A priest died recently under very peculiar circumstances. He was
the priest of a temple, belonging to one of the older Buddhist
sects, in a village near Osaka. (You can see that temple from the
Kwan-Setsu Railway, as you go by train to Kyoto.)
He was young, earnest, and extremely handsome--very much too
handsome for a priest, the women said. He looked like one of
those beautiful figures of Amida made by the great Buddhist
statuaries of other days.
The men of his parish thought him a pure and learned priest, in
which they were right. The women did not think about his virtue
or his learning only: he possessed the unfortunate power to
attract them, independently of his own will, as a mere man. He
was admired by them, and even by women of other parishes also, in
ways not holy; and their admiration interfered with his studies
and disturbed his meditations. They found irreproachable pretexts
for visiting the temple at all hours, just to look at him and
talk to him; asking questions which it was his duty to answer,
and making religious offerings which he could not well refuse.
Some would ask questions, not of a religious kind, that caused
him to blush. He was by nature too gentle to protect himself by
severe speech, even when forward girls from the city said things
that country-girls never would have said,--things that made him
tell the speakers to leave his presence. And the more he shrank
from the admiration of the timid, or the adulation of the
unabashed, the more the persecution increased, till it became the
torment of his life(1).
His parents had long been dead; he had no worldly ties: he loved
only his calling, and the studies belonging to it; and he did not
wish to think of foolish and forbidden things. His extraordinary
beauty--the beauty of a living idol--was only a misfortune.
Wealth was offered him under conditions that he could not even
discuss. Girls threw themselves at his feet, and prayed him in
vain to love them. Love-letters were constantly being sent to
him, letters which never brought a reply. Some were written in
that classical enigmatic style which speaks of "the Rock-Pillow
of Meeting," and "waves on the shadow of a face," and "streams
that part to reunite." Others were artless and frankly tender,
full of the pathos of a girl's first confession of love.
For a long time such letters left the young priest as unmoved, to
outward appearance, as any image of that Buddha in whose likeness
he seemed to have been made. But, as a matter of fact, he was not
a Buddha, but only a weak man; and his position was trying.
One evening there came to the temple a little boy who gave him a
letter, whispered the name of the sender, and ran away in the
dark. According to the subsequent testimony of an acolyte, the
priest read the letter, restored it to its envelope, and placed
it on the matting, beside his kneeling cushion. After remaining
motionless for a long time, as if buried in thought, he sought
his writing-box, wrote a letter himself, addressed it to his
spiritual superior, and left it upon the writing-stand. Then he
consulted the clock, and a railway time-table in Japanese. The
hour was early; the night windy and dark. He prostrated himself
for a moment in prayer before the altar; then hurried out into
the blackness, and reached the railway exactly in time to kneel
down in the middle of the track, facing the roar and rush of the
express from Kobe. And, in another moment, those who had
worshiped the strange beauty of the man would have shrieked to
see, even by lantern-light, all that remained of his poor
earthliness, smearing the iron way.
The letter written to his superior was found. It contained a bare
statement to the effect that, feeling his spiritual strength
departing from him, he had resolved to die in order that he might
not sin.
The other letter was still lying where he had left it on the
floor,--a letter written in that woman-language of which every
syllable is a little caress of humility. Like all such letters
(they are never sent through the post) it contained no date, no
name, no initial, and its envelope bore no address. Into our
incomparably harsher English speech it might be imperfectly
rendered as follows:--
_To take such freedom may be to assume overmuch; yet I feel that
I must speak to you, and therefore send this letter. As for my
lowly self, I have to say only that when first seeing you in the
period of the Festival of the Further Shore, I began to think;
and that since then I have not, even for a moment, been able to
forget. More and more each day I sink into that ever-growing
thought of you; and when I sleep I dream; and when, awaking and
seeing you not, I remember there was no truth in my thoughts of
the night, I can do nothing but weep. Forgive me that, having
been born into this world a woman, I should utter my wish for the
exceeding favor of being found not hateful to one so high.
Foolish and without delicacy I may seem in allowing my heart to
be thus tortured by the thought of one so far above me. But only
because knowing that I cannot restrain my heart, out of the depth
of it I have suffered these poor words to come, that I may write
them with my unskillful brush, and send them to you. I pray that
you will deem me worthy of pity; I beseech that you will not send
me cruel words in return. Compassionate me, seeing that this is
but the overflowing of my humble feelings; deign to divine and
justly to judge,--be it only with the least of kindliness,--this
heart that, in its great distress alone, so ventures to address
you. Each moment I shall hope and wait for some gladdening
answer_.
_Concerning all things fortunate, felicitation_.
_To-day,--
from the honorably-known,
to the longed-for, beloved, august one,
this letter goes._
(1) Actors in Japan often exercise a similar fascination upon
sensitive girls of the lower classes, and often take cruel
advantage of the power so gained. It is very rarely, indeed, that
such fascination can be exerted by a priest.