me a thin rice-wafer which I break and eat. I wonder what the rite may
mean that I, a stranger, may partake, and look up to see the calm old
eyes looking down at me, at my outlandish clothes and foreign face; but
he does not speak. Then with a gesture which is almost a blessing, the
white-robed priest is gone, and the acolytes follow after.
The temple’s shrine stands bare and bare, only the burnished mirror of
the great Sun-Goddess glitters.
Was it a Passover that we have eaten together? Or a Eucharist? Or
merely the symbol of our human brotherhood?
We are all children of the Sun; and Faith is One.
Yet it needed a Shintō priest in far Japan to show me a religion above
nation, beyond race, above sect. But his shrine is bare. The Mirror of
Truth hangs solitary above his altar, and his temple’s doors are open
to the Sun.
XII
INARI, THE FOX-GOD
The green tongue of the rice-fields thrusts itself deep into the blue
sea, and its tip is lacquered red.
Haneda-no-Inari is a temple whose gateways have swallowed up its
shrine, and on the low, flat, headland its many thousand _torī_ in rows
of scarlet dolmens walk inland from the sea. The green point lies a
henna-stained finger in the lap of the ocean.
Beyond the red tip, a ridge of pearl-grey sky rests on the water, while
overhead the clouds, like piled-up snowflakes, melt into the blue.
It is the end of September, and wide through the land the rustle of
ripening rice-ears comes and goes. Haneda-no-Inari, the Rice-God, is
calling the peasants to his shrine. And they come; broad-shouldered,
bullet-headed men, in short, blue tunics and dark blue hose, with brown
weather-beaten faces, seamed and lined; and always their hard hands,
half shut, half open, as though still holding hoe or plough. Old most
of them, and with that half-deaf look which years of fieldwork brings.
Intelligences half shut too, shutting fast on the primary ideas of
life, on the traditions of their fathers; for a thought, like the
hoe or plough, is too precious a thing to be lightly laid aside; it
is bequeathed from generation to generation as are the rice-fields
beneath their feet.
Inari calls, and the peasants come. Not only for the sake of the
Rice-God, though the rustle of the ripening rice-ears is a music in
the land, but because the image of the fox has dwelt so long in the
Rice-God’s temple that to the peasant Inari is both Fox-and Rice-God.
And the fear of the _Kitsuné_ is a power in Japan. The _Kitsuné_,
who can take a woman’s shape and bewitch you; the _Kitsuné_, who can
beguile a man that he follow to the fox’s very hole and stay there
living on snails and worms. The _Kitsuné_, who, entering a man’s body
under his finger-nails, will possess it, so that he howls like a fox,
slowly changes into one, and dies. And so they come to the temple, up
from the rice-fields, up under the scarlet tunnels of the _torī_, for
the passing through each tunnel means a wish fulfilled.
The gateways indeed have swallowed up this shrine. There is no temple,
only a low matted booth; at the back two white china images of the
Fox-God, his tail curled high above his head, and a priest on the
matting, as a shopman at his stall, selling charms, multitudes of
miniature china foxes, words on rice-paper, and mounds of earth, a
whole shopful of charms and amulets.
Opposite is a row of rabbit burrows, each roofed with a shelving
stone; just a hole in the ground, but full of meaning to the peasant,
for it is the home of the _Kitsuné_, and he crouches on the ground in
front of it, his head between his knees, or thrust far into the big
burrow in the eagerness of his prayer. And his face works; the priest
behind him watches. _Kitsuné_ is a reality to him, a force strong as
Nature’s laws, but capricious; so he prays. Then half in fear, half in
reverence, he thrusts one arm as far as it will go into the hole, and
scraping softly brings back a handful of brown earth. His face lights
up, and the priest behind leans forward.
Still on his knees the peasant wraps the magic earth in layers of clean
rice-paper and puts it carefully away in the breast of his patched
tunic. Then he gets up. He has his charm, a remedy against sickness and
disaster, a charm for his rice-fields and himself. The priest behind
reaches out his hand. He makes a keen shopkeeper, and his celestial
wares are never stolen. The temple terms are “cash down, and prayers
not taken in exchange.”
Through the long scarlet tunnels of the _torī_, back to the ripening
rice-fields the peasants go. The green point lies a henna-stained
finger in the lap of the ocean. Haneda-no-Inari, the temple of the
superstitious, glows a living tip of red.
For its sins are as scarlet.
XIII
THE ALTAR OF FIRE
It all happened in a suburban temple in the town of Tokyo, at the time
of the blossoming cherry-trees; and the prosaic din of a modern city
full of trains and tramcars hemmed us round. We had been conscious of
it dimly throughout the long ceremonial within the temple, where Shintō
priests in brocaded robes chanted in twos and threes, in solo and in
chorus; where the old High Priest had blessed with long strange rites
the four elements, earth, which is the mother of all things, fire,
water, air; had blessed the rice by which the people live, salt, and
_saké_; but now that we were all assembled in the outer courtyard the
noise of a busy city came distinctly to the ear. Tokyo was working hard
this April afternoon, and the cries of the newspaper boys pierced up
shrilly from the street below.
In the courtyard the ancient vestments of the priests showed strangely
beside the modern frocks of American visitors, the tweed suits of a
party of Cook’s tourists, even beside the _kimono_ of the Japanese
crowd, so markedly Tokyo and _Meiji_ (age of enlightenment), in their
felt hats, cloth caps, and “bowlers.”
The courtyard was big, the native crowd railed in at one end left a
large space bare, and here in the centre of the stamped brown earth
a great pile of burning charcoal was heaped. Twenty feet long, and
nearly as many broad, it glowed a solid mass of quivering heat, while
priests at each corner stood fanning the sullen red to an ever fiercer
flame. It was not hot enough yet, and in the sunshine of that April
afternoon we waited.
At the further end of the courtyard a broad band of salt lay on the
brown earth like a white step to the altar. The great fans of the
fanning priests sent puffs of heat across the court that made the
distinguished guests shrink back. And yet the glowing charcoal pyre was
not hot enough.
Behind us, in a corner of the courtyard, stood a bamboo ladder, whose
every rung was made of the razor-blade of a Japanese sword, set edge
upwards. As we all stood waiting, watching the solid altar of red flame
grow redder, a young man came out of the temple and crossed the court.
He was dressed in the short white tunic of religious festivals, and his
legs and feet were bare. He bowed to the party of distinguished guests,
to the priests, to the old High Priest, and from his manner I judged
him not a priest, but a temple attendant.
Among the crowd there was a murmur, a sway of intense excitement, and
then a dead stillness. In the stillness the young man put his bare
foot upon the lowest rung of the ladder, and an involuntary shudder
went through us all. A large-checked tourist, pushing every one aside,
rushed up to the ladder, and felt a sword-rung with his hand. Then he
came back, and across his open palm a ruled red line of blood rose up
swiftly.
There was a whispering among the priests, a commotion in the crowd, but
the polite expressions of regret from the old High Priest were courtly
with honorifics. The large-checked tourist tied his hand up clumsily in
his own pocket-handkerchief, and looked annoyed. The fanning priests,
with rhythmic movements of their hands and bodies, chased the living
heat across the court, and did not pause.
Again there was a murmur in the crowd, a stretching of necks to see,
and a dead silence.
The white-tuniced attendant, who had stood quite still beside the
ladder, placed his bare foot upon the lowest rung, and I saw the
large-checked tourist wince as though his injured hand were there
instead. Lightly as a sailor climbs, the young man ran up the ladder
rung by rung, and neither hands nor feet grew red. On the top he
stayed, looking down, and a shudder like a cry of pain went through the
courtyard. Then he turned, hanging for one brief moment by his knees on
the topmost rung--turned, and came down again.
In the April sunshine the sword-blades, from top to bottom of the
ladder, glittered spotless.
Firmly on his bare, brown feet the young man walked across the court,
bowed to the party of distinguished visitors, to the priests, to the
old High Priest, and disappeared within the temple.
The crowd behind the railings exclaimed in admiration, but the
distinguished visitors were above surprise. The party of Cook’s
tourists who had just “done” India were full of explanations. It was
“mere jugglery,” they said, though each man differed in his theory. One
was eloquent on hypnotic suggestion, and though the damaged tourist,
his hand still bound up, “couldn’t go so far as that, sir,” was not to
be persuaded. The injured tourist had apparently only been hypnotised
a little more effectually than the rest of us. The American guests
favoured “acrobatic training from infancy,” which “made the bones just
like jelly.” Somebody said he had heard it was “done with oil,” but was
quite vague as to the how, and all the more insistent in consequence.
And so we explained and argued while the level rays of sunshine fell
on the spotless sword-rungs of the ladder, and on the vestments of the
Shintō priests. They had watched and were impassive. The climbing of
the ladder was not a sacred ceremony, not a rite, rather an amusement
allowed the multitude, as the Catholic Church offered _jongleries_ in
the Middle Ages.
But as the sun fell lower and lower in the April sky, a hush came among
the little group of priests, and growing, travelled slowly over the
courtyard. Even the damaged tourist stopped his explanations. The great
red altar of heat that lay a fallen pillar of fire across the courtyard
was glowing now white-hot with life. The fanning priests at each corner
had moved further back to escape the scorch of the flames, but still
they fanned. In waves and gusts the heat was borne across the court,
to flicker, as it were, upon the air, steady itself and then drive
solidly forward. The Cook’s tourists who had seized upon the front row
of seats, twisted uneasily on their chairs, unwilling to give up their
“best places,” unable to endure the burning. But the fierce scorch
of the heat came steadily onwards, and before it the tourists ran,
dragging their chairs after them.
Still the fanning priests fanned on, chasing the quivering flames on
the red altar of heat, till it pulsed with a white-hot breath like a
thing alive.
In the pale April sky the swift sun was dropping golden through the
last arcs of heaven to a grey band of clouds upon the horizon. In half
an hour it would be night.
There was a stir in the crowd beyond the barriers; the fanning priests
beat out their rhythm slowly, and with the shadows the gathering sense
of awe deepened. Only the altar of heat burned brighter, gathering to
itself all the colour from the world.
Apart from the crowd the High Priest stood, the gold on his vestment
gleaming, and he watched the sun. The peace upon his face was like
an unsaid prayer. Did his soul go out to _Amaterasu_, the great
Sun-Goddess?
Swiftly the sun dropped through the bank of clouds leaving them golden,
showed a red circle on the horizon, and passed beneath. The faintest
flicker of emotion stirred for a moment the grave reverence of the
old man’s face. Then he turned. The rhythmic beating of the fanning
priests died into silence. The red altar stood a burning fiery furnace
in the courtyard, where already twilight was. He spoke no word, but
the religious calm of a perfect trust was in all his being. It touched
the straining multitude behind the barriers, even the tourists in
their chairs. Breathless we stayed gripped by the powers of an awed
suspense, of a great belief, as he came on. There was no hurry, no
tremor in his movements, on through the hot scorched air he came, on,
over the threshold of strewn salt, and on, over the altar of heat.
With naked feet he trod from end to end the white-hot pathway, and the
burning charcoal snapped beneath his tread. With naked feet he walked,
unscathed, over that fiery furnace; and the breath of a passionate
prayer passed like a sob through the courtyard.
Then one by one the priests in their embroidered vestments stepped
from the threshold of salt on to the fire. From end to end of the altar
they too trod that white-hot pathway slowly, unhurt, and the living
charcoal glowed like a thousand suns in the twilight.
Slowly behind their distant barriers the crowd stirred irresolute. An
old man whose face showed rapt in the circle of firelight approached
the priests. Hesitating he was led up to the altar, over the white salt
step, and faltering, he too trod the white-hot pathway. Then a coolie
came through the shadows, he too stepped up to the altar, passed over
the threshold of salt on to the living charcoal.
In twos and threes the crowd was coming now. Some of them hesitated on
the white salt step, some hurried along the fiery pathway. A few, a
very few, walked away as though their feet were singed. But all came,
even the children. The big children who went resolutely alone, the
little children whom the priests led.
And the twilight in the courtyard deepened into night. The broad altar
of heat glowed ruddy, a deep sun-red as its life pulsed slower. The
tourists were all quiet on their chairs, not one of them would venture,
though the little children went before. The Faith was not in them, nor
the power of that great Belief. But those behind the barriers, this
Tokyo crowd in _kimono_ and “bowler,” they believed. With the sounds of
a modern city humming in their ears, fresh from the western education
of their Board Schools, they, as their forefathers for two thousand
years, passed over the fire. This burning symbol of a spiritual
purification had meaning for them. They _had faith and were not afraid_.
Unto such is the Dominion of the Earth; unto such is the Kingdom of
Heaven.
XIV
FORGOTTEN GODS
Neglected by the river side the Buddhas sit, in one long silent row.
The rain is beating on their unprotected heads, and down their granite
faces little rills of water trickle. The river at their feet runs swift
and strong, grey among the boulders, as it rushes down to Nikkō. And
they sit forsaken.
The moss is thick upon their shoulders, the granite faces are all
scarred and battered, blotched with pallid growths, spotted with dusty
accumulations. But the Buddhas smile. Beneath their heavy-lidded eyes
they smile, a slow, still, changeless smile.
On the green bank above the tumultuous river there is no shrine, no
priest; the forgotten gods sit still, in one long silent row, and the
rain beats down relentless. Over their battered heads it runs, and
down their moss-grown shoulders; the soiled stone laps are full of it,
and it stands in ever widening pools about the lotus-leaves of each
pedestal. For in Nikkō the rain, tropical in vehemence, is persistent,
as in the Outer Hebrides. It lies to-day in slanting lines, thick as
willow-switches, across the dull grey sky.
I could not well be wetter, so I stop to look, and the whole long
silent row of Gods Forgotten smiles gently back at me.
Remindful of the legend which calls them numberless, I try to count.
Once, twice, several times; but the legend is right. Each time my total
varies. Perhaps the rain confuses me; the willow-switches lie so thick
across the sky. So I give it up and look at the long desolate row of
the numberless Buddhas. I wonder if they envy the Buddha who fell from
his pedestal into the stream and was carried down to Imaichi, where the
villagers, finding him uninjured, reverently set him up with his face
towards Nikkō. Now the country-side adores him, and he wears a large
pink bib.
Across the madly rushing river, churned grey between the boulders,
the Buddhas smile.... It is a smile of understanding. Yes, the slow,
still smile of One Who Understands, who understands All Things, and
understanding, is content.
And who should understand, and understanding rest content, if not the
Eternal Buddha? Is not the Godhead wise? Does it not see the meaning
and the path of All Things? And seeing, were it not then content the
Devil triumphs?
“God’s in His Heaven,
All’s right with the world.”
If God be in His Heaven, and God be God, then must the Godhead
understanding smile.
* * * * *
Through the thick-falling rain the long still row of granite Buddhas
smile back at me. I have thought so long upon that smile, which strikes
on western senses oddly, almost irreverently. Do we ever conceive of a
smiling God? In all the long picture galleries of Europe I have never
seen a Christ who smiled. With sword-pierced side and thorn-crowned
head He hangs before us--suffering, always sad. The Man of Sorrows;
yet He redeemed the world; He saved mankind. For pure joy a soul could
smile at such a thought. Yet with us the Redeemer suffers; He never
smiles.
The peasant Sōgorō, from his cross where he had watched the killing
of his children, laughed gaily as he bade his dying wife farewell;
for he had saved three hundred villages from unjust taxation. In his
intensest suffering a Japanese is taught to smile. He comes to tell you
that his child is dying, and he smiles. Perhaps his eyes are red, but
he smiles, that the sight of his suffering may not pain another. It is
the sublimest unselfishness and self-control. Sōgorō dying on the cross
bade his crucified wife farewell, laughing gaily, and no Japanese would
praise or wonder at the fact. Sōgorō died as a martyr. Yes, I have seen
a smile on the faces of our martyrs, rarely, it is true. Sodoma’s _St.
Sebastian_ smiles; it is a smile of the eyes. He sees a vision--the
Lamb of God and all the choirs of the angels. But Christ never smiles.
I cannot think of one picture, one conception of a smiling God. Sad,
weighed down with the sins of mankind; pitiful, pleading; or stern,
implacable, the Just Judge, the Ruler of the Universe, immovable
Omnipotence, scales in hand. Can either Godhead smile?
Buddha suffered much and endured much, but still he smiles. He too is
merciful and full of pity. He too suffers with each sin man sins. Here
too the Just Judge judgeth the World. And the patient Buddha suffers
till the wicked are redeemed. There is no end to his suffering till all
are saved. Only when the wicked cease from troubling, cease because
they are the good, is mortal life completed, till then the complex
worlds spin on and on. Yet Buddha smiles. For man’s birthright is not
sin, not sorrow, but Joy. The Godhead smiles.
This long silent row of granite gods, fashioned by the hands and the
hearts of this nation, smile. And all the bronze and granite statues,
all the gilded images, all the Buddhas of this island smile too, for
the people who made them and conceived them believe in Joy, in the
innate as in the ultimate goodness of man; in the innate as in the
ultimate Joy of the Godhead. Verily these are forgotten Gods in western
lands.
Across the raging mountain river, through the fast-falling rain, on
the desolate green bank the numberless Buddhas battered and forsaken
smile, that slow still smile of One Who Understands, who understands
All Things, and understanding is content.
Great Buddha, _Dai Nippon_, teach us.
LORD FUJI
“Where on the one hand is the province of Kai,
And on the other the province of Suruga,
Right in the midst between them
Stands out the high peak of Fuji.
The very clouds of Heaven dread to approach it;
Even the soaring birds reach not its summit in their flight.
Its burning fire is quenched by the snow;
The snow that falls is melted by the fire.
No words may tell of it, no name know I that fits it,
But a wondrous Deity it surely is.
* * * * *
Of Yamato, the Land of Sunrise,
It is the Peace-Giver, it is the God, it is the Treasure.
On the peak of Fuji, in the land of Suruga,
Never weary I of gazing.”
Japanese poet, eighth century.
(“Japanese Literature,” by W. G. Aston.)
I
PROLOGUE
From Pole to Pole the waters of the wide Pacific surge, unending and
alone. Over the shifting plain the silence of the ocean broods. Here is
man nothing; for the endless spaces of the ocean, the self-sufficiency
of the unresting sea remain for ever outside of man, coldly non-human.
A river or a hill can be loved into companionship, but the sea stays
always strange.
Without ends or boundaries, the shifting waters sweep from Pole to
Pole, solitary, changeless. Only the curve of the earth itself, or the
weakness of man’s eyesight draws imaginary boundaries on the horizon.
And the waste of the waters lies empty and still.
Coldly blue is the sea below, and the sky shutting down is blue too and
bare. Two empty infinities which meeting set bounds to each other.
And within there is nothing. Only space; blue, bare space.
“In the beginning,” says the Scripture, “the waters below were
separated from the waters above,” and out of the void came this world
of two dimensions, so cold, blue and beautiful. It is immensity--empty.
Then did the spirit of God move on the face of the waters, move slowly
and pass.
Into the empty blue came a white, still splendour. Softly it grew
in the dome of the sky, unreal in its beauty. But two pale curves
that stayed in the heavens, as the wandering snowflake seems to rest
on its fall. Midway between blue and blue it stayed, this soft white
splendour, stayed dreaming a pause.
For the spirit of God had passed; and the empty, blue vastness was
filled with a sense of joy and elation. Earth’s fairest presence had
risen high to the heavens. And it lay, two curving lines of exquisite
splendour, breathed light on the sky; and white as the wing of a gull
in the gleam of the sunshine, all shining with whiteness.
And the infinite plane of the waters stretches on to the Poles. And the
endless space of the sky wraps the water around.
But the empty, blue vastness is gone.
It is blue sea. It is sky. They are framing a world, for Lord Fuji has
come.
II
THE ASCENT
Geologists state that Fuji San is a volcano, a young volcano, 12,365
feet high. Philologists add that _San_ is derived from a Chinese term
meaning mountain, and is not the familiar Japanese title which we
render by Mr., Lord, or Master; while _Fuji_ is, they declare, a word
of Aino origin. And then they all fall silent.
These are the facts: the material, provable facts, such as western
text-books publish. But to Japan, Fuji San is much more, and most of
this is not text-book fact.
National tradition says that Fuji arose in a single night, and at the
same time Lake Biwa, one hundred and forty miles away, was suddenly
formed. There is a legend that, in those far-away days of _mukashi,
mukashi_--once upon a time--the Elixir of Life was taken to the top
of the mountain, where it still remains. And popular belief declares
that all the cinders and ashes brought down by the pilgrims’ feet are
carried each night back to the summit of Fuji.
To the people, Fuji is sacred; holy to some as the abiding-place of
the Goddess _Ko-no-hana-saku-ya-hime_, She who makes the Blossoms of
the Trees to Bloom, but sacred to all for its majesty, its unutterable
beauty. The peasants of the country-side call Fuji _Oyama_, Honourable
Mountain; and to the people Fuji San is Lord and Master. Deep in their
hearts, and unassailable by western facts, the worship of his beauty
and his power lies throbbing. During that brief six weeks of summer
when Fuji’s wind-swept sides alone are climbable, the pilgrims come in
thousands, in ten thousands. They dress themselves in white from head
to foot. They carry long staves of pure white wood in their hands, each
stamped with the temple crest, and in bands and companies they climb
the mountain. And always the leader at their head, his staff crowned
with a tinkling mass of bells, like tiny cymbals, chants the hymn
of Fuji. From base to summit, as the white-clad pilgrims climb, the
tinkling cymbals clash, and the voice of the leader rises loud at each
refrain: