "forlorn,"
"bereaved." _Ama hōshi,_ lit.: "nun-priest."]
_Never can be recalled the word too quickly spoken:_
_Therefore with Emma's face the lover receives the prayer._[31]
_Thrice did I hear that prayer with Buddha's face; but hereafter_
_My face shall be Emma's face because of too many prayers._
_Now they are merry together; but under their boat is_ Jigoku.[32]
_Blow quickly, thou river-wind,--blow a typhoon for my sake!_
_Vainly, to make him stay, I said that the crows were night crows;_[33]--
_The bell of the dawn peals doom,--the bell that cannot lie._
[Footnote 31: The implication is that he has hastily promised more
than he wishes to perform. Emma, or Yemma (Sansc. Yama), is the Lord
of Hell and Judge of Souls; and, as depicted in Buddhist sculpture
and painting, is more than fearful to look upon. There is an evident
reference in this song to the Buddhist proverb: _Karu-toki no
Jizō-gao; nasu-toki no Emma-gao_ ("Borrowing-time, the face of Jizō;
repaying-time, the face of Emma").]
[Footnote 32: "Jigoku" is the Buddhist name for various hells (Sansc.
_narakas)._ The allusion here is to the proverb, _Funa-ita ichi-mai
shita wa Jigoku:_ "Under [_the thickness of] a_ single boat-plank is
hell,"--referring to the perils of the sea. This song is a satire on
jealousy; and the boat spoken of is probably a roofed pleasure-boat,
such as excursions are made into the sound of music.]
[Footnote 33: _Tsuki-yo-garasu,_ lit.: "moon-night crows." Crows
usually announce the dawn by their cawing; but sometimes on moonlight
nights they caw at all hours from sunset to sunrise. The bell referred
to is the bell of some Buddhist temple: the _aké-no-kane,_ or
"dawn-bell," being, in all parts of Japan, sounded from every Buddhist
_tera._ There is a pun in the original;--the expression _tsukenai,_
"cannot _tell_ (a lie)," might also be interpreted phonetically as
"cannot _strike_ [a bell]."]
_This my desire: To kill the crows of three thousand worlds,_
_And then to repose in peace with the owner of my heart!_[34]
[Footnote 34:
San-zen sékai no
Karasu we koroshi
Nushi to soi-né ga
Shité mitai
]
I have cited this last only as a curiosity. For it has a strange
history, and is not what it seems,--although the apparent motive was
certainly suggested by some song like the one immediately preceding
it. It is a song of loyalty, and was composed by Kido of Chō-shū,
one of the leaders in that great movement which brought about the
downfall of the Shōgunate, the restoration of the Imperial power, the
reconstruction of Japanese society, and the introduction and adoption
of Western civilization. Kido, Saigō, and Ōkubo are rightly termed the
three heroes of the restoration. While preparing his plans at Kyōto, in
company with his friend Saigō, Kido composed and sang this song as an
intimation of his real sentiments. By the phrase, "ravens of the three
thousand worlds," he designated the Tokugawa partisans; by the word
_nushi_ (lord, or heart's-master) he signified the Emperor; and by the
term _soiné_ (reposing together) he referred to the hoped-for condition
of direct responsibility to the Throne, without further intervention
of Shōgun and daimyō. It was not the first example in Japanese history
of the use of popular song as a medium for the utterance of opinions
which, expressed in plainer language, would have invited assassination.
*
While I was writing the preceding note upon Kido's song, the Buddhist
phrase, _San-zen sékai_ (twice occurring, as the reader will have
observed, in the present collection), suggested a few reflections with
which this paper may fitly conclude. I remember that when I first
attempted, years ago, to learn the outlines of Buddhist philosophy, one
fact which particularly impressed me was the vastness of the Buddhist
concept of the universe. Buddhism, as I read it, had not offered
itself to humanity as a saving creed for one inhabited world, but
as the religion of "innumerable hundreds of thousands of myriads of
_kôtis_[35] of worlds." And the modern scientific revelation of stellar
evolution and dissolution then seemed to me, and still seems, like a
prodigious confirmation of certain Buddhist theories of cosmical law.
The man of science to-day cannot ignore the enormous suggestions of
the new story that the heavens are telling. He finds himself compelled
to regard the development of what we call mind as a general phase or
incident in the ripening of planetary life throughout the universe.
He is obliged to consider the relation of our own petty sphere to the
great swarming of suns and systems as no more than the relation of a
single noctiluca to the phosphorescence of a sea. By its creed the
Oriental intellect has been better prepared than the Occidental to
accept this tremendous revelation, not as a wisdom that increaseth
sorrow, but as a wisdom to quicken faith. And I cannot but think that
out of the certain future union of Western knowledge with Eastern
thought there must eventually proceed a Neo-Buddhism inheriting all
the strength of Science, yet spiritually able to recompense the seeker
after truth with the recompense foretold in the twelfth chapter of
the Sutra of the Diamond-Cutter. Taking the text as it stands,--in
despite of commentators,--what more could be unselfishly desired from
any spiritual teaching than the reward promised in that verse,--"_They
shall be endowed with the Highest Wonder"?_
[Footnote 35: 1 kôti = 10,000,000.]