admiration for the _Ijin San’s Bot’chan_ knew no bounds; and then
the pride of having a foreign-dressed baby of her own! Why, not one
of her acquaintances, not even the rich _saké_ merchant at the corner,
dressed their children “foreign fashion.” It was a height beyond their
ambition, a dizzy pinnacle only reached by the _samurai_ and the Court!
And Yoné’s strangled “h’s” of admiration and her indrawn whistles of
politeness knew no bounds. Even the _O Bā San_ in the corner turned her
head round and showed some signs of interest. And the baby stopped its
feeble cry and lay back on the _Ijin San’s_ lap--and smiled.
With a sudden swoop Yoné caught it up. “I take care, I take care,” she
said, “let the _Ijin San_ bring the clothes.”
And from that day she went about her work with the quaintest little
brown morsel in a foreign pelisse and a white bonnet nodding over her
shoulder. And neither the _O Bā San_ nor the baby ever went hungry
whatever Yoné might do.
IV
THE GRAVES OF THE RŌNIN
The white wing of a blossoming plum-tree casts a pale shadow across the
pebbled steps of the causeway, and the spring sunshine is warm. Behind,
under the great gate of the temple, is a stall with souvenir tea-bowls
of the _Forty-Seven Rōnin_ and the red blankets of a tiny _chaya_. In
front, at the end of the causeway, stands a Japanese father with his
little son, buying bundles of incense sticks from the Buddhist sexton.
Coming up the path are two peasants with bare, brown legs, one wearing
the old-fashioned gunhammer top-knot. And the plum-tree, its scent warm
and fragrant, lies a white wing above the path.
The Japanese father, _samurai_ from his face, and modern by his
clothes, and his son have passed into the graveyard before us. But we
all stand together in the little square garden on the side of the hill,
with its thickly clustered tombstones, shaped like Moses’ Tables of the
Law in the Child’s Bible, set in the flat brown earth.
Below, a sharply falling line of dark green shrubs; above, the
overhanging trees of the hillside; and the garden is quiet and still,
with a little chill of damp and death that sobers and subdues.
Before each stone tablet on the earthen path are bamboo vases filled
with freshly cut branches of evergreens, and the burning incense sticks
trail a thin scarf of smoke along the ground.
The two old peasants are busy sticking their thin, brown incense tapers
into the little heaps of grey ash--to become grey ashes in their turn.
The little son has already lit his before the tomb of Oishi Kuranosuké;
and the father, gravely feeling in the pocket of his “foreign” coat,
takes out a visiting-card, and lays it reverently among the pile of
others on the grave.
Then they go away slowly. And I catch the names of Asano Takumi no Kami
and Kira Kōtsuké no Suké, and I know that the little son is listening
to the story of the _Forty-Seven Rōnin_.
For two hundred years now they have come up the pebbled pathway into
the graveyard, country peasant and Tokyo gentlemen coming with incense
sticks and flowering branches, to keep green the memory of the loyal
retainers who died to revenge their lord: coming in _kimono_ and
top-knot: still coming in foreign clothes and _shappo_, for the old
spirit lives though the outer form is changing. The fierce unswerving
loyalty, the utter self-sacrifice, the tenacity and strength of the
_Forty-Seven Rōnin_ still stir the soul of the modern Japanese under
their foreign envelope as it stirred the heart of those fierce old
_samurai_, with their hands ever on the hilt of their long two-handed
swords.
“Thou shalt not live under the same heaven nor tread the same earth as
the enemy of thy father or thy master,” says the Scripture. And the
Forty-Seven died, and more than died, to fulfil the commandment.
In the temple below their wooden effigies stand to this day. Among them
are old men and young boys--one with the grey locks of seventy-seven,
one with the boyish cheeks of seventeen--but neither the old man nor
the young boy faltered, through all the long months of waiting, in the
dangerous moment of the struggle or after. They plotted and endured;
they fought and slew; they brought the bloody head of Kira Kōtsuké no
Suké, washed in the well beyond the plum-tree, here to the grave of
their dead lord; they gave themselves up to Justice; they carried out
the sentence of death on their own bodies with their own hands--all
with the same quiet self-control which only the sense of a supreme,
absorbing duty can produce.
And the Forty-Seven were buried here, in the quiet cold graveyard,
beside the body of their lord. And when they had been laid to rest
there came a fierce two-sworded _samurai_ to the little garden, and,
kneeling down in front of the tomb of Oishi Kuranosuké, he took his
dirk from his belt and stabbed himself above the grave. For he had
insulted Oishi Kuranosuké, in the long months of the waiting, thinking
he had forgotten his lord.
So they buried him among the Forty-Seven, and before his tomb are
flowering branches and burning incense tapers.
* * * * *
The two old peasants are gone, but the sound of coming steps is on the
pebbled pathway.
It is the feet of the nation. They come to keep their age long watch
above the graves of the Loyal _Rōnin_.
V
THE DOLLS’ FESTIVAL
Enshrined in their white wooden boxes the dolls look down; and the
gently drifting crowd stare their fill.
It is the eve of the Dolls’ Festival, and for a hundred yards along the
wide _Odōri_, the street is wreathed across and across with swaying
lines of paper lanterns.
On each matted floor, raised knee-high from the ground, a shopman sits
on his heels, his hands eternally stretched out over the charcoal fire
of the _hibachi_.
The background of dolls on three sides of him seem as interested in
their sale as he. The crowd drifts, talks, points, looks, but he sits
still, absorbed in his occupation. Occasionally he will turn a languid
head over one shoulder in the direction of an inquiring voice, and
tranquilly name a price four times bigger than he expects to get;
but unless the customer pursues the bargain with vigour he does not
stir. Even then, all the talking is done without moving more than a
head. And when the culminating point arrives at which the would-be
buyer shakes the dust off his feet and makes vigorously for the next
shop, he murmurs an impassive “_Yoroshī_” (“All right”), and warms
another finger, while a boy in the background, who for ever dusts the
stock-in-trade, does up the parcel and takes the money.
I wonder--would anything stir this _blasé_ image of indifference?
Perhaps if a fool or a foreigner, interchangeable terms in the East,
paid the price he asked he might----. No, “_Yoroshī, yoroshī_,”
he murmurs, and does not interrupt the warming of his hands by a
finger’s-breadth.
For ten long days now the dolls, all in the quaint robes of old,
have looked down on the gently drifting crowd, emperor and empress,
lords and ladies, and court musicians. The red silk trousers and
the flowing hair, the cut-glass chandelier-like head-dress and the
wide, wide sleeved _kimono_; the court lady leading her lap-dog; the
musicians with their instruments; and along the lower shelves, the long
procession of lacquered bowls, and tables and furniture, the old, old
shapes of Old Japan, the realities buried for ever in museums, and only
these, their midget substitutes, enjoying a brief life once a year.
They are so neat and pretty, of such exquisite workmanship and finish,
that I stay to look and look. Behind me the crowd closes in thicker
and thicker, looking too--but at me; so thickly that they obstruct the
rails of Tokyo’s main tramway, and cause it much embarrassment.
To-morrow is the Dolls’ Festival, and all the world is buying; I, too,
would like to buy. So I sit still on the edge of the matted floor
and watch. I shall learn what I ought to give and how to conduct the
intricate matter of a purchase. But though they were here before me,
and though they stay long after me, and though I wait with what I
consider quite Oriental patience, they do not buy, not one of them,
they only talk. So I am compelled to conduct my own purchase without
the aid of native example, and to the certain advantage of the
impassive shopman.
Does any one ever buy anything in Tokyo?
In all my many wanderings I have never seen them, patiently as I have
stalked them. They are always just going--just going--just going----
Perhaps that is why the impassive shopmen are so impassive.
VI
WITH DEATH BESIDE HER
“_Go-han wa skoshi mo arimasen_” (“Not another grain of rice, not a
grain”). And O Matsu sat back on her heels, the lid of the wooden rice
saucepan clutched in her hand.
“_Skoshi mo arimasen._” And the grey head, with its cropped hair
gathered into a slide behind, bent despairingly over the saucepan.
The _O hachi_ was quite empty, O Matsu had eaten the last grain
yesterday; she knew that quite well, but the trembling old fingers went
on feeling round and round the bare sides of the saucepan, for she was
very hungry. All through the long months of the rice famine O Matsu had
managed somehow. To-day the empty _O hachi_ lay on the ground while O
Matsu sat staring slowly into it. Then Death stared back at her, and
she knew it.
With a trembling little movement she got on to her feet and moved
across the matted floor into the _zashki_. The sun was shining on the
rice-paper panes of the _shōji_, and she pushed them back and stood out
on the little platform of polished wood, trying to warm herself; but
the piercing winter wind made her blackened teeth chatter, and she came
in again. In the _hibachi_ the grey ashes were dead and cold, the last
stick of charcoal had boiled the water for her tea last night. There
was neither fire nor food. O Matsu stood still watching, while Death
and his Shadow grew, as a ghost in the twilight.
Slowly the familiar walls, the matted floor, the half-opened _shōji_
insisted that the house was yet unswept, the first duty of a housewife
still undone; and with a painful effort O Matsu went and fetched the
bamboo broom that swept the matting, and the damp cloth to polish the
platform. The broom felt heavy to the weak old hands, and the task of
polishing the platform almost beyond her strength; so she worked on
slowly, stopping often, for hunger made her faint, but always going on
again. At last, _zashki_ and platform finished, she crept back into the
kitchen, longing to rest. The empty _O hachi_ lay on the floor. She
made a great effort, and, picking it up, carried it outside to scrub,
for cleanliness is a supreme duty in Japan.
When she came back she put the freshly scrubbed _O hachi_ in its place.
Then she sat down. There was nothing more to do. The house was as clean
as a house could be. O Matsu was inexpressibly weary, and the desire
for food was almost beyond control. Instinctively she wandered back to
the empty _O hachi_ and took off the lid. The copper bands, dim and
splashed with the washing, caught her eye. It seemed to her the hardest
thing of all her life to go and fetch her little cloth and sit down to
polish them, but she did it. And Death and his Shadow sat down at her
side.
Somehow as she rubbed, two tears gathered in the dim old eyes, and
rolled down the withered cheeks. O Matsu dropped the cloth, and holding
the long sleeve of her _kimono_ before her face, sat still and wept.
There is nothing in all the world so lonely as a Japanese woman without
husband or children. She has no claim on her own family, and little on
her husband’s; and in a land where the children, once grown up, provide
for their parents, what can a childless widowed old woman do?
* * * * *
The sun moved round the house, and O Matsu still sat in her kitchen
rubbing softly at the copper bands of the saucepan. And death, in
infinite pity, laid his hand upon her head, and his Shadow vanished.
“_O meshi wa skoshi mo arimasen_,” she said. And the shaven old
eyebrows puckered themselves together. “_Skoshi mo arimasen._” And the
bent little figure went on rubbing.
When the policeman came in the grey dawn of the morning, surprised that
the _amado_ were not drawn, he found O Matsu, the polished copper bands
of the _O hachi_ glittering in her lap--quite dead.
VII
KYOTO’S SOIRÉE
Midnight and yet as hot as mid-day. Over our heads the velvet darkness
lay as a visible lid above the streets, warm and still. Not a breath of
air was stirring from one end of Kyoto to the other; the city seemed a
vast dark house with all its windows shut. Only the rapid running of the
_kurumaya_ produced the slightest breeze, and that was but the fanning
of a heated ballroom; and when it stopped the hot still air settled down
hotter, stiller, than before.
We had reached the bank of the river, the bridge and Theatre Street lay
beyond; and, as suddenly as one opens a door in a dark passage, we were
there, inside, in the press and the noise, the lights and the crowd of
Kyoto’s nightly _soirée_.
Restaurants and hairpin stalls, _geisha_ booths and theatres, the
interesting show of the two-headed fish, or the tragic story of
the _Forty-seven Rōnin_, embroideries, and _bīru_, jugglers and
phonographs, cheap stalls for the sale of shaved ice and sugar syrup,
elegant restaurants with fish dinners; dancing-booths at two _sen_ a
head, where white-painted _geisha_ girls continually sang four notes
and assumed four postures, and sang the same four notes and repeated
the same four postures to a tightly packed audience sitting on its
heels, silent but appreciative; and all, restaurants, booths, theatres,
stalls, blazed with lights and posters, deafened with the banging of
big drums and the invitations of the proprietors, reeked with the smell
of burning tallow, the fragrance of boiling tea, the scent of crushed
geranium, the odour of an eastern summer’s night and of the press of
clean-washed, hot humanity.
Along the street, inside the stalls and out, the crowd was dense,
cheerful, polite and contented. There was no pushing, no ill-humour,
no fights, no drunkenness, nor one policeman. The people of Kyoto were
enjoying themselves like well-bred guests in a ballroom, with the
courtesy of self-control, and the self-abandoned pleasure of a child.
The road with its shifting crowd, and the two long lines of brightly
lighted buildings, covered with paper lanterns and cotton banners on
bamboo poles, looked more like a “set” in a theatre than real houses
in an out-of-doors street. Not a candle-flame quivered, not a banner
stirred, and the long perspective of the arched bridge was still as a
painted background.
Down in the river, in the actual bed of the stream, were more lights,
whole crowded restaurants afloat. Sitting on the tops of tables,
whose four legs driven down into the sand brought them within six
inches of the water, supper parties innumerable ate and talked;
while the children, slipping off their _gheta_, paddled their feet
in the stream. Even the little waitresses, as they ran from customer
to customer, would leave the long polished gangways that led from
tea-house to table, and take the shorter way through the water. Every
one was eating, and every one was happy--shaved ice with sugar syrup,
at two _sen_ a glass, or dishes of brown eels and rice at two _yen_,
gratuitous tea or _bīru_ in thirty-_sen_ bottles. And with the summer
night above, the water all around, the hundreds and hundreds of little
tables floated on the water bright with _kimono_ and lanterns. The
broad shallow backwater either side the bridge was full of them, and
the gentle rushing of the actual river beyond the circle of bright
light lent a sense of freshness to the shadows that they did not in
themselves possess.
Up on the bridge the crowd grew thicker, Theatre Street more full; the
hairpin stalls were surrounded with women and little girls, buying
long hairpins carved at the end, or ornamented with silk lanterns or
flowers, or ingenious designs of tortoises made of shells, with legs
that quivered realistically. And the velvet blackness lying above the
streets and beyond the river was warm to feel.
Suddenly, as when one throws a stone into the water, the crowd surged
forwards, then rippled slowly back; half a dozen white-uniformed
policemen, with the distinctive, distinguished face of the _samurai_,
were coming over the bridge, driving the people before them, back
and back. The confused noise of indistinct shouting filled the air.
Suddenly on to the bridge came running in a sort of jog-trot a crowd of
bareheaded men, their short white tunics hardly reaching to the thigh
and their brown legs naked beneath, all tugging and straining at a huge
unwieldy car, which moved in jerks on its wheels of solid wood. On
each side ran bands of men brandishing flaming torches in their hands,
while priests in gorgeous apparel came behind. And priests and people,
torch-bearers and car-pullers, were chanting as they ran, a fierce, wild
cry, which went on and on. The car-pullers swayed from side to side,
tossing their hands above their heads, the torch-bearers rocked, sending
great flaming fragments among the crowd, and we all stood pressed
together, shrinking back from the burning torches, and the feet of the
car-pullers, singed here, trampled there, in one sweating mass of hot
humanity.
In the middle of the bridge the car stood still. The men in white
tunics moved restlessly on their feet, straining at the cords; the
torch-bearers chanted louder, tossing their torches in the air; the
priests hurried to the front, and stood gesticulating while the wild,
monotonous cry, gathering fierceness and frenzy from its very monotony,
thundered and roared. Then with a sudden swirl the car turned round,
and torch-bearers, car-pullers and priests were rushing back again to
the same fierce wild cry, the same frenzied swaying of the bodies, and
the same mad tossing of the arms. The sacred procession had come, was
gone.
Slowly the crowd rippled back, on over the bridge, back down the
street, the policemen disappeared, the drums of the _geisha_ booths and
the invitations of the stall-owners rang out again. Down on the surface
of the river the floating tables grew fuller and fuller.
Kyoto’s nightly _soirée_ was at its height.
VIII
NŌ
A room whose sloping floor is cut into chess-board squares; each square
flat and matted, so that the back is twelve inches high and level
with the front of the square above; a bare still wooden room long and
crowded. Each matted square thick with kneeling men and women, the
long-headed aquiline faces of the nobles and the _samurai_. At the
end a platform with an opening vaguely leading from it. No scenery,
no footlights, no curtain. It is the theatre for the performance of
the _Nō_. Those sacred old world plays written many hundred years
ago, acted by _samurai_ for _samurai_, the religious mysteries and
moralities of Japan.
In the West the theatre long ago shook off, escaped, forgot the Church.
Here the elder child, the mother rather, still lives by the side of
her offspring, and lives unchanged. The _Nō_ to-day is as the _Nō_ of
five hundred years ago, the _Nō_ which grew out of the sacred dances
of an immemorable antiquity. Like the drama of the Greeks it has its
choruses, its chants, its unities, its one or two actors masked,
richly dressed, impressive, who move with a religious solemnity, and
speak as voices, not as men. Its plays, too, are drawn from sacred
legend, from the mythology of Shintō deities, from the mysteries of
the Buddhist faith, and from the fairy tales of the race. Over it all
there is a glamour as of a stolen glimpse into the buried past. To-day
its language is archaic, but preserved by constant repetition, handed
down from father to son in the families of nobles who, since _Nō_ first
began, have played in _Nō_, it remains the language and the speech of
those dead Japanese, who towards the fourteenth century organised the
_Nō_.
The chant is strange and piercing, its very notes and phrases are
outside of all that we consider music, as unfamiliar as the speech of
insects, or the song of the remotest fathers of mankind. It echoes like
a voice from out the long dead worlds, piercing yet remote, and the
_tink_ of pipes dies out. There falls a stillness in the room.
It is the afternoon of the last day of the Iidamachi _Nō_. As in
the theatres of Greece the plays, each of which lasts about two
hours, are given one after another throughout the whole day, while
between them comes the _Kiogen_ (mad words), or _folies dramatiques_,
farce-like, Greek-like comedies, shorter even than the _Nō_. Many of
the spectators have been here since the morning, and on the matting of
the shallow square boxes are lacquered trays of food, on all teapots
and tobacco-stands; others come to see a special play or so and go away
again; but to one and all it is not an amusement, it is a study, a
homage paid to the past, a rite.
As the first notes of the strange piercing chant wail down the room,
the pipes and cigarettes go out, the tiny tea-bowls are set down, and a
silence falls.
The actors, in their rich brocaded robes of a make and texture of
a long dead past, come slowly through the passage-way on to the
platform. Their masks are made of lacquer, and they speak in a slow
nasal deep voice that seems to come from the very back of their
throats. They speak with every muscle strained and taut. It sounds
almost as outside of speech as the chant is outside of music, and
they move in strange long strides. Such movements are not merely for
artistic effect, nor to mark agitation, or to reproduce nature; they
are often used to mark the passing of a period of time.
For all its stiffness and its rigour, its archaic make-believes, its
unnatural realities, there is an intensity and a thrill in it as of a
living thing that matters. The strange music of the tambourine-like
instruments, the thin wailing of the bamboo flute, the beating of
the one small drum, shaped like an hour-glass with three supporting
pillars, breaks in again and again upon the intoned speech of the
actors with its repeated irregular cadences in notes outside of speech.
And the long-robed figures, masked and rigid, stalk slowly across
the stage; and the chant of the chorus, as in the plays of Greece,
explains, comments, describes the action.
It is the story of the fisherman who found an angel’s robe of feathers
on a tree, and would not give it back though the angel begged and
begged. Without it she cannot reach her home in the blue of the heavens
above, and for a heavenly spirit to stay for long on earth means death.
Already the chorus is chanting her dirge when the fisherman, seeing her
beauty fading and her life ebbing fast, relents. He will give back the
robe if she will dance for him. She promises, but implores first her
robe that the dance may be more perfect. The fisherman fears she will
deceive him and fly back to heaven at once. But the spirit turns upon
him.
“Fie on thee, fisherman,” she cries, “deception was born of man; the
high heavens know not of it.”
And, touched, he gives back the robe. She dances, while the chorus
sings the beauties of the landscape, of Japan. How
“Heaven has its joys, but there is beauty here,
Here
Where the moon in bright unclouded glory
Shines on Kigomi’s lea.
And where on Fujiyama’s summit hoary
The snows look on the sea.”
Even the angel would stay awhile in a land so beautiful.
“Blow, blow ye winds that the white cloud-belt driven
Around my path may bar my homeward way,
Not yet would I return to Heaven.”
And still the angel dances, and the vision of Heaven descends upon
earth. She sings,
“And from the cloudy spheres,
Chiming in unison the angels’ lutes,
Tabrets and cymbals, and sweet silv’ry flutes
Ring through the heav’n that glows with purple hues.”
Then the voices fall away. And to the strange, tuneless music, whose
notes are not our notes, the spirit dances on, round and round in
gliding circles, with the slow, smooth movements of the sacred _Kagura_.
“Fragrant and fair--too fair for mortal eyes.”
The chorus sings again. And gliding round and round in circles ever
smoother, ever slower, the spirit passes from the platform and up the
vague passage-way that leads to the green-room beyond.
The fisherman starts. The play is ended. In long, stiff strides, so
slow, so slow, that an appreciable space of time seems set around the
movement of each muscle, the actor goes across the stage, up the vague
passage-way, into the room beyond.