"Do you know anything about josses?"
"Josses?"
"Yes; idols, Japanese idols,--josses."
"Something," I answered, "but not very much."
"Well, come, and look at my collection, won't you? I've been
collecting josses for twenty years, and I've got some worth
seeing. They're not for sale, though,--except to the British
Museum."
I followed the curio dealer through the bric-a-brac of his shop,
and across a paved yard into an unusually large go-down(1). Like
all go-downs it was dark: I could barely discern a stairway
sloping up through gloom. He paused at the foot.
"You'll be able to see better in a moment," he said. "I had this
place built expressly for them; but now it is scarcely big
enough. They're all in the second story. Go right up; only be
careful,--the steps are bad."
I climbed, and reached a sort of gloaming, under a very high
roof, and found myself face to face with the gods.
In the dusk of the great go-down the spectacle was more than
weird: it was apparitional. Arhats and Buddhas and Bodhisattvas,
and the shapes of a mythology older than they, filled all the
shadowy space; not ranked by hierarchies, as in a temple, but
mingled without order, as in a silent panic. Out of the
wilderness of multiple heads and broken aureoles and hands
uplifted in menace or in prayer,--a shimmering confusion of dusty
gold half lighted by cobwebbed air-holes in the heavy walls,--I
could at first discern little; then, as the dimness cleared, I
began to distinguish personalities. I saw Kwannon, of many forms;
Jizo, of many names; Shaka, Yakushi, Amida, the Buddhas and their
disciples. They were very old; and their art was not all of
Japan, nor of any one place or time: there were shapes from
Korea, China, India,--treasures brought over sea in the rich days
of the early Buddhist missions. Some were seated upon
lotos-flowers, the lotos-flowers of the Apparitional Birth. Some
rode leopards, tigers, lions, or monsters mystical,--typifying
lightning, typifying death. One, triple-headed and many-handed,
sinister and splendid, seemed moving through the gloom on a
throne of gold, uplifted by a phalanx of elephants. Fudo I saw,
shrouded and shrined in fire, and Maya-Fujin, riding her
celestial peacock; and strangely mingling with these Buddhist
visions, as in the anachronism of a Limbo, armored effigies of
Daimyo and images of the Chinese sages. There were huge forms of
wrath, grasping thunderbolts, and rising to the roof: the
Deva-kings, like impersonations of hurricane power; the Ni-O,
guardians of long-vanished temple gates. Also there were forms
voluptuously feminine: the light grace of the limbs folded within
their lotos-cups, the suppleness of the fingers numbering the
numbers of the Good Law, were ideals possibly inspired in some
forgotten tune by the charm of an Indian dancing-girl. Shelved
against the naked brickwork above, I could perceive multitudes of
lesser shapes: demon figures with eyes that burned through the
dark like the eyes of a black cat, and figures half man, half
bird, winged and beaked like eagles,--the _Tengu_ of Japanese
fancy.
"Well?" queried the curio dealer, with a chuckle of satisfaction
at my evident surprise.
"It is a very great collection," I responded.
He clapped his hand on my shoulder, and exclaimed triumphantly in
my ear, "Cost me fifty thousand dollars."
But the images themselves told me how much more was their cost to
forgotten piety, notwithstanding the cheapness of artistic labor
in the East. Also they told me of the dead millions whose pilgrim
feet had worn hollow the steps leading to their shrines, of the
buried mothers who used to suspend little baby-dresses before
their altars, of the generations of children taught to murmur
prayers to them, of the countless sorrows and hopes confided to
them. Ghosts of the worship of centuries had followed them into
exile; a thin, sweet odor of incense haunted the dusty place.
"What would you call that?" asked the voice of the curio dealer.
"I've been told it's the best of the lot."
He pointed to a figure resting upon a triple golden
lotos,--Avalokitesvara: she "_who looketh down above the sound of
prayer."... Storms and hate give way to her name. Fire
is quenched by her name. Demons vanish at the sound of her name.
By her name one may stand firm in the sky, like a sun...._
The delicacy of the limbs, the tenderness of the smile, were
dreams of the Indian paradise.
"It is a Kwannon," I made reply, "and very beautiful."
"Somebody will have to pay me a very beautiful price for it," he
said, with a shrewd wink. "It cost me enough! As a rule, though,
I get these things pretty cheap. There are few people who care to
buy them, and they have to be sold privately, you know: that
gives me an advantage. See that Jizo in the corner,--the big
black fellow? What is it?"
"Emmei-Jizo," I answered,--"Jizo, the giver of long life. It must
be very old."
"Well," he said, again taking me by the shoulder, "the man from
whom I got that piece was put in prison for selling it to me."
Then he burst into a hearty laugh,--whether at the recollection
of his own cleverness in the transaction, or at the unfortunate
simplicity of the person who had sold the statue contrary to law,
I could not decide.
"Afterwards," he resumed, "they wanted to get it back again, and
offered me more, than I had given for it. But I held on. I don't
know everything about josses, but I do know what they are worth.
There isn't another idol like that in the whole country. The
British Museum will be glad to get it."
"When do you intend to offer the collection to the British
Museum?" I presumed to ask.
"Well, I first want to get up a show," he replied. "There's money
to be made by a show of josses in London. London people never saw
anything like this in their lives. Then the church folks help
that sort of a show, if you manage them properly: it advertises
the missions. 'Heathen idols from Japan!'... How do you like the
baby?"
I was looking at a small gold-colored image of a naked child,
standing, one tiny hand pointing upward, and the other downward,
--representing the Buddha newly born. _Sparkling with light he
came from the womb, as when the Sun first rises in the east....
Upright he took deliberately seven steps; and the prints of his
feet upon the ground remained burning as seven stars. And he
spake with clearest utterance, saying, "This birth is a Buddha
birth. Re-birth is not for me. Only this last time am I born for
the salvation of all on earth and in heaven._"
"That is what they call a Tanjo-Shaka," I said. "It looks like
bronze."
"Bronze it is," he responded, tapping it with his knuckles to
make the metal ring. "The bronze alone is worth more than the
price I paid."
I looked at the four Devas whose heads almost touched the roof,
and thought of the story of their apparition told in the
Mahavagga. _On a beautiful night the Four Great Kings entered the
holy grove, filling all the place with light; and having
respectfully saluted the Blessed One, they stood in the four
directions, like four great firebrands_.
"How did you ever manage to get those big figures upstairs?" I
asked.
"Oh, hauled them up! We've got a hatchway. The real trouble was
getting them here by train. It was the first railroad trip they
ever made.... But look at these here: they will make the
sensation of the show!"