Kwan-non Temple—Uniformity of Temple Architecture—A _Kuruma_ Expedition—A
Perpetual Festival—The Ni-ô—The Limbo of Vanity—Heathen Prayers—Binzuru—A
Group of Devils—Archery Galleries—New Japan—An Élégante.
H.B.M.’s LEGATION, YEDO,
_June_ 9.
ONCE for all I will describe a Buddhist temple, and it shall be the
popular temple of Asakusa, which keeps fair and festival the whole year
round, and is dedicated to the “thousand-armed” Kwan-non, the goddess of
mercy. Writing generally, it may be said that in design, roof, and
general aspect, Japanese Buddhist temples are all alike. The sacred
architectural idea expresses itself in nearly the same form always.
There is a single or double-roofed gateway, with highly-coloured figures
in niches on either side; the paved temple-court, with more or fewer
stone or bronze lanterns; _amainu_, or heavenly dogs, in stone on stone
pedestals; stone sarcophagi, roofed over or not, for holy water; a flight
of steps; a portico, continued as a verandah all round the temple; a roof
of tremendously disproportionate size and weight, with a peculiar curve;
a square or oblong hall divided by a railing from a “chancel” with a high
and low altar, and a shrine containing Buddha, or the divinity to whom
the chapel is dedicated; an incense-burner, and a few ecclesiastical
ornaments. The symbols, idols, and adornments depend upon the sect to
which the temple belongs, or the wealth of its votaries, or the fancy of
the priests. Some temples are packed full of gods, shrines, banners,
bronzes, brasses, tablets, and ornaments, and others, like those of the
Monto sect, are so severely simple, that with scarcely an alteration they
might be used for Christian worship to-morrow.
The foundations consist of square stones on which the uprights rest.
These are of elm, and are united at intervals by longitudinal pieces.
The great size and enormous weight of the roofs arise from the trusses
being formed of one heavy frame being built upon another in diminishing
squares till the top is reached, the main beams being formed of very
large timbers put on in their natural state. They are either very
heavily and ornamentally tiled, or covered with sheet copper ornamented
with gold, or thatched to a depth of from one to three feet, with fine
shingles or bark. The casing of the walls on the outside is usually
thick elm planking either lacquered or unpainted, and that of the inside
is of thin, finely-planed and bevelled planking of the beautiful wood of
the _Retinospora obtusa_. The lining of the roof is in flat panels, and
where it is supported by pillars they are invariably circular, and formed
of the straight, finely-grained stem of the _Retinospora obtusa_. The
projecting ends of the roof-beams under the eaves are either elaborately
carved, lacquered in dull red, or covered with copper, as are the joints
of the beams. Very few nails are used, the timbers being very
beautifully joined by mortices and dovetails, other methods of junction
being unknown.
Mr. Chamberlain and I went in a _kuruma_ hurried along by three liveried
coolies, through the three miles of crowded streets which lie between the
Legation and Asakusa, once a village, but now incorporated with this
monster city, to the broad street leading to the Adzuma Bridge over the
Sumida river, one of the few stone bridges in Tôkiyô, which connects east
Tôkiyô, an uninteresting region, containing many canals, storehouses,
timber-yards, and inferior _yashikis_, with the rest of the city. This
street, marvellously thronged with pedestrians and _kurumas_, is the
terminus of a number of city “stage lines,” and twenty wretched-looking
covered waggons, with still more wretched ponies, were drawn up in the
middle, waiting for passengers. Just there plenty of real Tôkiyô life is
to be seen, for near a shrine of popular pilgrimage there are always
numerous places of amusement, innocent and vicious, and the vicinity of
this temple is full of restaurants, tea-houses, minor theatres, and the
resorts of dancing and singing girls.
A broad-paved avenue, only open to foot passengers, leads from this
street to the grand entrance, a colossal two-storied double-roofed _mon_,
or gate, painted a rich dull red. On either side of this avenue are
lines of booths—which make a brilliant and lavish display of their
contents—toy-shops, shops for smoking apparatus, and shops for the sale
of ornamental hair-pins predominating. Nearer the gate are booths for
the sale of rosaries for prayer, sleeve and bosom idols of brass and wood
in small shrines, amulet bags, representations of the jolly-looking
Daikoku, the god of wealth, the most popular of the household gods of
Japan, shrines, memorial tablets, cheap _ex votos_, sacred bells,
candlesticks, and incense-burners, and all the endless and various
articles connected with Buddhist devotion, public and private. Every day
is a festival-day at Asakusa; the temple is dedicated to the most popular
of the great divinities; it is the most popular of religious resorts; and
whether he be Buddhist, Shintôist, or Christian, no stranger comes to the
capital without making a visit to its crowded courts or a purchase at its
tempting booths. Not to be an exception, I invested in bouquets of
firework flowers, fifty flowers for 2 _sen_, or 1d., each of which, as it
slowly consumes, throws off fiery coruscations, shaped like the most
beautiful of snow crystals. I was also tempted by small boxes at 2 _sen_
each, containing what look like little slips of withered pith, but which,
on being dropped into water, expand into trees and flowers.
Down a paved passage on the right there is an artificial river, not over
clean, with a bridge formed of one curved stone, from which a flight of
steps leads up to a small temple with a magnificent bronze bell. At the
entrance several women were praying. In the same direction are two fine
bronze Buddhas, seated figures, one with clasped hands, the other holding
a lotus, both with “The light of the world” upon their brows. The grand
red gateway into the actual temple courts has an extremely imposing
effect, and besides, it is the portal to the first great heathen temple
that I have seen, and it made me think of another temple whose courts
were equally crowded with buyers and sellers, and of a “whip of small
cords” in the hand of One who claimed both the temple and its courts as
His “Father’s House.” Not with less righteous wrath would the gentle
founder of Buddhism purify the unsanctified courts of Asakusa. Hundreds
of men, women, and children passed to and fro through the gateway in
incessant streams, and so they are passing through every daylight hour of
every day in the year, thousands becoming tens of thousands on the great
_matsuri_ days, when the _mikoshi_, or sacred car, containing certain
symbols of the god, is exhibited, and after sacred mimes and dances have
been performed, is carried in a magnificent, antique procession to the
shore and back again. Under the gateway on either side are the _Ni-ô_,
or two kings, gigantic figures in flowing robes, one red and with an open
mouth, representing the _Yo_, or male principle of Chinese philosophy,
the other green and with the mouth firmly closed, representing the _In_,
or female principle. They are hideous creatures, with protruding eyes,
and faces and figures distorted and corrupted into a high degree of
exaggerated and convulsive action. These figures guard the gates of most
of the larger temples, and small prints of them are pasted over the doors
of houses to protect them against burglars. Attached to the grating in
front were a number of straw sandals, hung up by people who pray that
their limbs may be as muscular as those of the _Ni-ô_.
Passing through this gate we were in the temple court proper, and in
front of the temple itself, a building of imposing height and size, of a
dull red colour, with a grand roof of heavy iron grey tiles, with a
sweeping curve which gives grace as well as grandeur. The timbers and
supports are solid and of great size, but, in common with all Japanese
temples, whether Buddhist or Shintô, the edifice is entirely of wood. A
broad flight of narrow, steep, brass-bound steps lead up to the porch,
which is formed by a number of circular pillars supporting a very lofty
roof, from which paper lanterns ten feet long are hanging. A gallery
runs from this round the temple, under cover of the eaves. There is an
outer temple, unmatted, and an inner one behind a grating, into which
those who choose to pay for the privilege of praying in comparative
privacy, or of having prayers said for them by the priests, can pass.
In the outer temple the noise, confusion, and perpetual motion, are
bewildering. Crowds on clattering clogs pass in and out; pigeons, of
which hundreds live in the porch, fly over your head, and the whirring of
their wings mingles with the tinkling of bells, the beating of drums and
gongs, the high-pitched drone of the priests, the low murmur of prayers,
the rippling laughter of girls, the harsh voices of men, and the general
buzz of a multitude. There is very much that is highly grotesque at
first sight. Men squat on the floor selling amulets, rosaries, printed
prayers, incense sticks, and other wares. _Ex votos_ of all kinds hang
on the wall and on the great round pillars. Many of these are rude
Japanese pictures. The subject of one is the blowing-up of a steamer in
the Sumidagawa with the loss of 100 lives, when the donor was saved by
the grace of Kwan-non. Numbers of memorials are from people who offered
up prayers here, and have been restored to health or wealth. Others are
from junk men whose lives have been in peril. There are scores of men’s
queues and a few dusty braids of women’s hair offered on account of vows
or prayers, usually for sick relatives, and among them all, on the left
hand, are a large mirror in a gaudily gilt frame and a framed picture of
the P. M. S. _China_! Above this incongruous collection are splendid
wood carvings and frescoes of angels, among which the pigeons find a home
free from molestation.
Near the entrance there is a superb incense-burner in the most massive
style of the older bronzes, with a mythical beast rampant upon it, and in
high relief round it the Japanese signs of the zodiac—the rat, ox, tiger,
rabbit, dragon, serpent, horse, goat, monkey, cock, dog, and hog. Clouds
of incense rise continually from the perforations round the edge, and a
black-toothed woman who keeps it burning is perpetually receiving small
coins from the worshippers, who then pass on to the front of the altar to
pray. The high altar, and indeed all that I should regard as properly
the temple, are protected by a screen of coarsely-netted iron wire. This
holy of holies is full of shrines and gods, gigantic candlesticks,
colossal lotuses of gilded silver, offerings, lamps, lacquer, litany
books, gongs, drums, bells, and all the mysterious symbols of a faith
which is a system of morals and metaphysics to the educated and
initiated, and an idolatrous superstition to the masses. In this
interior the light was dim, the lamps burned low, the atmosphere was
heavy with incense, and amidst its fumes shaven priests in chasubles and
stoles moved noiselessly over the soft matting round the high altar on
which Kwan-non is enshrined, lighting candles, striking bells, and
murmuring prayers. In front of the screen is the treasury, a wooden
chest 14 feet by 10, with a deep slit, into which all the worshippers
cast copper coins with a ceaseless clinking sound.
There, too, they pray, if that can be called prayer which frequently
consists only in the repetition of an uncomprehended phrase in a foreign
tongue, bowing the head, raising the hands and rubbing them, murmuring a
few words, telling beads, clapping the hands, bowing again, and then
passing out or on to another shrine to repeat the same form. Merchants
in silk clothing, soldiers in shabby French uniforms, farmers, coolies in
“vile raiment,” mothers, maidens, swells in European clothes, even the
_samurai_ policemen, bow before the goddess of mercy. Most of the
prayers were offered rapidly, a mere momentary interlude in the gurgle of
careless talk, and without a pretence of reverence; but some of the
petitioners obviously brought real woes in simple “faith.”
In one shrine there is a large idol, spotted all over with pellets of
paper, and hundreds of these are sticking to the wire netting which
protects him. A worshipper writes his petition on paper, or, better
still, has it written for him by the priest, chews it to a pulp, and
spits it at the divinity. If, having been well aimed, it passes through
the wire and sticks, it is a good omen, if it lodges in the netting the
prayer has probably been unheard. The _Ni-ô_ and some of the gods
outside the temple are similarly disfigured. On the left there is a
shrine with a screen, to the bars of which innumerable prayers have been
tied. On the right, accessible to all, sits Binzuru, one of Buddha’s
original sixteen disciples. His face and appearance have been calm and
amiable, with something of the quiet dignity of an elderly country
gentleman of the reign of George III.; but he is now worn and defaced,
and has not much more of eyes, nose, and mouth than the Sphinx; and the
polished, red lacquer has disappeared from his hands and feet, for
Binzuru is a great medicine god, and centuries of sick people have rubbed
his face and limbs, and then have rubbed their own. A young woman went
up to him, rubbed the back of his neck, and then rubbed her own. Then a
modest-looking girl, leading an ancient woman with badly inflamed eyelids
and paralysed arms, rubbed his eyelids, and then gently stroked the
closed eyelids of the crone. Then a coolie, with a swelled knee, applied
himself vigorously to Binzuru’s knee, and more gently to his own.
Remember, this is the great temple of the populace, and “not many rich,
not many noble, not many mighty,” enter its dim, dirty, crowded halls.
{27}
But the great temple to Kwan-non is not the only sight of Asakusa.
Outside it are countless shrines and temples, huge stone _Amainu_, or
heavenly dogs, on rude blocks of stone, large cisterns of stone and
bronze with and without canopies, containing water for the ablutions of
the worshippers, cast iron _Amainu_ on hewn stone pedestals—a recent
gift—bronze and stone lanterns, a stone prayer-wheel in a stone post,
figures of Buddha with the serene countenance of one who rests from his
labours, stone idols, on which devotees have pasted slips of paper
inscribed with prayers, with sticks of incense rising out of the ashes of
hundreds of former sticks smouldering before them, blocks of hewn stone
with Chinese and Sanskrit inscriptions, an eight-sided temple in which
are figures of the “Five Hundred Disciples” of Buddha, a temple with the
roof and upper part of the walls richly coloured, the circular Shintô
mirror in an inner shrine, a bronze treasury outside with a bell, which
is rung to attract the god’s attention, a striking, five-storied pagoda,
with much red lacquer, and the ends of the roof-beams very boldly carved,
its heavy eaves fringed with wind bells, and its uppermost roof
terminating in a graceful copper spiral of great height, with the “sacred
pearl” surrounded by flames for its finial. Near it, as near most
temples, is an upright frame of plain wood with tablets, on which are
inscribed the names of donors to the temple, and the amount of their
gifts.
There is a handsome stone-floored temple to the south-east of the main
building, to which we were the sole visitors. It is lofty and very
richly decorated. In the centre is an octagonal revolving room, or
rather shrine, of rich red lacquer most gorgeously ornamented. It rests
on a frame of carved black lacquer, and has a lacquer gallery running
round it, on which several richly decorated doors open. On the
application of several shoulders to this gallery the shrine rotates. It
is, in fact, a revolving library of the Buddhist Scriptures, and a single
turn is equivalent to a single pious perusal of them. It is an
exceedingly beautiful specimen of ancient decorative lacquer work. At
the back part of the temple is a draped brass figure of Buddha, with one
hand raised—a dignified piece of casting. All the Buddhas have Hindoo
features, and the graceful drapery and oriental repose which have been
imported from India contrast singularly with the grotesque extravagances
of the indigenous Japanese conceptions. In the same temple are four
monstrously extravagant figures carved in wood, life-size, with clawed
toes on their feet, and two great fangs in addition to the teeth in each
mouth. The heads of all are surrounded with flames, and are backed by
golden circlets. They are extravagantly clothed in garments which look
as if they were agitated by a violent wind; they wear helmets and partial
suits of armour, and hold in their right hands something between a
monarch’s sceptre and a priest’s staff. They have goggle eyes and open
mouths, and their faces are in distorted and exaggerated action. One,
painted bright red, tramples on a writhing devil painted bright pink;
another, painted emerald green, tramples on a sea-green devil, an indigo
blue monster tramples on a sky-blue fiend, and a bright pink monster
treads under his clawed feet a flesh-coloured demon. I cannot give you
any idea of the hideousness of their aspect, and was much inclined to
sympathise with the more innocent-looking fiends whom they were
maltreating. They occur very frequently in Buddhist temples, and are
said by some to be assistant-torturers to Yemma, the lord of hell, and
are called by others “The gods of the Four Quarters.”
[Picture: Stone Lanterns]
The temple grounds are a most extraordinary sight. No English fair in
the palmiest days of fairs ever presented such an array of attractions.
Behind the temple are archery galleries in numbers, where girls, hardly
so modest-looking as usual, smile and smirk, and bring straw-coloured tea
in dainty cups, and tasteless sweetmeats on lacquer trays, and smoke
their tiny pipes, and offer you bows of slender bamboo strips, two feet
long, with rests for the arrows, and tiny cherry-wood arrows,
bone-tipped, and feathered red, blue, and white, and smilingly, but quite
unobtrusively, ask you to try your skill or luck at a target hanging in
front of a square drum, flanked by red cushions. A click, a boom, or a
hardly audible “thud,” indicate the result. Nearly all the archers were
grown-up men, and many of them spend hours at a time in this childish
sport.
All over the grounds booths with the usual charcoal fire, copper boiler,
iron kettle of curious workmanship, tiny cups, fragrant aroma of tea, and
winsome, graceful girls, invite you to drink and rest, and more solid but
less inviting refreshments are also to be had. Rows of pretty paper
lanterns decorate all the stalls. Then there are photograph galleries,
mimic tea-gardens, tableaux in which a large number of groups of
life-size figures with appropriate scenery are put into motion by a
creaking wheel of great size, matted lounges for rest, stands with
saucers of rice, beans and peas for offerings to the gods, the pigeons,
and the two sacred horses, Albino ponies, with pink eyes and noses,
revoltingly greedy creatures, eating all day long and still craving for
more. There are booths for singing and dancing, and under one a
professional story-teller was reciting to a densely packed crowd one of
the old, popular stories of crime. There are booths where for a few
_rin_ you may have the pleasure of feeding some very ugly and greedy
apes, or of watching mangy monkeys which have been taught to prostrate
themselves Japanese fashion.
This letter is far too long, but to pass over Asakusa and its novelties
when the impression of them is fresh would be to omit one of the most
interesting sights in Japan. On the way back we passed red mail carts
like those in London, a squadron of cavalry in European uniforms and with
European saddles, and the carriage of the Minister of Marine, an English
brougham with a pair of horses in English harness, and an escort of six
troopers—a painful precaution adopted since the political assassination
of Okubo, the Home Minister, three weeks ago. So the old and the new in
this great city contrast with and jostle each other. The Mikado and his
ministers, naval and military officers and men, the whole of the civil
officials and the police, wear European clothes, as well as a number of
dissipated-looking young men who aspire to represent “young Japan.”
Carriages and houses in English style, with carpets, chairs, and tables,
are becoming increasingly numerous, and the bad taste which regulates the
purchase of foreign furnishings is as marked as the good taste which
everywhere presides over the adornment of the houses in purely Japanese
style. Happily these expensive and unbecoming innovations have scarcely
affected female dress, and some ladies who adopted our fashions have
given them up because of their discomfort and manifold difficulties and
complications.
The Empress on State occasions appears in scarlet satin _hakama_, and
flowing robes, and she and the Court ladies invariably wear the national
costume. I have only seen two ladies in European dress; and this was at
a dinner-party here, and they were the wives of Mr. Mori, the go-ahead
Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, and of the Japanese Consul at Hong
Kong; and both by long residence abroad have learned to wear it with
ease. The wife of Saigo, the Minister of Education, called one day in an
exquisite Japanese dress of dove-coloured silk _crêpe_, with a pale pink
under-dress of the same material, which showed a little at the neck and
sleeves. Her girdle was of rich dove-coloured silk, with a ghost of a
pale pink blossom hovering upon it here and there. She had no frills or
fripperies of any description, or ornaments, except a single pin in her
chignon, and, with a sweet and charming face, she looked as graceful and
dignified in her Japanese costume as she would have looked exactly the
reverse in ours. Their costume has one striking advantage over ours. A
woman is perfectly _clothed_ if she has one garment and a girdle on, and
perfectly _dressed_ if she has two. There is a difference in features
and expression—much exaggerated, however, by Japanese artists—between the
faces of high-born women and those of the middle and lower classes. I
decline to admire fat-faces, pug noses, thick lips, long eyes, turned up
at the outer corners, and complexions which owe much to powder and paint.
The habit of painting the lips with a reddish-yellow pigment, and of
heavily powdering the face and throat with pearl powder, is a repulsive
one. But it is hard to pronounce any unfavourable criticism on women who
have so much kindly grace of manner.