Perhaps somebody will now be unreasonable enough to ask whether I
believe this story,--as if my belief or disbelief had anything to
do with the matter! The question of the possibility of remembering
former births seems to me to depend upon the question what it is that
remembers. If it is the Infinite All-Self in each one of us, then I can
believe the whole of the Jatakas without any trouble. As to the False
Self, the mere woof and warp of sensation and desire, then I can best
express my idea by relating a dream which I once dreamed. Whether it
was a dream of the night or a dream of the day need not concern any
one, since it was only a dream.
[Footnote 1: The Western reader is requested to bear in mind that the
year in which a Japanese child is born is counted always as one year in
the reckoning of age.]
[Footnote 2: Lit.: "A wave-man,"--a wandering samurai without a lord.
The rōnin were generally a desperate and very dangerous class; but
there were some fine characters among them.]
[Footnote 3: The Buddhist services for the dead are celebrated at
regular intervals, increasing successively in length, until the time
of one hundred years after death. The _jiū-san kwaiki_ is the service
for the thirteenth year after death. By "thirteenth" in the context the
reader must understand that the year in which the death took place is
counted for one year.]
[Footnote 4: The second husband, by adoption, of a daughter who lives
with her own parents.]
[Footnote 5: Children in Japan, among the poorer classes, are not
weaned until an age much later than what is considered the proper age
for weaning children in Western countries. But "four years old" in this
text may mean considerably less, than three by Western reckoning.]
[Footnote 6: From very ancient time in Japan it has been the custom
to bury the dead in large jars,--usually of red earthenware,--called
_Kamé_. Such jars are still used, although a large proportion of the
dead are buried in wooden coffins of a form unknown in the Occident.]
[Footnote 7: The idea expressed is not that of lying down with the
pillow under the head, but of hovering about the pillow, or resting
upon it as an insect might do. The bodiless spirit is usually said to
rest upon the roof of the home. The apparition of the aged man referred
to in the next sentence seems a thought of Shinto rather than of
Buddhism.]
[Footnote 8: The repetition of the Buddhist invocation _Namu Amida
Butsu_! is thus named. The _nembutsu_ is repeated by many Buddhist
sects besides the sect of Amida proper,--the Shinshū.]
[Footnote 9: Botamochi, a kind of sugared rice-cake.]
[Footnote 10: Such advice is a commonplace in Japanese Buddhist
literature. By Hotokė Sama here the boy means, not the Buddhas proper,
but the spirits of the dead, hopefully termed Buddhas by those who
loved them,--much as in the West we sometimes speak of our dead as
"angels."]
[Footnote 11: The cooking-place in a Japanese kitchen. Sometimes the
word is translated "kitchen-range," but the _kamado_ is something very
different from a Western kitchen-range.]
[Footnote 12: Here I think it better to omit a couple of sentences
in the original rather too plain for Western taste, yet not without
interest. The meaning of the omitted passages is only that even in the
womb the child acted with consideration, and according to the rules of
filial piety.]
[Footnote 13: _Nono-San_ (or _Sama_) is the child-word for the
Spirits of the dead, for the Buddhas, and for the Shintō Gods,--Kami.
_Nono-San wo ogamu_,--"to pray to the Nono-San," is the child-phrase
for praying to the gods. The spirits of the ancestors become
Nono-San,--_Kami_,--according to Shintō thought.]
[Footnote 14: The reference here to Ontaké Sama has a particular
interest, but will need some considerable explanation.
Ontaké, or Mitaké, is the name of a celebrated holy peak in the
province of Shinano--a great resort for pilgrims. During the
Tokugawa Shōgunate, a priest called Isshin, of the Risshū Buddhists,
made a pilgrimage to that mountain. Returning to his native place
(Sakamoto-chō, Shitaya, Yedo), he began to preach certain new
doctrines, and to make for himself a reputation as a miracle-worker,
by virtue of powers said to have been gained during his pilgrimage to
Ontaké. The Shōgunate considered him a dangerous person, and banished
him to the island of Hachijō, where he remained for some years.
Afterwards he was allowed to return to Yedo, and there to preach his
new faith,--to which he gave the name of Azuma-Kyō. It was Buddhist
teaching in a Shintō disguise,--the deities especially adored by its
followers being Okuni-nushi and Sukuna-hi-kona as Buddhist avatars. In
the prayer of the sect called Kaibyaku-Norito it is said:--"The divine
nature is immovable (fudō); yet it moves. It is formless, yet manifests
itself in forms. This is the Incomprehensible Divine Body. In Heaven
and Earth it is called Kami; in all things it is called Spirit; in Man
it is called Mind.... From this only reality came the heavens, the four
oceans, the great whole of the three thousand universes;--from the One
Mind emanate three thousands of great thousands of forms." ...
In the eleventh year of Bunkwa (1814) a man called Shi moyama Osuké,
originally an oil-merchant in Heiyemon-chō, Asakusa, Yedo, organized,
on the basis of Isshin's teaching, a religious association named
Tomoyé-Ko. It flourished until the overthrow of the Shōgunate, when
a law was issued forbidding the teaching of mixed doctrines, and the
blending of Shintō with Buddhist religion. Shimo-yama Osuké then
applied for permission to establish a new Shinto sect, under the name
of Mitaké-Kyō,--popularly called Ontaké-Kyō; and the permission was
given in the sixth year of Meiji (1873). Osuké then remodeled the
Buddhist sutra Fudō Kyō into a Shinto prayer-book, under the title,
Shintō-Fudō-Norito. The sect still flourishes; and one of its chief
temples is situated about a mile from my present residence in Tōkyō.
"Ontaké San" (or "Sama") is a popular name given to the deities adored
by this sect. It really means the Deity dwelling on the peak Mitaké,
or Ontaké. But the name is also sometimes applied to the high-priest
of the sect, who is supposed to be oracularly inspired by the deity
of Ontaké, and to make revelations of truth through the power of the
divinity. In the mouth of the boy Katsugoro "Ontaké Sama" means the
high-priest of that time (1823), almost certainly Osuké himself,--then
chief of the Tomoyé-Kyō.]
[Footnote 15: Kozō is the name given to a Buddhist acolyte, or a youth
studying for the priesthood. But it is also given to errand-boys and
little boy-servants sometimes,--perhaps because in former days the
heads of little boys were shaved. I think that the meaning in this text
is "acolyte."]
[Footnote 16: In that time the name of the smallest of coins = 1/10 of
1 cent. It was about the same as that now called rin, a copper with a
square hole in the middle and bearing Chinese characters.]