Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
produced from scanned images of public domain material
from the Google Print project.)
THE WAY OF THE GODS
_By_ JOHN LUTHER LONG
_Author of_ "MADAME BUTTERFLY"
"MISS CHERRY BLOSSOM" "THE FOX WOMAN"
"HEIMWEH" _Etc._ * * * *
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
_NEW YORK MCMVI_
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
COPYRIGHT, 1906,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1906.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass.,
U.S.A.
TO HIM WHO OWNS
HIS JOY BECAUSE
HE HAS BOUGHT
IT WITH SORROW--OR
WILL * * * * * *
PAGE
_TADAIMA!_ (Wait a moment!), 3
CONTENTS
PAGE
_IMPRIMIS_ 13
I Nippon Denji 19
II The Flying of the August Carp 29
III A Good Lie 37
IV Yet--a Lie Loosens Fealty 47
V Yamato Damashii 55
VI Yone 65
VII Ping-Yang 75
VIII Dream-of-a-Star 81
IX Isonna 93
X The Task of Jizo 101
XI Angel of the Earth-Heaven 109
XII Impertinent Isonna 119
XIII Only to Take Her 129
XIV The Going of the Soldier 137
XV But What could He Do? 143
XVI The Making of a Goddess 153
XVII The Eta 161
XVIII To the Emperor 169
XIX On Miyagi Field 175
XX Faded Glory 183
XXI In the Andon's Light 195
XXII Tadaima-Tadaima! 203
XXIII The Pity of the Gods 215
XXIV The Land of the Brave 225
XXV Jones 231
XXVI The "Tsarevitch" 241
XXVII The Small White Death 251
XXVIII "Present for Duty" 261
XXIX The Reincarnation of Shijiro Arisuga 269
XXX Zanzi, Lover of Battles 279
XXXI The Tomb of Lord Esas 285
XXXII When the Watch Passed 297
XXXIII Teikoku Banzai 303
XXXIV Afterward 311
TADAIMA
I thought I saw the bronze god Asamra (he who may speak but once in a
thousand years, and whose friendship I keep by making time stand still
for him in the stopping of the clock and its turning back) shake his
head in doubt as I put the manuscript into its wrappings and addressed
it to the publisher.
"Well?" I inquired, testily.
"Suppose They do not like it?" sighed the god.
"Why should They not?" demanded I, loftily.
"It has, among other unusualities, (I hope you like the gentleness of
the word!) those dashes which--You ought to have learned by this time
that They don't like to read over dashes."
"Why not?" asked I, again. "_I_ like them. And, they are my own!"
"Well, you know a dash necessitates lucubration. It stands for something
which you trust your reader to supply. That is unfair. If you are
writing a book and receiving an honorarium for it, do not expect him to
do it. It is a bit like eating. One does not go to a restaurant, and pay
for his food, then cook it himself."
"I have seen it done," cried I, "by particular people!"
"Ahem!" murmured the polite god: more polite on this day than I had
recently observed him--which meant some sort of propaganda.
"It is not an ahem!" I went on in the unregenerate heat which the
friction of the god often engendered in me. "Have _you_ never seen it
done?"
"I have," admitted the effigy, "seen a waiter sorely vexed to bring the
materials for a salad--"
"Aha!" cried I, triumphantly.
"Gomen nasai," begged the deity, "I had not finished. I have seen a
waiter, I say, sorely vexed to bring the materials for a salad which the
maker has--spoiled!"
"Then," demanded I, with icy coldness, "you think that if I permit Them
to supply a few thoughts to carry Them over the dashes They will--"
"Think something you did not think; perhaps something worse," the
effigy finished, calamitously.
"Or better?" I suggested, bitterly.
"Or better," agreed the god. "There is a small number of people (but,
extremely small) who like to supply in full what you suggest in dashes.
It tickles Them tremendously to think that you couldn't have done it so
well; that you trust Them to do it better. Often They are certain that
They have helped you over a place you could not help yourself
over--hence the dash."
"Sometimes," I mused, diffidently, "that is true."
"Ha, ha!" laughed the image, and our mood became more human.
"But, do you mean to say," I asked, "that if I leave John and Jane in
the upper hall, and take them up again in the lower hall, I must
acquaint Them with the fact that John and Jane have been obliged to
traverse the stairway to get away from the one and to reach the other?
Am I permitted no ellipsis in so patent a matter as that?"
"They will expect the stairway," sighed the god.
"And a page for each step, I suppose! How can They differ from me? What
other thought can They have than that John and Jane descended the
stairway to reach the lower hall?"
"There may be a back stairway, or a fire escape," chuckled the deity.
"Then, I suppose, I must spend some pages in telling Them not only that
John and Jane descended the stair, but that they did _not_ descend by
the back stair or the fire escape!"
"It would be better," said the idol. "They can skip it. But They cannot
deny that it is there, as They can if it is not. They would rather skip
what you supply than supply what you skip. One is Their judgment of your
mental caliber--usually too small--the other is your judgment of
Theirs--usually too generous. Ahem! There is a golden mean."
"Besides, however bad for literature it may be," laughed I, "at so much
a word, it is good for me!"
"Well," ventured god, in doubt, "are novels literature?"
"I am not the one to say," I retorted, with some asperity. "I
manufacture them. But I can swear that they are better literature--if
literature at all--than some of the criticisms of them--if literature at
all."
"Have I touched a broken, perhaps often mended, place in your armor?"
laughed the god.
"Well," I admitted, crustily, "I have read criticisms of English--no
matter whose--the English of which was eminently criticisable. Here is
one. The gentleman makes no distinction in the uses of 'which' and
'that,' and he has not a 'who' in his vocabulary."
"I have my eye on it," laughed the image, "and I admit that a few
whiches and whos for thats, and--even--er--pardon!--a few of your
dashes, would make its teaching more grateful."
"God," adjured I, happily, "thank you! Now do please stop and think! No
speech, no thought, goes on without dashes. When we write the speech
which flows mellifluous, we do violence to nature. And in all art the
tendency is toward nature."
"Recently," began the deity, in that high tone which always meant
checkmate to me, "I have seen the statue of an alleged athlete, in which
his bunions were reproduced!"
"I saw it, too," I laughed. Indeed, the god and I had stared at it
together.
"Well," the effigy went on, "that was certainly nature!"
"There is a golden mean," I re-quoted. "An artistic attitude toward all
manifestations of art. If one has this one will appreciate--er--whether
to reproduce the bunions. They may, of course, be picturesque bunions.
Why, god, if one should reproduce human speech, as it is spoken, there
would be a dash after every third word! Mine are quite within bounds."
"It would look queer," said the god, "and you would be called eccentric
instead of original. Please don't do it! In fact stop it! Placate both
your readers and your critics."
"Oh, as to that," said I, airily, "the labor would all be lost. Anything
which is unusual to the superficial experience of the average person is
glibly dubbed eccentric. You know how it is. A reader likes to find the
dear old situations in advance of him so that he knows what he is
approaching. There is the same fear of the terra incognita in literature
that there is in nature. A book or a play which is too novel a tax upon
the faculties of a client is not to his liking."
"Who, pray, do you write books for?" asked the effigy, with the
suspicion of a yawn.
"The people who read them," said I, cockily.
"Do They include the critics?"
"Oh, no," said I, hastily.
"Aren't they 'people who read them'?"
"Why, they are critics," cried I. "How can they?"
"That is hard doctrine," said the god, dully. "If you write for the
people who read, you must submit to their verdict. And the critics are a
part of them."
"A small part. But they pretend to speak for the whole. Permit me to
explain--"
The god politely waited.
"Your critic approaches a book as a lawyer does his
case--temperamentally--not judicially--with an opinion of it in advance
or upon the first pages, which the book must either justify or fail to
justify. The result appears in his published estimate. He states his
view as if it were the only one. And, being delivered ex cathedra, the
multitude take it as they do their preaching--for the gospel of
Literature! But how would you like that in your judge? Who is sworn to
decide upon the evidence adduced alone?
"So it happens that every book is well cursed and well blessed,
according to the humor of the dissector. And the cursing and blessing
are usually about equal."
"There does seem to be something wrong about criticism which can be
unanimous both ways," laughed the god.
"There ought to be some tribunal to which criticism could be referred
upon appeal as lawsuits are," said I. "But," I went on, hastening a bit
to my climax as the god seemed to doze, "the most terrible of all
criticism is the modern humorous kind--"
"I have heard an odious term used to characterize those who make it,"
whispered the deity.
"The man who can do nothing else--and usually he _can_ do nothing
else--can poke fun. It is a peculiarly tasteful form of iconoclasm."
Said the god:--
"If I should sleep, do not forget to stop the clock."
He pretended to do so.
That is his way when I have tired him.
J. L. L.
IMPRIMIS
Four times on earth and once elsewhere Shijiro Arisuga thought the
happiest moment of his life had come.
But you are to be warned, in two proverbs, concerning the peril of the
thing called happiness, in Japan. One has it that happiness is like the
tai, the other that it has in it the note of the uguisu. Now, the tai is
a very common fish, and the uguisu is a rare bird of one sad note,
reputed to be sung only to O-Emma, god of death, in the night, most
often when there is a solemn moon. Which, again, is much the same as
saying that, in Japan, at least, happiness is the common lot, and easy
to get as to catch the lazy perch; but that it has its sad note, which
may have to be sung in the darkness, alone, to death.
For in the East one is taught to be no more prodigal with one's joy than
with one's sorrow. The sum of both joy and sorrow, it is said, are
immutably the same in the world from eternity. And of these each soul
born is allotted its reasonable share as the gods adjudge it. So that if
one takes too much joy out of the common lot, some one, perhaps many
ones, must receive less than they ought.
Thus, one not only limits the rights of his fellow-men, who has no
warrant to do so, but impiously exercises the prerogatives of the gods,
than which nothing can be more heinous.
For this larceny of joy, therefore, the culprit must suffer more than
his share of woe, until the heavenly balance is once more restored. And
that may be in this life or another, in this world or another.
So you observe that in Japan, among those who yet believe in the old
ways of the gods (and they are many!), it is perilous to be over-happy.
For one is almost certain to pay for it with over-woe. And this is the
happy catching of the tai and the melancholy note of the uguisu which
wind through the carols of one's joy in the East.
Yet, when one is always happy, as Shijiro Arisuga was before we knew
him, it seems difficult to say that here or there was a happier moment.
Therefore, you are to learn of each of these five occasions in their
order, according to your patience, and, quite at the end, you are to be
left to judge for yourself, which was, indeed, the happiest moment of
Shijiro Arisuga's life. There will come a time, too,--at the end,--when
you will know nothing of Shijiro Arisuga's own views upon the subject:
he will not be there to tell them. I shall try to interpret for him. But
you are not to be prejudiced by this judgment of mine, since you cannot
know Shijiro Arisuga as well as I do until the end is reached--quite the
end.
And it is nothing--the little story--you are, further, warned, until the
woman enters. Indeed; nothing is anything--no story--until woman enters.
Try to fancy Eden without Eve!
Not that Star-Dream is another Eve; nor that this is like the first love
story. But there is a Garden and a Serpent; an Apple and a Woman. And,
from that Garden, Shijiro Arisuga is driven with a sword which flames.
But here my story differs entirely from that of the first love story.
For the woman is left in the garden--alone! And it is eternal night.
And she can hardly stay there alone. For the uguisu sings. I wonder if
Eve could have been happy in Eden alone? With the singing of the
death-bird? You will remember that though they were driven forth, it was
together: comrades in misfortune as in joy--yet comrades!
NIPPON DENJI
I
NIPPON DENJI
Now, the first of these five great occasions was that day Shijiro was
accepted in the haughty Imperial Guards, most of whom had genealogies
which would best impress us by the yards of illuminated mulberry paper
they covered. Arisuga had many of such yards himself. That was not a
question. But his inches raised many questions. The Guards were tall.
Shijiro Arisuga was small. Though he was a samurai of the samurai, his
ancestors kuge, it seemed impossible to admit him until Colonel Zanzi
spoke.
"He is a samurai," said Zanzi, gruffly. "Of course all Japanese fight.
But the rest, the commoners, are new to it. It is possible in a pinch
for them to run away. It happened once to my knowledge. But a samurai
goes only in the one direction when he is before an enemy. You all know
what direction that is. The commoner may be as good as the samurai in a
century. But the samurai is always dependable now. I wish the whole of
the Guards were shizoku. His uncles, the Shijiro of Aidzu, though they
were shiro men at Kyoto, and so against the emperor, in that old time,
were, nevertheless, kuge by rank. I do not see how we can keep him out
of the Guards. I don't want to, whether he is tall or small."
Now Zanzi was an autocrat who constantly pretended that he was not. He
had an iron temper which he nearly always concealed under courteous
persistence, until his men understood what must be without his ever
having precisely said that it must be. So, in this matter, he pretended
to have left it to them. But he had decided upon Shijiro's final
admission to the regiment, even though it was a time of peace, when
one's qualifications were more strictly scanned than in time of war,
simply because he was of the samurai, whom he adored.
"Nevertheless," warned Nijin, the recruiting major, "he is considerably
below the physical standard."
"He is _not_ the stuff for the Guards," alleged Yasuki.
And Matsumoto said:--
"I have heard him called 'Onna-Jin.'"
"Girl-Boy!" laughed Jokichi. "So have I."
"He used to carry a samisen about with him when he was a child--he and
little Yone, Baron Mutsu's daughter."
This came from Kitsushima, who added:--
"I have seen them at Mukojima, wandering under the cherry-boughs, hand
in hand, and singing childish songs!"
"I have seen him doing that later, where the lanterns shine in Geisha
street, and the little girl was not Yone."
They all laughed. This was not seriously against him.
"Having settled it that he practises the art of music, I will surprise
you with the information that he also pretends to the sister art of
poesy," laughed Asami. "He is the author of 'The Great Death'!"
"What!"
From half a dozen of them.
And they broke into the song: hoarse, iron, clanging, mongolian! Within
the six notes of the old Japanese scale!
(Do not be surprised at this. The Japanese army is full of poets.
Indeed, the Japanese land is full of them. They will spin you a complete
comedy or tragedy between seventeen or thirty-seven syllables. And, to
practise poetry is not there as here, heinous to one's friends. I know
of a gunner who sat cross-legged under his gun behind Poutuloff and
wrote a poem concerning The-Moon-in-a-Moat. It was finished as the
Russians got his range and dropped a covey of shrapnel upon him. After
the smoke cleared they found him dead. And he is forgotten. But his poem
was also found and lived on.)
This was "The Great Death" of Shijiro Arisuga.
"Yell of metal,
Strake of flame!
Death-wound spurting
In my face!
Hail Red Death!"
"Banzai!" cried Jokichi.
"Teikoku Banzai!" yelled Asami.
And, after the tumult, Yasuki, the reserved, himself said:--
"By Shaka, it is the very Yamato Damashii itself! The spirit of young
Japan."
"Nippon Denji!" laughed jolly Kitsushima.
"Yes! The Boys in Blue--as they called them in America in 1864."
Matsumoto had been to Princeton. But the thought of war--giving his soul
for his emperor--made him as mad as they who had never left their native
soil.
"I take all back," cried Nijin, into the tumult.
"And I," yelled Yasuki, who had agreed with him.
"Let him in!" shrilled Matsumoto and Jokichi together. "If he can write
songs--"
"And let him sing! Let him sing war-songs!" adjured Kitsushima!
Still, the happy Nijin, out of propriety of his office, as
recruiting-major, pretended to wish to stem the current started by the
song.
"One moment!" he cried.
But they laughed him down and again started the war-song.
"I _will_ have a moment!"
"Take two!" shouted Jokichi.
"Singing and fighting are two very different occupations."
"No, they are precisely the same," laughed Kitsushima.
"I deny it!"
It was a fierce yell from Nijin, who was happiest, to pretend tremendous
anger.
"I affirm it!" laughed Jokichi, into his face.
"Pretender!" cried Asami, shaking a happy fist at his superior.
Asami and Nijin stood with Zanzi for his admission.
Still, Nijin said in thunder:--
"Remember! poets never practise their preaching."
Nevertheless, if he had entered then, Arisuga would have been chosen, by
acclaim, because of his song.
But enthusiasm cools rapidly, and these stoical orientals could be moved
to enthusiasm by but this one thing--war.
So that after a month--two--it required another word from grizzled
Zanzi, who had been in the war of the Restoration, to let Shijiro in.
"Jokoji!" That was the word. "His father is at Jokoji!"
And they demanded, and he told, the story of Jokoji--which, pardon me, I
do not mean to tell. Save this little, so that you may understand, that
it was that last terrible stand of Saigo behind the hills of Kagoshima,
where the Shogunate perished and the empire was born again in 1868. And
the shoguns you may care to know were that mighty line of feodal
chieftains who had usurped the throne from the time of Yoritomo, to that
of Keiki. For all these years the imperial power had rioted at Yedo, in
the hands of two generals, while the emperor, a prisoner in his
palace-hermitage in Kyoto, had been but the high priest of his people.
They are there yet, at Jokoji, to the last man, Saigo and his gallant
rebels, in a great trench, without their heads, a warning to future
rebels.
After that other word--Jokoji--Arisuga was chosen.
Observe that they finally took him because of his father--though he died
a rebel. Indeed, those old insurgents, of 1868, are gradually being
canonized with crimson death-names, because they neither knew dishonor,
no, nor suffered it.
THE FLYING OF THE AUGUST CARP
II
THE FLYING OF THE AUGUST CARP
There was a time, of course, when Shijiro was too young to think of
being a soldier--save of the tin-sworded and cocked-hatted kind. And it
must be confessed, nay, it was confessed, by his uncles with profound
sorrow, that he cared little enough for even that. It is quite true that
lighted paper lanterns gleaming in the night, and morning glories with
first sun on them, and his small samisen, pleased him more. All this was
quite heinous to his samurai uncles and they did what they could to
correct it and instil into the little mind of the boy that love for the
glory of combat which they had. But, as often happens, their care and
their prayers availed them nothing, while their carelessness and their
repinings availed much. Of that I shall stop and tell: the picture--the
flying of the carp--how all the life of the little boy was changed in
one night,--so that he thought no more of Yone, the lanterns and the
flowers, but only of being a soldier.
It was that day when he was ten. All his relatives were present and they
flew a tremendous number of paper carp. For you are to know that this is
the way the gods have of telling one on one's birthday in Japan, whether
one is to be as strong and virile as the open-mouthed carp in a swift
wind, or as flaccid as they when there is no wind. The gods were kind
and sent a propitious day. The carp stood out, straining upon their
poles so that some of them broke loose and whirled cloud-ward--whereat
the multitude of Arisuga's relatives shouted with joy. For this was an
august omen of great good. Arisuga cared nothing for the omen. But the
carp eddying upward, and those straining on their poles, were very fine.
The tired, happy little boy had been put early to bed, while his uncles
remained to smoke and gossip. For one was from Kobe and the other was
from Osaka, and they did not meet as often as they could have wished.
For a long time there was no sound save the tapping of their pipes
against the metal rim of the hibachi as they were emptied of their ashes
to be filled again. This is still much the way of ceremonious old men in
Japan. They have learned the comradeship of silence.
Presently this sound of the tapping pipes woke the little boy from his
dreaming; and hearing whisperings in the room beyond he crept from his
futons to the fusuma, which he silently parted to look and listen.
His small eyes grew greater as he saw that his two uncles were still
there, and greater yet as he observed that they gesticulated in the
direction of the picture of "The Great Death" while they whispered.
Now this was a thing which had always troubled him: that they whispered
together about that picture, and that, somehow, he was included in the
mystery. It had hung there at the tokonoma since he could remember. He
had been taught to reverence it; for nowhere have pictures more
influence than in Japan.
It was divided in the horizontal middle into two panels. In that below
was carnage amazing. On the one side were the hosts of the emperor under
the brocade banner (the most ancient Japanese flag of war), yet armed
with guns and using cannon. On the other side were the rebel hosts of
Saigo with ancient halberds and spears and in bamboo armor, depending
upon the gods alone. Dying upon one of the cannon, with a shout upon his
lips and ecstasy upon every feature, was a soldier in the uniform of the
ancient Imperial Guards. The panel above showed one of the heavens far
toward nirvana. There this same soldier appeared glorified and on the
way to his reward in Shaka's bosom. Of course! He had died for the
emperor! The artist had not spared the glory when he came to write the
picture. And yet he had preserved a certain family likeness, so that
little Arisuga presently came to know, by the subtle presence and
teaching of his uncles, that this was Jokoji, the graveyard-battlefield
in Satsuma, and that the figure informed with the ecstasy of the great
red death for the emperor, was his father!
That no part of the lesson might be lost, the artist had also shown, in
that lower panel, the obverse of the reward of fealty. Those who had
fought against the emperor were being tossed like dogs into a trench.
Their heads were off. And the little boy had been taught to have no
pity upon them. Of course! He had none. They had impiously rebelled
against that god whose other name is Mutsuhito, Mikado!
Moreover, in the lower corner of this panel, in an amazing opening among
clouds with blazing edges, was that part of the hells reserved for the
souls of traitors; and there the enemies of the emperor, who had died at
Jokoji, were being variously tortured, in the intervals of their
reincarnations.
A GOOD LIE
III
A GOOD LIE
Said Namishima, Arisuga's uncle from Kobe, to Kiomidzu, his uncle from
Osaka:--
"The flying of the august carp has been honorably auspicious and
doubtless the gods now design to make him, in spirit, unlike his
regretted father."
"It was the gods' punishment upon him for fighting against his
emperor--that his son should miserably be an onna-jin," whispered
Kiomidzu.
"Nevertheless the honorable picture has aided greatly in making him
adore the emperor," protested Namishima.
"Yes, the money for its painting was augustly well spent," agreed
Kiomidzu, wisely shaking his head.
"Some day he will know, notwithstanding, that his father was a rebel.
Others know. It cannot unhappily be kept from him always."
"No."
"Perhaps then we shall be augustly dead--"
Both bowed and murmured again.
"And beyond his most excellent vengeance."
"Nevertheless," said Namishima, finally, "the august conscience within
informs me that we have brought him up honorably well!"
"There is excellently no doubt of it!" agreed Kiomidzu.
They bowed to each other.
For a while there was silence and the tapping of the pipes. Then they
spoke of a new and weightier matter.
Said Namishima--and here the little boy's eyes bulged:--
"If the soul of our brother continues to wander in the Meido, it will
not be chargeable, now, in the heavens, to us, but to him. We have kept
the lamps alight. We have taught him honor."
"We are too aged, also," agreed Kiomidzu, "to redeem him forth unto the
way to the heavens by dying in his stead the great death. It is for his
son!"
"In us, besides," Namishima went on, "the gods could not be augustly
deceived. But the child has his name."
"Therefore, should he die the great death, the merciful gods may be
deceived by the name into thinking it he who died at Jokoji. In that
case he would not only be redeemed to the way to the heavens, but on
this earth his name would be graciously added to honor."
So said he from Kobe. And he from Osaka:--
"For the gods are merciful!"
"So merciful, I sometimes abjectly think, that they desire to be
deceived, for our peace of mind."
"Or, at least," mended Kiomidzu, to whom this was a trifle too much,
"they will close their eyes while we augustly do it."
Namishima disliked a trifle the correction of his brother:--
"Do not the gods so act upon the minds of their creatures that they
remember or forget? Well, then! It is true that now others know that our
brother died on the rebel side at Jokoji. But do we not know that, in
the course of much time, the gods can make this to be forgotten, and
make to be remembered that he died on the emperor's side?"
"Yea, if his son should die for the emperor."
"Yea! For the name is the same!"
"And I have had a sign in a dream," said Kiomidzu, lowering his voice a
little more. "Before me stood a tall god--"
They both bowed and rubbed their hands.
"--I knew neither his august name nor his presence. But his face shone
as the sun, so that it is certain he was a god who can see the end from
the beginning, and all between. And thus he spake: 'Rise and light the
lamps and burn the sweet and bitter incense. For Shijiro Arisuga, he who
died at Jokoji, shall have a crimson death-name.'"
"How shall that come to pass, augustness?" I asked upon my face.
"'Through his son,'" said the god. "'The names are the same. Arise and
light the lamps and burn the bitter incense.'"
"And the augustness only vanished with the light of the new lamps I
lighted before Shijiro's tablet."
"Yet," doubted Namishima, though a deity had spoken, "the vengeance of
the gods must also first be accomplished--yea, satisfied full! And until
he is redeemed by this unhappy onna-jin, must our brother wander in the
dark Meido--so think I! The new lamps will be sacrilege."
"Nevertheless, one cannot honorably tell," argued the milder uncle from
Osaka, himself not convinced by his vision. "His father was no taller
nor of a greater spirit than he. He may not always be an onna-jin. And,
also, any day the vengeance of the gods may be satisfied and they will
permit him to redeem both his own and the spirit of his father. For I
believe it true that he was not beheaded by the victors at Jokoji, and
cast into the ditch as dogs are cast, but committed the honorable
seppuku upon himself. That he would do."
"Let it be hoped so. This is our one blot wherefore we cannot speak of
our ancestors."
And they chafed a prayer from between their hands that it might all be
so.
The little boy parted the fusuma yet more and looked. He had been taught
that his face must always be as expressionless as if it were always
under observation. And these old uncles had, more than others, taught
him so. Yet now they were not observing their own precepts. Their faces
were unmasked, and showed terror and anxiety. And this communicated
itself to the boy as he looked.
"Does it matter to the gods," asked Kiomidzu, "how fealty to the
heaven-born-one is augustly inculcated?"
"'The way does not matter when one is arrived!'" said Namishima.
"And 'a lie which doeth good,'" quoted Kiomidzu, "'is, manifestly, a
good lie.'"
"Happy is he," said Namishima, "who, being a liar for the truth, is
willing, like us, to abide by its consequences from the unenlightened,
to whom there is but one office in a lie--evil!"
"Nembutsu!" agreed the brother of Namishima, his hard hands rasping with
his prayer as do the soles of worn sandals.
And then they went on, to the end of the story of this picture of "The
Great Death," which had been painted and hung at the tokonoma when
Arisuga was a child to deceive him into thinking that his father had
honorably fought and died for his emperor instead of against him, that
his soul was probably in Buddha's bosom instead of wandering in the
alien dark Meido, unredeemed, that his body had been burned on a pyre
instead of left to rot in that great ditch in Jokoji. This these old
imperialists fancied their duty. The little boy sobbed there behind the
shoji.
"Sh!" whispered the uncle from Osaka.
"Sh!" echoed the uncle from Kobe. "He wakes. If he should hear, all
would be of no avail."
They covered the fire of the hibachi and caused a darkness in which they
stole away.
YET--A LIE LOOSENS FEALTY
IV
YET--A LIE LOOSENS FEALTY
The little boy slept no more. He got forth from his small room and made
the offerings, and lighted the incense which he had forgotten that
tired, joyous day, and then he took down his father's ihai, and touching
to it his forehead, pledged all his lives to make true that which had
been made false. For, yes, their names were the same, his father's and
his, and the gods are easily deceived--Shijiro Arisuga should be upon
the brass of those who had died for the emperor! The gods would attend
to the forgetting which must follow.
But this was not enough. The filial sin they had let him commit vexed
his little soul.
Where he had made a dim wisp of fibre to burn in oil before the tablet
of his father, he rubbed a prayer from between his small pink palms.
"Father and all the augustnesses, I did not know," he said childishly,
"that your spirit waited in the dark Meido for me to set it free. There
were lies!"
Then he stopped and waited, for the tears ran down his face and choked
his voice.
"It would have been better to teach me truth than lies. For they have
not made me wish to fight and die for the emperor--lies. But this, this
that you wait, wait always in the cold dark Meido for me to set you on
your way to the sleep in Buddha's bosom, this it is which makes me
promise, here, now, by all the eight hundred thousand, by my own soul's
reincarnations, all of them, that you shall be free; that your name
shall yet stand among those on the brass who are not forgotten."
"I did not know," he sobbed again. "And so I sang songs and made poems
while you wandered there. I did not know. I was only a little boy. But
now I am at once a man. It is true, august father, I must not lie to
you, that I would rather be at Shiba with Yone; I would rather walk on
the hills with her hand in mine; I would rather sing as she plays the
samisen; but I will be a soldier."
And then a strange thing happened--and you must not fail to remember
that stranger things happen in Japan than here--there came a crackling,
ripping noise at the last word of that prayer, and the upper panel of
the false picture loosed itself from the brocade to which it was
attached and, falling, covered completely the lower panel and blotted
out the whole. And that night yet, the little boy got his father's seal,
and, where it fell, there he sealed it fast.
So that when his uncles again saw it they grew troubled, kowtowed and
made a prayer. For suddenly, also, Arisuga, from a child, at ten had
become man. All he said to them when they diffidently undertook a
question was:--
"I know the samurai commandment: 'Thou shalt not live under the same
heavens nor upon the same earth with the enemy of thy lord!'"
"The commandments are not for children," said the uncle from Osaka,
gently.
"That I know well," answered Arisuga. "For I am not a child."
Said the terrified one from Kobe, "It does not mean that you must quit
the earths and the heavens--"
"But, rather," supplemented the one from Osaka, "that they shall--"
"That you shall kill many enemies of your lord and live yourself--my
child--"
"Cease! I am not a child," said Arisuga again, haughtily, "and I know
the commandments!"
"Nevertheless that," said the one, "is a manifestation from the gods!"
He pointed to the picture.
"There have been many such," said the other. "It means something."
"Yes," said the little boy, significantly, "it means something!"
"But were you present when the gods obscured the picture?" ventured
Kiomidzu.
"I was present," said Arisuga.
"And is it that which has changed you?" further ventured Namishima.
"No," declared Arisuga, looking upon them both sternly, and without an
honorific for either.
"I trust," whined Kiomidzu, "that all is well between us?"
"All is as well as it ever will be," said the boy.
Then, after a silence, he added:--
"And the sun is setting!"
Which meant, indeed, that they were driven from the door of their
brother's house by his son!
When they were in their going the boy said:--
"If I have sinned against the honorable hospitality, remember that a lie
loosens fealty!"
And when they were in the way, one said to the other:--
"He knows!"
After some thought he who was addressed answered:--
"I think it very well. I have no regret. Our brother will now be
released from the Meido. He will die for the emperor."
"However, we shall be unwelcome in his presence, so that I shall come
less often."
To this his brother agreed with melancholy.
"Our work is now done."
Thus, Shijiro was much more alone than before, and had many more
thoughts. But all were of war and the great red death, and none of Yone.
And then, presently, he came to join the haughty Imperial Guards, who
had never dreamed of being a soldier, but only of poetry, and
cherry-blossoms, and his samisen, and the soft satin hand of the little
Yone. For it was true, as Nijin said, and as they all agreed, Arisuga
among them, that he was not the stuff out of which the empire made its
Imperial Guards--quite.
It was in this time, in the presence of the obscured picture, that he
wrote his song of "The Great Death."
And his years grew faster than his inches.
YAMATO DAMASHII
V
YAMATO DAMASHII
And, slowly, that fantasy of a great death which infects every Japanese
crept into the life and thought of Shijiro Arisuga. Though it came to
him, in whom it had lain latent, hardly. But, perhaps for that reason,
as is the case with certain diseases, it came with greater certainty and
severity than if it had been always with him.
Yet the Yamato Damashii outstripped them both: the spirit of war--the
ghost of Japan!
He still went with little Yone to Mukojima sometimes, though less
frequently. And the small heart of the small girl wondered and grew hurt
at this. So that she asked him one day:--
"Little lord, why is it that we so seldom come here and that you no more
sing, no more carry your samisen, and are grown too suddenly for your
years a man with a face as serious as the unlaughing barbarians of the
West--why is it?"
They were at Shiba. And Shijiro laughed again, as he had used to laugh,
while he answered:--
"Sing no more! Listen!"
"Reign on for a thousand years of peace!
Reign on for a myriad years of ease!
Till the pebbles are boulders,
Moss grows to our shoulders,
O heaven-born lord of Nippon!"
"The Kimi Gayo!" said the little girl. "You sing the Imperial Hymn with
that light in your face who never sang it before--whose face was never
before so lighted? You answer my fear with fears."
"I sing a war-song, little moon-maid, because I am now a soldier," cried
Arisuga, with a certain fanatical ecstasy in spite of his gayety. "I am
going to die for the emperor the great death! I am going to set my
father free to pursue his way to the heavens or another reincarnation!
Think! The gods will love me for such a holy thing! Why do not you?"
"Oh, yes," whispered the little girl, "the gods will love you. And I.
But who, then, will come with me here? And who will hold my hand?"
"My spirit, I promise you that!"
A little chill crept over the girl.
"Yes," she answered doubtfully, "if I cannot have your body."
Shijiro still laughed.
"After all, a spirit is a safer comrade than a body. The custodians
cannot drive it away from the tombs. And will you wait here for my
spirit, as you do for my body?"
"Yes," she whispered, in her awe, once more.
But he gayly touched her.
"I will come like that--that--that!"
"I would rather have you so," said the little girl, touching him, as
flesh touches flesh, not as spirit touches flesh in the East.
Though she suspected that he was laughing at her, it was in a land where
both the spirits which loved one and hated one were believed to be
always at one's elbow.
Now that it had all been decided--his career fixed, the way made clear,
and he well in it--much of his absorption had passed away, and he was
both gayer and gentler with her. But it was not as before.
"There will be others, with bodies," laughed Shijiro.
The small maiden shook her head.
"No, there will not be others. I know. Oh, how differently you speak to
me now! You are suddenly grown a man with great thoughts. But you still
think of me as a little girl with small thoughts. Well, perhaps I am.
Yet I shall wait for you here. I can do that. The gods may not accept
your sacrifice for a time. They may not accept it at all. And there may
be no war for you to fight and die in. You may have to come back. No one
can know the purposes of the gods. And when you do, I, with my small
body and small thought, will be here only to make you happy."
"And, suppose," laughed Shijiro, treating her indeed as if he were
suddenly become a man and she were still a little girl, "suppose I go
away and forget--that often happens--and never come back?"
And Arisuga laughed again.
"I will wait," said the girl.
"What, after I have forgotten?"
"Do not tell me. Let no one tell me. Let me wait. Then your spirit may
come. It is cruel to wait, always wait. But it is not so cruel as to be
forgotten."
The soldier still laughed.
"The spirit of all the goddesses thrives in you!"
And he touched her gently.
"But the gods may send it to me soon--the great crimson death."
"Then," answered the little girl, "I can die the great death, too, and
still be with you--if you should wish!"
"What!" laughed Shijiro, anew, "little you--gentle Yone--in the wild
glory of the conflict, with a plunge into the fires of all the hells, in
the madness of carnage, with a yell frozen on your lips? Shall little
_you_ experience that arch esctasy: your death-wound spurting your own
warm blood into your own face? Then out, out, out into the eternal
solitude and silence of souls awaiting other reincarnations? To that
place called Meido? Ha ha, my fragile Yone, the great red death--is not
for you--not for perfumed little Yone's. It is a man's death!"
At this she was reproved, but as he always reproved her, very gently.
Yet it was wonderful that his gentleness held here. She understood well
her presumption in wishing to die the great death of a man.
"Pardon, small lord," she said humbly. "I spoke when I had not counted
three--instead of nine."
He laughed happily.
"Speak whatever comes to your lips. All is good, because it comes from
them--which are all good. But when you speak of the things which are a
man's, I look at your stature and--laugh! I tell you what is
yours--little Yone--and what is mine!"
She tried to forget that he was not much taller than she.
"No, forgive me; I must die only the small, white death of women and
children. But, until it comes, I shall be here where you and I were
happy together. And if you die, still caring for me, your spirit will
come and touch me, as you said. That much I know. You have said it! But
if you have forgotten, then there will be no touches; then I will still
wait until I die. It will not be long."
"Little one," said Arisuga, in pity, "we have lived and loved together
here. All has been good. But it is as a splendid summer day which one
forgets, in the glow, the madness of glory, the moment the call comes!
This we did not know, the madness of glory, and I had never thought to
learn. But it has come, and it is greater than all love. Should the call
sound now, I would leave you where you stand, and go upon the business
of our sovereign. As it is," he laughed, "we shall once more go homeward
hand in hand!"
And so they did. But still it was not as before. It never could be. As
he had said, this madness of glory had obscured all love.
YONE
VI
YONE
The war with China got slowly into the air. Troops were mobilizing. The
Guards were being fitted with uniforms for a warmer climate. The army
was thrilled with that nameless thing which speaks of action to the
soldier. Maps and plans of campaign grew over night. Nurses were
gathered where they could be most easily requisitioned. Plans for
hospital and transportation service were born and matured as certainly
now, as if the army had lived in an atmosphere of war instead of peace
for many years. But when the actual going came near, Arisuga thought of
Yone. There would be no more of that. And when it was said, a certain
sadness came and stayed with him, when the glory dulled a little. For it
had been sweet. And it might be only once again. Marching orders were
imminent.
So that, though it was even, and Yone might not go out in the even, he
found her one day, when the sadness came, and they stole through the
house's rear to that tomb of Esas in Shiba, where they had made a seat
of stone and moss. They had never before been alone together in the wood
at night, and Yone was terrified, as a maid ought to be, while Arisuga
was brave, as a soldier should be.
Yet, notwithstanding these adverse circumstances, it was there--at the
tomb of Esas, on this night of nights to Yone--that they made together
that song of "The Stork-and-the-Moon." And it was on this night, while
they sang it (without the samisen, for Yone was reposing too snugly
against one of Arisuga's arms for him to play, though they had the
samisen with them), that the watchman came with lantern and staff and
cried out that he had heard a song in that place of sacred tombs--a
foolish, worldly song--and adjured the sinners to come forth and be
punished.
Now both were frightened suddenly, and Yone crept deeply into the arms
of her soldier for protection. And she did not vacate her place of
safety when the watchman had passed on; Arisuga prevented her.
For he had not in the least fancied how sweet that might be. And her
fancies had fallen short of truth. And yet other things passed there at
that tomb of Lord Esas which I shall not stop to tell.
Later, perhaps, in this story, there may be occasion to tell what
happened there at the tomb of Lord Esas on the seat of stones and mosses
they had made: the promises,--if there were any,--the song, and all the
joy of that night upon which little Yone would have to live until
Arisuga came again--for this was indeed all he left to her.
It was a disgraceful hour when they stole forth. And had the watchman
seen them then, the gods alone know what the penalty would have been.
They passed the walls safely; but there was yet before them the re-entry
to the house of Yone, which was more terrible. Yet they were strangely
happy in their terrors, though Yone expected, hoped, to be disowned and
driven from home, disgraced in the eyes of the world. But also, in that
case, Arisuga would marry her. Chivalry would demand it. Of course he
had not exactly said so. In order that he might have the opportunity,
Yone protested:--
"I do not regret--not a word, not a thing!"
"No, it is my fault--"
"If they drive me from home, outcast me, I shall sing in the streets!"
"You!"
"Or go to Geisha street."
"You!"
"What, then, will I do, lord?"
"You will marry me--a little sooner than we planned, and live with my
mother while I fight."
"Yes," breathed Yone, quite content with this. It was more than she had
expected. Indeed, she was so filled with content that it was all she
could say.
Nevertheless, though this event had been arranged there behind the tomb,
under the influence of the terror of the watchman, yet its consummation
was put a long time off, for the parents of each had to be consulted,
cunningly, as if it had not at all been arranged. And this marred Yone's
happiness a trifle; for, if marriage was anything like that behind the
tomb, it could not come too soon. And, however soon it might come, it
would not be soon enough, for soon enough was now, and that was
passing.
Besides, she hoped it might happen before his sacrifice; for though she
would then be his widow and quite sure of his spirit, that first
personal contact by the tomb of old Lord Esas had been sweet.
However, there seemed, happily, no way of escape from an outcasting and
the consequences they had fixed upon, and this grew upon them more and
more as they went homeward, so that as they were yet quite happy in it
they came into the vicinity of Yone's home. Now, by that time all the
details had been arranged: Yone was to go to Arisuga's mother, where a
complete confession would be made. Then, on the morrow, the consent of
the parents would be asked, which, whether it were or were not obtained,
would be the signal for the wedding preparations. For in the one case
Yone would be the daughter of her parents, whose consent would have been
obtained, in the other of his whose consent was sure.
Then they looked up to find themselves almost in the midst of a great
fire which their absorption had kept them from noticing. And it was at
once but too plain that Yone's home was in that part of the district
already burned clear. Of course there were parents and brothers to
think of at once, and in thought of their safety Yone forgot the
opportunity for her outcasting and the hastening of her happiness. When
she remembered, it was too late.
She had been pounced upon by her father, and borne in joy to the
rendezvous where all the brothers and sisters, as well as the parents of
Yone, were now in prosaic safety and little perturbation. Shijiro
Arisuga had, upon the appearance of the father, ignominiously
disappeared--which, indeed, was the best thing which could have happened
for Yone, so far as her safety from scandal was concerned, and the worst
so far as her wish for an immediate marriage was concerned. There was,
now, not the least hope of an outcasting. No one had even seen Shijiro,
it appeared, nor knew of their going away or coming back together.
"How did you escape, my pleasant daughter?" cried the happy father,
embracing her.
"I do not know," said Yone, with some truth, looking furtively about for
Arisuga.
"And fully dressed?" asked the father again.
With a sigh of disgust, Yone answered again that she did not know.
"It was an interposition of the gods."
"Yes," sighed Yone, in her heart, "I suppose it was an interposition of
the infernal gods."
For Shijiro was undoubtedly gone, not at once to return.
"The smell of fire has not even passed upon your garments," pursued the
delighted parent.
"It is very strange," sighed the daughter.
"The gods love you!" declared her father.
"I suppose so," answered Yone, indifferently, thinking of quite another
escape and another love.
It happened that the next day the _Kowshing_ was sunk and the Guards
started for Ping-Yang.
PING-YANG
VII
PING-YANG