XV

The monastery and temple to which my self-appointed host was attached

did not differ greatly in appearance from any large and high-class

Japanese dwelling, dull and time-worn without, to be sure, but spacious,

pleasing, and comfortable within. Word of the unexpected “distinguished

guest” had evidently gone ahead, for as we turned into the grassless

courtyard six or seven members of this particular group—in other words,

half of it—lined up along the groove of the open sliding wall to bow me

welcome. One of them wore the modern hair-cut and ordinary kimono of the

Japanese layman, and was, as his appearance suggested, no priest or

priest-to-be, but a temporal business manager—“bookkeeper,” my guide,

with his limited English vocabulary, called him—such as attends to the

worldly affairs of each temple. Besides him there were a dozen inmates,

ranging from the head bonze, whose rank made him invisible to casual

visitors, down to my cicerone, latest and therefore lowest in rank of

the several youthful novices. When he had exchanged our shoes for

slippers, these in turn to be abandoned in the polished wooden hallways

at the entrance to the mat-carpeted rooms, and had washed from bamboo

dippers at a sort of sanctified water-trough filled with glass-clear

water from a spring up the hillside, the group from Osaka, three women

among them, and I were shown to cushions in a matted room. The paper

walls of this were decorated with painted bamboo branches, peacocks, and

various species of birds that were no mean examples of the best Japanese

art. Later on, when the other guests had departed, I was assigned to an

adjoining suite of two rooms such as no Japanese inn I have ever

inhabited can boast, and distinctly superior in decoration, size, and

specklessness to the quarters reserved for the royal family in another

monastery, which I was shown later in the day.

[Illustration: Descending, satisfied pilgrims sometimes suggest the

knights of ancient days]

In short, there was nothing about the establishment, except the

close-cropped heads, black robe-like kimonos, and rosaries of the

inmates, to distinguish it from a sumptuous private residence accustomed

to receive frequent guests. The three women, with that indifference to

public exposure characteristic of the Japanese, changed from their

road-worn kimonos to more decorative ones from their bags, merely

turning their backs on us during the process. Boys as wooden-faced as

the serving-lads of any layman inn, and hired in the same way for the

same purpose, brought us the noonday meal with all the requisite

kneeling and bowing of such service. I know not how often Caucasian

visitors come to Koya-san, except that I saw no other foreigners than a

group of Koreans during my whole pilgrimage, but certainly I was the

sight of the town, with inmates of other monasteries constantly calling

on one pretext or another to see this queer fellow and hear his

giggle-producing speech. But there were evidences, too, of real culture,

and certainly hints of European influence had crept in at some time, for

though all the novices escorted me to the bath-room, they did not come

inside to help me into the big square wooden tub of scalding water, or

to pour it over me with the little wooden buckets scattered about the

flooded floor. In fact, they even permitted me, almost without argument,

to bathe before, instead of immediately after, the evening meal, sure

proof of something un-Japanese.

[Illustration: Beggars along the ascent to Koya-san have all sorts of

schemes to attract attention and charity]

But I am getting ahead of the story. Koya-san is strictly vegetarian in

diet, as befits true Buddhists, though visitors often surreptitiously

break this rule by fishing in their knapsacks. I felt no such

inclination, however, by the time we had finished an excellent Japanese

luncheon. Long experience had evidently taught the monks how to live

well in spite of the injunction not to kill any living creature. While

we—ladies and all, of course, though not the inmates—were topping off

the meal with ephemeral native cigarettes, I noticed the men from Osaka

were conferring in undertones with the temple “bookkeeper” and slipping

into his hands a considerable sum of money. Not wishing to shirk my

share, I called one of them aside and asked if this were a “donation” to

cover the meal. No, it was merely for the purchase of a brace of prayers

for their dead fathers and mothers; any donations to the temple in

return for its hospitality could be made when I left. For a moment there

seemed something strangely incongruous in this buying of priestly

mummeries by doctors, lawyers, and merchants from a great city smudged

by belching factory chimneys, some of whom read, and to a limited degree

spoke, English. But do not millions of our own fellow-countrymen also

purchase priestly prayers for their dead fathers and mothers?

I am writing no guide-book; hence I shall not tell in detail of the

great monasteries, temples, “ancestral” and “golden” halls, and what not

that I visited during the afternoon under the guidance of another

“bookkeeper,” eager to improve his scanty and halting English. What

stands out most clearly in memory is the taking of tea in plain but

priceless Satsuma ware with the urbane head priests of several

monasteries, and the private view of a large, newly constructed, yet

strictly old-Buddhist building filled with the chief treasures of all

the temples on the mountain-top,—tapestries, paintings, illuminated

texts, statues, carvings by the famous Unkei, a whole résumé of the

heyday of Japanese art. Then there was the long stroll through the great

cemetery, more than a mile beneath towering _hinoki_ and massive

evergreens of venerable age, in the shaded stillness of which are the

myriad tombs, stone monuments of every size and age, blackened by time

and in some cases decrepit with neglect, of the great men of bygone

Japan,—mikados, _shoguns_, _daimyos_, _samurai_, monks, priests, and

famous heroes. Not that they are all buried here, but it was, and is,

the custom even of the strictest Shintoists among them to provide for a

monument, with perhaps a lock of hair or one of their stray ribs under

it, in the most sanctified Buddhist spot in the island empire.

There is no gain in running the risk of choosing wrong between two rival

faiths; besides, who can say where Shintoism leaves off and Buddhism

begins in Japanese mysticism? Perhaps the intermingling may be best

expressed in the words of one of my traveled friends of Nippon, that

“all Japanese _must_ be Shintoists”—for what is Shintoism, after all,

but an almost chauvinistic patriotism?—but that “there is no reason in

the world why they shall not be Buddhists also, or Christians, or even

Christian Scientists for that matter.” If Christianity can overlook a

certain amount of ancestor-worship among its disciples, as at least one

branch of it seems able to do in the Orient, the statement is hardly an

exaggeration. There is certainly no lack of the outward manifestations

of their religion, be it single or multiple, among the Japanese, yet one

looks almost in vain for any indication of what is referred to in the

West as the “spiritual life.”

The garden variety of Japanese mankind follows the lead of their haughty

nobles and rulers, and those of the rank and file who can do so inter

some portion of themselves in the mammoth cemetery of Koya-san. Behind

the “Hall of Ten Thousand Lamps” at the end of the long, funereal, yet

peaceful avenue is the “Innermost Temple,” containing the remains of

Kobo-Daishi, the China-trained monk who founded this great sanctuary

some eleven hundred years ago, and beside it is the _Kotsu-do_, or “Hall

of Bones.” Through the slatted door of this paper-prayer plastered and

gruesome circular edifice is tossed a bone or a wisp of hair of those

who have not attained the dignity of a monument, or even of a grave, on

the sacred mountain-top, yet who wish to improve their chances in the

next existence by lying, even in part, beside the holy founder of

Koya-san.

The great painting of a hell worthy of the imagination of the most

savage of medieval Christians, with devils gleefully forking naked

sinning souls into the bottomless brimstone pit, and all the rest of the

ridiculous Dante-esque details, which decorates the wall of one of the

smaller temples particularly popular with the rank and file, need not

have caused any great surprise had I recalled how even widely separated

religions are prone to steal their most effective thunder from one

another. What was really more incongruous was to come upon a score of

the younger monks and novices, stripped to slight garb that displayed

their athletic forms to advantage, finishing off their day of university

curriculum on the monasterial tennis-court. In fact, it transpired, the

most modest and retiring of the young recluses in “our” temple was the

tennis champion of all Koya-san. As I may have remarked before, there is

no one like the Japanese to mix casually the old and the new, the

prehistoric with the latest thing of the day.

[Illustration: Three Buddhist novices and a temple “bookkeeper,” my

guides, philosophers and friends during my stay there, bid me farewell

to Koya-san]

[Illustration: Pilgrims descending from a train on their return from

Koya-san]

[Illustration: Dotombori, the theater and “moire” street of Osaka]

[Illustration: Osaka Castle is perhaps the most impressive in Japan]

One would scarcely have recognized these tennis-players, or the rather

diffident youths who squatted about their foreign visitor all that

evening, in the gorgeously attired and self-confident monks and novices

who performed the impressive Buddhist service early next morning. I had

asked permission to attend this, even though it meant being called at

five. It was nearer six when all was ready, and in the meantime I was

graciously granted an audience by the chief bonze of our temple. This

yielded little beyond the giving and taking of politenesses through an

interpreter, and the fact that the chief himself set the rest of the

monastery a bad example in the matter of shaving. I was reminded that of

all the miscellaneous information pumped out of me by the more youthful

of my hosts during my stay what seemed to create the greatest wonder was

the assertion that I, and millions of my fellow-countrymen like me, made

it a practice to shave every day. Had a similar custom prevailed within

the monastery, the faces of the solemn dozen who gathered at length

about the altar in a dimly lighted interior room would have seemed less

out of keeping with their rich and florid robes and their apocalyptical

occupation.

The service lasted for an hour, but as I have no gift for proselyting I

shall make no attempt to explain its inner mysticism. The “bookkeeper,”

who knelt between me and the three other pilgrims who made up the

congregation, mentioned that it was dedicated to the ancestors of all

those present, and through them, I suppose, back to the Kami, the

original gods of the Japanese people. For the first half-hour the dozen

robe-wearers sat motionless on their feet about the four sides of the

barbarically intricate and richly glittering altar, incessantly chanting

responses to the singsong intonations of the head priest, occupying the

central position. The author of these quatrains evidently had not

strained his sinews of originality, for most of them consisted of the

endless repetition of the same few meaningless words. Lest I yield

unwittingly to the soporific effect of this incessant droning, I took to

studying the countless details of the altar. My ecclesiastical learning

is limited, however, and I could find no meaning in, nor even English

words for, any of them, except half a dozen chickens cut out of paper.

What in the name of religion have chickens to do with one’s ancestors?

Reminders of their favorite dish, or their calling, or perhaps their

chief vice, or....

But the dozen gorgeous figures, weary at last perhaps, even though they

were Japanese, of sitting on their feet, rose and took to parading

entirely around the altar. Their stockinged feet made not a sound on the

soft matting, but their chanting never for a moment hesitated, while the

ringing of bells and the striking of cymbals steadily increased, and

more incense clouded the already dimly seen room. The youths, who had

shown a tendency to giggle at the sound of English, or even less

provocation, the day before, refused now to catch a hint of my amusement

at their antics, and continued their march with the solemnity of ancient

stone images. Now and again one or the other of them became for a brief

space the soloist, while the rest of the group chanted the responses.

Toward the end of the ceremony the names of the three Japanese pilgrims

squatting beside me were chanted out one after the other, and they rose

one by one to sprinkle a pinch of incense into a smoldering bowl, and to

receive a package of tissue-paper prayers or indulgences. They were

doing this, whispered my cicerone, in honor of their own individual

ancestors.

Perhaps it is not a bad idea after all, this ancestor-worship, at least

in Japan, where the bygone are cremated instead of robbing the living of

badly needed acreage. Most of us owe the old fellows something, and at

least such ceremonies serve to keep them in mind. Running back through

as much of my own as was awake, I was startled to find that I could only

remember, or at least vizualize into a real being, a single one of my

own departed forebears—since female ancestors count for nothing whatever

in the Orient—and while I felt sure that the old gentleman would keenly

have enjoyed the incense of a good Habana cigar, I could not see

what....

But about that moment, fortunately, the service came to an abrupt end,

and a much more important one, contained in lacquered cups and

rice-bowls, was announced. An hour later the “bookkeeper” pocketed my

donation in so unworldly a spirit as not even to count it, while the

younger of my hosts donned their every-day black robes preparatory to

seeing me off on my journey to the world below.