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In various countries of which the peoples appear strange to us, by
reason of beliefs, ideas, customs, and arts having nothing in common
with our own, there can be found something in the nature of the
land--something in its flora or fauna--characterized by a corresponding
strangeness. Probably the relative queerness of the exotic nature in
such regions helped more or less to develop the apparent oddity of the
exotic mind. National differences of thought or feeling should not be
less evolutionally interpretable than the forms of vegetables or of
insects; and, in the mental evolution of a people, the influence of
environment upon imagination must be counted as a factor....
*
These reflections were induced by a box of crabs sent me from the
Province of Chōshū,--crabs possessing that very same quality of
grotesqueness which we are accustomed to think of as being peculiarly
Japanese. On the backs of these creatures there are bossings and
depressions that curiously simulate the shape of a human face,--a
distorted face,--a face modelled in relief as a Japanese craftsman
might have modelled it in some moment of artistic whim.
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Two varieties of such crabs--nicely dried and polished--are constantly
exposed for sale in the shops of Akamagaséki (better known to
foreigners by the name of Shimonoséki). They are caught along the
neighbouring stretch of coast called Dan-no-Ura, where the great
clan of the Heiké, or Taira, were exterminated in a naval battle,
seven centuries ago, by the rival clan of Genji, or Minamoto. Readers
of Japanese history will remember the story of the Imperial Nun,
Nii-no-Ama, who in the hour of that awful tragedy composed a poem, and
then leaped into the sea, with the child-emperor Antoku in her arms.
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Now the grotesque crabs of this coast are called Heiké-gani, or
"Heiké-crabs," because of a legend that the spirits of the drowned and
slaughtered warriors of the Heiké-clan assumed such shapes; and it is
said that the fury or the agony of the death-struggle can still be
discerned in the faces upon the backs of the crabs. But to feel the
romance of this legend you should be familiar with old pictures of the
fight of Dan-no-Ura,--old coloured prints of the armoured combatants,
with their grim battle-masks of iron and their great fierce eyes.
The smaller variety of crab is known simply as a
"Heiké-crab,"--Heiké-gani. Each Heiké-gani is supposed to be animated
by the spirit of a common Heiké warrior only,--an ordinary samurai. But
the larger kind of crab is also termed Taishō-gani ("Chieftain-crab"),
or Tatsugashira ("Dragon-helmet"); and all Taishō-gani or Tatsugashira
are thought to be animated by ghosts of those great Heiké captains
who bore upon their helmets monsters unknown to Western heraldry, and
glittering horns, and dragons of gold.
I got a Japanese friend to draw for me the two pictures of Heiké-gani
herewith reproduced; and I can vouch for their accuracy. But I told
him that I could not see anything resembling a helmet, either in his
drawing of the Tatsugashira, nor in the original figure upon the back
of the crab.
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"Can you see it?" I asked. "Why, yes,--somewhat like this," he
answered, making the following sketch:--
"Well, I can make out part of the head-gear," I said;--"but that
outline of yours is not according to facts,--and that face is vapid as
the face of the Moon. Look at the nightmare on the back of the real
crab!..."
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