THE REAL SHINTO
_Yo no naka wo
Nani ni tatoyemu?
Asa-borake
Kogi-yuku fune no
Ato no shira-nami_.
To what shall I compare
This world?
To the white wake behind
A ship that has rowed away
At dawn!
When the autumn came and the maple trees turned scarlet, the men
returned from their long summer holidays. After that Asako's lot
became heavier than ever.
"What is this talk of tall beds and special cooking?" said Mr.
Fujinami Gentaro. "The girl is a Japanese. She must live like a
Japanese and be proud of it."
So Asako had to sleep on the floor alongside her cousin Sadako in one
of the downstairs rooms. Her last possession, her privacy, was taken
away from her. The soft mattresses which formed the native bed, were
not uncomfortable; but Asako discarded at once the wooden pillow,
which every Japanese woman fits into the nape of her neck, so as to
prevent her elaborate _coiffure_ becoming disarranged. As a result,
her head was always untidy, a fact upon which her relatives commented.
"She does not look like a great foreign lady now," said Mrs. Shidzuyé,
the mistress of the house. "She looks like _osandon_ (a rough kitchen
maid) from a country inn."
The other women tittered.
One day the old woman of Akabo arrived. Her hair was quite white like
spun glass, and her waxen face was wrinkled like a relief map. Her
body was bent double like a lobster; and her eyes were dim with
cataracts. Cousin Sadako said with awe that she was over a hundred
years old.
Asako had to submit to the indignity of allowing this dessicated
hag to pass her fumbling hands all over her body, pinching her and
prodding her. The old woman smelt horribly of _daikon_ (pickled
horse-radish). Furthermore the terrified girl had to answer a
battery of questions as to her personal habits and her former marital
relations. In return, she learned a number of curious facts about
herself, of which she had hitherto no inkling. The lucky coincidence
of having been born in the hour of the Bird and the day of the Bird
set her apart from the rest of womankind as an exceptionally fortunate
individual. But, unhappily, the malignant influence of the Dog Year
was against her nativity. When once this disaffected animal had been
conquered and cast out, Asako's future should be a very bright one.
The family witch agreed with the Fujinami that the Dog had in all
probability departed with the foreign husband. Then the toothless
crone breathed three times upon the mouth, breasts and thighs of
Asako; and when this operation was concluded, she stated her opinion
that there was no reason, obstetrical or esoteric, why the ransomed
daughter of the house of Fujinami should not become the mother of many
children.
But on the psychical condition of the family in general she was far
from reassuring. Everything about the mansion, the growth of the
garden, the flight of the birds, the noises of the night-time,
foreboded dire disaster in the near future. The Fujinami were in the
grip of a most alarming _ingé_ (chain of cause and effect). Several
"rough ghosts" were abroad; and were almost certain to do damage
before their wrath could be appeased. What was the remedy? It was
indeed difficult to prescribe for such complicated cases. Temple
charms, however, were always efficacious. The old woman gave the names
of some of the shrines which specialized in exorcism.
Some days later the charms were obtained, strips of rice paper with
sacred writings and symbols upon them, and were pasted upon posts and
lintels all over the house. This was done in Mr. Fujinami's absence.
When he returned, he commented most unfavourably on this act of faith.
The prayer tickets disfigured his house. They looked like luggage
labels. They injured his reputation as an _esprit fort_. He ordered
the students to remove them.
After this sacrilegious act, the old woman, who had lingered on in the
family mansion for several weeks, returned again to Akabo, shaking her
white locks and prophesying dark things to come.
* * * * *
For some reason or other, the witch's visit did not improve Asako's
position. She was expected to perform little menial services, to bring
in food at meal-times and to serve the gentlemen on bended knee,
to clap her hands in summons to the servant girls, to massage Mrs.
Fujinami, who suffered from rheumatism in the shoulder, and to scrub
her back in the bath.
Her wishes were usually ignored; and she was not encouraged to leave
the house and grounds. Sadako no longer took her cousin with her to
the theatre or to choose kimono patterns at the Mitsukoshi store. She
was irritated at Asako's failure to learn Japanese. It bored her to
have to explain everything. She found this girl from Europe silly and
undutiful.
Only at night they would chatter as girls will, even if they are
enemies; and it was then that Sadako narrated the history of her
romance with the young student.
One night, Asako awoke to find that the bed beside her was empty, and
that the paper _shoji_ was pushed aside. Nervous and anxious, she
rose and stood in the dark veranda outside the room. A cold wind was
blowing in from some aperture in the _amado_. This was unusual, for a
Japanese house in its night attire is hermetically sealed.
Suddenly Sadako appeared from the direction of the wind. Her hair
was disheveled. She wore a dark cloak over her parti-coloured night
kimono. By the dim light of the _andon_ (a rushlight in a square paper
box), Asako could see that the cloak was spotted with rain.
"I have been to _benjo_," said Sadako nervously.
"You have been out in the rain," contradicted her cousin. "You are wet
through. You will catch cold."
"_Sa! Damaré!_ (Be quiet!)" whispered Sadako, as she threw her cloak
aside, "do not talk so loud. See!" She drew from her breast a short
sword in a sheath of shagreen. "If you speak one word, I kill you with
this."
"What have you done?" asked Asako, trembling.
"What I wished to do," was the sullen answer.
"You have been with Sekiné?" Asako mentioned the student's name.
Sadako nodded in assent. Then she began to cry, hiding her face in her
kimono sleeve.
"Do you love him?" Asako could not help asking.
"Of course, I love him," cried Sadako, starting up from her sorrow.
"You see me. I am no more virgin. He is my life to me. Why cannot I
love him? Why cannot I be free like men are free to love as they wish?
I am new woman. I read Bernard Shaw. I find one law for men in Japan,
and another law for women. But I will break that law. I have made
Sekiné my lover, because I am free."
Asako could never have imagined her proud, inhuman cousin reduced to
this state of quivering emotion. Never before had she seen a Japanese
soul laid bare.
"But you will marry Sekiné, Sada dear; and then you will be happy."
"Marry Sekiné!" the girl hissed, "marry a boy with no money and leave
you to be the Fujinami heiress, when I am promised to the Governor of
Osaka, who will be home Minister when the next Governor comes!"
"Oh, don't do that," urged Asako, her English sentimentalism flooding
back across her mind. "Don't marry a man whom you don't love. You say
you are a new woman. Marry Sekiné. Marry the man whom you love. Then
you will be happy."
"Japanese girls are never happy," groaned her cousin.
Asako gasped. This morality confused her.
"But that would be a mortal sin," she said. "Then you could never be
happy."
"We cannot be happy. We are Fujinami," said Sadako gravely. "We are
cursed. The old woman of Akabo said that it is a very bad curse. I do
not believe superstition. But I believe there is a curse. You also,
you have been unhappy, and your father and mother. We are cursed
because of the women. We have made so much money from poor women. They
are sold to men, and they suffer in pain and die so that we become
rich. It is a very bad _ingé_. So they say in Akabo, that we Fujinami
have a fox in our family. It brings us money; but it makes us unhappy.
In Akabo, even poor people will not marry with the Fujinami, because
we have the fox."
It is a popular belief, still widely held in Japan, that certain
families own spirit foxes, a kind of family banshee who render them
service, but mark them with a curse.
"I do not understand," said Asako, afraid of this wild talk.
"Do you know why the Englishman went away?" said her cousin brutally.
It was Asako's turn to cry.
"Oh, I wish I had gone with him. He was so good to me, always so kind
and so gentle!"
"When he married you," said Sadako, "he did not know that you had the
curse. He ought not to have come to Japan with you. Now he knows you
have the curse. So he went away. He was wise."
"What do you mean by the curse?" asked Asako.
"You do not know how the Fujinami have made so much money?"
"No," said Asako. "It used to come for me from Mr. Ito. He had shares
or something."
"Yes. But a share that means a share of a business. Do you not know
what is our business?"
"No," said Asako again.
"You have seen the Yoshiwara, where girls are sold to men. That is our
business. Do you understand now?"
"No."
"Then I will tell you the whole story of the Fujinami. About one
hundred and twenty years ago our great-great-grandfather came to Yedo,
as Tokyo was then called. He was a poor boy from the country. He had
no friends. He became clerk in a dry goods store. One day a woman,
rather old, asked him: 'How much pay you get?' He said, 'No pay, only
food and clothes.' The woman said, 'Come with me; I will give you food
and clothes and pay also,' He went with her to the Yoshiwara where she
had a small house with five or six girls. Every night he must stand
in front of the house, calling. Then the drunken workmen, and the
gamblers, and the bad _samurai_ would come and pay their money. And
they pay their money to him, our great-great-grandfather. When the
girls were sick, or would not receive guests, he would beat them, and
starve them, and burn _o kyu_ (a medical plant called moxa, used for
cauterization) on their backs. One day he said to the woman who was
mistress of the house, 'Your girls are too old. The rich friends do
not come any more. Let us sell these girls. I will go into the
country and get new girls, and then you will marry me and make me your
partner.' The woman said, 'If we have good luck with the girls and
make money, then I marry you.' So our great-great-grandfather went
back to his own country, to Akabo; and his old friends in the country
were astonished, seeing how much money he had to spend. He said 'Yes.
I have many rich friends in Yedo. They want pretty country girls to be
their wives. See, I pay you in advance five pieces of gold. After the
marriage more money will be given. Let me take your prettiest girls to
Yedo with me. And they will all get rich husbands.' They were simple
country people, and they believed him because he was a man of their
village, of Akabo. He went back to Yedo with about twenty girls,
fifteen or sixteen years old. He and the other clerks of the Yoshiwara
first made them _jor[=o]_. From those twenty girls he made very much
money. So he married the woman who kept the house. Then he hired a big
house called Tomonji. He furnished it very richly; and he would only
receive guests of the high-class people. Five of his girls became very
famous _oiran_. Even their pictures, drawn by Utamaro, are worth now
hundreds of _yen_. When our great-great-grandfather died he was a very
rich man. His son was the second Fujinami. He bought more houses in
the Yoshiwara and more girls. He was our great-grandfather. He had
two sons. One was your father's father, who bought this land and first
built a house here. The other was my grandfather, Fujinami Gennosuké,
who still lives in the _inkyo_. They have all made much money from
girls; but the curse was hurting them all, especially their wives and
daughters."
"And my father?" asked Asako.
"Your father wrote a book to say how bad a thing it is that money is
made from men's lust and the pain of Women. He told in the book
how girls are tricked to come to Tokyo, how their parents sell them
because they are poor or because there is famine, how the girls are
brought to Tokyo ten and twenty at a time, and are put to auction sale
in the Yoshiwara, how they are shut up like prisoner, how very rough
men are sent to them to break their spirit and to compel them to be
_jor[=o]_. There is a trial to see how strong they are. Then, when the
spirit is broken, they are shown in the window as 'new girls' with
beautiful kimono and with wreath of flowers on their head. If they
are lucky they escape disease for a few years, but it comes soon or
late--_rinbyo, baidoku_ and _raibyo_. They are sent to the hospital
for treatment; or else they are told to hide the disease and to get
more men. So the men take the disease and bring it to their wives and
children, who have done no wrong. But the girls of the Yoshiwara have
to work all the time, when they are only half cured. So they become
old and ugly and rotten very quickly. Then, if they take consumption
or some such thing, they die and the master says, 'It is well. She
was already too old. She was wasting our money.' And they are
buried quickly in the burial place of the _jor[=o]_ outside the city
boundary, the burial place of the dead who are forgotten. Or some, who
are very strong, live until their contract is finished. Then they go
back to the country, and marry there and spread disease. But they all
die cursing the Fujinami, who have made money out of their sorrow and
pain. I think this garden is full of their ghosts, and their curses
beat upon the house, like the wind when it makes the shutters rattle!"
"How do you know all these terrible things?" asked Asako.
"It is written in your father's book. I will read it to you. If you do
not believe, ask Ito San. He will tell you it is true."
So for several evenings Sadako read to this stranger Fujinami her own
father's words, the words of a forerunner.
Japan is still a savage country, wrote Fujinami Katsundo, the Japanese
are still barbarians. To compare the conventional codes, which they
have mistaken for civilization, with the depth and the height of
Occidental idealism, as Christ perceived it and Dante and St. Francis
of Assisi and Tolstoy, is "to compare the tortoise with the moon."
Japan is imitating from the West its worst propensities--hard
materialism, vulgarity and money-worship. The Japanese must be humble,
and must admit that the most difficult part of their lesson has yet to
be learned. Cut and dried systems are useless. Prussian constitution,
technical education, military efficiency and bravado--such things are
not progress. Japan must denounce the slavery of ancestor-worship, and
escape from the rule of the dead. She must chase away the bogeys of
superstition, and enjoy life as a lovely thing, and love as the vision
of a life still more beautiful. She must cleanse her land of all its
filth, and make it what it still might be--the Country of the Rising
Sun.
Such was the message of Asako's father in his book, _The Real Shinto_.
"We are not allowed to read this book," Sadako explained; "the police
have forbidden it. But I found a secret copy. It was undutiful of your
father to write such things. He went away from Japan; and everyone
said, 'It is a good thing he has gone; he was a bad man; he shamed his
country and his family.'"
There was much in the book which Asako could not follow. Her cousin
tried to explain it to her; and many nights passed, thus, the two
girls sitting up and reading by the pale light of the _andon_. It was
like a renewal of the old friendship. Sometimes a low whistle sounded
from outside the house. Sadako would lay aside the book, would slip
on her cloak and go out into the garden, where Sekiné was waiting for
her.
When she was left to herself Asako began to think for the first time
in her life. Hitherto her thoughts had been concerned merely with her
own pleasures and pains, with the smiles and frowns of those around
her, with petty events and trifling projects. Perhaps, because some
of her father's blood was alive in her veins, she could understand
certain aspects of his book more clearly than her interpreter, Sadako.
She knew now why Geoffrey would not touch her money. It was filthy,
it was diseased, like the poor women who had earned it. Of course, her
Geoffrey preferred poverty to wealth like that. Could she face poverty
with him? Why, she was poor already, here in her cousins' house. Where
was the luxury which her money used to buy? She was living the life of
a servant and a prisoner.
What would be the end of it? Surely Geoffrey would come back to her,
and take her away! But he had no money now, and it would cost much
money to travel to Japan. And then, this terrible war! Geoffrey was a
soldier. He would be sure to be there, leading his men. Supposing he
were killed?
One night in a dream she saw his body carried past her, limp and
bleeding. She screamed in her sleep. Sadako awoke, terrified.
"What is the matter?"
"I dreamed of Geoffrey, my husband. Perhaps he is killed in the war."
"Do not say that," said Sadako. "It is unlucky to speak of death. It
troubles the ghosts. I have told you this house is haunted."
Certainly for Asako the Fujinami mansion had lost its charm. Even the
beautiful landscape was besieged by horrible thoughts. Every day two
or three of the Yoshiwara women died of disease and neglect, so Sadako
said and therefore every day the invisible population of the Fujinami
garden must be increasing, and the volume of their curses must be
gathering in intensity. The ghosts hissed like snakes in the bamboo
grove. They sighed in the pine branches. They nourished the dwarf
shrubs with their pollution. Beneath the waters of the lake the
corpses--women's corpses--were laid out in rows. Their thin hands
shook the reeds. Their pale faces rose at night to the surface, and
stared at the moon. The autumn maples smeared the scene with infected
blood; and the stone foxes in front of the shrine of Inari sneered and
grinned at the devil world which their foul influence had called into
being through the black witchcraft of lechery, avarice and disease.