I once knew a fortune-teller who really believed in the science that he
professed. He had learned, as a student of the old Chinese philosophy,
to believe in divination long before he thought of practising it.
During his youth he had been in the service of a wealthy daimyō, but
subsequently, like thousands of other samurai, found himself reduced to
desperate straits by the social and political changes of Meiji. It was
then that he became a fortune-teller,—an itinerant
_uranaiya_,—travelling on foot from town to town, and returning to his
home rarely more than once a year with the proceeds of his journey. As
a fortune-teller he was tolerably successful,—chiefly, I think, because
of his perfect sincerity, and because of a peculiar gentle manner that
invited confidence. His system was the old scholarly one: he used the
book known to English readers as the _Yî-King_,—also a set of ebony
blocks which could be so arranged as to form any of the Chinese
hexagrams;—and he always began his divination with an earnest prayer to
the gods.
The system itself he held to be infallible in the hands of a master. He
confessed that he had made some erroneous predictions; but he said that
these mistakes had been entirely due to his own miscomprehension of
certain texts or diagrams. To do him justice I must mention that in my
own case—(he told my fortune four times),—his predictions were
fulfilled in such wise that I became afraid of them. You may disbelieve
in fortune-telling,—intellectually scorn it; but something of inherited
superstitious tendency lurks within most of us; and a few strange
experiences can so appeal to that inheritance as to induce the most
unreasoning hope or fear of the good or bad luck promised you by some
diviner. Really to see our future would be a misery. Imagine the result
of knowing that there must happen to you, within the next two months,
some terrible misfortune which you cannot possibly provide against!
He was already an old man when I first saw him in Izumo,—certainly more
than sixty years of age, but looking very much younger. Afterwards I
met him in Ōsaka, in Kyōto, and in Kobé. More than once I tried to
persuade him to pass the colder months of the winter-season under my
roof,—for he possessed an extraordinary knowledge of traditions, and
could have been of inestimable service to me in a literary way. But
partly because the habit of wandering had become with him a second
nature, and partly because of a love of independence as savage as a
gipsy’s, I was never able to keep him with me for more than two days at
a time.
Every year he used to come to Tōkyō,—usually in the latter part of
autumn. Then, for several weeks, he would flit about the city, from
district to district, and vanish again. But during these fugitive trips
he never failed to visit me; bringing welcome news of Izumo people and
places,—bringing also some queer little present, generally of a
religious kind, from some famous place of pilgrimage. On these
occasions I could get a few hours’ chat with him. Sometimes the talk
was of strange things seen or heard during his recent journey;
sometimes it turned upon old legends or beliefs; sometimes it was about
fortune-telling. The last time we met he told me of an exact Chinese
science of divination which he regretted never having been able to
learn.
“Any one learned in that science,” he said, “would be able, for
example, not only to tell you the exact time at which any post or beam
of this house will yield to decay, but even to tell you the direction
of the breaking, and all its results. I can best explain what I mean by
relating a story.
“The story is about the famous Chinese fortune-teller whom we call in
Japan Shōko Setsu, and it is written in the book _Baikwa-Shin-Eki_,
which is a book of divination. While still a very young man, Shōko
Setsu obtained a high position by reason of his learning and virtue;
but he resigned it and went into solitude that he might give his whole
time to study. For years thereafter he lived alone in a hut among the
mountains; studying without a fire in winter, and without a fan in
summer; writing his thoughts upon the wall of his room—for lack of
paper;—and using only a tile for his pillow.
“One day, in the period of greatest summer heat, he found himself
overcome by drowsiness; and he lay down to rest, with his tile under
his head. Scarcely had he fallen asleep when a rat ran across his face
and woke him with a start. Feeling angry, he seized his tile and flung
it at the rat; but the rat escaped unhurt, and the tile was broken.
Shōko Setsu looked sorrowfully at the fragments of his pillow, and
reproached himself for his hastiness. Then suddenly he perceived, upon
the freshly exposed clay of the broken tile, some Chinese
characters—between the upper and lower surfaces. Thinking this very
strange, he picked up the pieces, and carefully examined them. He found
that along the line of fracture seventeen characters had been written
within the clay before the tile had been baked; and the characters read
thus: ‘_In the Year of the Hare, in the fourth month, on the
seventeenth day, at the Hour of the Serpent, this tile, after serving
as a pillow, will be thrown at a rat and broken._’ Now the prediction
had really been fulfilled at the Hour of the Serpent on the seventeenth
day of the fourth month of the Year of the Hare. Greatly astonished,
Shōko Setsu once again looked at the fragments, and discovered the seal
and the name of the maker. At once he left his hut, and, taking with
him the pieces of the tile, hurried to the neighboring town in search
of the tilemaker. He found the tilemaker in the course of the day,
showed him the broken tile, and asked him about its history.
“After having carefully examined the shards, the tilemaker said: —‘This
tile was made in my house; but the characters in the clay were written
by an old man—a fortune-teller,—who asked permission to write upon the
tile before it was baked.’ ‘Do you know where he lives?’ asked Shōko
Setsu. ‘He used to live,’ the tilemaker answered, ‘not very far from
here; and I can show you the way to the house. But I do not know his
name.’
“Having been guided to the house, Shōko Setsu presented himself at the
entrance, and asked for permission to speak to the old man. A
serving-student courteously invited him to enter, and ushered him into
an apartment where several young men were at study. As Shōko Setsu took
his seat, all the youths saluted him. Then the one who had first
addressed him bowed and said: ‘We are grieved to inform you that our
master died a few days ago. But we have been waiting for you, because
he predicted that you would come to-day to this house, at this very
hour. Your name is Shōko Setsu. And our master told us to give you a
book which he believed would be of service to you. Here is the
book;—please to accept it.’
“Shōko Setsu was not less delighted than surprised; for the book was a
manuscript of the rarest and most precious kind,—containing all the
secrets of the science of divination. After having thanked the young
men, and properly expressed his regret for the death of their teacher,
he went back to his hut, and there immediately proceeded to test the
worth of the book by consulting its pages in regard to his own fortune.
The book suggested to him that on the south side of his dwelling, at a
particular spot near one corner of the hut, great luck awaited him. He
dug at the place indicated, and found a jar containing gold enough to
make him a very wealthy man.”
My old acquaintance left this world as lonesomely as he had lived in
it. Last winter, while crossing a mountain-range, he was overtaken by a
snowstorm, and lost his way. Many days later he was found standing
erect at the foot of a pine, with his little pack strapped to his
shoulders: a statue of ice—arms folded and eyes closed as in
meditation. Probably, while waiting for the storm to pass, he had
yielded to the drowsiness of cold, and the drift had risen over him as
he slept. Hearing of this strange death I remembered the old Japanese
saying,—_Uranaiya minouyé shiradzu:_ “The fortune-teller knows not his
own fate.”