THE AUTUMN FESTIVAL
_Yo no naka ni
Ushi no Kuruma no
Nakari-seba,
Omoi no iye wo
Ikade ide-mashi?_
In this world
If there were no
Ox-cart (_i.e._ Buddhist religion),
How should we escape
From the (burning) mansion of our thought?
During October, the whole family of the Fujinami removed from Tokyo
for a few days in order to perform their religious duties at the
temple of Ikégami. Even grandfather Gennosuké emerged from his
dower-house, bringing his wife, O Tsugi. Mr. Fujinami Gentaro was in
charge of his own wife, Shidzuyé San, of Sadako and of Asako. Only
Fujinami Takeshi, the son and heir, with his wife Matsuko, was absent.
There had been some further trouble in the family which had not
been confided to Asako, but which necessitated urgent steps for the
propitiation of religious influences. The Fujinami were followers of
the Nichiren sect of Buddhism. Their conspicuous devotion and their
large gifts to the priests of the temple were held to be causes of
their ever-increasing prosperity. The dead Fujinami, down from that
great-great-grandfather who had first come to seek his fortune in
Yedo, were buried at Ikégami. Here the priests gave to each _hotoké_
(Buddha or dead person) his new name, which was inscribed on small
black tablets, the _ihai_. One of these tablets for each dead person
was kept in the household shrine at Tokyo, and one in the temple at
Ikégami.
Asako was taken to the October festival, because her father too was
buried in the temple grounds--one small bone of him, that is to say,
an _ikotsu_ or legacy bone, posted home from Paris before the rest of
his mortality found alien sepulture at Père Lachaise. Masses were said
for the dead; and Asako was introduced to the tablet. But she did not
feel the same emotion as when she first visited the Fujinami house.
Now, she had heard her father's authentic voice. She knew his scorn
for pretentiousness of all kinds, for false conventions, for false
emotions, his hatred of priestcraft, his condemnation of the family
wealth, and his contempt for the little respectabilities of Japanese
life.
* * * * *
A temple in Japan is not merely a building; it is a site. These sites
were most carefully chosen with the same genius which guided our
Benedictines and Carthusians. The site of Ikégami is a long-abrupt
hill, half-way between Tokyo and Yokohama. It is clothed with
_cryptomeria_ trees. These dark conifers, like immense cypresses, give
to the spot that grave, silent, irrevocable atmosphere, with which
Boecklin has invested his picture of the Island of the Dead. These
majestic trees are essentially a part of the temple. They correspond
to the pillars of our Gothic cathedrals. The roof is the blue vault
of heaven; and the actual buildings are but altars, chantries and
monuments.
A steep flight of steps is suspended like a cascade from the crest of
the hill. Up and down these steps, the wooden clogs of the Japanese
people patter incessantly like water-drops. At the top of the steps
stands the towered gateway, painted with red ochre, which leads to the
precincts. The guardians of the gate, _Ni-O_, the two gigantic Deva
kings, who have passed from India into Japanese mythology, are encaged
in the gateway building. Their cage and their persons are littered
with nasty morsels of chewed paper, wherever their worshippers have
literally spat their prayers at them.
Within the enclosure are the various temple buildings, the bell-tower,
the library, the washing-trough, the hall of votive offerings,
the sacred bath-house, the stone lanterns and the lodgings for the
pilgrims; also the two main halls for the temple services, which are
raised on low piles and are linked together by a covered bridge, so
that they look like twin arks of safety, floating just five feet above
the troubles of this life. These buildings are most of them painted
red; and there is fine carving on panels, friezes and pediments,
and also much tawdry gaudiness. Behind these two sanctuaries is the
mortuary chapel where repose the memories of many of the greatest
in the land. Behind this again are the priests' dormitories, with a
lovely hidden garden hanging on the slopes of a sudden ravine; its
presiding genius is an old pine-tree, beneath which Nichiren himself,
a contemporary and a counterpart of Saint Dominic, used to meditate on
his project for a Universal Church, founded on the life of Buddha, and
led by the apostolate of Japan.
* * * * *
For the inside of a week the Fujinami dwelt in one of a row of stalls,
like loose-boxes, within the temple precincts. The festival might have
some affinity with the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, when the devout
left their city dwellings to live in booths outside the walls.
_Namu my[=o]h[=o] renge ky[=o]._
(Adoration to the Wonderful Law of the Lotus Scriptures!)
The famous formula of the priests of the Nichiren sect was being
repeated over and over again to the accompaniment of drums; for in
the sacred text itself lies the only authentic Way of Salvation. With
exemplary insistence Mr. Fujinami Gennosuké was beating out the rhythm
of the prayer with a wooden clapper on the _mokugy[=o]_, a wooden drum,
shaped like a fish's head.
_Namu my[=o]h[=o] renge ky[=o]_.
From every corner of the temple _enclave_ the invocation was droning
like a threshing machine. Asako's Catholic conscience, now awakening
from the spell which Japan had cast upon it, became uneasy about its
share in these pagan rites. In order to drive the echo of the litany
out of her ears, she tried to concentrate her attention upon watching
the crowd.
_Namu my[=o]h[=o] renge ky[=o]_.
Around her was a dense multitude of pilgrims, in their hundreds of
thousands, shuffling, chaffering and staring. Some, like the
Fujinami, had hired temporary lodgings, and had cooks and servants in
attendance. Some were camping in the open. Others were merely visiting
the temple for the inside of the day. The crowds kept on shifting and
mingling like ants on an ant-hill.
Enjoyment, rather than piety, was the prevailing spirit; for this was
one of the few annual holidays of the industrious Tokyo artisan.
In the central buildings, five feet above this noisy confluence of
people, where the golden images of the Buddhas are enthroned, the
mitred priests with their copes of gold-embroidered brown were
performing the rituals of their order. To right and left of the high
altar, the canons squatting at their red-lacquered praying-desks, were
reciting the _sutras_ in strophe and antistrophe. Clouds of incense
rose.
In the adjoining building an earnest young preacher was exhorting a
congregation of elderly and somnolent ladies to eschew the lusts of
the flesh and to renounce the world and its gauds, marking each point
in his discourse with raps of his fan. Foxy-faced satellites of the
abbey were doing a roaring trade in charms against various accidents,
and in sacred scrolls printed with prayers or figures of Nichiren.
The temple-yard was an immense fancy fair. The temple pigeons wheeled
disconsolately in the air or perched upon the roofs, unable to find
one square foot of the familiar flagstones, where they were used to
strut and peck. Stalls lined the stone pathways and choked the spaces
between the buildings. Merchants were peddling objects of piety,
sacred images, charms and rosaries; and there were flowers for the
women's hair, and toys for the children, and cakes and biscuits,
_biiru_ (beer) and _ramuné_ (lemonade) and a distressing sickly drink
called "champagne cider" and all manner of vanities. In one corner of
the square a theatre was in full swing, the actors making up in
public on a balcony above the crowd, so as to whet their curiosity and
attract their custom. Beyond was a cinematograph, advertised by lurid
paintings of murders and apparitions; and farther on there was a
circus with a mangy zoo.
The crowd was astonishingly mixed. There were prosperous merchants of
Tokyo with their wives, children, servants and apprentices. There were
students with their blue and white spotted cloaks, their _képis_ with
the school badge, and their ungainly stride. There were modern young
men in _y[=o]fuku_ (European dress), with panama hats, swagger canes
and side-spring shoes, supercilious in attitude and proud of their
unbelief. There were troops of variegated children, dragging at
their elders' hands or kimonos, or getting lost among the legs of the
multitude like little leaves in an eddy. There were excursion parties
from the country, with their kimonos caught up to the knees, and with
baked earthen faces stupidly staring, sporting each a red flower or
a coloured towel for identification purposes. There were labourers
in tight trousers and tabard jackets, inscribed with the name and
profession of their employer. There were _geisha_ girls on their best
behaviour, in charge of a professional auntie, and recognizable only
by the smart cut of their cloaks and the deep space between the collar
and the nape of the neck, where the black _chignon_ lay.
Close to the tomb of Nichiren stood a Japanese Salvationist, a zealous
pimply young man, wearing the red and blue uniform of General Booth
with _kaiseigun_ (World-saving Army) in Japanese letters round his
staff cap. He stood in front of a screen, on which the first verse of
"Onward, Christian Soldiers," was written in a Japanese translation.
An assistant officiated at a wheezy harmonium. The tune was vaguely
akin to its Western prototype; and the two evangelists were trying to
induce a tolerant but uninterested crowd to join in the chorus.
Everywhere beggars were crawling over the compound in various states
of filth. Some, however, were so ghastly that they were excluded
from the temple enclosure. They had lined up among the trunks of
the cryptomeria trees, among the little grey tombs with their fading
inscriptions and the moss-covered statues of kindly Buddhas.
Asako gave a penny into the crooked hand of one poor sightless wretch.
"Oh, no!" cried cousin Sadako; "do not go near to them. Do not touch
them. They are lepers."
Some of them had no arms, or had mere stumps ending abruptly in a red
and sickening object like a bone which a dog has been chewing. Some
had no legs, and were pulled along on little wheeled trolleys by their
less dilapidated companions in misfortune. Some had no features.
Their faces were mere glabrous disks, from which eyes and nose had
completely vanished; only the mouth remained, a toothless gap fringed
with straggling hairs. Some had faces abnormally bloated, with
powerful foreheads and heavy jowls, which gave them an expression of
stony immobility like Byzantine lions. All were fearfully dirty and
covered with sores and lice.
The people passing by smiled at their grim unsightliness, and threw
pennies to them, for which they scrambled and scratched like beasts.
_Namu my[=o]h[=o] renge ky[=o]_.
Asako's relatives spent the day in eating, drinking and gossiping to
the rhythm of the interminable prayer.
It was a perfect day of autumn, which is the sweetest season in Japan.
A warm bright sun had been shining on the sumptuous colours of the
waning year, on the brilliant reds and yellows which clothed the
neighbouring hills, on the broad brown plain with its tesselated
design of bare rice-fields, on the brown villas and cottages huddled
in their fences of evergreen like birds in their nests, on the
red trunks of the cryptomeria trees, on the brown carpet of matted
pine-needles, on the grey crumbling stones of the old graveyard, on
the high-pitched temple roofs, and on the inconsequential swarms of
humanity drifting to their devotions, casting their pennies into the
great alms-trough in front of the shrine, clanging the brass bell with
a prayer for good luck, and drifting home again with their bewildered,
happy children.
Asako no longer felt like a Japanese. The sight of her countrymen in
their drab monotonous thousands sickened her. The hiss and cackle
of their incomprehensible tongue beat upon her brain with a deadly
incessant sound, like raindrops to one who is impatiently awaiting the
return of fine weather.
Here at Ikégami, the distant view of the sea and the Yokohama shipping
invited Asako to escape. But where could she escape to? To England.
She was an Englishwoman no longer. She had cast her husband off for
insufficient reasons. She had been cold, loveless, narrow-minded and
silly. She had acted, as she now recognised, largely on the suggestion
of others. Like a fool she had believed what had been told. She had
not trusted her love for her husband. As usual, her thoughts returned
to Geoffrey, and to the constant danger which threatened him. Lately,
she had started to write a letter to him several times, but had never
got further than "Dearest Geoffrey."
She was glad when the irritating day was over, when the rosy sunset
clouds showed through the trunks of the cryptomerias, when the night
fell and the great stars like lamps hung in the branches. But the
night brought no silence. Paper lanterns were lighted round the
temple; and rough acetylene flares lit up the tawdry fairings. The
chattering, the bargaining, the clatter of the _geta_ became more
terrifying even than in daytime. It was like being in the darkness in
a cage of wild beasts, heard, felt, but unseen.
The evening breeze was cold. In spite of the big wooden fireboxes
strewn over their stall, the Fujinami were shivering.
"Let us go for a walk," suggested cousin Sadako.
The two girls strolled along the ridge of the hill as far as the
five-storied pagoda. They passed the tea-house, so famous for its
plum-blossoms in early March. It was brightly lighted. The paper
rectangles of the _shoji_ were aglow like an illuminated honeycomb.
The wooden walls resounded with the jangle of the _samisen_, the high
screaming _geisha_ voices, and the rough laughter of the guests. From
one room the _shoji_ were pushed open; and drunken men could be seen
with kimonos thrown back from their shoulders showing a body reddened
with _saké_. They had taken the _geishas_' instruments from them, and
were performing an impromptu song and dance, while the girls clapped
their hands and writhed with laughter. Beyond the tea-house, the din
of the festival was hushed. Only from the distance came the echo of
the song, the rasp of the forced merriment, the clatter of the _geta_,
and the hum of the crowd.
Starlight revealed the landscape. The moon was rising through a
cloud's liquescence. Soon the hundreds of rice-plots would catch her
full reflection. The outline of the coast of Tokyo Bay was visible
as far as Yokohama; so were the broad pool of Ikégami and the lumpy
masses of the hills inland.
The landscape was alive with lights, lights dim, lights bright,
lights stationary, lights in swaying movement round each centre of
population. It looked as if the stars had fallen from heaven, and were
being shifted and sorted by careful gleaners. As each nebula of white
illumination assembled itself, it began to move across the vast plain,
drawn inwards towards Ikégami from every point of the compass as
though by a magnetic force. These were the lantern processions of
pilgrims. They looked like the souls of the righteous rising from
earth to heaven in a canto from Dante.
The clusters of lights started, moved onwards, paused, re-grouped
themselves, and struggled forward, until in the narrow street of
the village under the hill Asako could distinguish the shapes of the
lantern-bearers and their strange antics, and the sacred palanquin,
a kind of enormous wooden bee-hive, which was the centre of each
procession, borne on the sturdy shoulders of a swarm of young men to
the beat of drums and the inevitable chant.
_Namu my[=o]h[=o] renge ky[=o]_.
Slowly the procession jolted up the steep stairway, and came to rest
with their heavy burdens in front of the temple of Nichiren.
"It is very silly," said cousin Sadako, "to be so superstitious, I
think."
"Then why are we here?" asked Asako.
"My grandfather is very superstitious; and my father is afraid to say
'No' to him. My father does not believe in any gods or Buddhas; but
he says it does no harm, and it may do good. All our family is
_gohei-katsugi_ (brandishers of sacred symbols). We think that with
all this prayer we can turn away the trouble of Takeshi."
"Why, what is the matter with Mr. Takeshi? Why is he not here? and
Matsuko San and the children?"
"It is a great secret," said the Fujinami cousin, "you will tell no
one. You will pretend also even with me that you do not know. Takeshi
San is very sick. The doctor says that he is a leper."
Asako stared, uncomprehending. Sadako went on,--
"You saw this morning those ugly beggars. They were all so terrible
to see, and their bodies were so rotten. My brother is becoming like
that. It is a sickness. It cannot be cured. It will kill him very
slowly. Perhaps his wife Matsu and his children also have the
sickness. Perhaps we too are sick. No one can tell, not for many
years."
Ugly wings seemed to cover the night. The world beneath the hill had
become the Pit of Hell, and the points of light were devils' spears.
Asako trembled.
"What does it mean?" she asked. "How did Takeshi San become sick?"
"It was a _tenbatsu_ (judgment of heaven)," answered her cousin.
"Takeshi San was a bad man. He was rude to his father, and he was
cruel to his wife. He thought only of _geisha_ and bad women. No
doubt, he became sick from touching a woman who was sick. Besides,
it is the bad _ingé_ of the Fujinami family. Did not the old woman of
Akabo say so? It is the curse of the Yoshiwara women. It will be our
turn next, yours and mine."
No wonder that poor Asako could not sleep that night in the cramped
promiscuity of the family dead.
Fujinami Takeshi had been sickly for some time; but then his course
of life could hardly be called a healthy one. On his return from his
summer holiday, red patches had appeared on the palms of his hands,
and afterwards on his forehead. He had complained of the irritation
caused by this "rash." Professor Kashio had been called in to
prescribe. A blood test was taken. The doctor then pronounced that
the son and heir was suffering from leprosy, and for that there was no
cure.
The disease is accompanied by irritation, but by little actual pain.
Constant application of compresses can allay the itching, and can
often save the patient from the more ghastly ravages of disfigurement.
But, slowly, the limbs lose their force, the fingers and toes drop
away, the hair falls, and merciful blindness comes to hide from the
sufferer the living corpse to which his spirit is bound. More merciful
yet, the slow decay attacks the organs of the body. Often consumption
intervenes. Often just a simple cold suffices to snuff out the
flickering life.
In the village of Kusatsu, beyond the Karuizawa mountains, there is a
natural hot spring, whose waters are beneficial for the alleviation of
the disease. In this place there is a settlement of well-to-do lepers.
Thither it was decided to banish poor Takeshi. His wife, Matsuko,
naturally was expected to accompany him, to nurse him and to make
life as comfortable for him as she could. Her eventual doom was almost
certain. But there was no question, no choice, no hesitation and no
praise. Every Japanese wife is obliged to become an Alcestis, if
her husband's well-being demand it. The children were sent to the
ancestral village of Akabo.