I should have paid them had I called them in to entertain me and my
guests with singing and dancing, were, the one a town, the other a
country girl; and little by little they showed the difference, at first
very slight to a foreigner, by all the many little things which obtain
everywhere. It was a source of quiet amusement for me to see them
posture, in what they call their dances, in the very room of our
landlord the priest's house, where I have so often watched him sitting
while his pupil bent over his writing, an antique picture, like so many
Eastern scenes of the ideal of contemplative monastic study. But our
little priest is away, on service at the temple of Iyémitsŭ, and his
house is kept for him in his absence by some devout lady parishioner,
who lent us the apartment more convenient than ours, and who undoubtedly
shared in the amusement herself. And I asked myself if there had been a
secret ceremony of purification afterwards.
I saw, too, lingering at the corner of Iyémitsŭ, the litter of a great
lady, said to be the beauty of the court; but I was content to have her
remain mysterious to me, and tried not to regret my indolence, when my
companion twitted me with his presentation to her, and to associate her
only with the clear porcelains that bear her princely name. And then,
again, the priests of the temple of Iyéyasŭ came down to meet some
prince, looking like great butterflies in green and yellow, and capped
with their shining black hats. The youngest waved his fan at me in
recognition, and gaily floated back up the high white steps and into the
sunny inclosures beyond, more and more like some winged essence.
* * * * *
Then the temple attendants brushed with brooms the mosses of the
pavement about the Torii, and the gates were closed. And I listened,
until the blaze of the sun passed under the green film of the trees, to
the fluting of the priests in the sanctuary on the hill. It was like a
hymn to nature. The noise of the locusts had stopped for a time; and
this floating wail, rising and falling in unknown and incomprehensible
modulations, seemed to belong to the forest as completely as their cry.
The shrill and liquid song brought back the indefinite melancholy that
one has felt with the distant sound of children's voices, singing of
Sundays in drowsy rhythms. But these sounds belonged to the place, to
its own peculiar genius--of a lonely beauty, associated with an
indefinite past, little understood; with death, and primeval nature, and
final rest.
The last beams of the sunset made emerald jewels of the needles in the
twigs above me--made red velvet of the powdery edges of broken bark,
when the distant flutes ceased, and I left my study.
As I came out from the giant trees a great wave of the funereal song of
the locusts passed through the air, leaving me suddenly in a greater
silence as I came home. Then I could hear the rise and fall of the sound
of our little waterfall in the garden as I stretched myself at the
flattest on the mats, and Kato brought the tea and put it beside me.
SKETCHING.--THE PAGODA IN RAIN.
August 25.
This afternoon I returned to the entrance of Iyéyasŭ, and sketched under
the great trees of the central avenue. The great white clouds were there
again in the blue above, colored as with gold where they showed below
through the trees; then they came nearer, then they melted together;
then suddenly all was veiled, the rain came down in sheets, and I was
glad of the refuge of the tea booths along the eastern wall. It was
late, almost evening; no one there; a few pilgrims and attendants and
priests scurried away through the court, disappearing with bare reddened
legs and wet clogs around the corners of the avenues. And the rain
persisted, hanging before me like a veil of water. I had in front, as I
sat in the booths, already damp and gusty with drafts, the face of the
tall red pagoda behind its stone balustrade and at right angles to the
great Torii that I had been painting. The great trees were all of one
green, their near and far columns flattened out with the branches into
masses of equal values. Through them, below, in the few openings to the
west, the sky was colored with the sunset, as if it were clear far over
Nan-tai-san. The gold of the roofs' edges and of the painted carvings
below was light and pale as the sky far away. Higher up the gold was
bright and clear under the rain, which made it glisten; it glowed
between the brackets of the lower cornices and paled like silver higher
up. All the innumerable painted carvings and projections and ornaments
looked pale behind the rain, while the great red mass grew richer as it
rose, and the bronze roofs, freshly washed, were blacker, and the green
copper glistened, like malachite, on the edges of the vermilion rails,
or on the bells which hung from the roof corners, against the sky or
against the trees. The green, wet mosses spotted with light the stone
flags below, or glowed like a fairy yellow flame on the adjoining red
lacquer of the temple fence, so drenched now that I could see reflected
in it the white divisions and still whiter lichens of the stone
balustrade. Below it the great temple wall was blotched with dark purple
and black lichens, and the columns of the Torii were white at the bottom
with mosses. Its upper cross-arm glistened yellow with their growths as
if it had caught the sun. But the heavy rain was drenching all; and now
from all the roofs of the pagoda poured lines of water, the one within
the other, the highest describing a great curve that encircled all the
others, and the whole high tower itself, as if with a lengthened aureole
of silver drops. It was as if water had poured out from the fountain
basins, one above the other, which the Italian Renaissance liked to
picture on tall pilasters, even as this one was profiled against the sky
and distant rain. Below, a yellow torrent covered the great court with
an eddying lake, and its course rushed down the great steps or made a
crested, bounding line along the gutters by the walls. I watched for a
time the beautiful curves dropping from the roofs of the tower, until
all grew dark and my coolie arrived to carry paint box and easel, and we
managed to get home, with sketching umbrellas, wet, however, through
every layer of clothing.
FROM NIKKO TO KAMAKURA
NIKKO, August 27.
Yesterday, I went out in another afternoon of blazing sunlight, up to
the corner of the temple inclosure and along its outside edge, where the
rocks of the mountain, covered with trees, make a great vague wall.
Under the damp trees runs a path paved with small blocks of stone,
slippery with moss, or, when bare, smoothed by ages of treading. This
road leads to the little cascade which supplies the sacred water-tank of
the temple of Iyéyasŭ, that square block of water under the gilded and
painted canopy in the great courtyard.
The waterfall drops over rocks into a hollow between the hills; high
trees stand along its edge near a black octagonal shrine, with great
roof, green and yellow with moss. On this side of the water, a
diminutive shrine, red-painted, with columns and architrave of many
colors and a roof of thatch all green, out of which are growing the
small stems of young trees. In front, a Torii, just tall enough to pass
under, of gray stone, all capped and edged with green, velvety moss. A
curved stone, cushioned with moss, in front of it, spans the
water-course that gives escape to the waters of the pool. The doors of
the shrine are closed, as if to make more solitary yet the quiet of the
little hollow.
Higher up, past the black building and above high steps, on a platform
edged by walls, stand black buildings, shrines of Buddhist divinities,
whose golden bodies I can see through the grating of the unfastened
doors. I feel their amiable presence, while I sit painting in the damp
sunlight, and the murmur of the waters seems their whispered
encouragement.
On my return I looked again toward the abrupt rocky hill to find a
little monument we had passed at its foot, just off the road. Through
the inevitable Torii a little path of rough flagging, all broken up and
imbedded in moss, leads across the small bridge of two large stones, one
of whose parapets is gone, and up high steps, half natural, to a little
altar of big stones with a heavy balustrade around three sides. A little
stone shrine with a roof stands upon it, and behind it a tall gray rock
upon which is incised and gilded a device of five disks forming a
circle. All around about the path and shrine are trees covered with
moss; the rocks, the shrine, the path, are spotted with green and yellow
velvet; all looks as if abandoned to nature,--all but the gilded
armorial bearings in the mossy stone, which I take to be those of the
divinized mortal in whose honor this little record has been built,
Ten-jin Sama, known and worshiped by every schoolboy in Japan. He is the
patron of learning and of penmanship, and was during his life a great
scholar and minister of state under the name of Michizane. This was just
before the year nine hundred. A faithful minister, a learned and just
man, he naturally gave great umbrage, especially to a younger associate
whose sister was Empress, and who succeeded through malicious slander in
bringing about Michizane's banishment.
In his place of exile, separated from wife and children, he died two
years later. There, I suppose, he rode about on the saddled bull, upon
which Yosai has placed him in his drawings, as also he was seen by
Motonobu in a dream, of which I have a drawing. There the great artist
has represented him, faithful, I suppose, to what he really saw, as a
younger man than he really could have been, galloping swiftly and
bending down to avoid the branches of the trees above.
Bulls of bronze and marble adorn his temple in Kioto, recalling how the
bull that drew him to the cemetery refused to go further than a certain
spot, where he was buried in a grave dug hastily. Misfortune and remorse
followed his enemies, with the death of the Imperial heir; so that the
Emperor, revoking his banishment, reinstalled the dead man in the honors
of his office, and bestowed a high rank upon his ghost. Since then his
worship has grown, as I said above.
As you see, the Mikado has been the fountain of honor for this world and
the next; and I cannot help being reminded of the constant relations of
Chinese and Japanese thought in this unity--this constant joining of
that which we separate. The forms of China may be more "bureaucratic";
no such national prejudices and feelings can belong to the idea of the
sovereign there as must exist in Japan, with a dynasty of rulers as
Japanese as Japan itself. But there has been here, as there, a sort of
natural duty in the Government to look after all the relations of those
intrusted to its care. In China, all religion or religions must depend
upon the sanction of the ruling powers; nothing is too great or too
small to be satisfied with; official approval may attend the worship of
some local heroine, official disapproval may be shown to some
exaggerations of Taoist superstitions. The source of this right and this
duty is always the idea that in the ruler all is centered; he is
responsible to Heaven, and is the tie between the powers above and the
deities below. Hence there is nothing absurd in his following the
governed after death.
In Japan, the forms of this power may be different, but its workings
will be similar, and hero-worship, combined with the respect and worship
of ancestors, has had a most important part in the development of life
here, in encouraging patriotism and lofty ideas, and in stimulating the
chivalrous feeling, the ideas of honor, that seem to me the peculiar
note of the Japanese. However misapplied, however mistaken, however
barbarous some forms of these ideas may appear to us, I cannot make for
myself a definition of the national character, nor see a clue to many of
their actions unless I bear in mind the ruling power of this feeling.
While we are in this place, where Iyéyasŭ's name is so important, let me
cite a trifling anecdote.
It is said that on some occasion he accompanied Hideyoshi, the great
Taiko Sama, each with few attendants, upon some visit, and all were
afoot. Now, among the retinue of Iyéyasŭ was one Honda, a man of
preternatural strength, who hinted to his master that this might be an
opportunity for an attack upon his great rival. But Taiko guessed the
danger, and, turning round, said to Iyéyasŭ: "My sword is heavy, for me
unaccustomed to walking, so may I not ask your servant to carry it for
me?" For Taiko knew that it would have been considered a disgrace to
attack a man unarmed when he had intrusted his sword, not to his own
servant, but to the servant of his enemy. And Iyéyasŭ understood this
appeal to the idea of honor.
August 28.
Two more days and we shall be gone. As I sketch in the temples or about
them, everything seems more beautiful as it grows to be more a part of
my daily existence. Though I am perpetually harassed through feeling
that I cannot copy everything, and through trying to force my memory to
grasp so as to retain the multitudinous details of the architectural
decoration, I have drawn the curve of this, and the patterns of that,
and noted the colors, but I wonder, if the thread gets loosened that
holds them together, whether I shall ever be able to separate one from
another in their entanglement. And then I still do not wish to work.
There are so many places that I should like to look at again without the
oppression of an obligatory record.
This evening I must take another look at the neglected graves of the
followers of Iyémitsŭ who committed suicide, as my Japanese account has
it, "that they might accompany him in his dark pilgrimage to the future
world." At least it says this of Hotta Masemori and of three others;
while the graves, as I remember them, are twenty-one in number, and
about this I have never thought to ask, but I must do so. And then there
may have been retainers of retainers. It is a pleasure to me anyhow to
set down at least one name and to help to keep this memory clear when I
think of the neglected spot in which they lie. It is not far from that
part of the land where stood the residence of their master's family, now
destroyed, through the days of turbulence which closed the last moments
of their reign. Broken fragments of fencing still lean against the
little inclosures of stone posts, balustrade, and gate that surround
each memorial pillar. They stand in two rows in a little clearing, the
valley sunk behind them, hidden in part by much wild growth.
O---- was telling us some little while ago of the feudal habit which
gave to a chieftain the vow of certain retainers who undertook to follow
him faithfully even beyond the grave. It was expected of them in war
that they should be about him sharing in his struggle, and if he died in
peace, near or far, they should be ready to go too.
And as death is the most important thing in life, I cannot help thinking
over the condition of mind of any one who looked forward to such a
limitation of its lease.
When age had changed the view of life, had created more ties, more
duties, had made the term nearer and more capricious, while everything
else became more fixed, did this bond, with its promise of payment to be
met at any moment's demand, become a heavy burden of debt? I can
occasionally conjure up a picture--perhaps erroneous, because my
imagination of the circumstances may displace them,--of some older man
settled in pleasant places, rested in secure possessions, with
dependants, with friends, with affections around his life, learning at
any moment of the probability that the call might come. He might be
summoned from any festivity or joy as if by a knocking at the door. How
curiously he must have watched the runners of the mail who might be
bringing into his town the news from the court, or wheresoever this
other life--which to all purposes was his own--was perhaps ebbing away.
How then he would have known what to do, even to its most minute detail,
and be but part of a ceremonial that he himself would direct. Vague
memories come up to me of places set apart in the garden, and the
screens and the hangings and the lights that belonged to the voluntary
ordeal. But as I keep on thinking, I feel more certain that my fancy
displaces the circumstances of former times and of a different
civilization. For instance, the concentration of the feudal territory,
habits of clanship, the constant attendance, must have narrowed the
circle and made the individual more like a part of one great machinery,
one great family, than he can ever be again. The weakness, the
insufficiency of the individual, has been stiffened by the importance of
the family, of the clan, as a basis of society; and I could almost say
that I discern in this one main-spring of the peculiar courtesy of this
nation, which seems to go along with a great feeling of a certain
freedom, so that the obedience of the inferior does not seem servile.
The servant who has done his duty of respectful service seems afterward
ready to take any natural relation that may turn up. The youth trained
in respect to his betters and elders, and silent in their presence, will
give his opinion frankly when asked, with a want of diffidence quite
unexpected. The coming years are certain to bring changes that cannot be
arrested.
* * * * *
While I was being baked to-day, at my work that I could not leave, my
companions have been away on a visit higher up the mountains, to the hot
baths on the lake, and, at least for part of the time, have had the
weather almost cold. They have much to say about the baths, and the
fullness of visitors, and the difficulty of getting place, and one of
them has gone to her bath in the native dress, and another cannot yet
quite get over the impression made upon him by the pretty young lady
near whom he stood under the eaves of the bath-house, where he had taken
refuge from the rain, and whose modest manners were as charming as her
youthfulness, and had no more covering.
Here everything is still hot and damp, though our nights are cooler and
I am able to make out more conveniently my notes and my sketches and my
memoranda of purchased acquisitions. On the lower floor boxes are being
filled, and to-morrow evening horses and men will stand in our garden to
be laden; we shall follow the light of their lanterns down the road, and
they will seem to be carrying parts of us away from Nikko.
NIKKO TO YOKOHAMA
NEAR UTSUNOMIYA, August 30.
We left Nikko this morning; a hot, moist, quiet, lovely morning. We
dawdled at our friends' house and breakfasted, and said good-by to our
worthy landlord. Yesterday he had found fault with my sketching him in
his ordinary yellow priest's dress, while he had vestments as beautiful
as any painter or clergyman could desire; in proof of which he had
rushed into his house and reappeared in those lovely things and moved
about the green of the garden looking as radiant as any flamingo. But I
knew not of these possessions of his, and regretted quite as deeply as
he could himself not having painted him in them.
It was a sad moment--that of leaving his little garden for good, and
walking down the road to the enormous steps under the trees by the
river, where we reversed the picture of our arrival six weeks ago. There
stood the naked runners, and our hostess above us, as we sat in the
_kurumas_, but this time the doctor was not with us, except to bid us
good-by. His place was filled by the professional guide and factotum,
who sat anxious for departure in his own _kuruma_, and who for days had
been packing and labeling and helping to make lists, and receiving
instructions, and bustling about at times when he was not sleeping--and
generally making life a misery. We rattled over the bridge, passed the
children going to school, and the polite policeman with spectacles and
sword, who looks like a German Rath of some kind or other, and the
woman of the Eta class[7] who has sold us skins of monkeys and of
badgers, as well as two baby monkeys, whom we have disrespectfully named
Sesson and Sosen, after the painters who so beautifully portrayed their
ancestors.
Soon we had entered the long avenue of cryptomeria and kept on through
shadow and sunlight, with our runners at their fullest gait, for we had
to be in time for the afternoon train at Utsunomiya, and it is
twenty-two miles from Nikko. But we were more than in time, and had to
wait at an inn near the station. I am absurdly stupid and fatigued, so
that I have given up watching the landscape and merely make these notes.
Besides, there is a missionary near us so self-contented that I feel
like withdrawing into my own self and dreaming of the times he was not
here. I recall a little story of Utsunomiya, connected with my
associations of Nikko, which I shall try to tell you; though, at the
very start, I find a difficulty in my having heard it told in several
different and contradictory ways--and I can only travel one at a time.
As I shall tell it, it represents a legend believed at least in the
theater, which, as we know, everywhere makes a kind of history.
The story is about the shogun Iyémitsŭ, whose temple, you know, is at
Nikko, and who was near missing the honor of being divinized there
later, owing to a plot arranged by his enemies, the scene of which was
this little town of Utsunomiya. At that time he was but a boy, the
heir-apparent, and was on his way to Nikko, as was his official duty, to
worship at the tomb of his grandfather Iyéyasŭ, lately deceased. In
this story Iyémitsŭ is not in the legitimate line of descent, but is
made the heir by the decision of the great Iyéyasŭ.
His father, Hidetada, was shogun, as you know, having succeeded Iyéyasŭ,
during the latter's lifetime,--the old man remaining in reality the
master, though absolved from external responsibilities. Now, Hidetada's
wife was of the family of Nobunaga, on her mother's side--and bore him a
son, who was named during his childhood Kuni Matsu. Another son, whose
boy name was Take Chiyo, was the son of Kasuga No Tsubone, a remarkable
woman. Each son had tutors, people of importance, and around each boy
gathered a number of ambitious interests, all the fiercer that they were
dissembled and depended for success upon the choice of either heir as
shogun, to succeed father and grandfather. The claim of the other son
was favored by the father and more generally accepted; but the son of
Kasuga was superior in looks, manners, and intelligence, and his mother
hoped to influence in his favor old Iyéyasŭ, the grandfather.
Iyéyasŭ was then living in retirement at Sunpu, that is now called
Shidzuoka, which is on the road called the Tokaido.
Kasuga took advantage of a pilgrimage to the shrines of Ise to stop on
her road, and naturally offer homage to the head of the family, the
grandfather of her son. Besides the power of her own personality, she
was able to place before Iyéyasŭ very strong arguments for choosing as
the heir of the line a youth as promising as her Take Chiyo.