JAPAN AGAIN—THE SHINTO TRANCES
The trip to Spain was merely an interlude; for, above all, at this time
he felt the attraction of Japan. Returning from Europe in June he spent
the summer in Dedham; but when winter came he started again for the Far
East, this time by way of Europe, where he picked up Ralph Curtis; and
then by the Red Sea to India and Burma, reaching Tokyo about the first
of April, 1891. By far the most interesting part of this visit to Japan
arose from a journey which he took with George Agassiz in July and
August, into the interior of the Island. Agassiz became a most devoted
friend, who followed his studies here, and later in Flagstaff, taking
part in his observations and writing a memorial after his death. Their
object was travel through a part of the mountainous region, ending at
Ontake, a high extinct volcano, one of Japan’s most sacred peaks. But
the holiness of the spot, or the religious pilgrimages thereto, were not
the motive of the visit; nor did they expect to see anything of that
nature with which they were not already familiar.
Leaving Tokyo by train on July 24, they soon reached a point where they
got off and took jinrikishas to descend later to their own feet on a
path that came “out every now and then over a view at spots where
Agassiz said one had to be careful not to step over into the view one’s
self.” For the next three days the lodging was not too comfortable, the
heat terrific and the footpath going over a steep mountain pass.
However, the weather improved; and without serious misadventure they
were, on August 6, ascending Ontake, and not far from the top, when they
saw three young men, clad as pilgrims, begin a devotional ceremony. One
of them seated on a bench before a shrine, went through what looked like
contortions accompanied by a chant, while another, at whom they were
directed, sat bowed on the opposite bench motionless until, beginning to
twitch, he broke into a paroxysm and ended by becoming stiff though
still quivering. Then the first leaned forward, and bowing down, asked
the name of the god that possessed his companion. The other in a strange
voice answered “I am Hakkai.” Whereat the first asked, as of an oracle,
questions that were answered; and after the god had finished speaking,
said a prayer and woke the other from his trance. But this was not the
end, for the same thing was repeated, the three changing places by
rotation until each of them had been petitioner and entranced. On
several more occasions the ceremony was enacted during the next
thirty-six hours, the young men fasting all that time. The whole scene
is more fully described in the opening chapter of Percival’s “Occult
Japan.”
With his temperament and literary ambition he thought at once of writing
about this extraordinary sight, which he connected as a phenomenon with
the fox possession he had already encountered on a lower plane. He
suggested the title “Ontake, a Pilgrimage,” but he soon saw the whole
matter on a larger scale. The cult seemed to be unknown beyond its
votaries, nothing did he find written upon it, the few foreigners who
had scaled the mountain had missed it altogether, although, as he says,
their guides or porters must have been familiar with it. Dr. Sturgis
Bigelow, who was a student and believer in Buddhism, had never heard of
it, which seemed strange, for although a Shinto, not a Buddhist, rite
many people accepted both faiths, and one Buddhist sect practiced
something akin to it. Moreover, its underlying idea of possession by
another spirit appeared to ramify, not only into fox possession, but in
many other directions. On inquiry he found that there was an
establishment of the Ontake cult in Tokyo, and the head of it the
Kwanchō, or primate of that Shinto sect. This man proved very friendly
and gave all the information about its rites, their significance and
underlying philosophy, within his knowledge,—perhaps beyond it,—and
arranged exhibits; all of which Percival carefully recorded in his
notebooks. Every motion made in inducing the trance, every implement
used in the ceremony, had its meaning and its function, which he strove
to learn. Moreover, there were miracles of splashing with boiling water,
walking over hot coals and up ladders with sword blades for rungs;
curing disease; consulting the fox and the raccoon-faced dog, which he
called Japanese table turning; and other less dignified performances
more or less connected with the idea of divine or demonic possession.
Some of these things he was able to witness by séances in his own house,
others by visits to the places where they were performed, often for his
special benefit.
All this took more time than he had expected to spend in Japan, and
delayed his sailing until the autumn was more than half over. Nor was
this enough to complete his researches. In December of the following
year he re-crossed the Pacific, and at Christmas we find him at
Yokohama. Again he hires a house, fits it up in Japanese style but with
occidental furniture; again he was travelling over the land, this time
in search less of scenery than of psychic phenomena and the lore
connected with their celebration. In July he is interviewing a Ryobu
Shinto priest and “eliciting much valuable information.”
For the trances, and the various miracles, a participant must be
prepared by a process of purification, long continued for the former,
always by bathing before the ceremony; and by Percival’s frequent
attendance, and great interest, he attained the repute for a degree of
purity that enabled him to go where others were not admitted. On this
ground he attended what he called the Kwanchō’s Kindergarten, but was
not allowed to bring a friend. The Kwanchō, as the head of the principal
Shinto sect that practised trances, had a class of boys and girls who
went through a preparation therefor by a series of what an unbeliever
might call ecstatic acrobatic feats, lasting a long time before they
were fitted for subjects of divine possession. He visited everything
relating to the mysteries that he could find, procured from the Kwanchō
an introduction that enabled him to see the interior grounds of the
great shrines of Ise, from which even the pilgrims were excluded, and to
see there a building whereof he learned the history and meaning that the
very guardian priests did not understand. At trances he was allowed to
examine the possessed, take their pulse, and even to stick pins into
them to test their sensibility, sometimes in a way that they were far
from not feeling afterwards. In short he was enabled as no one had ever
been before, to make a very thorough examination of the phenomena with
the object of discovering and revealing their significance; for he was
convinced that they were perfectly genuine, without a tinge of fraud,
and allied to the hypnotism then at the height of its vogue. In March,
1893 he gave the first of a series of papers on Esoteric Shintoism
before the Asiatic Society of Japan. These he worked up after his return
to America in the autumn, and published in 1895 with the title “Occult
Japan or the Way of the Gods.”
A casual reader might be misled by occasional cleverness of expression
into thinking the book less serious than it is. Perhaps that accounts in
part for Lafcadio Hearn’s calling it supercilious. Percival himself
says, in the first paragraph of the chapter on Miracles: “It is quite
possible to see the comic side of things without losing sight of their
serious aspect. In fact, not to see both sides is to get but a
superficial view of life, missing its substance. So much for the people.
As for the priests, it is only necessary to say that few are more
essentially sincere and lovable than the Shintō ones; and few religions
in a sense more true. With this preface for life-preserver I plunge
boldly into the miracles.” In fact, expressions that appear less serious
than the subject merits are few, and the descriptions, of the trances
for example, are almost strangely appreciative, and for a scientific
study keenly sympathetic and beautiful.
The book opens with an account of the trances of the three young men on
Mount Ontake, for that sight was the source of all these researches. He
next lays a foundation for the study of the subject by a short history
of the Japanese religions; how Shinto, the old cult, with its myriad
divinities and simple rites, was for a time overshadowed by Buddhism, to
be restored with the power of the Mikado; and how with its revival the
popularity of the trances returned. They had been kept alive by a single
Buddhist sect which had adopted them, but now they are even more widely
practised by two out of the ten Shinto sects, their sacred site being
Ontake. But before taking up the trances he describes the lesser, and
better known, cases of miraculous intervention for protection from
injury and for sanctification; notably, being sprinkled with boiling
water, walking over a bed of hot coals, and up and down a ladder of
sword blades; and he discusses why no injury occurs. The walking over
hot coals, at least, was even performed in his own garden; and, although
he does not say so in the book, he did it himself, without, however,
complete immunity to the soles of his feet.
After telling of what he terms objective, as distinguished from
subjective, miracles, such as bringing down fire from heaven; and saying
something of miraculous healing of disease, he comes to the main subject
of the book, the incarnations or trances. First he speaks of the
preparation for them, washing and fasting which are arduous and long,
the purification of persons and places, and a series of ceremonies
which, he says, tend to promote vacuity of mind. All these things are
absolutely sincere, for he declares that the first view of a trance
dispels any idea of sham. He then describes three typical trances: first
Ryobu, a Shinto-Buddhist sect, where one of the men possessed, on coming
back to himself, was disappointed that he had not spoken English, which
he did not know himself; for to his mind it was not he that spoke but
the god who entered into him. The second example was a Buddhist trance
with the full complement of eight persons filling their several offices
in the ceremony. This description is especially striking and
sympathetic. The third case is of a pure Shinto trance, much the same,
but with the simpler ceremonial of that cult. He describes also the
Kwanchō’s training school, which has already been referred to as the
Kindergarten. He notes the pulse, insensibility, the other physical
conditions and sensations of the possessed, the sex and number of the
gods who enter him, for the exorcist has no power to invoke the spirit
he would prefer, but simply calls for a god, and when one comes inquires
who it is. It may be a god or a goddess, and several of them may come in
succession. The main object of the proceeding being to obtain counsel or
prophecy, the exorcist, and he alone, can ask questions of him, but he
can do so on behalf of anyone else, and often did so for Percival about
his own affairs, although the prophecies appear never to have turned out
right.
A chapter is devoted to pilgrimages and the pilgrim clubs, which
included in the aggregate vast numbers of people, only a minute part of
whom, however, belonged to the trance sects. They subscribed small sums
to be used to send each year a few of their members to the shrine or
sacred mountain with which the club is associated; this feature of the
religious organization being as important from a social as a religious
point of view. Another chapter is given to the Gohei, or sacred cluster
of paper strips, used for all spiritual purposes, and essential in
calling down any god; an emblem which he compares with the crucifix,
while pointing out the difference in their use. This first part of the
book ends with an argument, apparently to one who knows nothing about
the matter conclusive, that the whole subject of these trances is of
Shinto not Buddhist origin; and in this connection he tells of his visit
to the shrines of Ise where a temple was built to the sun-goddess when
she possessed people, as she has long ceased to do at these shrines.
So far the book is scientific; that is, it consists of a description and
analysis of phenomena repeatedly observed and carefully tested. The
second part, which he calls Noumena, is an explanation of them on
general psychological principles, and thus belongs rather to philosophy
than science. It comprises discussions of the essence of self, of the
freedom of the will, of the motive forces of ideas, of individuality, of
dreams, hypnotism and trances. In these matters he was much influenced
by the recently published “Psychology” of William James, which he had
with him, and he draws comparisons with hypnotism, a more prominent
subject then than it is now. Bearing in mind his dominant thought about
the essential quality of the Japanese, it is not unnatural that he
should find in the greater frequency of such phenomena among them than
elsewhere a confirmation of his theory of their comparative lack of
personality.
Perhaps his own estimate of the relative value of the two parts of the
book and that of critics might not agree; but, however that may be, the
second part is penetrating, and the work as a whole a remarkable study
of a subject up to that time practically wholly concealed from the many
observers of Japanese life and customs. It was, in fact, his farewell to
Japan, for, leaving in the fall of 1893, he never again visited that
land. Ten years its people had been his chief intellectual interest, but
perhaps he thought he had exhausted the vein in which he had been at
work, or another interest may have dislodged it. He has left no
statement of why he gave up Japan for astronomy, but probably there is
truth in both of these conjectures.
Talking later to George Agassiz, Percival attributed the change to the
fact that Schiaparelli, who had first observed the fine lines on the
planet Mars which he called “canali,” found that his failing eyesight
prevented his pursuing his observations farther, and that he had
determined to carry them on. That may well have directed his attention
to the particular planet; but the interest in astronomy lay far deeper,
extending back to the little telescope of boyhood on the roof of his
father’s house at Brookline. We have seen that his Commencement Part at
graduation was on the nebular hypothesis, and he never lost his early
love of such things. In July, 1891, he writes to his brother-in-law,
William L. Putnam, about a project for writing on what he calls the
philosophy of the cosmos, with illustrations from celestial mechanics.
That was just before he went to Ontake and there became involved in the
study of trances, “which,” as he says in his next letter to the same,
“adds another to my budget of literary eventualities.” In fact, the
trances occupied most of his time for the next two years, without
banishing the thought of later taking up other things, or effacing the
lure of astronomy, for in 1892 he took with him to Japan a six-inch
telescope, no small encumbrance unless really desired, and he writes of
observing Saturn therewith. Whatever may have been the reason, it seems
probable from the rapidity with which he threw himself into astronomy
and into its planetary branch, that at least he had something of the
kind in his mind before he returned from Japan in the autumn of 1893.