[Illustration]
Mushi yo mushi,
Naïté ingwa ga
Tsukuru nara?
“O insect, insect!--think you that Karma can be exhausted by
song?”--_Japanese poem._
I
If you ever visit Japan, be sure to go to at least one
temple-festival,--_en-nichi_. The festival ought to be seen at night,
when everything shows to the best advantage in the glow of countless
lamps and lanterns. Until you have had this experience, you cannot know
what Japan is,--you cannot imagine the real charm of queerness and
prettiness, the wonderful blending of grotesquery and beauty, to be
found in the life of the common people.
In such a night you will probably let yourself drift awhile with
the stream of sight-seers through dazzling lanes of booths full
of toys indescribable--dainty puerilities, fragile astonishments,
laughter-making oddities;--you will observe representations of
demons, gods, and goblins;--you will be startled by _mandō_--immense
lantern-transparencies, with monstrous faces painted upon them;--
you will have glimpses of jugglers, acrobats, sword-dancers,
fortune-tellers;--you will hear everywhere, above the tumult of voices,
a ceaseless blowing of flutes and booming of drums. All this may not be
worth stopping for. But presently, I am almost sure, you will pause in
your promenade to look at a booth illuminated like a magic-lantern, and
stocked with tiny wooden cages out of which an incomparable shrilling
proceeds. The booth is the booth of a vendor of singing-insects; and
the storm of noise is made by the insects. The sight is curious; and a
foreigner is nearly always attracted by it.
But having satisfied his momentary curiosity, the foreigner usually
goes on his way with the idea that he has been inspecting nothing
more remarkable than a particular variety of toys for children. He
might easily be made to understand that the insect-trade of Tōkyō
alone represents a yearly value of thousands of dollars; but he would
certainly wonder if assured that the insects themselves are esteemed
for the peculiar character of the sounds which they make. It would not
be easy to convince him that in the æsthetic life of a most refined
and artistic people, these insects hold a place not less important
or well-deserved than that occupied in Western civilization by our
thrushes, linnets, nightingales and canaries. What stranger could
suppose that a literature one thousand years old,--a literature full
of curious and delicate beauty,--exists upon the subject of these
short-lived insect-pets?
* * * * *
The object of the present paper is, by elucidating these facts, to
show how superficially our travellers might unconsciously judge the
most interesting details of Japanese life. But such misjudgments are
as natural as they are inevitable. Even with the kindest of intentions
it is impossible to estimate correctly at sight anything of the
extraordinary in Japanese custom,--because the extraordinary nearly
always relates to feelings, beliefs, or thoughts about which a stranger
cannot know anything.
* * * * *
Before proceeding further, let me observe that the domestic insects of
which I am going to speak, are mostly night-singers, and must not be
confounded with the _semi_ (cicadæ), mentioned in former essays of mine.
I think that the cicadæ,--even in a country so exceptionally rich as is
Japan in musical insects,--are wonderful melodists in their own way. But
the Japanese find as much difference between the notes of night-insects
and of cicadæ as we find between those of larks and sparrows; and they
relegate their cicadæ to the vulgar place of chatterers. _Semi_ are
therefore never caged. The national liking for caged insects does not
mean a liking for mere noise; and the note of every insect in public
favor must possess either some rhythmic charm, or some mimetic quality
celebrated in poetry or legend. The same fact is true of the Japanese
liking for the chant of frogs. It would be a mistake to suppose that all
kinds of frogs are considered musical; but there are particular species
of very small frogs having sweet notes; and these are caged and petted.
Of course, in the proper meaning of the word, insects do not _sing_;
but in the following pages I may occasionally employ the terms “singer”
and “singing-insect,”--partly because of their convenience, and partly
because of their correspondence with the language used by Japanese
insect-dealers and poets, describing the “voices” of such creatures.