NARA
In the last week of June, the proprietor of the tea-field beneath our
veranda conducted a second picking of his stumpy little bushes. From
sunrise until dusk rose a chorus of children’s voices beyond the hedge.
The first and best crop having been gathered weeks earlier with the
first fire-flies, this hubbub accompanied only the gleaning after the
harvesters. It was a pretty picture in the foreground of the magnificent
view—these little blue and white figures in huge wash-bowl hats, with
touches of bright red here and there in their costumes. The headman sat
comfortably under a fig-tree, with no clothing to speak of, smoked his
pipe, and watched the youngsters at work. When they toiled up to him
with full baskets, he weighed the load with a rude steelyard and sent
them back, so that some of the tea-pickers were always moving up and
down the paths between the compact rows of bushes, and grouped about the
patriarch under the fig-tree. The leaves were spread in the sun all day
and carried off at night in large sacks and baskets. Walking out through
the woods one day, with two little red-gowned priestesses from the Kasuga
temple, we came upon a tiny village, and there found the same tea-leaves
being toasted in shallow paper-lined baskets over charcoal fires. The
attendants rubbed and tossed the fragrant leaves, that were soon dried
enough to suffice for the home market.
Although secular occupations prosper, and Nara cutlery and ink rank high
in public favor, the temple life of Nara is its real existence. Every day
pilgrims and tourists passed before us in processions whose variety of
people and costumes was endless. Yet in all the weeks the European coat
and trousers only once appeared in those sacred aisles. Every morning
two or more of the little red-robed priestesses came, hand in hand, to
spend an hour or two beside my friend’s easel. The old priests, in their
white gowns and purple skirts, were very courteous and hospitable, and
as our stay lengthened we grew to feel ourselves a part of the sacred
community. The little priestesses carried us to their homes to drink
tea, and the priests brought their friends to watch the methods of the
foreign artist. Among the sightseers and visitors to the Shinto shrines
and their guardians were many Buddhist priests, whose shaved heads and
black or yellow gauze gowns made them conspicuous. The priests of the two
faiths seemed to fraternize and to treat each other with the greatest
consideration. Their speech, as we heard it, was always so formal, so
gentle, and so loaded with honorifics and the set phrases of politeness
that there could never have been any theological controversies. A
few Buddhist nuns, also, made pilgrimage to Kasuga’s ancient groves;
creatures unfeminine and unbeautiful enough in appearance to be saintly
in the extreme. They wear white kimonos under gauze coats, with a skirt
plaited to the edge of them—the same costume that priests wear—and they
shave their heads with the same remorseless zeal. These bald-headed women
give one a strange sensation, for in the absence of their dusky tresses
their eyes appear too prominent, and it is easy to perceive an unnatural,
snaky glitter in them. There are several nunneries near Nara and one in
Kioto, but all the inmates assume the same priests’ dress and shave their
heads, and we inferred that all the six hundred Buddhist nuns in the
empire were equally ugly.
At the edge of the little town of Nara is a large pond, wherein a court
romance of the eighth century declares a lovelorn maiden to have drowned
herself for sake of a fickle Emperor. Above this historic pond stands a
fine old five-story pagoda, and the scattered buildings remaining from
what was once a great Buddhist establishment. This Kobukuji temple dates
back to the year 710, but has been burned and rebuilt again and again.
After the downfall of the Shoguns, who were Buddhists, the restoration
of the Emperor to power made Shinto the established faith. In the zeal
attending the revival of Shinto, Buddhism was almost laid under a ban.
Buddhist priests hid themselves, and Buddhist pictures, statues, and
books were concealed. Moreover, the craze for foreign fashions induced
a contempt for the old temples and pagodas. Two of the buildings of
Kobukuji were torn down and the statues in them destroyed. Ropes were
even placed about the beautiful old pagoda, which would have met the fate
of the Column Vendome had not the saner citizens leagued together to
preserve it. In this calmer day, the Japanese of whatever faith look upon
this ancient pagoda, the old bell, and the venerable buildings of the
Buddhist establishments as the pride of Nara.
The town of Nara is a well-kept little provincial settlement, but with
nothing especially characteristic or interesting in its clean streets.
One goes to see the black gnomes at work, kneading their dough of
rapeseed-oil, soot, and glue, pressing it into moulds, baking it, and
supplying the country with its best writing ink. While the Japanese
india-ink is not equal to the Chinese ink, some of it is very expensive.
It requires a connoisseur to tell why a stick the size of one’s little
finger should cost one or two dollars at the manufacturer’s shop, while a
cake three or four times as large, and apparently of the same substance,
should be only a tenth of that price. The few curio-shops offer almost
nothing to the most diligent searcher, and the town itself makes small
claim upon the average visitors, who come to see the temples and enjoy
the surroundings and the view from the sacred groves on the heights.
In the little row of tea-houses along the brow of Mikasayama, one is
in the midst of Nara’s real life and atmosphere, and in the detached
pavilions and houses scattered through their gardens the visitor is
confronted with the most attractive phases of a Japanese traveller’s
existence. The exquisite simplicity and beauty of these tiny houses,
with their encircling galleries, all the four sides open to the air and
view, the silence of the garden, broken only by the trickling water as
it falls from bamboo pipe to bronze basin or tiny lakelet, render it
an Arcadia. For a small sum one may have one of these tiny houses to
himself, a dainty box for cha no yu, and a doll’s kitchen accompanying
each pavilion. On sunny days the garden is a small paradise, with the
moving figures of guests and attendants always giving a human interest
to the picturesque bits of landscape. On rainy days the pictures are
as many, but done in soberer tones. On those rainy June days, when
there were few smart showers, but a steady, persistent, fine drizzle
that left everything soaked with moisture, the domestics pattered about
our garden from house to house, perched on their high wooden clogs,
with their skirts tucked high above their bare feet, twirling huge
oil-paper umbrellas above their heads. At night they came to close our
amados noisily, and to hang up the mosquito-nets of coarsely-woven
green cotton—nets the size of the room itself, fastened by cords at
the four corners of the ceiling, and exhaling the musty, mildewed
odor that belongs to so many things Japanese, and is so inevitable in
the rainy season. From all the foliage mosquitoes swarmed by myriads,
and a candle-flame attracted winged things that only an entomologist
could name; insects so small and light that one breathed them; gorgeous
golden-green beetles, rivalling their Brazilian congeners; and huge black
stag-horn beetles that dealt one a sharp blow with the force of their
coming. At night, too, the domestic rat asserted itself, and this pest
and disturber of tea-house life ran riot in the empty chamber between
the beautiful wooden ceilings and the real roof. The thin wood acted
as a sounding-board, and their scampering and racing, and the thud of
the pursuing weasels, was an all-night and every-night affair. The
Japanese themselves seem to feel no hostility towards rats and mice,
and at Yaami’s and at Nara the proprietor and staff sit quietly in the
great office and kitchen-room, which are so nearly one, and allow these
followers of Daikoku to scamper over their ledgers, between the groups
on the mats, and to perform feats of racing and balancing on the rafters
overhead.
[Illustration: PRIESTESSES AT NARA]
The flimsiness of our little house, no less than the absurd walls and
gates of the moated demesne, seemed to invite robbery, but in that
Arcadia there were no robbers. The habitation was left alone for hours
with every screen wide open, and countless things in view that might
have tempted curious handling at least, but nothing was disturbed nor
lost. There was no provision for locking the screens of any room, nor for
making the amados proof against any amateur burglar, the need of such a
protection never having been felt—a sufficient commentary on the people.
Nesans, coolies, and small boys were all so individual, so
characteristically Japanese, so untouched by and unused to foreign
influences, that they were an unceasing delight; and so unintentionally
theatrical and picturesque that for day after day we felt ourselves to be
living in a theatre, and Nara’s hill-side to be one vast revolving stage.
We had easily fallen into the serene and peaceful routine of Nara life,
and become so interested in those surrounding us, that there was a real
sadness on our own part when easel, camera, and koris were packed, and
those simple, affectionate people bade us their tearful sayonaras.
It was a rainy morning, and the green rice plain looked greener under
the gray sky as we rode away from Nara. Men and women were working
in the fields, wading knee-deep in the mud and water, stirring the
muck around the young shoots, and tearing up the water-weeds with iron
hooks. No other grain requires as much care as rice, and from the first
transplanting from the seed-bed until the ears of grain are formed, there
is continuous grubbing in the mire of the paddy fields. The legions of
frogs that live in them share their abode with horrible slugs, snails,
blood-suckers, and stingers of many kinds, against whose assaults the
poor farmers wrap their legs knee-high with many thicknesses of cotton
cloth. Following the level plain and skirting instead of surmounting
the bold mountain-spur, all the twenty-six miles from Nara to Osaka ran
through rice fields. Every little square of dyked paddy-field had its
workers. In some the first ploughing was being done; in others the water
was being worked into the soil; and, farther on, men and women, standing
ankle-deep in the muck, were setting out the tiny green shoots. Here and
there laborers were treading water-wheels to pump water from the lower to
the higher levels, or with long sweeps dipping it slowly up from wells.
There are seven great Buddhist monasteries around Nara, all more or
less in decay, but all possessing relics of great historic interest
and value. Several of them show their white walls, like fortresses,
high on the mountain-side, and in them linger the remnants of a once
rich and numerous priesthood—their sacred retreats being so remote and
inaccessible that not half a dozen foreigners have ever visited them.
Horiuji, half-way to Osaka, is the largest of these Nara monasteries, and
its pagoda and Hondo are the oldest wooden buildings in Japan. Both were
completed in the year 607, and both are intact, solid, and firm enough
to endure for twelve centuries more. To students of Buddhism, Horiuji is
a Mecca, on account of its wealth of scriptures, statues, pictures, and
relics, dating from the time when that faith had just been introduced
from China. To art connoisseurs its interest is unique because of its
old Hondo, containing frescos executed by a Korean artist at the time of
its erection, which, with one exception, are the only frescos proper in
Japan, and among the few paintings executed on a surface erect before the
artist. All other paintings in Japan—kakemono, panels of screens, and
sections of ceilings or wall space—are done with the wood, paper, or silk
lying on the floor before the seated artist. These Horiuji frescos are
dim and faded, and only pale wraiths and suggestions of haloed saints,
here a head and there a bit of drapery, can be made out. In recent years
attention has been called to these works. By imperial command an artist
came down from Tokio to copy them; and when the Imperial Art Commission
came from their Nara work to inspect and catalogue the Horiuji treasures,
Ogawa, their photographer, spent two days at work making flash-light
exposures in the dark interior of the Hondo.
Among the sacred relics of Horiuji is the veritable eyeball of Buddha,
the legacy of the holy Shotoku Taisho, the Emperor who founded Horiuji,
and left to it statues of himself, carved by his own hand at different
ages. Shotoku Taisho talked when he was four months old, and a little
later conversed in eight languages all at once. It is therefore easy to
believe that when this prodigy of legend was a year old, and, turning to
the East, with clasped hands repeated the invocation of his sect—“_Namu
Amida Butsu!_” (Hail, or Hear us, Great Buddha!)—he found this precious
relic of Buddha’s body, the eyeball, in his hands. That he knew it to be
an eyeball is not the least part of the miracle, as it looks most like
the tiny, discolored pearl of a common oyster. The eyeball of Buddha
is shown every day at high noon, a special mass being chanted by the
priest while the relic is displayed. For a consideration, and for the
welfare of the temple treasury, the mass may be repeated at any hour. The
celebrant, a very old priest, when called from the monastery, came in
splendid apparel of brocade and gauze, and entering the little temple,
knelt, touched a silver-voiced gong, and prayed before a gilded shrine
with closed doors and a wealth of golden lotus ornaments. Then he slowly
drew forth from an altar recess a large bundle, covered with rich red
and gold brocade and tied with heavy silk cords, laid it reverently on a
low table before the altar, and, with a muttered chant of prayer, untied
and laid back bag after bag of old brocade, each lined with silk of some
contrasting color and tied with thick cords. After the ninth bag was
opened, an upright case, covered with more brocade, appeared, lifting
which, the priest produced a little rock-crystal reliquary, and set it
upon a golden lotus as a pedestal. The reliquary was in the shape of the
conventional Buddhist tomb—a cube, a sphere, and a pyramid, placed one
above the other—and the bits of flawless crystal were held together by
silver wires. In the hollow sphere lay the dingy relic, that rattled like
a pebble when it was turned for one to see it. The holy man never once
paused in his muttered chant from the time he lifted the precious bundle
from the altar until he had replaced the ten silken wrappings and set the
sacred relic back in its niche.
In one of the buildings are queer oven-shaped humps in the floor,
covering secret chambers, where for twelve centuries offerings of gold
have been dropped for the rebuilding of the temples in case of fire.
These hoards cannot be touched except on the occurrence of the calamity
feared, and the priests even resisted the wish of the Imperial Art
Commission to break open the vaults to examine the coins believed to be
there. A Boston art connoisseur, who visited Horiuji a few years ago,
and found its priests poor and its art treasures in need of care and
restoration, started a fund for that purpose, and himself took in charge
the rehabilitation of one precious old screen. Many valuable paintings,
tattered, mouldered, and mildewed almost to extinction, were thereby
rescued. Four other contributors have since subscribed generous amounts
to this fund, all of whom, by strange coincidence, were from Boston.
On a hill back of the main sanctuaries is a most curious octagonal
temple, filled with the votive offerings of those who have been restored
to health, or received other answers to prayer. The outside walls are
half-hidden by the hundreds of six-inch-square boards, upon which are
painted the suffering pilgrims who have been cured, and a ledge is heaped
high with awls, the conventional offering of the deaf whose hearing has
been restored. Locks of hair, short swords, daggers, steel mirrors, and
devices in coins are hung on the doors. The circular altar within the
stone-floored temple, containing many old statues and sacred images, has
its base completely plated with overlapping sword-guards, short swords,
and little steel mirrors. Helmets and bits of armor are everywhere, and
the long shell hair-pins of Japanese women have been offered in such
numbers that, woven together with silk cords into curtains or screens,
they hang like banners before and beside the altars. All around the walls
and over the rafters, as far up into the darkness as one can see, hang
short swords, ranged closely side by side, overlapping mirrors, guards,
bows, arrows, curious weapons and pieces of armor, coins, and hair-pins.
Near this extraordinary place is a nunnery, where a family of holy women
have the shaved heads and disfiguring garments of priests, their altars
and images, their daily service, and the same routine of life in every
way.
Rounding the last spur of hills and crossing a broad river, the road
reaches the great Osaka plain, lying in a broad semicircle between the
mountains and the shores of the Inland Sea. On these vast alluvial flats
rice is still the main crop, and the saké made from it is considered
the best in the empire. All over this emerald plain the farmers could
be seen at work, their wide hats showing like so many big mushrooms
when the wearers, sunk deep in the muck of the paddy fields, bent over
their work. On the prairie-like level of the plain the irrigating system
is simple and ingenious. Everywhere the farmers were plastering up the
little dikes that keep the water within its limit and pattern the plain
with a gigantic check-work of narrow black lines and serve as footwalks
from field to field. No fences or high barriers break the even level,
and those strange contrivances, the primitive Persian water-wheels, may
be seen every few rods. This Persian wheel, with its row of hanging
boxes, is put in motion by a man who climbs it in treadmill fashion, the
boxes scooping up the water from the lower level and discharging their
burden into a trough at the top, whence the stream flows from field to
field by almost imperceptible changes of level. The wheelman wears only
the loin-cloth prescribed by law and a wisp of blue towel knotted about
his head. Occasionally he fastens a big paper umbrella to a long bamboo
pole, and plants it where it will cast a small shadow on him, but usually
he tramps his uncomplaining round in the blaze of the tropical sun, a
solitary and pathetic, but highly picturesque figure, isolated thus on
the vast green plain. More Oriental, even, are the groups at the wells,
shaded by straw mats or umbrellas on long poles, while they work the same
long well-sweeps as the shadoofs of the Nile.
Far off, like an island in this sea of green, rise the castle towers and
the pagoda-tops of Osaka, and for hours we hardly seemed to gain upon the
vision, but the runners, saving themselves for a last effort and taking
a sip of tea in the suburbs, raced down through the streets and over the
bridges at a gait never before equalled.