No American scholar is better fitted than the Rev. Dr. William Elliot
Griffis to speak of Japanese manners and customs, and of the religions
and modes of thought of the people of Japan. After an extended residence
in that country in connection with the Imperial University of Tokio, he
has studied and written of it and of its inhabitants. “The Mikado’s
Empire,” “The Religions of Japan,” “Japan in History, Folk Lore, and
Art,” are among the best known and most valuable of his works in that
field. Of “The Threshold Covenant” he says heartily, after an
examination of its pages:
“Your general theory is abundantly confirmed in the early life and
customs of Chinese Asia, and especially in the history of early Japan. I
should, of course, be glad to call together a council of native Japanese
friends, and some of my returned countrymen, and talk over your book,
but this is impossible at present, and press of many duties prevents me
from doing justice to the work, as I should like to do. Such
observations as I may throw out, though imperfect, will, I trust, be
suggestive. I have read the book twice, and consider it a work of the
first order of value.
“In mediæval and modern Japan, it must be remembered, many of the
ancient customs and primitive native ideas have been not only changed,
but obliterated, by Buddhism, which, by its excessive reverence for
life, put an end to those customs which had in them the shedding of
blood, or the taking of life. In ancient days it was the pretty nearly
universal custom to build human beings alive in the walls of castles or
strongholds, and the piers or foundations of bridges. Many are the
places rich in traditions of the _hito-gashira_, or human pillars, who
were lowered into the sea to be drowned (to appease the dragon, etc.),
or made, as it were, cement for the foundation-stone,–to which I have
alluded in my ‘Religions of Japan.’
“What may be called the ‘gate etiquette’ in Japan is elaborate and
detailed. More than once have the foreign teachers, denizens, and
tourists, had quarrels with the Japanese school, municipal, and national
authorities, because they unwittingly often violated ancient Japanese
traditions and customs. I myself remember how the _mom-ban_, or
gate-keeper, used to refuse admittance to my _jin-riki-sha_ because I
had sitting with me a Japanese student or lad, who could not, in native
ideas of propriety, share with me (a guest) the honor of riding inside
the chief gate of mansion or college. Concerning troubles with native
servants and others, who were inclined to shelter themselves under the
foreigners’ prestige and privilege, I need not speak in detail. The term
‘Mikado,’ as you may know, is literally Sublime Porte, Awful Gate, or
Portal of Majesty. I believe there is profound significance in the idea
of having the gateway to a Buddhist temple a structure which is in many
cases almost as imposing as the sacred edifice itself. Each Shintō
shrine has before it, at some distance, a _tori-i_; and every little
wayside shrine, in size from a doll-house to a one-room cottage, has
almost invariably a little _tori-i_, or gateway, before it.
“The most elaborate ceremonies and gradations of honor are connected
with the threshold of the Imperial Palace, and for a thousand years or
more were rigorously observed in Kioto, and doubtless to great extent
are yet in the new palace in Tokio.
“In a Japanese marriage, when conducted on the old order of ceremonies,
the origin of which goes back into primeval twilight, the bride goes
from her own home always to be married in her husband’s home and to
become a part of it. As she approaches her new home, fires are lighted
on either side of the threshold or door of entrance of the bridegroom’s
house. The name of these fires is ‘garden torches.’ As she proceeds up
the corridor, inside the house, two pairs of men and women, one on each
side, have mortars in which they pound rice. As the palanquin passes,
the two mortars are moved together, and the meal from the two is mixed
so as to become one mess. During the same time two candles have been
lighted on either side of the passage way, and after the passing of the
palanquin, the two flames are first joined in one and then blown out. Of
course, these ceremonies are _now_ used only among the higher classes.
“In all the Buddhist temples beside the great gateway and the ordinary
temple entrance there is a distinctly marked sill, behind which is the
altar, and over which the worshiper must not come.
“I am very much inclined to believe that there is a significance which
allies itself to ‘The Threshold Covenant’ in the _ye-bumi_ or ‘trampling
on the cross,’ observed during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and
nineteenth centuries in Japan in order to eradicate all traces of
Christianity. The pagan authorities made a copper engraving of the
crucifix, and putting it on the ground, between a structure that was
evidently meant for the doorway with a threshold under it, they
compelled every one–man, woman, and child–to step upon the figure of
Christ and the cross in token of their rejection of everything belonging
to Christianity.
“In ancient Japan, and all through her history, great care was taken
with boundaries and boundary marks, the latter being sometimes masses of
charcoal buried in the earth, or inscribed pillars, the bases of which
were charred. Mr. Ernest Satow, the first authority on things Japanese,
believes that these boundary pillars, which, in some cases (as in Corea
today), were carved to represent certain gods, afterwards became phallic
emblems. Before most of the Buddhist temples of importance are to be
found the two guardian deities Ni-ō (two kings), and before many
thousands of shrines of both Shintō and Buddhism is the _ama-inu_
(heavenly dogs), which are the guardians of the entrance to the temple.
“Time would fail me to tell of the various fetiches placed over and
beside the doorways and gates. Beside the very elaborate New Year’s
symbolism signifying prosperity, longevity, congratulations, etc., there
is always, on the last night of the year, a sort of ‘purging out of the
old leaven,’ cleaning up of the house, and exorcism, by means of beans
as projectiles, of all evil and evil spirits. Then bunches of thorny
leaves, like holly, are affixed outside on the door lintel. Over the
doorway of almost every house of country folk and many of the
townspeople, one can see the wooden charms nailed up. These are bought
in the temples of the priests as well as the packages of sacred paper
with Sanskrit letters or monograms for the better class of houses.
“Besides the red cord with which almost every present in Japan is tied,
the stamp of the red hand on or at the side of the door, either on the
wood itself or on a sheet of paper, nailed up beside the door, is very
common at particular times.
“The Mecca of Japanese Shintō is at Isé, where the temples have had from
time immemorial ‘only one foundation.’ The buildings are renewed every
twenty years on the same spot. For many centuries it has been the custom
to rebuild Buddhist temples on the same foundation when destroyed by
fire, or when ‘captured’ from Shintoist to Buddhist ownership....
“Let me call your attention to the idea underlying the political and
religious covenant of the great Iroquois Confederacy–the most remarkable
political structure of North American Indian life. The five tribes
(later a sixth was added) called their dwelling-place in New York,
between Niagara and the Hudson ‘the Long House’ after the typical
Iroquois dwelling in which lived many families. Few Iroquois lived east
of Schenectady, though they went to fish in the Hudson River, which they
then named (a) ‘Schenectady.’ Schenectady (which in the Indian
conception was the region in their extreme east) means, when analyzed,
‘just outside the threshold,’ or ‘without the door.’ While Onondaga was
the central fore-place of the Confederacy, the site of Schenectady had
special sacredness in the minds of the Iroquois, and the Mohawks, who
occupied this portion of the country, were called ‘the guardians of the
threshold.’
“Van Curler (Arendt Van Curler), one of the real ‘makers of America,’
who knew the Indians so well, and who made that great covenant with them
which kept the Iroquois, despite all French intrigue, bribery, and
opposition, faithful (for two centuries, till the Revolution divided
even the white men), first to the Dutch, then to the English, knew this
Indian reverence for the threshold, and took a just advantage of it. The
fact that ‘The Covenant of Corlear’ was made on the threshold of their
Long House gave it such sacredness in the eyes of the Indians that it
was _never broken_. In all their later oratory, for two centuries they
referred to this covenant. Besides calling the governors of New York
‘Corlear’ (the only instance, as Francis Parkman once wrote me, in which
the Indians applied a _personal_ name instead of making use of a
material object, figuratively, to a governor,–‘fish,’ ‘pen,’ ‘big
mountain,’ etc.), the Mohawks of Canada to this day, as I heard them
speak it after personal inquiry, call Queen Victoria ‘Kora Kowa,’ that
is, ‘the great Corlear’ (Van Curler).”