K A K E M O N O
JAPANESE SKETCHES
BY
A. HERBAGE EDWARDS
_WITH FRONTISPIECE_
[Illustration: Printer’s Logo]
CHICAGO
A. C. McCLURG & CO.
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
1906
[Illustration: COPYRIGHT 1906 S. L. WILLARD
_A Daughter of Japan_]
American Edition Published Sept. 15, 1906
_Printed in Great Britain_
_Bound by Lakeside Press, Chicago_
TO MY TEACHERS
THE PEOPLE OF JAPAN
CONTENTS
THE FAITH OF JAPAN
PAGE
I. DAI BUTSU 3
II. THE SHRINES OF ISÉ 5
III. THE TEMPLE OF NIKKŌ 8
IV. KANNON, LADY OF MERCY 14
V. RINZAKI’S ALTAR 17
VI. TWO CREEDS 19
VII. THE LEGEND OF THE NOSELESS JIZŌ 22
VIII. THE TEMPLES OF SHIBA 27
IX. AMIDA BUTSU 31
X. ST. NICHIREN 34
XI. BETWEEN EARTH AND HEAVEN 36
XII. INARI, THE FOX-GOD 39
XIII. THE ALTAR OF FIRE 42
XIV. FORGOTTEN GODS 48
LORD FUJI
I. PROLOGUE 55
II. THE ASCENT 57
III. EPILOGUE 99
THE ART OF THE NATION
I. GRACE BEFORE MEAT 103
II. IN A CLOISONNÉ FACTORY 110
III. FLOWER ARRANGEMENT 114
IV. GOD’S MESSENGER 119
V. THE ART OF THE PEOPLE 122
SCENES IN RAIN AND SUNSHINE
I. THE MOAT 157
II. A RAINY DAY 159
III. MMÉ (PLUM BLOSSOMS) 161
IV. WET LEAVES 163
V. ASAMAYAMA 165
VI. CAMELLIAS 176
VII. RAIN 178
VIII. THE BLACK CANAL 181
IX. THE INLAND SEA 184
THE LAND OF THE GODS
I. ACROSS THE LAGOON 193
II. TO KIZUKI 199
III. IZUMO’S GREAT TEMPLE 204
IV. KIZUKI’S BAY 211
V. IN MATSUÉ 214
VI. THE TWO SPIRITS 235
THE HEART OF THE PEOPLE
I. TOKYO 243
II. EAST AND WEST 255
III. YONÉ’S BABY 257
IV. THE GRAVES OF THE RŌNIN 260
V. THE DOLLS’ FESTIVAL 263
VI. WITH DEATH BESIDE HER 266
VII. KYOTO’S SOIRÉE 269
VIII. NŌ 273
IX. A JAPANESE BANK-HOLIDAY 278
X. THE PALACE OF THE SON OF HEAVEN 282
XI. AND SHE WAS A WIDOW 285
GLOSSARY 293
THE FAITH OF JAPAN
“In my Father’s house are many mansions.”
_John_ xiv.
Tenshi ni kuchi nashi hito o motte iwashimu.
“Heaven has no mouth, it makes men speak for it.”
_Japanese Proverb._
I
DAI BUTSU
(GREAT BUDDHA)
The great God Buddha sits peaceful and still, a line of dark bronze
against the blue sky, and the length of the garden is flooded with
light. Two tall pink cherry-trees drop blushing snowflakes on to his
broad shoulders, and the sound of running water is a liquid prayer.
Under his heavy-lidded eyes he looks as one who saw not, or saw too
well, and his slow smile is inscrutable and still. The mystery of it
draws one nearer.
What is thy secret, Great Lord Buddha?
But the heavy-lidded eyes droop lower, and the slow smile is still.
Only the cherry-trees send their pale pink petals floating downward
into the bronzed lap. And the murmuring water runs more swiftly.
Immutable he sits, and still; enduring, unchanging, though the sea
destroy his temples and the earthquakes rock about his feet. Buddha on
his lotus-leaf is still.
And the generations of men rise up, and pass away, fretted with life’s
fitful fever, and searching for his secret. Buddha is still, his slow
smile unchanging, his heavy eyelids drooped.
Is that thy secret, Great Lord Buddha? The mystery we passion-swept,
ever-changing mortals can never penetrate?
“God is the same, for ever. The _same_, and _for ever_.”
And the murmuring water runs, the cherry-trees bloom and fade, the
centuries pass away. Still the heavy-lidded eyes are drooped, the slow
smile is inscrutable and still. Lord Buddha keeps his secret.
Or is it only we who cannot read.
II
THE SHRINES OF ISÉ
On every side the circle of the hills shuts out all sounds, and the
vast forest stretches solemn, sombre.
The long two miles of white road from the village are forgotten, the
crude sunshine of the public gardens fades away, the giant fir-trees
stand as they stood two thousand years ago when the shrine of the great
Sun-Goddess first was born.
The broad grey path of unhewn stone, unshadowed in the darkness of
the trees, bends downward to the river’s brink, where a grey still
pool lies silent on the edge of the rushing stream. It is the Pool of
Purification where all who go up to the temple stay and wash. Even the
_kurumaya_ who daily draws the pilgrim or the stranger to the shrine,
stoops to plunge his hands and feet into the still grey waters. And as
he does so a great shaft of sunshine hits the weltering circle of the
hills beyond the stream, and they quiver, blue as a distant mirage in
the blue sky; while the forest is the darker for that light.
The grey stone path is long and wide, the forest vast, unfathomable;
primæval, untamed, and yet kept with a care that leaves no trace
behind; the forest of a dream where Death is not, nor decay, nor any
sign of man. From time to time the dark stern stems of the cryptomerias
are broken with the glossy deep-green leaves of a camphor-tree; and
each time my _kurumaya_ stays to pray, for camphor-trees are sacred,
and their bark thrown into the sea has power to calm the waves.
And the forest stretches on and on.
In the distance the grey stone path broadens into a flight of shallow
steps, and passes beneath an open gateway out of sight. A wooden wall,
like the sloughed bark of forest trees, stretches right and left; and
against it, rigid in his discipline, the white uniform of a modern
soldier, bayonet fixed.
I stand on the threshold of the most sacred spot in all Japan.
Beyond the gateway is another gate, where a pure white curtain falls,
fold on fold. It is the veil of the great Sun-Goddess. All through the
ages since first the nation was, the shrine of the Sun-Goddess has
stood behind that veil. Every twenty years night comes, her temple
dies, and again is born, unchanged, unaltered to the last least detail.
And her priests are the carpenters. So through all the ages, the body
of the great Sun-Goddess glows, in youth eternal, and none save her
far-off offspring, _Tenshisama_, the Son of Heaven, may pass behind the
veil.
The Japanese soldier stays to guard, for did the stranger, sacrilegious
in his foolish pride, so much as touch those long white folds, evil
might befall him. Viscount Mori died beneath the sword of a _samurai_
for lifting but the edge of the curtain with his stick.
My _kurumaya_ is on his knees before these fluttering, mysterious
folds, two claps, a bow, a little murmured prayer; another bow, two
claps, and he rises.
Then he leads us along inside the wooden wall, and another grey-green
wooden wall, built as it were of flattened tree-trunks, rises on the
other side, leads us a few yards, and then he stops. The outer wooden
wall runs round a huge imperfect square, then comes a broad band of
space where we are standing, and then the inner wall rails out the
world. Inside and opposite the curtained gateway, but with the whole
distance of the sacred square between, stands the shrine itself, a
grey-brown wooden building, unpainted, unadorned; a grey-brown roof of
thatch, with the cross-beams of its roof-tree rising up through the
thatch in two rough wooden anchors bound with gold. A building that is
simple, with a simplicity more strange to modern man than the strangest
complexity, archaic, primæval, a ghost from man’s dim past.
The silent sombre trees stand thickly round. Beyond the circle of
blue hills shuts out all sounds. The folds of the white curtain fall
straight and close.
My _kurumaya_ prays again.
And there behind her veil the great Sun-Goddess dwells, untouched
by time, of an age with the hills, more primitive than the forest
trees--and sacred still.
III
THE TEMPLE OF NIKKŌ
In all the pomp of splendour and of power they buried Iyeyasu at Nikkō,
and the greatest artists of Old Japan came and built in his memory a
temple more beautiful than any in all the length and breadth of the
land. For more than forty years they worked, and brains and money and
labour were poured out like mountain water, until the temple stood
complete, the mausoleum of Iyeyasu and the eternal monument of this
artistic race.
With Buddhist rites was the great _Shōgun_ buried, and for many hundred
years daily remembered in a ritual as solemn as it is effective, but
Buddha himself has not anywhere a temple so splendid.
They buried Iyeyasu at Nikkō, not in the town of his birth or of his
death, not in the city over which he ruled, but four days’ journey
from Yedo in the midst of the mountains; and they did it that Japan’s
greatest ruler might lie amid the nation’s best in nature as in art,
that to the splendour of the temple the Land herself might add the
glories of her mountains and her trees.
At Nikkō is the great _Shōgun_ buried, and for twenty miles before his
shrine a stately avenue of trees leads up to the temple, and up this
avenue prince and pilgrim yearly come; prince and pilgrim, priest
and peasant they still come, up the great avenue of dark thick-set
cryptomerias, the giant pine-trees of Japan.
At the temple’s foot a mountain stream rushes in a deep green gorge,
and two bridges cross the stream: one bright red, the bridge of the Son
of Heaven, one painted green, for the rest of this world’s humankind.
And the reason is that when the Buddhist saint Shōdō Shōnin pursued the
vision that had been sent to him, he journeyed into the mountains many
days until the grey torrent of Nikkō rushing tumultuously across his
path barred the way; but the vision abode with him, and Shōdō Shōnin
knew that he must cross the stream, yet was there neither bridge,
nor boat, nor crossing-place. So the saint kneeled down and prayed.
Then there appeared to him an angel, clothed in black robes and blue,
wearing a string of skulls around his neck, and holding in his hand two
serpents, these he threw across the stream, and they became a bridge
firm and strong. So Shōdō Shōnin passed over the torrent in safety,
but when he looked back, snakes, bridge, and angel had vanished and
only the rushing river remained. Then for a memory the two bridges were
built in the very place of the crossing.
Of all the marriages of Art and Nature the Sacred Red Bridge of Nikkō
is the most beautiful. Scattered among hills and trees and river,
beauty lay; but this people coming through the mountains saw the one
bond that had power to bind the pale blue hills, the dark green gorge,
the stone-grey stream together in an ordered whole of deep-thought
artistic loveliness, planned, perfect, yet supremely natural.
Then the avenue goes on, up the foot of the hill, till it widens and
broadens into a great gravel circle before the entrance-gate of
the temple. Here the great trees of the mountains spread out and up
on either hand, with the temple in their midst surrounded but not
overwhelmed by the grace of the wood. Under the granite _torī_, the
first gateway is guarded by two figures, the mythical lions gilded and
lacquered; while above, the mysterious _baku_, with his four ears and
his nine tails, who has power to eat all bad dreams that pass before
sleeping eyes, crouches alert.
A flight of granite steps leads to the first courtyard, set at right
angles to the gateway, and paved with rounded grey pebbles from the
stream. Here are all the minor buildings of the temple, the stable
for the sacred white horse, the library for the two thousand _sutra_
of the Buddhist scriptures, the tank-house for the purification,
the store-houses for the temple furniture; and stable and library,
tank-house and store-houses are jewelled gems of carving and design, so
rich, so splendid in the ordered magnificence of their colouring that
western senses stand amazed. A blood-red lacquered fence aglow with
coloured carvings divides the temple from the sombre majesty of the
giant cryptomerias.
Then the pebbled space contracts into a flight of granite stairs, and
mounts between stone walls that end in painted friezes of carved wood
to a second courtyard. This is almost square, and standing on the wide
grey sweep of rounded pebbles are three bronze lanterns from the three
tributary kingdoms of Old Japan--from Korea, Luchu, and _Holland_; and
there in serried rows and ranged against the blood-red lacquered fence
aglow with gilded carvings, stand multitudes of bronze lanterns, which
the dead _daimyō_ of Old Japan sent as offerings to the temple. Beyond
the lacquered fence the dark still stems of the pine-trees range out of
sight.
Then the pebbled space contracts again, and a flight of granite steps
leads between granite walls set with coloured friezes of carved wood to
the third courtyard; and the colourless pause of the second court, with
its bronze lanterns on grey stones, gains a new meaning as one mounts,
for in the third courtyard, between the blood-red friezes with their
riotous coloured carvings, is the pure perfection of the Yōmei-mon, a
double gateway, of white lacquer, cream-white and supported by four
pillars of carved wood. And when they put the fourth pillar in its
place they planted it upside down fearing if the beauty of the temple
were all-perfect, evil might befall the house of Tokugawa through the
jealousy of high heaven.
And the stranger as he draws near pauses in sheer amazement; the wild
untamable beauty of the mighty temple set in its giant framework of
dark green trees is strange beyond believing.
On either hand stretches the tropical splendour of the blood-red
lacquered fence, set with coloured carvings as with shining jewels.
Behind is the pale glory of the Yōmei-mon. All around the darkness
of the forest lies like a still quiet tomb. And in front, rising in
lines of sheer perfection, is the white beauty of the Chinese gate,
cream-white, adorned with glittering yellow brass, brass in rounded
sunken medallions on the lintel and the gate-posts, brass in quaint
designs and shining points of yellow light, which break about the
whiteness as sunshine through a mist.
The carvings and the pattern, the picture-panels, the decorated eaves,
the chiselled heads and sculptured birds and beasts, the growing,
glowing flowers, the hanging lotus-bells that tinkle at the corners
of the tent-curved roof, and all perfect, are more than a man’s mind
can perceive though he look for many years. Brains and money and labour
were poured out here like mountain water, and like the rushing stream
of Nikkō the drops go unperceived in the beauty of the whole.
In the short space of forty years were the temple and its fences, the
gateways and the carvings, completed and set up; but forty short years
from first to last, and the carving of one gateway is more than a
lifetime’s work.
Then the splendour culminates. Beyond the Chinese gateway is the actual
shrine itself, its cream-white gateway studded too with brass, while
superb in the utter beauty of their carving, two writhing dragons
stretch on either hand between the door-post and the pillar. Inside is
the temple of the memorial tablets, where with daily rites the Buddhist
priests prayed for the soul of Iyeyasu. To-day the Buddhist emblems are
all gone, the shrine is bare. A _shintō_ rope of rice-straw stretches
from post to post, the mirror of the Sun-Goddess shines above the altar
for her son, the “Son of Heaven” _Tenshi_, the Mikado, has come back to
his own.
All the magnificence of the temple now is in its walls, walls of panel
carvings where the springing phœnix and the crouching lion rise like
pale shadows from the pale unstained wood, so little are they raised
above the surface. And yet the artist’s hand that carved them was
without a rival in the world. They are real and living, delicate and
true, and so entirely beautiful that the heart cries out with joy as at
a long-lost good. Here is no colour, the sweep of pale yellow matting,
the panelled walls of pale dust-coloured wood, are more light than
colour. Here the rich joy of sense is laid aside: the temple stands a
beauty immaterial.
Through three hundred years they prayed for Iyeyasu daily with long
rites, but his tomb is not here.
It lies beyond the temple and above it. One climbs to it by a long,
steep stair of grey-green granite, set in the sombre hill. A stairway
built of granite in long slabs, so broad and thick that the balustrade
with its coping, base, and sculptured columns is all cut from one
solid block, with each block fourteen feet long. And the stairway took
thirteen years to quarry and set up.
The hillside is steep, the stairs are many, and the tall dark pines,
the flame-red maples gather, gather till the temple’s roof, the sound
of praying bell or chanted hymn is lost. The little space which Art
stole from Nature is completely hidden, even the forest has forgotten.
And the grey stair climbs, climbs among the dark-green trees, then
stops.
On the top of the hill is a rounded curve of stately pines. Alone,
solitary between sky and trees, stands the tomb of Iyeyasu, a domed
pillar-box of bronze glinting golden through the trees. A low stone
wall surrounds the tomb, a bronze door solid but uncarved is its
gateway, and that is all. Here among the quiet trees, in the stillness
of the forest, above the splendour of the temple, lie the ashes of the
great Iyeyasu.
All the days of his rule he dwelt among men, but his soul climbed
the steep stair of Life, casting off its splendours and its glories,
climbed above them, climbed back into the eternal simplicity of Nature,
and there he laid him down to rest.
IV
KANNON, LADY OF MERCY
It was the _fête_ of Kannon of Asak’sa, whose votaries are many. They
thronged the narrow paved pathway set between the two long rows of red
brick stalls, and overflowed into the temple grounds behind, where the
juggler and the wax-works, the two-headed porpoise, and the headless
man, and all the long scale of attractions in between shouted and
drummed. All the fun of the fair was here, with the advantage of a
_petit bout de messe_, to save the soul, over the way.
Kannon of Asak’sa is a popular lady, and her doors stand wide open.
You may go in with your boots on. It is true that the goddess herself,
on her gilded altar, is railed off from public touch by a wire
netting--like the animals in the menagerie outside. But that is all
the privacy she enjoys, and the rest of her temple is as public as a
railway station, and just about as sacred. The people pour in up the
steps on all sides, the scraping of their _gheta_ on the dirty wooden
floor adding its quota of noise to the chink of money and the buzz of
voices, the ringing of bells, and the hurry and bustle of a surging
railway crowd. There is the same wide-open, doorless feel, the same
discomforting, amphibious sensation of neither open air nor closed
house. A large bookstall in the corner, selling the latest illustrated
numbers of the goddess, and the whole stock of Kannon literature adds
to the illusion. Between two pillars a temple clerk issues tickets at
a substantial booking-office. A shaven official appears and rings a
bell at intervals, reciting a prayer in the voice of a railway porter
proclaiming stations. There is the same reasonless flux and reflux of
the crowd, the same rush and bustle, with its inseparable accompaniment
of underlying roar that rises and falls, sometimes absorbing all the
other sounds into itself, sometimes leaving them distinct and clear,
but never for a moment ceasing.
A huge lacquered case like a square coffin, its lid replaced by thick
metal bars, stands between the bookstall and the booking-office, right
against the wire netting. Into this each comer throws his coin before
reciting his prayer, and the chinking of the money as it falls is as
unceasing as the roar of the crowd.
Away in a corner behind the booking-office a worn-out black statue
sits huddled in rags. Around it, bands of invalids await their turn
to rub the featureless figure with their hands, and transfer the
charm by rubbing themselves in the corresponding spot. As a method of
propagating disease, this treatment for curing it can have few equals.
But the coffers of the temple profit greatly.
Business, indeed, is brisk to-day. The shaven-headed booking-clerk is
issuing tickets at a bank-holiday rate, and the bookstall is besieged.
Up from all sides comes the tumult of the fair. Kannon must be a paying
investment.
As I stand on the steps with the din of the temple behind me, a man in
the crowd below buys a cage of little birds at a stall, and, opening
the door, throws them up into the air. The startled flutter of their
wings as they soar up over the heads of the crowd into the blue carries
me back to Ober-Ammergau, to the memory of the overturned tables of the
money-changers, and the overthrown cages of those who sold doves.
“My house shall be called the house of prayer, but ye have made it a
den of thieves.”
Is human nature the same all the world over? Are priests? Or is the
fate of all religions alike?
O Kannon of Asak’sa! Kannon, Lady of Mercy! how long must thou wait for
thy deliverer? O Lord Buddha, how long?
V
RINZAKI’S ALTAR
On the edge of the dark hills is the temple of Rinzaki, and the green
sea of the rice-fields washes up to its open doors. Overhead the grey
sky of a sunless summer’s evening dims all the colours in the land, and
leaves them shadows. It is fresh and still, and the wide, green bay
sweeps in smooth curves to the foot of the dark hills. On the pathway
the hosts of little green frogs hop like hailstones, and the startled
splash as they fall back into the rice-fields is sharp and clear.
Rinzaki stands alone, its _shōji_ walls pushed back, and the slender,
square pillars at each corner are dark against the greyness. The open
matted spaces of the temple are deserted, and the stillness is pure and
clear as freshly running water. In the sunless evening light the sombre
colours of the temple are but light and shadow, a sweep of pale matting
under a dark roof framed in grey. And the stillness grows purer,
clearer, and more still.
Beyond the open spaces of the matting, between altar wall and altar
wall, the garden of the temple hangs, a living picture on the wall. Two
kneeling-cushions on the matting mark the purpose of the garden, and I
stay to look.
A faintly running stream, stone-grey, a shaven slope of green, and on
it three clipped azalea-bushes pink with blossom. So still, so clear, I
stretch my hand to feel.
It is a garden--a garden painted by an artist who worked in earth and
flowers. And the dim greyness of the temple, the pale spaces of the
matting, frame the garden as a shell its pearl. I could but look.
The pale pink of the azalea-bushes, the soft curve of the slope, the
stone-grey of the running stream, were painted with the loving care,
the certain touch of a master’s hand. There was no fault. Between altar
wall and altar wall the living picture hung--perfect.
Like David’s harping to Saul distraught, the stillness of the garden,
the dim greyness of the temple, washed pure the heart. The sin-freed
soul floated out unfettered, and thought was not.
Alone the garden lay, an earthly Nirvana in the stillness.
Rinzaki’s true altar stood here.
VI
TWO CREEDS
Above the white cloud of the plum-blossoms, through the dark wood of
the cryptomerias, on the top of the hill lies the temple of Ikkégami.
The broad spaces of its courtyards and its gardens are sunny and still,
and the blue sky above is a bed of celestial forget-me-nots. Down each
side the big, dark trunks of the giant fir-trees stand straight and
tall--two rows of sombre pillars, shutting in a sunny aisle.
In front, at the end of the wandering white path of rounded stones sunk
into the bare earth, is the _Hondō_ or main building with the tent
curves of its roof, and the polished floor of its veranda shining like
a sword in the sun. Behind is the big wooden gateway, and the hundred
stone steps which lead from the hilltop to the village beneath. And
scattered down the wide earth courtyard, and half hidden under the
dark arches of the trees, are the innumerable little buildings which
form the complete whole of a Buddhist temple; the belfry, with its
bronze bell hung from the big wooden beam of the ceiling to within
three feet of the ground, and the polished wooden spar with which it
is beaten; the quaint revolving library--like a dwarf windmill without
sails--where the hundred volumes of the Buddhist Scripture can be dimly
seen through the thick wooden lattice; the wide granite tank under its
tiled roof, all hung with lengths of brown temple towels, where the
faithful pour water over their hands from bamboo dippers as a symbol of
purification; the side chapels with their drums and offerings. All are
quiet to-day and deserted, only by the side of the tank, in front of a
worn-out stone statue, a peasant mother is standing, her baby tucked in
the back of her _kimono_--fast asleep. She claps her hands three times
to call the attention of the gods, and then she prays, and the baby’s
shaven head nods heavily over her shoulder. Then she takes the bamboo
dipper and pours water over the head of the stone statue, carefully,
that not a dry spot may remain, and prays again.
Between the dark pillars of the tree-trunks and the stamped earth of
the courtyard, a line of narrow, pointed laths runs like a wooden
fencing round the temple precincts. I wonder what they are and leave
the stepping-stones of the pathway to see.
Tombstones? Yes. Set close together, and sometimes three or four deep,
the long line of thin pointed laths closes in the temple and its
courtyard with a fence of graves. Not a rich man’s graveyard this, but
the last home of the peasants from the rice-fields and the fishermen
from the sea. I look at the rows of Chinese characters running
lengthwise down the narrow tombstones, and stop in wonder, for on one
the Roman letters with their familiar outlines stand out plainly.
“To the Men of the Warship _Onega_.”
That is all.
To the men of the Warship _Onega_! It was true then the story. The
story of the loss of the _Onega_ in the bay below, and the sale of
the sunken wreck with all its contents to fishermen along the coast.
The story of the finding of the corpses of the drowned sailors, all
entangled among the wreckage, and of how the Japanese fishermen
collected them reverently, saying, with the faith of the ancient
Greeks, that their souls would wander restless and distressed unless
they were laid in their graves and the funeral prayers sung over them.
So they sent a petition to the great _Ijin San_ in Tokyo praying him to
come to the temple of Ikkégami, that his dead brothers might have some
one of their own race, if not of their own family, to perform the last
solemn rites. And the Ambassador came to Ikkégami, and the long line
of weather-beaten Japanese fishermen bore the western sailors up the
hill to the temple, and buried them in the courtyard, under the silent
trees, with all the rites of the Buddhist church. And they set up the
wooden lath as over the grave of a brother, among the long lines of the
tombstones of their fathers; but they wrote on it in the tongue of the
stranger so that God and their countrymen might know their own again.
And all this they did out of their own hearts, and with the money of
their own earning.
So the men of _Onega_ lie buried with Buddhist rites in a Buddhist
churchyard, and the wooden lath above their graves is but another rail
in the holy fence of the Japanese dead which encloses the temple.
* * * * *
The long arches of the sombre trees are dark and still. The blue sky
above is without fleck or stain, and the peace of God which passeth all
understanding is spread as a hand above the tree-tops.
The men of the _Onega_ sleep well.
VII
THE LEGEND OF THE NOSELESS JIZŌ
It was a great many years ago, but the stone Jizō stands there yet,
just on the edge of the woods beyond the rice-fields. The blue cotton
bib around his neck is new, the odd little piles of stones that balance
on his shoulders, cuddle in his arms, or lie around his feet are
larger, for kindly hearts have passed by since then, to pick up a stone
and carry it to Jizō, who helps the souls of the little dead children
crying naked on the banks of the Sai-no-Kawara, because the old hag
Shozuka-no-Baba has taken their clothes away, and will not let them
pass over into the happy land beyond, but keeps them piling stones on
the banks of the Buddhist Styx, and crying bitterly.
And Jizō sits there by the roadside still, the same benevolent smile on
his shaven face, still holding the pilgrim’s staff with its metal rings
in one hand, and the jewel which brings all wisdom in the other. Only
he has no nose. He lost it thirty years ago, the day little Dicky James
came running up the road, his new hatchet clutched in his hand.
Now Dicky was the son of a missionary, and he had been brought up on
good books and Sunday schools, and the night before he had been taken
to hear the wonderful experiences of a “brother” from China, who had
filled his little head full of “glorious martyrdom,” “sinful heathen,”
“the overthrowing of idols,” and “the abomination of desolation,” which
Dicky didn’t understand but thought meant the long stretch of muddy
rice-fields down beyond Negishi. And that put Jizō into his head. And
besides, there was the new hatchet.
All the morning he had played Red Indians, until, in an access of
realism, he had almost brained the baby. The threatened loss of his
hatchet and the great idea that was working in his head made him quiet
and subdued all through dinner.
He was sorry about baby, “poor little martyr,” as his mother called
her; and the idea grew and grew. Why shouldn’t he be a martyr too,
and return to his family covered with glory? Then the thought of Jizō
jumped into his head. He would go out, like the “brother” from China,
into the “abomination of desolation,” and “overturn the idol” of the
“sinful heathen.” Or, at least, if he couldn’t overturn it, the new
hatchet would cut off its head, and Dicky’s fingers itched to try. He
had no idea martyrdom was so interesting.
So, dinner over, Dicky seized his hatchet, and started off, away from
the settlement, across the canal, up by the racecourse, and down the
hill towards Negishi. Here he took to the shore, to avoid complications
in the village; for Dicky was used to showing his Christian superiority
by cuffing the heads of the heathen, and the boys of Negishi were his
particular enemies. So the tide being out he kept to the shore until he
was past the village, and the long stretch of rice-fields, nothing but
solid ponds of black mud, each surrounded by a little, low, mud bank,
came into sight.
“The abomination of desolation,” said Dicky.
And it did look like it. He went on along the narrow path towards the
hills, with the wide stretch of muddy ponds on each side of him. They
dwindled away gradually as Dicky went up the valley, dwindled away
until they only looked like a kind of mud river running between the
green hills. And there beyond the last one, on the edge of the hill,
was Jizō. Jizō, with his broad smile and his funny little bib.
Dicky looked about him nervously; the great moment had come. No, there
was no one in the rice-fields, and no one coming after him from the
village; and Jizō’s smile was tempting. Up went the little hatchet
and smash down with all Dicky’s strength. But Jizō’s head did not
roll in the dust, as it ought to have done, so Dicky tried again. He
was getting excited now. It was so beautiful to feel his dear hatchet
coming down smash, smash, smash, and to know he was doing the “good
work” at the same time.
Smash, smash! This time something had smashed, and Jizō’s stone nose
lay at his feet. Dicky stooped to pick it up, exultant, and in the
momentary pause heard angry voices among the fields, and feet coming
swiftly up the road behind him. Then Dicky forgot all about “martyrdom”
and ran as fast as he could go, across the bank of the rice-field in
front of him, up the hill beyond, his hatchet clutched in one hand, and
Jizō’s stone nose in the other.
It was the rice-field that saved him, because the men had to go round,
but their shouts brought out the village, and the sight of Jizō,
noseless, sent all the angry “heathen” up the hill in chase. I do
not think they would have hurt him if they had caught him, for the
Japanese are not fanatical, and they are very kind to children.
It was just this feeling that made them so angry now. To think that
any one could injure Jizō; Jizō the friend of those in trouble, the
comforter of women in travail, and the keeper of the baby souls crying
naked on the dark banks of the Sai-no-Kawara. I do not think they would
have hurt Dicky, but the whole village came out to see, and the men and
boys ran up the hills around shouting:
“_Nan des ka? Nan des ka?_ What is it? What is it?”
And Dicky in his terror ran until his little legs gave way under him,
and panting he threw himself on the ground under the trees.
The shouts had died away a long while, and it was growing dark in the
wood before Dicky stirred. It was darker still when at last he crept
cautiously down the hill and over the rice-fields towards the stone
statue of Jizō. He was very tired now, and very hungry, but the memory
of the angry voices calling after him in the hills made him afraid to
go back through the village, and by this time the tide was up. So Dicky
sat down by the side of Jizō in the growing darkness and waited. And
all his nurse’s stories of Jizō and the little children came into his
mind. He looked up at Jizō, smiling still his large benevolent smile,
and crept nearer.
* * * * *
It was quite dark that evening when they found Dicky, his head
peacefully laid to sleep on Jizō’s feet, utterly worn out with the
pangs and the excitement of his martyrdom, his little hatchet fallen on
the ground, but one grubby fist fast clutching something that even in
his sleep he held tight.
But Dicky’s taste for martyrdom had gone, and once, to his father’s
horror, he was heard to declare that he “wished he was a heathen
because he would like to say his prayers to Jizō.”
In the deepest depths of his pocket, next to his clasp-knife and his
favourite ally taw, there lived for many years a small stone object
that he sometimes took out and looked at when he was quite alone. And
Dicky had serious doubts at times about the goodness of the martyrs,
and the sinfulness of the heathen, while his ideas on idols underwent a
radical change.
It is thirty years ago now. But the legend of the noseless Jizō and his
fight with the _Onigo_ (the devil in the shape of a child) is still
told in the villages around Negishi.
The other day Richard heard it himself.
VIII
THE TEMPLES OF SHIBA
A matchless blue sky overarches the world, pale, clear, intense, and
the twisted green boughs of the Japanese pine throw their gaunt, black
arms up into the blue, in the vain endeavour of a hundred years to
reach it. The hush of cloistered calm in which the trees grew up is
still here, although the Tokyo citizen walks and rides where once none
but Buddhist priests might linger. The Red Gateway, with the tent
curves of its roof petrified into grey tiles, still claims for all
within Buddha as its master.
And the hush of cloistered calm grows stiller.
Through a wide space open to the sky, a space paved with rounded
pebbles, water-washed for many years ere they floored the courtyard of
the House of God, believing and unbelieving feet have beaten smooth a
wide, brown pathway. All around, and arranged in serried rows, stand a
myriad grey-stone lanterns, the pious gifts of dead _daimyō_. Between
these tall stone emblems of the five elements the pathway runs; cupola,
crescent, pyramid, sphere, cube--ether, air, fire, water, earth--and
the crude shapes of the primitive elements, touched and altered by
generations of artists, are turned to curves of quaintest beauty.
Diagonally across the space goes the black pathway, the standing rows
of tall lanterns thickly set on either side, until beneath another gate
it makes a pause. A gate of red lacquer this, with carvings of gilded
wood on ceiling and wall. Carvings full of that oriental luxuriance of
colour and line which half shocks our sober northern senses; so shocks
them sometimes that we call it scornfully “barbaric,” until we grow
wiser with much looking and learn to see the truth and beauty of this
exuberant splendour.
Beyond the gateway, the black path leads out under the blue sky, a
pebbled square on either hand, set round with stately rows of bronze
lanterns, the pious gifts of yet greater _daimyō_. Another gate stands
waiting at the end of the pebbled square, a gateway with rounded wooden
columns of red lacquer, like its fellow, and carvings of gold. But
the beams of its ceiling have been smoothed away, and in the centre
a much twisted and curled dragon, which, like Joseph’s coat, is of
many colours, writhes across the ceiling. A carved and gilded gallery
stretches away on either side past the gateway. Another yet more
beautiful, with its slender square pillars of red lacquer bound at base
and crown with beaten brass, leads a rainbow shadow through the sunny
court to the cool dark door of the temple itself. In the shade of the
gilded galleries, suspended from the red-lacquered cross-beams, hangs a
row of still bronze lanterns. Dimly in their exquisite shapes can one
trace the symbolised elements.
Behind a wooden barrier five steps lead straight to the temple’s
front, closed now with dark blinds of split bamboo bound together with
a silken thread. The tiled eaves of the curving roof overhang the
steps, and between door and lacquered pillar writhes in many wriggles
of green and golden carving two royal dragons, the Ascending and the
Descending--the going-up and the coming-down.
Leaning on the barrier, the glory of those golden dragons, of those red
columns, of the carved beams and inlaid porch rushed riotously into
the soul. And now one understood the preparation of those successive
gateways, set each between a sunny space of pebbled court; for the
first had shown but red and gold, up in the ceiling of the second
lingered lines of azure blue, the third added green to the other three,
the gallery gave glances of mauve and violet, while here, under the
eaves of the temple roof, the rainbow itself is glorious in carved wood.
A culminating point of colour and splendour, what can the temple hold
within?
Cool spaces of matted floor set round with black boxes on black stools,
each box holding its portion of Buddhist Scripture; sombre pennants of
dark blue and green brocade upon the walls; a sober light clear but
colourless; and which is more beautiful, the rainbow porch of many
colours riotous in carving and scrolls, or the sober quiet of the
temple, a beauty of spaces and restraint?
The colourless matted room is wide and low. In front between the sombre
pennants is the inner sanctuary. Gods on either side on lacquered
tables set against the walls; at the end, beyond more lacquered tables,
two brocaded masses rise like square coffins on a raised daïs; between
stand figures of the gods, white-faced Benten and Kannon, Lady of
Mercy. The red tables bear many-coloured sweets and biscuits heaped
high on metal plates, in metal cups; offerings to the spirits of the
dead _Shōgun_ whose tablets lie enshrined behind those masses of
brocade. A bronze bowl on the floor filled with grey ash sends forth
filmy clouds of incense. There is no sound.
Behind the temple, through two open spaces of pebbled squares, each
reached by a score of granite steps, is the tomb; a smooth, round mass
of stone encircled with a breast-high parapet of bronze; all around a
sweep of grey pebbles.
That is all.
And yet standing here I wonder whether the dead _Shōgun_ have not
rightly chosen? Whether their resting-place is not more truly beautiful
than the beauty of sombre ornament in the temple, than the riotous
carving of the gateways.
The porch was Beauty’s body, arrayed, adorned; here lies Beauty’s soul,
naked and eternal.
IX
AMIDA BUTSU
Buddhism is not one but many; the same faith and the same nation
which produces the squalor, dirt and commercial profanity of Asak’sa
can create the peace and purity of Rinzaki, while Shiba’s riot of
impossible colouring is born of the same religion and the same people
as the stern beauty of the _Hongwanji_; for the temples of the _Shin_
sect are severe as a Protestant cathedral, as a Presbyterian church,
only they are built by a race of artists.
Kannon of Asak’sa is popular, but the beautiful _Hongwanji_ at Kyoto,
finished a few years ago, at a cost of eight million yen, was built
mainly by the peasants, who contributed not only in money but in kind,
sending their most beautiful trees to be cut into beams, offering
themselves to hew and to build, giving always of their best. And each
beam was raised to its place by long hawsers made of women’s hair,
the soft black hair of youth or womanhood, with here and there the
shrivelled grey hairs of age. And the hawsers are suspended in the
temple for men and missionaries to ponder on.
Buddhism is not dead but living. The old, the weary, and the poorest
poor creep into the _Hongwanji_ in Japan, and the pale matting of these
temples is covered with the square-holed copper coins worth a quarter
of a farthing, which they roll over the matting towards the altar from
the corners where they kneel and pray.
* * * * *
Nagoya’s _Hongwanji_ is the glory of the town. It stands in the thick
of the city, in a great wide courtyard of stamped earth set round with
trees. Its sculptured gates of bronze are always open, and once inside
them the busy town with its factories and its workshops, its quarter of
a million of inhabitants, is gone, for the wide courtyard sets a lavish
space of stillness between the city and the shrine. A space so wide and
ample that the temple’s curves stand out clear and sharp as a solitary
tower on an empty plain.
Built all of wood, unpainted, unstained; and so faded by the sunshine,
so worn with age, and weather beaten with the wind and rain, that in
the glow of the summer’s sun the temple stands against the brilliant
light faded and grey, a beauty of pathos, not of joy.
Under the eaves the saints and sacred animals are carved in tender
lines of love. Age has touched and left them colourless, and the
infinite pity of the Buddha which enwraps creation, enfolding man and
his brother the beast, looks from their eyes.
Inside there is peace and sober quiet. A wide low space suggestively
divided into three with slender square pillars of wood, and behind,
along the whole width of the temple a blaze of gold, sombre and rich.
No riot of impossible colouring here, no profusion of design and
decoration; sober, almost stern in its beauty, the centre and the two
side altars shine in the dim light.
A bronze figure of Buddha, dead black against the gold, stands on his
lotus-leaf with uplifted hands. It is Buddha as the God of Mercy, the
living, loving god, Amida Butsu--Eternal Buddha.
Dull gold and black, alive in the altar, shadowly repeated in the pale
yellow matting and in the grey age-stained wood, are all the decoration
of the temple, save perfect purity and peace, and an atmosphere of
quiet, enduring charity. For the Shin sect teaches that the law cannot
be altered, that the eternal chain of cause and effect goes always and
for ever on, that the wages and more than the wages of sin is death,
that an act and its consequences roll ever onward through the world,
and neither man nor time can stay them; it teaches that a man’s sorrows
are made by his sins, but that Buddha is merciful and just, that he who
is love gives love; love knows no sin, nor sin’s child, sorrow; without
sin and sorrow is the world at rest.
* * * * *
Outside, the city labours, toils. Within, the workers kneel on the pure
pale matting, and praying, roll their square-holed coins towards the
image of Eternal Buddha, whose hand is raised to bless.
X
SAINT NICHIREN
Up a hundred steep stone steps lies the temple of the Lord Buddha, for
Nichiren, his servant, whose head the executioner’s sword refused to
cut off, died here.
Now Nichiren was a man of faith. And his faith was the faith of the
average man--he knew he was right. But Nichiren did more, for he had
the courage of his opinions; and he said, “I alone am right; the rest
are all wrong, unfaithful servants of the Lord--kill them.”
And the people believed Nichiren, for is not such faith in one’s own
opinion a sign of divine inspiration? And did not the Lord Buddha send
lightning from Heaven to turn the edge of the executioner’s sword and
save his pious servant?
So they followed after Nichiren and despised the rest of the church,
and built temples of the true faith throughout the length and breadth
of the land. And the priests of Nichiren walked in the steps of
their master, and are--for the tolerant Japanese--almost bigoted and
fanatical.
Now the Nichiren priests delight in noise. Perhaps they think--like
many a politician--that it takes the place of argument. And so their
temples for ever re-echo with the banging of big drums, the clapping of
wooden clappers, the booming of big bells, and the eternal chanting of
the _Namu-myōho-rengekyō_, the formula of the faith of Nichiren.
In the little side temple to the left, wreathed with paper flowers and
cheap ornaments--for Nichiren has even strength to blur the national
sense of art--they are busy now.
A priest in the middle crouches on the ground; on either side, before a
big drum like a yellow barrel lying horizontally on the ground, sit two
believers. Behind are grouped three more, all provided with clappers or
bells. The drumming is incessant, the clapping nearly so, while all,
priests and people, keep up one never-ending drone of
“_Namu-myōho-rengekyō, Namu-myōho-rengekyō, Namu-myōho-rengekyō._”
I can only see the backs of the group, and the arms of the two drummers
as they raise them up above their heads to beat the big barrels in
front of them. Suddenly, from round the corner of the drum, an old face
peers--priest by its costume and its cunning. An unshaven, unkempt
face that blinks--dirty, ignorant, bigoted. It crouches there on the
matting, the old cunning eyes opening and shutting with each repetition
of the never-ending formula,
“_Namu-myōho-rengekyō, Namu-myōho-rengekyō, Namu-myōho-rengekyō_,”
until sense and meaning are lost in a wave of wild, brute fanaticism.
The drums bang louder, the clappers clap shriller, the bells boom
quicker and quicker, and I stand there convinced.
_Namu-myōho-rengekyō, Namu-myōho-rengekyō, Namu-myōho-rengekyō._
I too am of the faith of Nichiren, for I know that I am right. All
these are wrong, unfaithful servants of the Lord--kill them.
XI
BETWEEN EARTH AND HEAVEN
Five hundred feet of wall, and the temple’s courtyard hangs a balcony
above the world.
The thousand steps by which I climbed are hidden, and the _chaya_, in
the width of the brown road that touches cliff and sea, is so beneath my
feet that its roof seems resting on the ground. My _kurumaya_, in his
white hat, is a growing mushroom on a dark blue stalk. The man is but a
human atom crushed between two immensities.
From cliff to distant sky the wide sea spreads out, a vast still plain
of shimmering blue. This ball of earth is rolled out flat before my
eyes, and its mysterious ends are a far-off rim, dark blue and clear.
Overhead the burnished sky shuts down a domed cover on the flattened
earth. The very sea seems hot. My _kurumaya_, sitting on the slender
shafts of his _jinriksha_, fans himself with his hat, and I am startled
to see how perfectly the three-inch figure works.
The world lies all spread out below me, here is nothing but the temple
and the sun.
Across the burning courtyard where the sun smites the rounded pebbles
with hard shafts of light, and through the open doorway in the temple’s
wall, I go, and then the silent shadows of the trees fall all around.
The sky above their tops is bluer, the very sunlight brighter for the
shade.
The temple’s shrine is built upon a polished raft of wood, moored three
feet above the ground. Its walls are dark with matted blind. Only the
square door-posts stand clear against the light, and through them I see
the bareness of the shrine--a sweep of pale matting on the floor, and
then dim space. Alone, the burnished mirror of the great Sun-Goddess
hangs above the altar.
On the threshold of his temple stands the high priest, attended by two
acolytes. He wears a head-dress of black lacquer like a perforated
meat-cover, but the face beneath is old and very calm. He bows as I
mount the shallow polished steps which lead up from the ground, takes
from the black-robed acolyte a slender silver vase, and a shallow
terra-cotta bowl. Standing shoeless on the threshold of the naked
shrine he slowly pours the sacred _saké_ from the silver vase into
the terra-cotta bowl, and gives me to drink. The bowl is black with
age, the _saké_ thick, like distilled honey; and I notice, as I drink,
the carved figures running round the rim, and the faint scent of
plum-blossom.