I
I see, rising out of darkness, a lotos in a vase. Most of the vase is
invisible, but I know that it is of bronze, and that its glimpsing
handles are bodies of dragons. Only the lotos is fully illuminated:
three pure white flowers, and five great leaves of gold and green,—gold
above, green on the upcurling under-surface,—an artificial lotos. It is
bathed by a slanting stream of sunshine,—the darkness beneath and
beyond is the dusk of a temple-chamber. I do not see the opening
through which the radiance pours, but I am aware that it is a small
window shaped in the outline-form of a temple-bell.
The reason that I see the lotos—one memory of my first visit to a
Buddhist sanctuary—is that there has come to me an odor of incense.
Often when I smell incense, this vision defines; and usually thereafter
other sensations of my first day in Japan revive in swift succession
with almost painful acuteness.
It is almost ubiquitous,—this perfume of incense. It makes one element
of the faint but complex and never-to-be-forgotten odor of the Far
East. It haunts the dwelling-house not less than the temple,—the home
of the peasant not less than the yashiki of the prince. Shintō shrines,
indeed, are free from it;—incense being an abomination to the elder
gods. But wherever Buddhism lives there is incense. In every house
containing a Buddhist shrine or Buddhist tablets, incense is burned at
certain times; and in even the rudest country solitudes you will find
incense smouldering before wayside images,—little stone figures of
Fudō, Jizō, or Kwannon. Many experiences of travel,—strange impressions
of sound as well as of sight,—remain associated in my own memory with
that fragrance:—vast silent shadowed avenues leading to weird old
shrines;—mossed flights of worn steps ascending to temples that moulder
above the clouds;—joyous tumult of festival nights;—sheeted
funeral-trains gliding by in glimmer of lanterns; murmur of household
prayer in fishermen’s huts on far wild coasts;—and visions of desolate
little graves marked only by threads of blue smoke ascending,—graves of
pet animals or birds remembered by simple hearts in the hour of prayer
to Amida, the Lord of Immeasurable Light.
But the odor of which I speak is that of cheap incense only,—the
incense in general use. There are many other kinds of incense; and the
range of quality is amazing. A bundle of common incense-rods—(they are
about as thick as an ordinary pencil-lead, and somewhat longer)—can be
bought for a few sen; while a bundle of better quality, presenting to
inexperienced eyes only some difference in color, may cost several yen,
and be cheap at the price. Still costlier sorts of incense,—veritable
luxuries,—take the form of lozenges, wafers, pastilles; and a small
envelope of such material may be worth four or five pounds-sterling.
But the commercial and industrial questions relating to Japanese
incense represent the least interesting part of a remarkably curious
subject.