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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of In Ghostly Japan, by Lafcadio Hearn
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: In Ghostly Japan
+
+Author: Lafcadio Hearn
+
+Release Date: June 16, 2003 [eBook #8128]
+[Most recently updated: February 3, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Liz Warren
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN GHOSTLY JAPAN ***
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+In Ghostly Japan
+
+by Lafcadio Hearn
+
+
+Contents
+
+ FRAGMENT
+ FURISODÉ
+ INCENSE
+ A STORY OF DIVINATION
+ SILKWORMS
+ A PASSIONAL KARMA
+ FOOTPRINTS OF THE BUDDHA
+ ULULATION
+ BITS OF POETRY
+ JAPANESE BUDDHIST PROVERBS
+ SUGGESTION
+ INGWA-BANASHI
+ STORY OF A TENGU
+ AT YAIDZU
+
+List of Illustrations
+
+ The Mountain of Skulls
+ The Magical Incense
+ The Peony Lantern
+ The Lights of the Dead
+ S’rîpâda-tracing at Dentsu-In, Koishikawa, Tōkyō
+ Shō-Ekō-Hō-Kwan
+ Square and Triangle
+ Jizō
+ Emma Dai-ō
+
+[Illustration: The Mountain of Skulls]
+
+
+
+
+Fragment
+
+
+And it was at the hour of sunset that they came to the foot of the
+mountain. There was in that place no sign of life,—neither token of
+water, nor trace of plant, nor shadow of flying bird,—nothing but
+desolation rising to desolation. And the summit was lost in heaven.
+
+Then the Bodhisattva said to his young companion:—“What you have asked
+to see will be shown to you. But the place of the Vision is far; and
+the way is rude. Follow after me, and do not fear: strength will be
+given you.”
+
+Twilight gloomed about them as they climbed. There was no beaten path,
+nor any mark of former human visitation; and the way was over an
+endless heaping of tumbled fragments that rolled or turned beneath the
+foot. Sometimes a mass dislodged would clatter down with hollow
+echoings;—sometimes the substance trodden would burst like an empty
+shell….Stars pointed and thrilled; and the darkness deepened.
+
+“Do not fear, my son,” said the Bodhisattva, guiding: “danger there is
+none, though the way be grim.”
+
+Under the stars they climbed,—fast, fast,—mounting by help of power
+superhuman. High zones of mist they passed; and they saw below them,
+ever widening as they climbed, a soundless flood of cloud, like the
+tide of a milky sea.
+
+Hour after hour they climbed;—and forms invisible yielded to their
+tread with dull soft crashings;—and faint cold fires lighted and died
+at every breaking.
+
+And once the pilgrim-youth laid hand on a something smooth that was not
+stone,—and lifted it,—and dimly saw the cheekless gibe of death.
+
+“Linger not thus, my son!” urged the voice of the teacher;—“the summit
+that we must gain is very far away!”
+
+On through the dark they climbed,—and felt continually beneath them the
+soft strange breakings,—and saw the icy fires worm and die,—till the
+rim of the night turned grey, and the stars began to fail, and the east
+began to bloom.
+
+Yet still they climbed,—fast, fast,—mounting by help of power
+superhuman. About them now was frigidness of death,—and silence
+tremendous….A gold flame kindled in the east.
+
+Then first to the pilgrim’s gaze the steeps revealed their
+nakedness;—and a trembling seized him,—and a ghastly fear. For there
+was not any ground,—neither beneath him nor about him nor above
+him,—but a heaping only, monstrous and measureless, of skulls and
+fragments of skulls and dust of bone,—with a shimmer of shed teeth
+strown through the drift of it, like the shimmer of scrags of shell in
+the wrack of a tide.
+
+“Do not fear, my son!” cried the voice of the Bodhisattva;—“only the
+strong of heart can win to the place of the Vision!”
+
+Behind them the world had vanished. Nothing remained but the clouds
+beneath, and the sky above, and the heaping of skulls
+between,—up-slanting out of sight.
+
+Then the sun climbed with the climbers; and there was no warmth in the
+light of him, but coldness sharp as a sword. And the horror of
+stupendous height, and the nightmare of stupendous depth, and the
+terror of silence, ever grew and grew, and weighed upon the pilgrim,
+and held his feet,—so that suddenly all power departed from him, and he
+moaned like a sleeper in dreams.
+
+“Hasten, hasten, my son!” cried the Bodhisattva: “the day is brief, and
+the summit is very far away.”
+
+But the pilgrim shrieked,—“I fear! I fear unspeakably!—and the power
+has departed from me!”
+
+“The power will return, my son,” made answer the Bodhisattva…. “Look
+now below you and above you and about you, and tell me what you see.”
+
+“I cannot,” cried the pilgrim, trembling and clinging; “I dare not look
+beneath! Before me and about me there is nothing but skulls of men.”
+
+“And yet, my son,” said the Bodhisattva, laughing softly,—“and yet you
+do not know of what this mountain is made.”
+
+The other, shuddering, repeated:—“I fear!—unutterably I fear!…there is
+nothing but skulls of men!”
+
+“A mountain of skulls it is,” responded the Bodhisattva. “But know, my
+son, that all of them ARE YOUR OWN! Each has at some time been the nest
+of your dreams and delusions and desires. Not even one of them is the
+skull of any other being. All,—all without exception,—have been yours,
+in the billions of your former lives.”
+
+
+
+
+Furisodé
+
+
+Recently, while passing through a little street tenanted chiefly by
+dealers in old wares, I noticed a _furisodé_, or long-sleeved robe, of
+the rich purple tint called _murasaki_, hanging before one of the
+shops. It was a robe such as might have been worn by a lady of rank in
+the time of the Tokugawa. I stopped to look at the five crests upon it;
+and in the same moment there came to my recollection this legend of a
+similar robe said to have once caused the destruction of Yedo.
+
+Nearly two hundred and fifty years ago, the daughter of a rich merchant
+of the city of the Shōguns, while attending some temple-festival,
+perceived in the crowd a young samurai of remarkable beauty, and
+immediately fell in love with him. Unhappily for her, he disappeared in
+the press before she could learn through her attendants who he was or
+whence he had come. But his image remained vivid in her memory,—even to
+the least detail of his costume. The holiday attire then worn by
+samurai youths was scarcely less brilliant than that of young girls;
+and the upper dress of this handsome stranger had seemed wonderfully
+beautiful to the enamoured maiden. She fancied that by wearing a robe
+of like quality and color, bearing the same crest, she might be able to
+attract his notice on some future occasion.
+
+Accordingly she had such a robe made, with very long sleeves, according
+to the fashion of the period; and she prized it greatly. She wore it
+whenever she went out; and when at home she would suspend it in her
+room, and try to imagine the form of her unknown beloved within it.
+Sometimes she would pass hours before it,—dreaming and weeping by
+turns. And she would pray to the gods and the Buddhas that she might
+win the young man’s affection,—often repeating the invocation of the
+Nichiren sect: _Namu myō hō rengé kyō!_
+
+But she never saw the youth again; and she pined with longing for him,
+and sickened, and died, and was buried. After her burial, the
+long-sleeved robe that she had so much prized was given to the Buddhist
+temple of which her family were parishioners. It is an old custom to
+thus dispose of the garments of the dead.
+
+The priest was able to sell the robe at a good price; for it was a
+costly silk, and bore no trace of the tears that had fallen upon it. It
+was bought by a girl of about the same age as the dead lady. She wore
+it only one day. Then she fell sick, and began to act strangely,—crying
+out that she was haunted by the vision of a beautiful young man, and
+that for love of him she was going to die. And within a little while
+she died; and the long-sleeved robe was a second time presented to the
+temple.
+
+Again the priest sold it; and again it became the property of a young
+girl, who wore it only once. Then she also sickened, and talked of a
+beautiful shadow, and died, and was buried. And the robe was given a
+third time to the temple; and the priest wondered and doubted.
+
+Nevertheless he ventured to sell the luckless garment once more. Once
+more it was purchased by a girl and once more worn; and the wearer
+pined and died. And the robe was given a fourth time to the temple.
+
+Then the priest felt sure that there was some evil influence at work;
+and he told his acolytes to make a fire in the temple-court, and to
+burn the robe.
+
+So they made a fire, into which the robe was thrown. But as the silk
+began to burn, there suddenly appeared upon it dazzling characters of
+flame,—the characters of the invocation, _Namu myō hō rengé kyō;_—and
+these, one by one, leaped like great sparks to the temple roof; and the
+temple took fire.
+
+Embers from the burning temple presently dropped upon neighbouring
+roofs; and the whole street was soon ablaze. Then a sea-wind, rising,
+blew destruction into further streets; and the conflagration spread
+from street to street, and from district into district, till nearly the
+whole of the city was consumed. And this calamity, which occurred upon
+the eighteenth day of the first month of the first year of Meiréki
+(1655), is still remembered in Tōkyō as the _Furisodé-Kwaji_,—the Great
+Fire of the Long-sleeved Robe.
+
+According to a story-book called _Kibun-Daijin_, the name of the girl
+who caused the robe to be made was O-Samé; and she was the daughter of
+Hikoyemon, a wine-merchant of Hyakushō-machi, in the district of Azabu.
+Because of her beauty she was also called Azabu-Komachi, or the Komachi
+of Azabu.[1] The same book says that the temple of the tradition was a
+Nichiren temple called Hon-myoji, in the district of Hongo; and that
+the crest upon the robe was a _kikyō_-flower. But there are many
+different versions of the story; and I distrust the _Kibun-Daijin_
+because it asserts that the beautiful samurai was not really a man, but
+a transformed dragon, or water-serpent, that used to inhabit the lake
+at Uyéno,—_Shinobazu-no-Iké_.
+
+ [1] After more than a thousand years, the name of Komachi, or
+ Ono-no-Komachi, is still celebrated in Japan. She was the most
+ beautiful woman of her time, and so great a poet that she could move
+ heaven by her verses, and cause rain to fall in time of drought. Many
+ men loved her in vain; and many are said to have died for love of her.
+ But misfortunes visited her when her youth had passed; and, after
+ having been reduced to the uttermost want, she became a beggar, and
+ died at last upon the public highway, near Kyōto. As it was thought
+ shameful to bury her in the foul rags found upon her, some poor person
+ gave a wornout summer-robe (_katabira_) to wrap her body in; and she
+ was interred near Arashiyama at a spot still pointed out to travellers
+ as the “Place of the Katabira” (_Katabira-no-Tsuchi_).
+
+
+
+
+Incense
+
+
+I
+
+I see, rising out of darkness, a lotos in a vase. Most of the vase is
+invisible, but I know that it is of bronze, and that its glimpsing
+handles are bodies of dragons. Only the lotos is fully illuminated:
+three pure white flowers, and five great leaves of gold and green,—gold
+above, green on the upcurling under-surface,—an artificial lotos. It is
+bathed by a slanting stream of sunshine,—the darkness beneath and
+beyond is the dusk of a temple-chamber. I do not see the opening
+through which the radiance pours, but I am aware that it is a small
+window shaped in the outline-form of a temple-bell.
+
+The reason that I see the lotos—one memory of my first visit to a
+Buddhist sanctuary—is that there has come to me an odor of incense.
+Often when I smell incense, this vision defines; and usually thereafter
+other sensations of my first day in Japan revive in swift succession
+with almost painful acuteness.
+
+It is almost ubiquitous,—this perfume of incense. It makes one element
+of the faint but complex and never-to-be-forgotten odor of the Far
+East. It haunts the dwelling-house not less than the temple,—the home
+of the peasant not less than the yashiki of the prince. Shintō shrines,
+indeed, are free from it;—incense being an abomination to the elder
+gods. But wherever Buddhism lives there is incense. In every house
+containing a Buddhist shrine or Buddhist tablets, incense is burned at
+certain times; and in even the rudest country solitudes you will find
+incense smouldering before wayside images,—little stone figures of
+Fudō, Jizō, or Kwannon. Many experiences of travel,—strange impressions
+of sound as well as of sight,—remain associated in my own memory with
+that fragrance:—vast silent shadowed avenues leading to weird old
+shrines;—mossed flights of worn steps ascending to temples that moulder
+above the clouds;—joyous tumult of festival nights;—sheeted
+funeral-trains gliding by in glimmer of lanterns; murmur of household
+prayer in fishermen’s huts on far wild coasts;—and visions of desolate
+little graves marked only by threads of blue smoke ascending,—graves of
+pet animals or birds remembered by simple hearts in the hour of prayer
+to Amida, the Lord of Immeasurable Light.
+
+But the odor of which I speak is that of cheap incense only,—the
+incense in general use. There are many other kinds of incense; and the
+range of quality is amazing. A bundle of common incense-rods—(they are
+about as thick as an ordinary pencil-lead, and somewhat longer)—can be
+bought for a few sen; while a bundle of better quality, presenting to
+inexperienced eyes only some difference in color, may cost several yen,
+and be cheap at the price. Still costlier sorts of incense,—veritable
+luxuries,—take the form of lozenges, wafers, pastilles; and a small
+envelope of such material may be worth four or five pounds-sterling.
+But the commercial and industrial questions relating to Japanese
+incense represent the least interesting part of a remarkably curious
+subject.
+
+II
+
+Curious indeed, but enormous by reason of it infinity of tradition and
+detail. I am afraid even to think of the size of the volume that would
+be needed to cover it…. Such a work would properly begin with some
+brief account of the earliest knowledge and use of aromatics in Japan.
+I would next treat of the records and legends of the first introduction
+of Buddhist incense from Korea,—when King Shōmyō of Kudara, in 551 A.
+D., sent to the island-empire a collection of sutras, an image of the
+Buddha, and one complete set of furniture for a temple. Then something
+would have to be said about those classifications of incense which were
+made during the tenth century, in the periods of Engi and of
+Tenryaku,—and about the report of the ancient state-councillor,
+Kimitaka-Sangi, who visited China in the latter part of the thirteenth
+century, and transmitted to the Emperor Yomei the wisdom of the Chinese
+concerning incense. Then mention should be made of the ancient incenses
+still preserved in various Japanese temples, and of the famous
+fragments of _ranjatai_ (publicly exhibited at Nara in the tenth year
+of Meiji) which furnished supplies to the three great captains,
+Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and Iyeyasu. After this should follow an outline
+of the history of mixed incenses made in Japan,—with notes on the
+classifications devised by the luxurious Takauji, and on the
+nomenclature established later by Ashikaga Yoshimasa, who collected one
+hundred and thirty varieties of incense, and invented for the more
+precious of them names recognized even to this day,—such as
+“Blossom-Showering,” “Smoke-of-Fuji,” and “Flower-of-the-Pure-Law.”
+Examples ought to be given likewise of traditions attaching to
+historical incenses preserved in several princely families, together
+with specimens of those hereditary recipes for incense-making which
+have been transmitted from generation to generation through hundreds of
+years, and are still called after their august inventors,—as “the
+Method of Hina-Dainagon,” “the Method of Sentō-In,” etc. Recipes also
+should be given of those strange incenses made “_to imitate the perfume
+of the lotos, the smell of the summer breeze, and the odor of the
+autumn wind_.” Some legends of the great period of incense-luxury
+should be cited,—such as the story of Sué Owari-no-Kami, who built for
+himself a palace of incense-woods, and set fire to it on the night of
+his revolt, when the smoke of its burning perfumed the land to a
+distance of twelve miles…. Of course the mere compilation of materials
+for a history of mixed-incenses would entail the study of a host of
+documents, treatises, and books,—particularly of such strange works as
+the _Kun-Shū-Rui-Shō_, or “Incense-Collector’s
+Classifying-Manual”;—containing the teachings of the Ten Schools of the
+Art of Mixing Incense; directions as to the best seasons for
+incense-making; and instructions about the “_different kinds of fire_”
+to be used for burning incense—(one kind is called “literary fire,” and
+another “military fire”); together with rules for pressing the ashes of
+a censer into various artistic designs corresponding to season and
+occasion…. A special chapter should certainly be given to the
+incense-bags (_kusadama_) hung up in houses to drive away goblins,—and
+to the smaller incense-bags formerly carried about the person as a
+protection against evil spirits. Then a very large part of the work
+would have to be devoted to the religious uses and legends of
+incense,—a huge subject in itself. There would also have to be
+considered the curious history of the old “incense-assemblies,” whose
+elaborate ceremonial could be explained only by help of numerous
+diagrams. One chapter at least would be required for the subject of the
+ancient importation of incense-materials from India, China, Annam,
+Siam, Cambodia, Ceylon, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, and various islands of
+the Malay archipelago,—places all named in rare books about incense.
+And a final chapter should treat of the romantic literature of
+incense,—the poems, stories, and dramas in which incense-rites are
+mentioned; and especially those love-songs comparing the body to
+incense, and passion to the eating flame:—
+
+Even as burns the perfume lending thy robe its fragance,
+Smoulders my life away, consumed by the pain of longing!
+
+
+….The merest outline of the subject is terrifying! I shall attempt
+nothing more than a few notes about the religious, the luxurious, and
+the ghostly uses of incense.
+
+III
+
+The common incense everywhere burned by poor people before Buddhist
+icons is called _an-soku-kō_. This is very cheap. Great quantities of
+it are burned by pilgrims in the bronze censers set before the
+entrances of famous temples; and in front of roadside images you may
+often see bundles of it. These are for the use of pious wayfarers, who
+pause before every Buddhist image on their path to repeat a brief
+prayer and, when possible, to set a few rods smouldering at the feet of
+the statue. But in rich temples, and during great religious ceremonies,
+much more expensive incense is used. Altogether three classes of
+perfumes are employed in Buddhist rites: _kō_, or incense-proper, in
+many varieties—(the word literally means only “fragrant
+substance”);—_dzukō_, an odorous ointment; and _makkō_, a fragrant
+powder. _Kō_ is burned; _dzukō_ is rubbed upon the hands of the priest
+as an ointment of purification; and _makkō_ is sprinkled about the
+sanctuary. This _makkō_ is said to be identical with the
+sandalwood-powder so frequently mentioned in Buddhist texts. But it is
+only the true incense which can be said to bear an important relation
+to the religious service.
+
+“Incense,” declares the _Soshi-Ryaku_,[1] “is the Messenger of Earnest
+Desire. When the rich Sudatta wished to invite the Buddha to a repast,
+he made use of incense. He was wont to ascend to the roof of his house
+on the eve of the day of the entertainment, and to remain standing
+there all night, holding a censer of precious incense. And as often as
+he did thus, the Buddha never failed to come on the following day at
+the exact time desired.”
+
+ [1] “Short [or Epitomized] History of Priests.”
+
+
+This text plainly implies that incense, as a burnt-offering, symbolizes
+the pious desires of the faithful. But it symbolizes other things also;
+and it has furnished many remarkable similes to Buddhist literature.
+Some of these, and not the least interesting, occur in prayers, of
+which the following, from the book called _Hōji-san_[2] is a striking
+example:—
+
+ [2] “The Praise of Pious Observances.”
+
+
+—“_Let my body remain pure like a censer!—let my thought be ever as a
+fire of wisdom, purely consuming the incense of sîla and of dhyâna,_[3]
+_that so may I do homage to all the Buddhas in the Ten Directions of
+the Past, the Present, and the Future!_”
+
+ [3] By _sîla_ is meant the observance of the rules of purity in act
+ and thought. _Dhyâna_ (called by Japanese Buddhists _Zenjō_) is one of
+ the higher forms of meditation.
+
+
+Sometimes in Buddhist sermons the destruction of Karma by virtuous
+effort is likened to the burning of incense by a pure flame,—sometimes,
+again, the life of man is compared to the smoke of incense. In his
+“Hundred Writings “(_Hyaku-tsū-kiri-kami_), the Shinshū priest Myōden
+says, quoting from the Buddhist work _Kujikkajō_, or “Ninety Articles
+“:—
+
+“In the burning of incense we see that so long as any incense remains,
+so long does the burning continue, and the smoke mount skyward. Now the
+breath of this body of ours,—this impermanent combination of Earth,
+Water, Air, and Fire,—is like that smoke. And the changing of the
+incense into cold ashes when the flame expires is an emblem of the
+changing of our bodies into ashes when our funeral pyres have burnt
+themselves out.”
+
+He also tells us about that Incense-Paradise of which every believer
+ought to be reminded by the perfume of earthly incense:—“In the
+Thirty-Second Vow for the Attainment of the Paradise of Wondrous
+Incense,” he says, “it is written: ‘_That Paradise is formed of
+hundreds of thousands of different kinds of incense, and of substances
+incalculably precious;—the beauty of it incomparably exceeds anything
+in the heavens or in the sphere of man;—the fragrance of it perfumes
+all the worlds of the Ten Directions of Space; and all who perceive
+that odor practise Buddha-deeds._’ In ancient times there were men of
+superior wisdom and virtue who, by reason of their vow, obtained
+perception of the odor; but we, who are born with inferior wisdom and
+virtue in these later days, cannot obtain such perception. Nevertheless
+it will be well for us, when we smell the incense kindled before the
+image of Amida, to imagine that its odor is the wonderful fragrance of
+Paradise, and to repeat the _Nembutsu_ in gratitude for the mercy of
+the Buddha.”
+
+IV
+
+But the use of incense in Japan is not confined to religious rites and
+ceremonies: indeed the costlier kinds of incense are manufactured
+chiefly for social entertainments. Incense-burning has been an
+amusement of the aristocracy ever since the thirteenth century.
+Probably you have heard of the Japanese tea-ceremonies, and their
+curious Buddhist history; and I suppose that every foreign collector of
+Japanese _bric-à-brac_ knows something about the luxury to which these
+ceremonies at one period attained,—a luxury well attested by the
+quality of the beautiful utensils formerly employed in them. But there
+were, and still are, incense-ceremonies much more elaborate and costly
+than the tea-ceremonies,—and also much more interesting. Besides music,
+embroidery, poetical composition and other branches of the
+old-fashioned female education, the young lady of pre-Meiji days was
+expected to acquire three especially polite accomplishments,—the art of
+arranging flowers, (_ikébana_), the art of ceremonial tea-making
+(_cha-no-yu_ or _cha-no-e_),[4] and the etiquette of incense-parties
+(_kō-kwai_ or _kō-é_). Incense-parties were invented before the time of
+the Ashikaga shōguns, and were most in vogue during the peaceful period
+of the Tokugawa rule. With the fall of the shōgunate they went out of
+fashion; but recently they have been to some extent revived. It is not
+likely, however, that they will again become really fashionable in the
+old sense,—partly because they represented rare forms of social
+refinement that never can be revived, and partly because of their
+costliness.
+
+ [4] Girls are still trained in the art of arranging flowers, and in
+ the etiquette of the dainty, though somewhat tedious, _cha-no-yu_.
+ Buddhist priests have long enjoyed a reputation as teachers of the
+ latter. When the pupil has reached a certain degree of proficiency,
+ she is given a diploma or certificate. The tea used in these
+ ceremonies is a powdered tea of remarkable fragrance,—the best
+ qualities of which fetch very high prices.
+
+
+In translating _kō-kwai_ as “incense-party,” I use the word “party” in
+the meaning that it takes in such compounds as “card-party,”
+“whist-party,” “chess-party”;—for a _kō-kwai_ is a meeting held only
+with the object of playing a game,—a very curious game. There are
+several kinds of incense-games; but in all of them the contest depends
+upon the ability to remember and to name different kinds of incense by
+the perfume alone. That variety of _kō-kwai_ called _Jitchū-kō_
+(“ten-burning-incense”) is generally conceded to be the most amusing;
+and I shall try to tell you how it is played.
+
+The numeral “ten,” in the Japanese, or rather Chinese name of this
+diversion, does not refer to ten kinds, but only to ten packages of
+incense; for _Jitchū-kō_, besides being the most amusing, is the very
+simplest of incense-games, and is played with only four kinds of
+incense. One kind must be supplied by the guests invited to the party;
+and three are furnished by the person who gives the entertainment. Each
+of the latter three supplies of incense—usually prepared in packages
+containing one hundred wafers is divided into four parts; and each part
+is put into a separate paper numbered or marked so as to indicate the
+quality. Thus four packages are prepared of the incense classed as No.
+1, four of incense No. 2, and four of incense No. 3,—or twelve in all.
+But the incense given by the guests,—always called “guest-incense”—is
+not divided: it is only put into a wrapper marked with an abbreviation
+of the Chinese character signifying “guest.” Accordingly we have a
+total of thirteen packages to start with; but three are to be used in
+the preliminary sampling, or “experimenting”—as the Japanese term
+it,—after the following manner.
+
+We shall suppose the game to be arranged for a party of six,—though
+there is no rule limiting the number of players. The six take their
+places in line, or in a half-circle—if the room be small; but they do
+not sit close together, for reasons which will presently appear. Then
+the host, or the person appointed to act as incense-burner, prepares a
+package of the incense classed as No 1, kindles it in a censer, and
+passes the censer to the guest occupying the first seat,[5] with the
+announcement—“This is incense No 1” The guest receives the censer
+according to the graceful etiquette required in the _kō-kwai_, inhales
+the perfume, and passes on the vessel to his neighbor, who receives it
+in like manner and passes it to the third guest, who presents it to the
+fourth,—and so on. When the censer has gone the round of the party, it
+is returned to the incense-burner. One package of incense No. 2, and
+one of No. 3, are similarly prepared, announced, and tested. But with
+the “guest-incense” no experiment is made. The player should be able to
+remember the different odors of the incenses tested; and he is expected
+to identify the guest-incense at the proper time merely by the
+unfamiliar quality of its fragrance.
+
+ [5] The places occupied by guests in a Japanese _zashiki_, or
+ reception room are numbered from the alcove of the apartment. The
+ place of the most honored is immediately before the alcove: this is
+ the first seat, and the rest are numbered from it, usually to the
+ left.
+
+
+The original thirteen packages having thus by “experimenting” been
+reduced to ten, each player is given one set of ten small
+tablets—usually of gold-lacquer,—every set being differently
+ornamented. The backs only of these tablets are decorated; and the
+decoration is nearly always a floral design of some sort:—thus one set
+might be decorated with chrysanthemums in gold, another with tufts of
+iris-plants, another with a spray of plum-blossoms, etc. But the faces
+of the tablets bear numbers or marks; and each set comprises three
+tablets numbered “1,” three numbered “2,” three numbered “3,” and one
+marked with the character signifying “guest.” After these tablet-sets
+have been distributed, a box called the “tablet-box” is placed before
+the first player; and all is ready for the real game.
+
+The incense-burner retires behind a little screen, shuffles the flat
+packages like so many cards, takes the uppermost, prepares its contents
+in the censer, and then, returning to the party, sends the censer upon
+its round. This time, of course, he does not announce what kind of
+incense he has used. As the censer passes from hand to hand, each
+player, after inhaling the fume, puts into the tablet-box one tablet
+bearing that mark or number which he supposes to be the mark or number
+of the incense he has smelled. If, for example, he thinks the incense
+to be “guest-incense,” he drops into the box that one of his tablets
+marked with the ideograph meaning “guest;” or if he believes that he
+has inhaled the perfume of No. 2, he puts into the box a tablet
+numbered “2.” When the round is over, tablet-box and censer are both
+returned to the incense-burner. He takes the six tablets out of the
+box, and wraps them up in the paper which contained the incense guessed
+about. The tablets themselves keep the personal as well as the general
+record,—since each player remembers the particular design upon his own
+set.
+
+The remaining nine packages of incense are consumed and judged in the
+same way, according to the chance order in which the shuffling has
+placed them. When all the incense has been used, the tablets are taken
+out of their wrappings, the record is officially put into writing, and
+the victor of the day is announced. I here offer the translation of
+such a record: it will serve to explain, almost at a glance, all the
+complications of the game.
+
+According to this record the player who used the tablets decorated with
+the design called “Young Pine,” made but two mistakes; while the holder
+of the “White-Lily” set made only one correct guess. But it is quite a
+feat to make ten correct judgments in succession. The olfactory nerves
+are apt to become somewhat numbed long before the game is concluded;
+and, therefore it is customary during the _Kō-kwai_ to rinse the mouth
+at intervals with pure vinegar, by which operation the sensitivity is
+partially restored.
+
+RECORD OF A KŌ-KWAI.
+
+
+Order in which the ten packages of incense were used:—
+
+
+1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9   10
+No. No. — No. No. No. No. No. No. No.
+III I “GUEST” II I III II I III II
+
+
+Names given to the six sets of tablets used, according to decorative
+designs on the back:
+“Gold Chrysanthemum” 1    3    1    2*  Guest  1     2*   2    3* 3    
+    3
+“Young Bamboo”   3*   1*   1    2*   1*   Guest  3    2    1 3 4
+“Red Peony”     Guest 1*   2    2*   3     1     3    2    3* 1 3
+“White Lily”     1    3    1    3    2     2     1    3   Guest 2* 1
+“Young Pine”     3*   1* Guest* 3    1*    2     2*   1*   3* 2* 8
+(Winner)
+“Cherry-Blossom-in-a-Mist”      1    3  Guest* 2*   1*    3*    1 2   
+3* 2*         6
+
+Guesses recorded by numbers on the tablet; correct being marked *
+
+No. of correct guesses
+
+NAMES OF INCENSE USED.
+
+
+I. “Tasogare” (“Who-Is-there?” I. e. “Evening-Dusk”).
+II. “Baikwa” (“Plum Flower”).
+III. “Wakakusa” (“Young Grass”).
+IV.  (“Guest Incense”) “Yamaji-no-Tsuyu” (“Dew-on-the-Mountain-Path”).
+
+To the Japanese original of the foregoing record were appended the
+names of the players, the date of the entertainment, and the name of
+the place where the party was held. It is the custom In some families
+to enter all such records in a book especially made for the purpose,
+and furnished with an index which enables the _Kō-kwai_ player to refer
+immediately to any interesting fact belonging to the history of any
+past game.
+
+The reader will have noticed that the four kinds of incense used were
+designated by very pretty names. The incense first mentioned, for
+example, is called by the poets’ name for the gloaming,—_Tasogaré_
+(lit: “Who is there?” or “ Who is it?”)—a word which in this relation
+hints of the toilet-perfume that reveals some charming presence to the
+lover waiting in the dusk. Perhaps some curiosity will be felt
+regarding the composition of these incenses. I can give the Japanese
+recipes for two sorts; but I have not been able to identify all of the
+materials named:—
+
+_Recipe for Yamaji-no-Tsuyu._
+
+   Ingredients                   Proportions.
+                                              about Jinkō (aloes-wood) 
+                                                           4 _mommé_   
+                                                (½ oz.) Cōoji (cloves) 
+                                                               4 ”     
+                                                    ” Kunroku
+                                              (olibanum)              
+                                              4 ”            ” Hakkō
+                                              (artemisia Schmidtiana)  
+                                               4 ”            ” Jakō
+                                              (musk)                   
+                                                1 _bu_         (⅛ oz.)
+                                              Kōkō(?)                  
+                                                     4 _mommé_      (½
+                                              oz.)
+
+_To 21 pastilles_
+
+_Recipe for Baikwa._
+
+   Ingredients                   Proportions.
+                                              about Jinkō (aloes)      
+                                                           20 _mommé_  
+                                               (2 1/2 oz.) Chōji
+                                              (cloves)                 
+                                               12 “         (1 1/2 oz.)
+                                              Kōkō(?)                  
+                                                  8 1/3 “         (1
+                                              1/40 oz.) Byakudan
+                                              (sandal-wood)           
+                                              4 “         (1/2 oz.)
+                                              Kanshō (spikenard)       
+                                                      2 _bu_       
+                                              (1/4 oz.) Kwakkō
+                                              (Bishop’s-wort?)     1
+                                              _bu_ 2 _shu_  (3/16 oz.)
+                                              Kunroku (olibanum)       
+                                                      3 ”  3 ”   
+                                              (15/22 oz.) Shōmokkō (?) 
+                                                                  2 ”  
+                                                    (1/4 oz.) Jakō
+                                              (musk)                   
+                                                 3 ” 2 _shu_   (7/16
+                                              oz.) Ryūnō (refined
+                                              Borneo Camphor)    3
+                                              _shu_       (3/8 oz.)
+
+_To 50 pastilles_
+
+The incense used at a _Kō-kwai_ ranges in value, according to the style
+of the entertainment, from $2.50 to $30.00 per envelope of 100
+wafers—wafers usually not more than one-fourth of an inch in diameter.
+Sometimes an incense is used worth even more than $30.00 per envelope:
+this contains _ranjatai_, an aromatic of which the perfume is compared
+to that of “musk mingled with orchid-flowers.” But there is some
+incense,—never sold,—which is much more precious than
+_ranjatai_,—incense valued less for its composition than for its
+history: I mean the incense brought centuries ago from China or from
+India by the Buddhist missionaries, and presented to princes or to
+other persons of high rank. Several ancient Japanese temples also
+include such foreign incense among their treasures. And very rarely a
+little of this priceless material is contributed to an
+incense-party,—much as in Europe, on very extraordinary occasions, some
+banquet is glorified by the production of a wine several hundred years
+old.
+
+Like the tea-ceremonies, the _Kō-kwai_ exact observance of a very
+complex and ancient etiquette. But this subject could interest few
+readers; and I shall only mention some of the rules regarding
+preparations and precautions. First of all, it is required that the
+person invited to an incense-party shall attend the same in as
+_odorless_ a condition as possible: a lady, for instance, must not use
+hair-oil, or put on any dress that has been kept in a perfumed
+chest-of-drawers. Furthermore, the guest should prepare for the contest
+by taking a prolonged hot bath, and should eat only the lightest and
+least odorous kind of food before going to the rendezvous. It is
+forbidden to leave the room during the game, or to open any door or
+window, or to indulge in needless conversation. Finally I may observe
+that, while judging the incense, a player is expected to take not less
+than three inhalations, or more than five.
+
+In this economical era, the _Kō-kwai_ takes of necessity a much humbler
+form than it assumed in the time of the great daimyō, of the princely
+abbots, and of the military aristocracy. A full set of the utensils
+required for the game can now be had for about $50.00; but the
+materials are of the poorest kind. The old-fashioned sets were
+fantastically expensive. Some were worth thousands of dollars. The
+incense-burner’s desk,—the writing-box, paper-box, tablet-box,
+etc.,—the various stands or _dai_,—were of the costliest
+gold-lacquer;—the pincers and other instruments were of gold, curiously
+worked;—and the censer—whether of precious metal, bronze, or
+porcelain,—was always a _chef-d’œuvre_, designed by some artist of
+renown.
+
+V
+
+Although the original signification of incense in Buddhist ceremonies
+was chiefly symbolical, there is good reason to suppose that various
+beliefs older than Buddhism,—some, perhaps, peculiar to the race;
+others probably of Chinese or Korean derivation,—began at an early
+period to influence the popular use of incense in Japan. Incense is
+still burned in the presence of a corpse with the idea that its
+fragrance shields both corpse and newly-parted soul from malevolent
+demons; and by the peasants it is often burned also to drive away
+goblins and the evil powers presiding over diseases. But formerly it
+was used to summon spirits as well as to banish them. Allusions to its
+employment in various weird rites may be found in some of the old
+dramas and romances. One particular sort of incense, imported from
+China, was said to have the power of calling up human spirits. This was
+the wizard-incense referred to in such ancient love-songs as the
+following:—
+
+“I have heard of the magical incense that summons the souls of the
+absent:
+Would I had some to burn, in the nights when I wait alone!”
+
+
+There is an interesting mention of this incense in the Chinese book,
+_Shang-hai-king_. It was called _Fwan-hwan-hiang_ (by Japanese
+pronunciation, _Hangon-kō_), or “Spirit-Recalling-Incense;” and it was
+made in Tso-Chau, or the District of the Ancestors, situated by the
+Eastern Sea. To summon the ghost of any dead person—or even that of a
+living person, according to some authorities,—it was only necessary to
+kindle some of the incense, and to pronounce certain words, while
+keeping the mind fixed upon the memory of that person. Then, in the
+smoke of the incense, the remembered face and form would appear.
+
+[Illustration: The Magical Incense]
+
+In many old Japanese and Chinese books mention is made of a famous
+story about this incense,—a story of the Chinese Emperor Wu, of the Han
+dynasty. When the Emperor had lost his beautiful favorite, the Lady Li,
+he sorrowed so much that fears were entertained for his reason. But all
+efforts made to divert his mind from the thought of her proved
+unavailing. One day he ordered some Spirit-Recalling-Incense to be
+procured, that he might summon her from the dead. His counsellors
+prayed him to forego his purpose, declaring that the vision could only
+intensify his grief. But he gave no heed to their advice, and himself
+performed the rite,—kindling the incense, and keeping his mind fixed
+upon the memory of the Lady Li. Presently, within the thick blue smoke
+arising from the incense, the outline, of a feminine form became
+visible. It defined, took tints of life, slowly became luminous, and
+the Emperor recognized the form of his beloved At first the apparition
+was faint; but it soon became distinct as a living person, and seemed
+with each moment to grow more beautiful. The Emperor whispered to the
+vision, but received no answer. He called aloud, and the presence made
+no sign. Then unable to control himself, he approached the censer. But
+the instant that he touched the smoke, the phantom trembled and
+vanished.
+
+Japanese artists are still occasionally inspired by the legends of the
+Hangon-ho. Only last year, in Tōkyō, at an exhibition of new kakemono,
+I saw a picture of a young wife kneeling before an alcove wherein the
+smoke of the magical incense was shaping the shadow of the absent
+husband.[6]
+
+ [6] Among the curious Tōkyō inventions of 1898 was a new variety of
+ cigarettes called _Hangon-sō_, or “Herb of Hangon,”—a name suggesting
+ that their smoke operated like the spirit-summoning incense. As a
+ matter of fact, the chemical action of the tobacco-smoke would define,
+ upon a paper fitted into the mouth-piece of each cigarette, the
+ photographic image of a dancing-girl.
+
+
+Although the power of making visible the forms of the dead has been
+claimed for one sort of incense only, the burning of any kind of
+incense is supposed to summon viewless spirits in multitude. These come
+to devour the smoke. They are called _Jiki-kō-ki_, or “incense-eating
+goblins;” and they belong to the fourteenth of the thirty-six classes
+of Gaki (_prêtas_) recognized by Japanese Buddhism. They are the ghosts
+of men who anciently, for the sake of gain, made or sold bad incense;
+and by the evil karma of that action they now find themselves in the
+state of hunger-suffering spirits, and compelled to seek their only
+food in the smoke of incense.
+
+
+
+
+A Story of Divination
+
+
+I once knew a fortune-teller who really believed in the science that he
+professed. He had learned, as a student of the old Chinese philosophy,
+to believe in divination long before he thought of practising it.
+During his youth he had been in the service of a wealthy daimyō, but
+subsequently, like thousands of other samurai, found himself reduced to
+desperate straits by the social and political changes of Meiji. It was
+then that he became a fortune-teller,—an itinerant
+_uranaiya_,—travelling on foot from town to town, and returning to his
+home rarely more than once a year with the proceeds of his journey. As
+a fortune-teller he was tolerably successful,—chiefly, I think, because
+of his perfect sincerity, and because of a peculiar gentle manner that
+invited confidence. His system was the old scholarly one: he used the
+book known to English readers as the _Yî-King_,—also a set of ebony
+blocks which could be so arranged as to form any of the Chinese
+hexagrams;—and he always began his divination with an earnest prayer to
+the gods.
+
+The system itself he held to be infallible in the hands of a master. He
+confessed that he had made some erroneous predictions; but he said that
+these mistakes had been entirely due to his own miscomprehension of
+certain texts or diagrams. To do him justice I must mention that in my
+own case—(he told my fortune four times),—his predictions were
+fulfilled in such wise that I became afraid of them. You may disbelieve
+in fortune-telling,—intellectually scorn it; but something of inherited
+superstitious tendency lurks within most of us; and a few strange
+experiences can so appeal to that inheritance as to induce the most
+unreasoning hope or fear of the good or bad luck promised you by some
+diviner. Really to see our future would be a misery. Imagine the result
+of knowing that there must happen to you, within the next two months,
+some terrible misfortune which you cannot possibly provide against!
+
+He was already an old man when I first saw him in Izumo,—certainly more
+than sixty years of age, but looking very much younger. Afterwards I
+met him in Ōsaka, in Kyōto, and in Kobé. More than once I tried to
+persuade him to pass the colder months of the winter-season under my
+roof,—for he possessed an extraordinary knowledge of traditions, and
+could have been of inestimable service to me in a literary way. But
+partly because the habit of wandering had become with him a second
+nature, and partly because of a love of independence as savage as a
+gipsy’s, I was never able to keep him with me for more than two days at
+a time.
+
+Every year he used to come to Tōkyō,—usually in the latter part of
+autumn. Then, for several weeks, he would flit about the city, from
+district to district, and vanish again. But during these fugitive trips
+he never failed to visit me; bringing welcome news of Izumo people and
+places,—bringing also some queer little present, generally of a
+religious kind, from some famous place of pilgrimage. On these
+occasions I could get a few hours’ chat with him. Sometimes the talk
+was of strange things seen or heard during his recent journey;
+sometimes it turned upon old legends or beliefs; sometimes it was about
+fortune-telling. The last time we met he told me of an exact Chinese
+science of divination which he regretted never having been able to
+learn.
+
+“Any one learned in that science,” he said, “would be able, for
+example, not only to tell you the exact time at which any post or beam
+of this house will yield to decay, but even to tell you the direction
+of the breaking, and all its results. I can best explain what I mean by
+relating a story.
+
+“The story is about the famous Chinese fortune-teller whom we call in
+Japan Shōko Setsu, and it is written in the book _Baikwa-Shin-Eki_,
+which is a book of divination. While still a very young man, Shōko
+Setsu obtained a high position by reason of his learning and virtue;
+but he resigned it and went into solitude that he might give his whole
+time to study. For years thereafter he lived alone in a hut among the
+mountains; studying without a fire in winter, and without a fan in
+summer; writing his thoughts upon the wall of his room—for lack of
+paper;—and using only a tile for his pillow.
+
+“One day, in the period of greatest summer heat, he found himself
+overcome by drowsiness; and he lay down to rest, with his tile under
+his head. Scarcely had he fallen asleep when a rat ran across his face
+and woke him with a start. Feeling angry, he seized his tile and flung
+it at the rat; but the rat escaped unhurt, and the tile was broken.
+Shōko Setsu looked sorrowfully at the fragments of his pillow, and
+reproached himself for his hastiness. Then suddenly he perceived, upon
+the freshly exposed clay of the broken tile, some Chinese
+characters—between the upper and lower surfaces. Thinking this very
+strange, he picked up the pieces, and carefully examined them. He found
+that along the line of fracture seventeen characters had been written
+within the clay before the tile had been baked; and the characters read
+thus: ‘_In the Year of the Hare, in the fourth month, on the
+seventeenth day, at the Hour of the Serpent, this tile, after serving
+as a pillow, will be thrown at a rat and broken._’ Now the prediction
+had really been fulfilled at the Hour of the Serpent on the seventeenth
+day of the fourth month of the Year of the Hare. Greatly astonished,
+Shōko Setsu once again looked at the fragments, and discovered the seal
+and the name of the maker. At once he left his hut, and, taking with
+him the pieces of the tile, hurried to the neighboring town in search
+of the tilemaker. He found the tilemaker in the course of the day,
+showed him the broken tile, and asked him about its history.
+
+“After having carefully examined the shards, the tilemaker said: —‘This
+tile was made in my house; but the characters in the clay were written
+by an old man—a fortune-teller,—who asked permission to write upon the
+tile before it was baked.’ ‘Do you know where he lives?’ asked Shōko
+Setsu. ‘He used to live,’ the tilemaker answered, ‘not very far from
+here; and I can show you the way to the house. But I do not know his
+name.’
+
+“Having been guided to the house, Shōko Setsu presented himself at the
+entrance, and asked for permission to speak to the old man. A
+serving-student courteously invited him to enter, and ushered him into
+an apartment where several young men were at study. As Shōko Setsu took
+his seat, all the youths saluted him. Then the one who had first
+addressed him bowed and said: ‘We are grieved to inform you that our
+master died a few days ago. But we have been waiting for you, because
+he predicted that you would come to-day to this house, at this very
+hour. Your name is Shōko Setsu. And our master told us to give you a
+book which he believed would be of service to you. Here is the
+book;—please to accept it.’
+
+“Shōko Setsu was not less delighted than surprised; for the book was a
+manuscript of the rarest and most precious kind,—containing all the
+secrets of the science of divination. After having thanked the young
+men, and properly expressed his regret for the death of their teacher,
+he went back to his hut, and there immediately proceeded to test the
+worth of the book by consulting its pages in regard to his own fortune.
+The book suggested to him that on the south side of his dwelling, at a
+particular spot near one corner of the hut, great luck awaited him. He
+dug at the place indicated, and found a jar containing gold enough to
+make him a very wealthy man.”
+
+
+My old acquaintance left this world as lonesomely as he had lived in
+it. Last winter, while crossing a mountain-range, he was overtaken by a
+snowstorm, and lost his way. Many days later he was found standing
+erect at the foot of a pine, with his little pack strapped to his
+shoulders: a statue of ice—arms folded and eyes closed as in
+meditation. Probably, while waiting for the storm to pass, he had
+yielded to the drowsiness of cold, and the drift had risen over him as
+he slept. Hearing of this strange death I remembered the old Japanese
+saying,—_Uranaiya minouyé shiradzu:_ “The fortune-teller knows not his
+own fate.”
+
+
+
+
+Silkworms
+
+I
+
+I was puzzled by the phrase, “silkworm-moth eyebrow,” in an old
+Japanese, or rather Chinese proverb:—_The silkworm-moth eyebrow of a
+woman is the axe that cuts down the wisdom of man._ So I went to my
+friend Niimi, who keeps silkworms, to ask for an explanation.
+
+“Is it possible,” he exclaimed, “that you never saw a silkworm-moth?
+The silkworm-moth has very beautiful eyebrows.”
+
+“Eyebrows?” I queried, in astonishment. “Well, call them what you
+like,” returned Niimi;—“the poets call them eyebrows…. Wait a moment,
+and I will show you.”
+
+He left the guest-room, and presently returned with a white paper-fan,
+on which a silkworm-moth was sleepily reposing.
+
+“We always reserve a few for breeding,” he said;—“this one is just out
+of the cocoon. It cannot fly, of course: none of them can fly…. Now
+look at the eyebrows.”
+
+I looked, and saw that the antennae, very short and feathery, were so
+arched back over the two jewel-specks of eyes in the velvety head, as
+to give the appearance of a really handsome pair of eyebrows.
+
+Then Niimi took me to see his worms.
+
+In Niimi’s neighborhood, where there are plenty of mulberrytrees, many
+families keep silkworms;—the tending and feeding being mostly done by
+women and children. The worms are kept in large oblong trays, elevated
+upon light wooden stands about three feet high. It is curious to see
+hundreds of caterpillars feeding all together in one tray, and to hear
+the soft papery noise which they make while gnawing their
+mulberry-leaves. As they approach maturity, the creatures need almost
+constant attention. At brief intervals some expert visits each tray to
+inspect progress, picks up the plumpest feeders, and decides, by gently
+rolling them between forefinger and thumb, which are ready to spin.
+These are dropped into covered boxes, where they soon swathe themselves
+out of sight in white floss. A few only of the best are suffered to
+emerge from their silky sleep,—the selected breeders. They have
+beautiful wings, but cannot use them. They have mouths, but do not eat.
+They only pair, lay eggs, and die. For thousands of years their race
+has been so well-cared for, that it can no longer take any care of
+itself.
+
+It was the evolutional lesson of this latter fact that chiefly occupied
+me while Niimi and his younger brother (who feeds the worms) were
+kindly explaining the methods of the industry. They told me curious
+things about different breeds, and also about a wild variety of
+silkworm that cannot be domesticated:—it spins splendid silk before
+turning into a vigorous moth which can use its wings to some purpose.
+But I fear that I did not act like a person who felt interested in the
+subject; for, even while I tried to listen, I began to muse.
+
+II
+
+First of all, I found myself thinking about a delightful revery by M.
+Anatole France, in which he says that if he had been the Demiurge, he
+would have put youth at the end of life instead of at the beginning,
+and would have otherwise so ordered matters that every human being
+should have three stages of development, somewhat corresponding to
+those of the lepidoptera. Then it occurred to me that this fantasy was
+in substance scarcely more than the delicate modification of a most
+ancient doctrine, common to nearly all the higher forms of religion.
+
+Western faiths especially teach that our life on earth is a larval
+state of greedy helplessness, and that death is a pupa-sleep out of
+which we should soar into everlasting light. They tell us that during
+its sentient existence, the outer body should be thought of only as a
+kind of caterpillar, and thereafter as a chrysalis;—and they aver that
+we lose or gain, according to our behavior as larvæ, the power to
+develop wings under the mortal wrapping. Also they tell us not to
+trouble ourselves about the fact that we see no Psyché-imago detach
+itself from the broken cocoon: this lack of visual evidence signifies
+nothing, because we have only the purblind vision of grubs. Our eyes
+are but half-evolved. Do not whole scales of colors invisibly exist
+above and below the limits of our retinal sensibility? Even so the
+butterfly-man exists,—although, as a matter of course, we cannot see
+him.
+
+But what would become of this human imago in a state of perfect bliss?
+From the evolutional point of view the question has interest; and its
+obvious answer was suggested to me by the history of those
+silkworms,—which have been domesticated for only a few thousand years.
+Consider the result of our celestial domestication for—let us
+say—several millions of years: I mean the final consequence, to the
+wishers, of being able to gratify every wish at will.
+
+Those silkworms have all that they wish for,—even considerably more.
+Their wants, though very simple, are fundamentally identical with the
+necessities of mankind,—food, shelter, warmth, safety, and comfort. Our
+endless social struggle is mainly for these things. Our dream of heaven
+is the dream of obtaining them free of cost in pain; and the condition
+of those silkworms is the realization, in a small way, of our imagined
+Paradise. (I am not considering the fact that a vast majority of the
+worms are predestined to torment and the second death; for my theme is
+of heaven, not of lost souls. I am speaking of the elect—those worms
+preördained to salvation and rebirth.) Probably they can feel only very
+weak sensations: they are certainly incapable of prayer. But if they
+were able to pray, they could not ask for anything more than they
+already receive from the youth who feeds and tends them. He is their
+providence,—a god of whose existence they can be aware in only the
+vaguest possible way, but just such a god as they require. And we
+should foolishly deem ourselves fortunate to be equally well cared-for
+in proportion to our more complex wants. Do not our common forms of
+prayer prove our desire for like attention? Is not the assertion of our
+“need of divine love” an involuntary confession that we wish to be
+treated like silkworms,—to live without pain by the help of gods? Yet
+if the gods were to treat us as we want, we should presently afford
+fresh evidence,—in the way of what is called “the evidence from
+degeneration,”—that the great evolutional law is far above the gods.
+
+An early stage of that degeneration would be represented by total
+incapacity to help ourselves;—then we should begin to lose the use of
+our higher sense-organs;—later on, the brain would shrink to a
+vanishing pin-point of matter;—still later we should dwindle into mere
+amorphous sacs, mere blind stomachs. Such would be the physical
+consequence of that kind of divine love which we so lazily wish for.
+The longing for perpetual bliss in perpetual peace might well seem a
+malevolent inspiration from the Lords of Death and Darkness. All life
+that feels and thinks has been, and can continue to be, only as the
+product of struggle and pain,—only as the outcome of endless battle
+with the Powers of the Universe. And cosmic law is uncompromising.
+Whatever organ ceases to know pain,—whatever faculty ceases to be used
+under the stimulus of pain,—must also cease to exist. Let pain and its
+effort be suspended, and life must shrink back, first into protoplasmic
+shapelessness, thereafter into dust.
+
+Buddhism—which, in its own grand way, is a doctrine of
+evolution—rationally proclaims its heaven but a higher stage of
+development through pain, and teaches that even in paradise the
+cessation of effort produces degradation. With equal reasonableness it
+declares that the capacity for pain in the superhuman world increases
+always in proportion to the capacity for pleasure. (There is little
+fault to be found with this teaching from a scientific
+standpoint,—since we know that higher evolution must involve an
+increase of sensitivity to pain.) In the Heavens of Desire, says the
+_Shōbō-nen-jō-kyō_, the pain of death is so great that all the agonies
+of all the hells united could equal but one-sixteenth part of such
+pain.[1]
+
+ [1] This statement refers only to the Heavens of Sensuous
+ Pleasure,—not to the Paradise of Amida, nor to those heavens into
+ which one enters by the Apparitional Birth. But even in the highest
+ and most immaterial zones of being,—in the Heavens of
+ Formlessness,—the cessation of effort and of the pain of effort,
+ involves the penalty of rebirth in a lower state of existence.
+
+
+The foregoing comparison is unnecessarily strong; but the Buddhist
+teaching about heaven is in substance eminently logical. The
+suppression of pain—mental or physical,—in any conceivable state of
+sentient existence, would necessarily involve the suppression also of
+pleasure;—and certainly all progress, whether moral or material,
+depends upon the power to meet and to master pain. In a
+silkworm-paradise such as our mundane instincts lead us to desire, the
+seraph freed from the necessity of toil, and able to satisfy his every
+want at will, would lose his wings at last, and sink back to the
+condition of a grub….
+
+III
+
+I told the substance of my revery to Niimi. He used to be a great
+reader of Buddhist books.
+
+“Well,” he said, “I was reminded of a queer Buddhist story by the
+proverb that you asked me to explain,—_The silkworm-moth eyebrow of a
+woman is the axe that cuts down the wisdom of man._ According to our
+doctrine, the saying would be as true of life in heaven as of life upon
+earth…. This is the story:—
+
+“When Shaka[2] dwelt in this world, one of his disciples, called Nanda,
+was bewitched by the beauty of a woman; and Shaka desired to save him
+from the results of this illusion. So he took Nanda to a wild place in
+the mountains where there were apes, and showed him a very ugly female
+ape, and asked him: ‘Which is the more beautiful, Nanda, —the woman
+that you love, or this female ape?’ ‘Oh, Master!’ exclaimed Nanda, ‘how
+can a lovely woman be compared with an ugly ape?’ ‘Perhaps you will
+presently find reason to make the comparison yourself,’ answered the
+Buddha;—and instantly by supernatural power he ascended with Nanda to
+the _San-Jūsan-Ten_, which is the Second of the Six Heavens of Desire.
+There, within a palace of jewels, Nanda saw a multitude of heavenly
+maidens celebrating some festival with music and dance; and the beauty
+of the least among them incomparably exceeded that of the fairest woman
+of earth. ‘O Master,’ cried Nanda, ‘what wonderful festival is this?’
+‘Ask some of those people,’ responded Shaka. So Nanda questioned one of
+the celestial maidens; and she said to him:—‘This festival is to
+celebrate the good tidings that have been brought to us. There is now
+in the human world, among the disciples of Shaka, a most excellent
+youth called Nanda, who is soon to be reborn into this heaven, and to
+become our bridegroom, because of his holy life. We wait for him with
+rejoicing.’ This reply filled the heart of Nanda with delight. Then the
+Buddha asked him: ‘Is there any one among these maidens, Nanda, equal
+in beauty to the woman with whom you have been in love?’ ‘Nay, Master!’
+answered Nanda; ‘even as that woman surpassed in beauty the female ape
+that we saw on the mountain, so is she herself surpassed by even the
+least among these.’
+
+ [2] Sâkyamuni.
+
+
+“Then the Buddha immediately descended with Nanda to the depths of the
+hells, and took him into a torture-chamber where myriads of men and
+women were being boiled alive in great caldrons, and otherwise horribly
+tormented by devils. Then Nanda found himself standing before a huge
+vessel which was filled with molten metal;—and he feared and wondered
+because this vessel had as yet no occupant. An idle devil sat beside
+it, yawning. ‘Master,’ Nanda inquired of the Buddha, ‘for whom has this
+vessel been prepared?’ ‘Ask the devil,’ answered Shaka. Nanda did so;
+and the devil said to him: ‘There is a man called Nanda,—now one of
+Shaka’s disciples,—about to be reborn into one of the heavens, on
+account of his former good actions. But after having there indulged
+himself, he is to be reborn in this hell; and his place will be in that
+pot. I am waiting for him.’”[3]
+
+ [3] I give the story substantially as it was told to me; but I have
+ not been able to compare it with any published text. My friend says
+ that he has seen two Chinese versions,—one in the _Hongyō-kyō_ (?),
+ the other in the _Zōichi-agon-kyō_ (Ekôttarâgamas). In Mr. Henry
+ Clarke Warren’s _Buddhism in Translations_ (the most interesting and
+ valuable single volume of its kind that I have ever seen), there is a
+ Pali version of the legend, which differs considerably from the
+ above.—This Nanda, according to Mr. Warren’s work, was a prince, and
+ the younger half-brother of Sâkyamuni.
+
+
+
+
+A Passional Karma
+
+
+One of the never-failing attractions of the Tōkyō stage is the
+performance, by the famous Kikugorō and his company, of the
+_Botan-Dōrō_, or “Peony-Lantern.” This weird play, of which the scenes
+are laid in the middle of the last century, is the dramatization of a
+romance by the novelist Encho, written in colloquial Japanese, and
+purely Japanese in local color, though inspired by a Chinese tale. I
+went to see the play; and Kikugorō made me familiar with a new variety
+of the pleasure of fear. “Why not give English readers the ghostly part
+of the story?”—asked a friend who guides me betimes through the mazes
+of Eastern philosophy. “It would serve to explain some popular ideas of
+the supernatural which Western people know very little about. And I
+could help you with the translation.”
+
+I gladly accepted the suggestion; and we composed the following summary
+of the more extraordinary portion of Enchō’s romance. Here and there we
+found it necessary to condense the original narrative; and we tried to
+keep close to the text only in the conversational passages,—some of
+which happen to possess a particular quality of psychological interest.
+
+
+—_This is the story of the Ghosts in the Romance of the
+Peony-Lantern:_—
+
+I
+
+There once lived in the district of Ushigomé, in Yedo, a _hatamoto_[1]
+called Iijima Heizayémon, whose only daughter, Tsuyu, was beautiful as
+her name, which signifies “Morning Dew.” Iijima took a second wife when
+his daughter was about sixteen; and, finding that O-Tsuyu could not be
+happy with her mother-in-law, he had a pretty villa built for the girl
+at Yanagijima, as a separate residence, and gave her an excellent
+maidservant, called O-Yoné, to wait upon her.
+
+ [1] The _hatamoto_ were samurai forming the special military force of
+ the Shōgun. The name literally signifies “Banner-Supporters.” These
+ were the highest class of samurai,—not only as the immediate vassals
+ of the Shōgun, but as a military aristocracy.
+
+
+O-Tsuyu lived happily enough in her new home until one day when the
+family physician, Yamamoto Shijō, paid her a visit in company with a
+young samurai named Hagiwara Shinzaburō, who resided in the Nedzu
+quarter. Shinzaburō was an unusually handsome lad, and very gentle; and
+the two young people fell in love with each other at sight. Even before
+the brief visit was over, they contrived,—unheard by the old doctor,—to
+pledge themselves to each other for life. And, at parting, O-Tsuyu
+whispered to the youth,—“_Remember! If you do not come to see me again,
+I shall certainly die!_”
+
+Shinzaburō never forgot those words; and he was only too eager to see
+more of O-Tsuyu. But etiquette forbade him to make the visit alone: he
+was obliged to wait for some other chance to accompany the doctor, who
+had promised to take him to the villa a second time. Unfortunately the
+old man did not keep this promise. He had perceived the sudden
+affection of O-Tsuyu; and he feared that her father would hold him
+responsible for any serious results. Iijima Heizayémon had a reputation
+for cutting off heads. And the more Shijō thought about the possible
+consequences of his introduction of Shinzaburō at the Iijima villa, the
+more he became afraid. Therefore he purposely abstained from calling
+upon his young friend.
+
+Months passed; and O-Tsuyu, little imagining the true cause of
+Shinzaburō’s neglect, believed that her love had been scorned. Then she
+pined away, and died. Soon afterwards, the faithful servant O-Yoné also
+died, through grief at the loss of her mistress; and the two were
+buried side by side in the cemetery of Shin-Banzui-In,—a temple which
+still stands in the neighborhood of Dango-Zaka, where the famous
+chrysanthemum-shows are yearly held.
+
+II
+
+Shinzaburō knew nothing of what had happened; but his disappointment
+and his anxiety had resulted in a prolonged illness. He was slowly
+recovering, but still very weak, when he unexpectedly received another
+visit from Yamamoto Shijō. The old man made a number of plausible
+excuses for his apparent neglect. Shinzaburō said to him:—“I have been
+sick ever since the beginning of spring;—even now I cannot eat
+anything…. Was it not rather unkind of you never to call? I thought
+that we were to make another visit together to the house of the Lady
+Iijima; and I wanted to take to her some little present as a return for
+our kind reception. Of course I could not go by myself.”
+
+Shijō gravely responded,—“I am very sorry to tell you that the young
+lady is dead!”
+
+“Dead!” repeated Shinzaburō, turning white,—“did you say that she is
+dead?”
+
+The doctor remained silent for a moment, as if collecting himself: then
+he resumed, in the quick light tone of a man resolved not to take
+trouble seriously:—
+
+“My great mistake was in having introduced you to her; for it seems
+that she fell in love with you at once. I am afraid that you must have
+said something to encourage this affection—when you were in that little
+room together. At all events, I saw how she felt towards you; and then
+I became uneasy,—fearing that her father might come to hear of the
+matter, and lay the whole blame upon me. So—to be quite frank with
+you,—I decided that it would be better not to call upon you; and I
+purposely stayed away for a long time. But, only a few days ago,
+happening to visit Iijima’s house, I heard, to my great surprise, that
+his daughter had died, and that her servant O-Yoné had also died. Then,
+remembering all that had taken place, I knew that the young lady must
+have died of love for you…. [_Laughing_] Ah, you are really a sinful
+fellow! Yes, you are! [_Laughing_] Isn’t it a sin to have been born so
+handsome that the girls die for love of you?[2] [_Seriously_] Well, we
+must leave the dead to the dead. It is no use to talk further about the
+matter;—all that you now can do for her is to repeat the Nembutsu[3]….
+Good-bye.”
+
+ [2] Perhaps this conversation may seem strange to the Western reader;
+ but it is true to life. The whole of the scene is characteristically
+ Japanese.
+
+
+ [3] The invocation _Namu Amida Butsu!_ (“Hail to the Buddha
+ Amitâbha!”),—repeated, as a prayer, for the sake of the dead.
+
+
+And the old man retired hastily,—anxious to avoid further converse
+about the painful event for which he felt himself to have been
+unwittingly responsible.
+
+III
+
+Shinzaburō long remained stupefied with grief by the news of O-Tsuyu’s
+death. But as soon as he found himself again able to think clearly, he
+inscribed the dead girl’s name upon a mortuary tablet, and placed the
+tablet in the Buddhist shrine of his house, and set offerings before
+it, and recited prayers. Every day thereafter he presented offerings,
+and repeated the _Nembutsu;_ and the memory of O-Tsuyu was never absent
+from his thought.
+
+Nothing occurred to change the monotony of his solitude before the time
+of the Bon,—the great Festival of the Dead,—which begins upon the
+thirteenth day of the seventh month. Then he decorated his house, and
+prepared everything for the festival;—hanging out the lanterns that
+guide the returning spirits, and setting the food of ghosts on the
+_shōryōdana_, or Shelf of Souls. And on the first evening of the Bon,
+after sun-down, he kindled a small lamp before the tablet of O-Tsuyu,
+and lighted the lanterns.
+
+The night was clear, with a great moon,—and windless, and very warm.
+Shinzaburō sought the coolness of his veranda. Clad only in a light
+summer-robe, he sat there thinking, dreaming, sorrowing;—sometimes
+fanning himself; sometimes making a little smoke to drive the
+mosquitoes away. Everything was quiet. It was a lonesome neighborhood,
+and there were few passers-by. He could hear only the soft rushing of a
+neighboring stream, and the shrilling of night-insects.
+
+But all at once this stillness was broken by a sound of women’s
+_geta_[4] approaching—_kara-kon, kara-kon;_—and the sound drew nearer
+and nearer, quickly, till it reached the live-hedge surrounding the
+garden. Then Shinzaburö, feeling curious, stood on tiptoe, so as to
+look over the hedge; and he saw two women passing. One, who was
+carrying a beautiful lantern decorated with peony-flowers,[5] appeared
+to be a servant;—the other was a slender girl of about seventeen,
+wearing a long-sleeved robe embroidered with designs of
+autumn-blossoms. Almost at the same instant both women turned their
+faces toward Shinzaburō;—and to his utter astonishment, he recognized
+O-Tsuyu and her servant O-Yoné.
+
+ [4] _Komageta_ in the original. The geta is a wooden sandal, or clog,
+ of which there are many varieties,—some decidedly elegant. The
+ _komageta_, or “pony-geta” is so-called because of the sonorous
+ hoof-like echo which it makes on hard ground.
+
+
+ [5] The sort of lantern here referred to is no longer made; and its
+ shape can best be understood by a glance at the picture accompanying
+ this story. It was totally unlike the modern domestic band-lantern,
+ painted with the owner’s crest; but it was not altogether unlike some
+ forms of lanterns still manufactured for the Festival of the Dead, and
+ called _Bon-dōrō_. The flowers ornamenting it were not painted: they
+ were artificial flowers of crêpe-silk, and were attached to the top of
+ the lantern.
+
+[Illustration: The Peony Lantern]
+
+They stopped immediately; and the girl cried out,—“Oh, how strange!…
+Hagiwara Sama!”
+
+Shinzaburō simultaneously called to the maid:—“O-Yoné! Ah, you are
+O-Yoné!—I remember you very well.”
+
+“Hagiwara Sama!” exclaimed O-Yoné in a tone of supreme amazement.
+“Never could I have believed it possible!… Sir, we were told that you
+had died.”
+
+“How extraordinary!” cried Shinzaburō. “Why, I was told that both of
+you were dead!”
+
+“Ah, what a hateful story!” returned O-Yoné. “Why repeat such unlucky
+words?… Who told you?”
+
+“Please to come in,” said Shinzaburō;—“here we can talk better. The
+garden-gate is open.”
+
+So they entered, and exchanged greeting; and when Shinzaburō had made
+them comfortable, he said:—
+
+“I trust that you will pardon my discourtesy in not having called upon
+you for so long a time. But Shijō, the doctor, about a month ago, told
+me that you had both died.”
+
+“So it was he who told you?” exclaimed O-Yoné. “It was very wicked of
+him to say such a thing. Well, it was also Shijō who told us that _you_
+were dead. I think that he wanted to deceive you,—which was not a
+difficult thing to do, because you are so confiding and trustful.
+Possibly my mistress betrayed her liking for you in some words which
+found their way to her father’s ears; and, in that case, O-Kuni—the new
+wife—might have planned to make the doctor tell you that we were dead,
+so as to bring about a separation. Anyhow, when my mistress heard that
+you had died, she wanted to cut off her hair immediately, and to become
+a nun. But I was able to prevent her from cutting off her hair; and I
+persuaded her at last to become a nun only in her heart. Afterwards her
+father wished her to marry a certain young man; and she refused. Then
+there was a great deal of trouble,—chiefly caused by O-Kuni;—and we
+went away from the villa, and found a very small house in
+Yanaka-no-Sasaki. There we are now just barely able to live, by doing a
+little private work…. My mistress has been constantly repeating the
+_Nembutsu_ for your sake. To-day, being the first day of the Bon, we
+went to visit the temples; and we were on our way home—thus late—when
+this strange meeting happened.”
+
+“Oh, how extraordinary!” cried Shinzaburō. “Can it be true?-or is it
+only a dream? Here I, too, have been constantly reciting the _Nembutsu_
+before a tablet with her name upon it! Look!” And he showed them
+O-Tsuyu’s tablet in its place upon the Shelf of Souls.
+
+“We are more than grateful for your kind remembrance,” returned O-Yoné,
+smiling…. “Now as for my mistress,”—she continued, turning towards
+O-Tsuyu, who had all the while remained demure and silent, half-hiding
+her face with her sleeve,—“as for my mistress, she actually says that
+she would not mind being disowned by her father for the time of seven
+existences,[6] or even being killed by him, for your sake! Come! will
+you not allow her to stay here to-night?”
+
+ [6] “For the time of seven existences,”—that is to say, for the time
+ of seven successive lives. In Japanese drama and romance it is not
+ uncommon to represent a father as disowning his child “for the time of
+ seven lives.” Such a disowning is called _shichi-shō madé no mandō_, a
+ disinheritance for seven lives,—signifying that in six future lives
+ after the present the erring son or daughter will continue to feel the
+ parental displeasure.
+
+
+Shinzaburō turned pale for joy. He answered in a voice trembling with
+emotion:—
+
+“Please remain; but do not speak loud—because there is a troublesome
+fellow living close by,—a _ninsomi_[7] called Hakuōdō Yusai, who tells
+peoples fortunes by looking at their faces. He is inclined to be
+curious; and it is better that he should not know.”
+
+ [7] The profession is not yet extinct. The _ninsomi_ uses a kind of
+ magnifying glass (or magnifying-mirror sometimes), called _tengankyō_
+ or _ninsomégané_.
+
+
+The two women remained that night in the house of the young samurai,
+and returned to their own home a little before daybreak. And after that
+night they came every nighht for seven nights,—whether the weather were
+foul or fair,—always at the same hour. And Shinzaburō became more and
+more attached to the girl; and the twain were fettered, each to each,
+by that bond of illusion which is stronger than bands of iron.
+
+IV
+
+Now there was a man called Tomozō, who lived in a small cottage
+adjoining Shinzaburō’s residence, Tomozō and his wife O-Miné were both
+employed by Shinzaburō as servants. Both seemed to be devoted to their
+young master; and by his help they were able to live in comparative
+comfort.
+
+One night, at a very late hour, Tomozō heard the voice of a woman in
+his master’s apartment; and this made him uneasy. He feared that
+Shinzaburō, being very gentle and affectionate, might be made the dupe
+of some cunning wanton,—in which event the domestics would be the first
+to suffer. He therefore resolved to watch; and on the following night
+he stole on tiptoe to Shinzaburō’s dwelling, and looked through a chink
+in one of the sliding shutters. By the glow of a night-lantern within
+the sleeping-room, he was able to perceive that his master and a
+strange woman were talking together under the mosquito-net. At first he
+could not see the woman distinctly. Her back was turned to him;—he only
+observed that she was very slim, and that she appeared to be very
+young,—judging from the fashion of her dress and hair.[8] Putting his
+ear to the chink, he could hear the conversation plainly. The woman
+said:—
+
+“And if I should be disowned by my father, would you then let me come
+and live with you?”
+
+ [8] The color and form of the dress, and the style of wearing the
+ hair, are by Japanese custom regulated according to the age of the
+ woman.
+
+
+Shinzaburō answered:—
+
+“Most assuredly I would—nay, I should be glad of the chance. But there
+is no reason to fear that you will ever be disowned by your father; for
+you are his only daughter, and he loves you very much. What I do fear
+is that some day we shall be cruelly separated.”
+
+She responded softly:—
+
+“Never, never could I even think of accepting any other man for my
+husband. Even if our secret were to become known, and my father were to
+kill me for what I have done, still—after death itself—I could never
+cease to think of you. And I am now quite sure that you yourself would
+not be able to live very long without me.”… Then clinging closely to
+him, with her lips at his neck, she caressed him; and he returned her
+caresses.
+
+Tomozō wondered as he listened,—because the language of the woman was
+not the language of a common woman, but the language of a lady of
+rank.[9] Then he determined at all hazards to get one glimpse of her
+face; and he crept round the house, backwards and forwards, peering
+through every crack and chink. And at last he was able to see;—but
+therewith an icy trembling seized him; and the hair of his head stood
+up.
+
+ [9] The forms of speech used by the samurai, and other superior
+ classes, differed considerably from those of the popular idiom; but
+ these differences could not be effectively rendered into English.
+
+
+For the face was the face of a woman long dead,—and the fingers
+caressing were fingers of naked bone,—and of the body below the waist
+there was not anything: it melted off into thinnest trailing shadow.
+Where the eyes of the lover deluded saw youth and grace and beauty,
+there appeared to the eyes of the watcher horror only, and the
+emptiness of death. Simultaneously another woman’s figure, and a
+weirder, rose up from within the chamber, and swiftly made toward the
+watcher, as if discerning his presence. Then, in uttermost terror, he
+fled to the dwelling of Hakuōdō Yusai, and, knocking frantically at the
+doors, succeeded in arousing him.
+
+V
+
+Hakuōdō Yusai, the _ninsomi_, was a very old man; but in his time he
+had travelled much, and he had heard and seen so many things that he
+could not be easily surprised. Yet the story of the terrified Tomozō
+both alarmed and amazed him. He had read in ancient Chinese books of
+love between the living and the dead; but he had never believed it
+possible. Now, however, he felt convinced that the statement of Tomozō
+was not a falsehood, and that something very strange was really going
+on in the house of Hagiwara. Should the truth prove to be what Tomozō
+imagined, then the young samurai was a doomed man.
+
+“If the woman be a ghost,”—said Yusai to the frightened servant, “—if
+the woman be a ghost, your master must die very soon,—unless something
+extraordinary can be done to save him. And if the woman be a ghost, the
+signs of death will appear upon his face. For the spirit of the living
+is _yōki_, and pure;—the spirit of the dead is _inki_, and unclean: the
+one is Positive, the other Negative. He whose bride is a ghost cannot
+live. Even though in his blood there existed the force of a life of one
+hundred years, that force must quickly perish…. Still, I shall do all
+that I can to save Hagiwara Sama. And in the meantime, Tomozō, say
+nothing to any other person,—not even to your wife,—about this matter.
+At sunrise I shall call upon your master.”
+
+VI
+
+When questioned next morning by Yusai, Shinzaburō at first attempted to
+deny that any women had been visiting the house; but finding this
+artless policy of no avail, and perceiving that the old man’s purpose
+was altogether unselfish, he was finally persuaded to acknowledge what
+had really occurred, and to give his reasons for wishing to keep the
+matter a secret. As for the lady Iijima, he intended, he said, to make
+her his wife as soon as possible.
+
+“Oh, madness!” cried Yusai,—losing all patience in the intensity of his
+alarm. “Know, sir, that the people who have been coming here, night
+after night, are dead! Some frightful delusion is upon you!… Why, the
+simple fact that you long supposed O-Tsuyu to be dead, and repeated the
+_Nembutsu_ for her, and made offerings before her tablet, is itself the
+proof!… The lips of the dead have touched you!—the hands of the dead
+have caressed you!… Even at this moment I see in your face the signs of
+death—and you will not believe!… Listen to me now, sir,—I beg of
+you,—if you wish to save yourself: otherwise you have less than twenty
+days to live. They told you—those people—that they were residing in the
+district of Shitaya, in Yanaka-no-Sasaki. Did you ever visit them at
+that place? No!—of course you did not! Then go to-day,—as soon as you
+can,—to Yanaka-no-Sasaki, and try to find their home!…”
+
+And having uttered this counsel with the most vehement earnestness,
+Hakuōdō Yusai abruptly took his departure.
+
+Shinzaburō, startled though not convinced, resolved after a moment’s
+reflection to follow the advice of the _ninsomi_, and to go to Shitaya.
+It was yet early in the morning when he reached the quarter of
+Yanaka-no-Sasaki, and began his search for the dwelling of O-Tsuyu. He
+went through every street and side-street, read all the names inscribed
+at the various entrances, and made inquiries whenever an opportunity
+presented itself. But he could not find anything resembling the little
+house mentioned by O-Yoné; and none of the people whom he questioned
+knew of any house in the quarter inhabited by two single women. Feeling
+at last certain that further research would be useless, he turned
+homeward by the shortest way, which happened to lead through the
+grounds of the temple Shin-Banzui-In.
+
+Suddenly his attention was attracted by two new tombs, placed side by
+side, at the rear of the temple. One was a common tomb, such as might
+have been erected for a person of humble rank: the other was a large
+and handsome monument; and hanging before it was a beautiful
+peony-lantern, which had probably been left there at the time of the
+Festival of the Dead. Shinzaburō remembered that the peony-lantern
+carried by O-Yoné was exactly similar; and the coincidence impressed
+him as strange. He looked again at the tombs; but the tombs explained
+nothing. Neither bore any personal name,—only the Buddhist _kaimyō_, or
+posthumous appellation. Then he determined to seek information at the
+temple. An acolyte stated, in reply to his questions, that the large
+tomb had been recently erected for the daughter of Iijima Heizayémon,
+the _hatamoto_ of Ushigomé; and that the small tomb next to it was that
+of her servant O-Yoné, who had died of grief soon after the young
+lady’s funeral.
+
+Immediately to Shinzaburö’s memory there recurred, with another and
+sinister meaning, the words of O-Yoné:—“_We went away, and found a very
+small house in Yanaka-no-Sasaki. There we are now just barely able to
+live—by doing a little private work_….” Here was indeed the very small
+house,—and in Yanaka-no-Sasaki. But the little _private work…?_
+
+Terror-stricken, the samurai hastened with all speed to the house of
+Yusai, and begged for his counsel and assistance. But Yusai declared
+himself unable to be of any aid in such a case. All that he could do
+was to send Shinzaburō to the high-priest Ryōseki, of Shin-Banzui-In,
+with a letter praying for immediate religious help.
+
+VII
+
+The high-priest Ryōseki was a learned and a holy man. By spiritual
+vision he was able to know the secret of any sorrow, and the nature of
+the karma that had caused it. He heard unmoved the story of Shinzaburō,
+and said to him:—
+
+“A very great danger now threatens you, because of an error committed
+in one of your former states of existence. The karma that binds you to
+the dead is very strong; but if I tried to explain its character, you
+would not be able to understand. I shall therefore tell you only
+this,—that the dead person has no desire to injure you out of hate,
+feels no enmity towards you: she is influenced, on the contrary, by the
+most passionate affection for you. Probably the girl has been in love
+with you from a time long preceding your present life,—from a time of
+not less than three or four past existences; and it would seem that,
+although necessarily changing her form and condition at each succeeding
+birth, she has not been able to cease from following after you.
+Therefore it will not be an easy thing to escape from her influence….
+But now I am going to lend you this powerful _mamori_.[10] It is a pure
+gold image of that Buddha called the Sea-Sounding
+Tathâgata—_Kai-On-Nyōrai_,—because his preaching of the Law sounds
+through the world like the sound of the sea. And this little image is
+especially a _shiryō-yoké_,[11]—which protects the living from the
+dead. This you must wear, in its covering, next to your body,—under the
+girdle…. Besides, I shall presently perform in the temple, a
+_segaki_-service[12] for the repose of the troubled spirit…. And here
+is a holy sutra, called _Ubō-Darani-Kyō_, or “Treasure-Raining
+Sûtra”[13] you must be careful to recite it every night in your
+house—without fail…. Furthermore I shall give you this package of
+_o-fuda_;[14]—you must paste one of them over every opening of your
+house,—no matter how small. If you do this, the power of the holy texts
+will prevent the dead from entering. But—whatever may happen—do not
+fail to recite the sutra.”
+
+ [10] The Japanese word _mamori_ has significations at least as
+ numerous as those attaching to our own term “amulet.” It would be
+ impossible, in a mere footnote, even to suggest the variety of
+ Japanese religious objects to which the name is given. In this
+ instance, the _mamori_ is a very small image, probably enclosed in a
+ miniature shrine of lacquer-work or metal, over which a silk cover is
+ drawn. Such little images were often worn by _samurai_ on the person.
+ I was recently shown a miniature figure of Kwannon, in an iron case,
+ which had been carried by an officer through the Satsuma war. He
+ observed, with good reason, that it had probably saved his life; for
+ it had stopped a bullet of which the dent was plainly visible.
+
+
+ [11] From _shiryō_, a ghost, and _yokeru_, to exclude. The Japanese
+ have, two kinds of ghosts proper in their folk-lore: the spirits of
+ the dead, _shiryō_; and the spirits of the living, _ikiryō_. A house
+ or a person may be haunted by an _ikiryō_ as well as by a _shiryō_.
+
+
+ [12] A special service,—accompanying offerings of food, etc., to those
+ dead having no living relatives or friends to care for them,—is thus
+ termed. In this case, however, the service would be of a particular
+ and exceptional kind.
+
+
+ [13] The name would be more correctly written _Ubō-Darani-Kyō_. It is
+ the Japanese pronunciation of the title of a very short sutra
+ translated out of Sanscrit into Chinese by the Indian priest
+ Amoghavajra, probably during the eighth century. The Chinese text
+ contains transliterations of some mysterious Sanscrit
+ words,—apparently talismanic words,—like those to be seen in Kern’s
+ translation of the Saddharma-Pundarîka, ch. xxvi.
+
+
+ [14] _O-fuda_ is the general name given to religious texts used as
+ charms or talismans. They are sometimes stamped or burned upon wood,
+ but more commonly written or printed upon narrow strips of paper.
+ _O-fuda_ are pasted above house-entrances, on the walls of rooms, upon
+ tablets placed in household shrines, etc., etc. Some kinds are worn
+ about the person;—others are made into pellets, and swallowed as
+ spiritual medicine. The text of the larger _o-fuda_ is often
+ accompanied by curious pictures or symbolic illustrations.
+
+
+Shinzaburō humbly thanked the high-priest; and then, taking with him
+the image, the sutra, and the bundle of sacred texts, he made all haste
+to reach his home before the hour of sunset.
+
+VIII
+
+With Yusai’s advice and help, Shinzaburō was able before dark to fix
+the holy texts over all the apertures of his dwelling. Then the
+_ninsomi_ returned to his own house,—leaving the youth alone.
+
+Night came, warm and clear. Shinzaburō made fast the doors, bound the
+precious amulet about his waist, entered his mosquito-net, and by the
+glow of a night-lantern began to recite the _Ubō-Darani-Kyō_. For a
+long time he chanted the words, comprehending little of their
+meaning;—then he tried to obtain some rest. But his mind was still too
+much disturbed by the strange events of the day. Midnight passed; and
+no sleep came to him. At last he heard the boom of the great
+temple-bell of Dentsu-In announcing the eighth hour.[15]
+
+ [15] According to the old Japanese way of counting time, this
+ _yatsudoki_ or eighth hour was the same as our two o’clock in the
+ morning. Each Japanese hour was equal to two European hours, so that
+ there were only six hours instead of our twelve; and these six hours
+ were counted backwards in the order,—9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4. Thus the ninth
+ hour corresponded to our midday, or midnight; half-past nine to our
+ one o’clock; eight to our two o’clock. Two o’clock in the morning,
+ also called “the Hour of the Ox,” was the Japanese hour of ghosts and
+ goblins.
+
+
+It ceased; and Shinzaburō suddenly heard the sound of _geta_
+approaching from the old direction,—but this time more slowly:
+_karan-koron, karan-koron!_ At once a cold sweat broke over his
+forehead. Opening the sutra hastily, with trembling hand, he began
+again to recite it aloud. The steps came nearer and nearer,—reached the
+live hedge,—stopped! Then, strange to say, Shinzaburō felt unable to
+remain under his mosquito-net: something stronger even than his fear
+impelled him to look; and, instead of continuing to recite the
+_Ubō-Darani-Kyō_, he foolishly approached the shutters, and through a
+chink peered out into the night. Before the house he saw O-Tsuyu
+standing, and O-Yoné with the peony-lantern; and both of them were
+gazing at the Buddhist texts pasted above the entrance. Never
+before—not even in what time she lived—had O-Tsuyu appeared so
+beautiful; and Shinzaburō felt his heart drawn towards her with a power
+almost resistless. But the terror of death and the terror of the
+unknown restrained; and there went on within him such a struggle
+between his love and his fear that he became as one suffering in the
+body the pains of the Shō-netsu hell.[16]
+
+ [16] _En-netsu_ or _Shō-netsu_ (Sanscrit “Tapana”) is the sixth of the
+ Eight Hot Hells of Japanese Buddhism. One day of life in this hell is
+ equal in duration to thousands (some say millions) of human years.
+
+
+Presently he heard the voice of the maid-servant, saying:—
+
+“My dear mistress, there is no way to enter. The heart of Hagiwara Sama
+must have changed. For the promise that he made last night has been
+broken; and the doors have been made fast to keep us out…. We cannot go
+in to-night…. It will be wiser for you to make up your mind not to
+think any more about him, because his feeling towards you has certainly
+changed. It is evident that he does not want to see you. So it will be
+better not to give yourself any more trouble for the sake of a man
+whose heart is so unkind.”
+
+But the girl answered, weeping:—
+
+“Oh, to think that this could happen after the pledges which we made to
+each other!… Often I was told that the heart of a man changes as
+quickly as the sky of autumn;—yet surely the heart of Hagiwara Sama
+cannot be so cruel that he should really intend to exclude me in this
+way!… Dear Yone, please find some means of taking me to him…. Unless
+you do, I will never, never go home again.”
+
+Thus she continued to plead, veiling her face with her long
+sleeves,—and very beautiful she looked, and very touching; but the fear
+of death was strong upon her lover.
+
+O-Yoné at last made answer,—“My dear young lady, why will you trouble
+your mind about a man who seems to be so cruel?… Well, let us see if
+there be no way to enter at the back of the house: come with me!”
+
+And taking O-Tsuyu by the hand, she led her away toward the rear of the
+dwelling; and there the two disappeared as suddenly as the light
+disappears when the flame of a lamp is blown out.
+
+IX
+
+Night after night the shadows came at the Hour of the Ox; and nightly
+Shinzaburō heard the weeping of O-Tsuyu. Yet he believed himself
+saved,—little imagining that his doom had already been decided by the
+character of his dependents.
+
+Tomozō had promised Yusai never to speak to any other person—not even
+to O-Miné—of the strange events that were taking place. But Tomozō was
+not long suffered by the haunters to rest in peace. Night after night
+O-Yoné entered into his dwelling, and roused him from his sleep, and
+asked him to remove the _o-fuda_ placed over one very small window at
+the back of his master’s house. And Tomozō, out of fear, as often
+promised her to take away the _o-fuda_ before the next sundown; but
+never by day could he make up his mind to remove it,—believing that
+evil was intended to Shinzaburō. At last, in a night of storm, O-Yoné
+startled him from slumber with a cry of reproach, and stooped above his
+pillow, and said to him: “Have a care how you trifle with us! If, by
+to-morrow night, you do not take away that text, you shall learn how I
+can hate!” And she made her face so frightful as she spoke that Tomozō
+nearly died of terror.
+
+O-Miné, the wife of Tomozō, had never till then known of these visits:
+even to her husband they had seemed like bad dreams. But on this
+particular night it chanced that, waking suddenly, she heard the voice
+of a woman talking to Tomozō. Almost in the same moment the talk-ing
+ceased; and when O-Miné looked about her, she saw, by the light of the
+night-lamp, only her husband,—shuddering and white with fear. The
+stranger was gone; the doors were fast: it seemed impossible that
+anybody could have entered. Nevertheless the jealousy of the wife had
+been aroused; and she began to chide and to question Tomozō in such a
+manner that he thought himself obliged to betray the secret, and to
+explain the terrible dilemma in which he had been placed.
+
+Then the passion of O-Miné yielded to wonder and alarm; but she was a
+subtle woman, and she devised immediately a plan to save her husband by
+the sacrifice of her master. And she gave Tomozō a cunning
+counsel,—telling him to make conditions with the dead.
+
+They came again on the following night at the Hour of the Ox; and
+O-Miné hid herself on hearing the sound of their coming,—_karan-koron,
+karan-koron!_ But Tomozō went out to meet them in the dark, and even
+found courage to say to them what his wife had told him to say:—
+
+“It is true that I deserve your blame;—but I had no wish to cause you
+anger. The reason that the _o-fuda_ has not been taken away is that my
+wife and I are able to live only by the help of Hagiwara Sama, and that
+we cannot expose him to any danger without bringing misfortune upon
+ourselves. But if we could obtain the sum of a hundred _ryō_ in gold,
+we should be able to please you, because we should then need no help
+from anybody. Therefore if you will give us a hundred _ryō_, I can take
+the _o-fuda_ away without being afraid of losing our only means of
+support.”
+
+When he had uttered these words, O-Yoné and O-Tsuyu looked at each
+other in silence for a moment. Then O-Yoné said:—
+
+“Mistress, I told you that it was not right to trouble this man, —as we
+have no just cause of ill will against him. But it is certainly useless
+to fret yourself about Hagiwara Sama, because his heart has changed
+towards you. Now once again, my dear young lady, let me beg you not to
+think any more about him!”
+
+But O-Tsuyu, weeping, made answer:—
+
+“Dear Yone, whatever may happen, I cannot possibly keep myself from
+thinking about him! You know that you can get a hundred _ryō_ to have
+the _o-fuda_ taken off…. Only once more, I pray, dear Yone!—only once
+more bring me face to face with Hagiwara Sama,—I beseech you!” And
+hiding her face with her sleeve, she thus continued to plead.
+
+“Oh! why will you ask me to do these things?” responded O-Yoné. “You
+know very well that I have no money. But since you will persist in this
+whim of yours, in spite of all that I can say, I suppose that I must
+try to find the money somehow, and to bring it here to-morrow night….”
+Then, turning to the faithless Tomozō, she said:—“Tomozō, I must tell
+you that Hagiwara Sama now wears upon his body a _mamori_ called by the
+name of _Kai-On-Nyōrai_, and that so long as he wears it we cannot
+approach him. So you will have to get that _mamori_ away from him, by
+some means or other, as well as to remove the _o-fuda_.”
+
+Tomozō feebly made answer:—
+
+“That also I can do, if you will promise to bring me the hundred
+_ryō_.”
+
+“Well, mistress,” said O-Yoné, “you will wait,—will you not,—until
+to-morrow night?”
+
+“Oh, dear Yoné!” sobbed the other,—“have we to go back to-night again
+without seeing Hagiwara Sama? Ah! it is cruel!”
+
+And the shadow of the mistress, weeping, was led away by the shadow of
+the maid.
+
+X
+
+Another day went, and another night came, and the dead came with it.
+But this time no lamentation was heard without the house of Hagiwara;
+for the faithless servant found his reward at the Hour of the Ox, and
+removed the _o-fuda_. Moreover he had been able, while his master was
+at the bath, to steal from its case the golden _mamori_, and to
+substitute for it an image of copper; and he had buried the
+_Kai-On-Nyōrai_ in a desolate field. So the visitants found nothing to
+oppose their entering. Veiling their faces with their sleeves they rose
+and passed, like a streaming of vapor, into the little window from over
+which the holy text had been torn away. But what happened thereafter
+within the house Tomozō never knew.
+
+The sun was high before he ventured again to approach his master’s
+dwelling, and to knock upon the sliding-doors. For the first time in
+years he obtained no response; and the silence made him afraid.
+Repeatedly he called, and received no answer. Then, aided by O-Miné, he
+succeeded in effecting an entrance and making his way alone to the
+sleeping-room, where he called again in vain. He rolled back the
+rumbling shutters to admit the light; but still within the house there
+was no stir. At last he dared to lift a corner of the mosquito-net. But
+no sooner had he looked beneath than he fled from the house, with a cry
+of horror.
+
+Shinzaburō was dead—hideously dead;—and his face was the face of a man
+who had died in the uttermost agony of fear;—and lying beside him in
+the bed were the bones of a woman! And the bones of the arms, and the
+bones of the hands, clung fast about his neck.
+
+XI
+
+Hakuōdō Yusai, the fortune-teller, went to view the corpse at the
+prayer of the faithless Tomozō. The old man was terrified and
+astonished at the spectacle, but looked about him with a keen eye. He
+soon perceived that the _o-fuda_ had been taken from the little window
+at the back of the house; and on searching the body of Shinzaburō, he
+discovered that the golden _mamori_ had been taken from its wrapping,
+and a copper image of Fudō put in place of it. He suspected Tomozō of
+the theft; but the whole occurrence was so very extraordinary that he
+thought it prudent to consult with the priest Ryōseki before taking
+further action. Therefore, after having made a careful examination of
+the premises, he betook himself to the temple Shin-Banzui-In, as
+quickly as his aged limbs could bear him.
+
+Ryōseki, without waiting to hear the purpose of the old man’s visit, at
+once invited him into a private apartment.
+
+“You know that you are always welcome here,” said Ryōseki. “Please seat
+yourself at ease…. Well, I am sorry to tell you that Hagiwara Sama is
+dead.”
+
+Yusai wonderingly exclaimed:—“Yes, he is dead;—but how did you learn of
+it?”
+
+The priest responded:—
+
+“Hagiwara Sama was suffering from the results of an evil karma; and his
+attendant was a bad man. What happened to Hagiwara Sama was
+unavoidable;—his destiny had been determined from a time long before
+his last birth. It will be better for you not to let your mind be
+troubled by this event.”
+
+Yusai said:—
+
+“I have heard that a priest of pure life may gain power to see into the
+future for a hundred years; but truly this is the first time in my
+existence that I have had proof of such power…. Still, there is another
+matter about which I am very anxious….”
+
+“You mean,” interrupted Ryōseki, “the stealing of the holy _mamori_,
+the _Kai-On-Nyōrai_. But you must not give yourself any concern about
+that. The image has been buried in a field; and it will be found there
+and returned to me during the eighth month of the coming year. So
+please do not be anxious about it.”
+
+More and more amazed, the old _ninsomi_ ventured to observe:—
+
+“I have studied the _In-Yō_,[17] and the science of divination; and I
+make my living by telling peoples’ fortunes;—but I cannot possibly
+understand how you know these things.”
+
+ [17] The Male and Female principles of the universe, the Active and
+ Passive forces of Nature. Yusai refers here to the old Chinese
+ nature-philosophy,—better known to Western readers by the name
+ FENG-SHUI.
+
+
+Ryōseki answered gravely:—
+
+“Never mind how I happen to know them…. I now want to speak to you
+about Hagiwara’s funeral. The House of Hagiwara has its own
+family-cemetery, of course; but to bury him there would not be proper.
+He must be buried beside O-Tsuyu, the Lady Iijima; for his
+karma-relation to her was a very deep one. And it is but right that you
+should erect a tomb for him at your own cost, because you have been
+indebted to him for many favors.”
+
+Thus it came to pass that Shinzaburō was buried beside O-Tsuyu, in the
+cemetery of Shin-Banzui-In, in Yanaka-no-Sasaki.
+
+—_Here ends the story of the Ghosts in the Romance of the
+Peony-Lantern._—
+
+
+My friend asked me whether the story had interested me; and I answered
+by telling him that I wanted to go to the cemetery of
+Shin-Banzui-In,—so as to realize more definitely the local color of the
+author’s studies.
+
+“I shall go with you at once,” he said. “But what did you think of the
+personages?”
+
+“To Western thinking,” I made answer, “Shinzaburō is a despicable
+creature. I have been mentally comparing him with the true lovers of
+our old ballad-literature. They were only too glad to follow a dead
+sweetheart into the grave; and nevertheless, being Christians, they
+believed that they had only one human life to enjoy in this world. But
+Shinzaburō was a Buddhist,—with a million lives behind him and a
+million lives before him; and he was too selfish to give up even one
+miserable existence for the sake of the girl that came back to him from
+the dead. Then he was even more cowardly than selfish. Although a
+samurai by birth and training, he had to beg a priest to save him from
+ghosts. In every way he proved himself contemptible; and O-Tsuyu did
+quite right in choking him to death.”
+
+“From the Japanese point of view, likewise,” my friend responded,
+“Shinzaburō is rather contemptible. But the use of this weak character
+helped the author to develop incidents that could not otherwise,
+perhaps, have been so effectively managed. To my thinking, the only
+attractive character in the story is that of O-Yoné: type of the
+old-time loyal and loving servant,—intelligent, shrewd, full of
+resource,—faithful not only unto death, but beyond death…. Well, let us
+go to Shin-Banzui-In.”
+
+We found the temple uninteresting, and the cemetery an abomination of
+desolation. Spaces once occupied by graves had been turned into
+potato-patches. Between were tombs leaning at all angles out of the
+perpendicular, tablets made illegible by scurf, empty pedestals,
+shattered water-tanks, and statues of Buddhas without heads or hands.
+Recent rains had soaked the black soil,—leaving here and there small
+pools of slime about which swarms of tiny frogs were hopping.
+Everything—excepting the potato-patches—seemed to have been neglected
+for years. In a shed just within the gate, we observed a woman cooking;
+and my companion presumed to ask her if she knew anything about the
+tombs described in the Romance of the Peony-Lantern.
+
+“Ah! the tombs of O-Tsuyu and O-Yoné?” she responded, smiling;—“you
+will find them near the end of the first row at the back of the
+temple—next to the statue of Jizo.”
+
+Surprises of this kind I had met with elsewhere in Japan.
+
+We picked our way between the rain-pools and between the green ridges
+of young potatoes,—whose roots were doubtless feeding on the sub-stance
+of many another O-Tsuyu and O-Yoné;—and we reached at last two
+lichen-eaten tombs of which the inscriptions seemed almost obliterated.
+Beside the larger tomb was a statue of Jizo, with a broken nose.
+
+“The characters are not easy to make out,” said my friend—“but wait!”….
+He drew from his sleeve a sheet of soft white paper, laid it over the
+inscription, and began to rub the paper with a lump of clay. As he did
+so, the characters appeared in white on the blackened surface.
+
+“_Eleventh day, third month—Rat, Elder Brother, Fire—Sixth year of
+Horéki_ [A. D. 1756].’… This would seem to be the grave of some
+innkeeper of Nedzu, named Kichibei. Let us see what is on the other
+monument.”
+
+With a fresh sheet of paper he presently brought out the text of a
+kaimyō, and read,—
+
+“_En-myō-In, Hō-yō-I-tei-ken-shi, Hō-ni’:—‘Nun-of-the-Law, Illustrious,
+Pure-of-heart-and-will, Famed-in-the-Law,—inhabiting the
+Mansion-of-the-Preaching-of-Wonder._’…. The grave of some Buddhist
+nun.”
+
+“What utter humbug!” I exclaimed. “That woman was only making fun of
+us.”
+
+“Now,” my friend protested, “you are unjust to the, woman! You came
+here because you wanted a sensation; and she tried her very best to
+please you. You did not suppose that ghost-story was true, did you?”
+
+
+
+
+Footprints of the Buddha
+
+
+I
+
+I was recently surprised to find, in Anderson’s catalogue of Japanese
+and Chinese paintings in the British Museum, this remarkable
+statement:—“It is to be noted that in Japan the figure of the Buddha is
+never represented by the feet, or pedestal alone, as in the Amravati
+remains, and many other Indian art-relics.” As a matter of fact the
+representation is not even rare in Japan. It is to be found not only
+upon stone monuments, but also in religious paintings,—especially
+certain kakemono suspended in temples. These kakemono usually display
+the footprints upon a very large scale, with a multitude of mystical
+symbols and characters. The sculptures may be less common; but in Tōkyō
+alone there are a number of _Butsu-soku-séki_, or “Buddha-foot stones,”
+which I have seen,—and probably several which I have not seen. There is
+one at the temple of Ekō-In, near Ryōgoku-bashi; one at the temple of
+Denbō-In, in Koishikawa; one at the temple of Denbō-In, in Asakusa; and
+a beautiful example at Zōjōji in Shiba. These are not cut out of a
+single block, but are composed of fragments cemented into the irregular
+traditional shape, and capped with a heavy slab of Nebukawa granite, on
+the polished surface of which the design is engraved in lines about
+one-tenth of an inch in depth. I should judge the average height of
+these pedestals to be about two feet four inches, and their greatest
+diameter about three feet. Around the footprints there are carved (in
+most of the examples) twelve little bunches of leaves and buds of the
+_Bodai-jū_ (“Bodhidruma”), or Bodhi-tree of Buddhist legend. In all
+cases the footprint design is about the same; but the monuments are
+different in quality and finish. That of Zōjōji,—with figures of
+divinities cut in low relief on its sides,—is the most ornate and
+costly of the four. The specimen at Ekō-In is very poor and plain.
+
+The first _Butsu-soku-séki_ made in Japan was that erected at Tōdaiji,
+in Nara. It was designed after a similar monument in China, said to be
+the faithful copy of an Indian original. Concerning this Indian
+original, the following tradition is given in an old Buddhist
+book:[1]—“In a temple of the province of Makada [_Maghada_] there is a
+great stone. The Buddha once trod upon this stone; and the prints of
+the soles of his feet remain upon its surface. The length of the
+impressions is one foot and eight inches,[2] and the width of them a
+little more than six inches. On the sole-part of each footprint there
+is the impression of a wheel; and upon each of the prints of the ten
+toes there is a flower-like design, which sometimes radiates light.
+When the Buddha felt that the time of his Nirvâna was approaching, he
+went to Kushina [_Kusinârâ_], and there stood upon that stone. He stood
+with his face to the south. Then he said to his disciple Anan
+[_Ânanda_]: ‘In this place I leave the impression of my feet, to remain
+for a last token. Although a king of this country will try to destroy
+the impression, it can never be entirely destroyed.’ And indeed it has
+not been destroyed unto this day. Once a king who hated Buddhism caused
+the top of the stone to be pared off, so as to remove the impression;
+but after the surface had been removed, the footprints reappeared upon
+the stone.”
+
+ [1] The Chinese title is pronounced by Japanese as _Sei-iki-ki_.
+ “Sei-iki”(the Country of the West) was the old Japanese name for
+ India; and thus the title might be rendered, “The Book about India.” I
+ suppose this is the work known to Western scholars as _Si-yu-ki_.
+
+
+ [2] “One _shaku_ and eight _sun_.” But the Japanese foot and inch are
+ considerably longer than the English.
+
+
+Concerning the virtue of the representation of the footprints of the
+Buddha, there is sometimes quoted a text from the
+_Kwan-butsu-sanmai-kyō_ [“Buddha-dhyâna-samâdhi-sâgara-sûtra”], thus
+translated for me:—“In that time Shaka [“Sâkyamuni”] lifted up his
+foot…. When the Buddha lifted up his foot all could perceive upon the
+sole of it the appearance of a wheel of a thousand spokes…. And Shaka
+said: ‘Whosoever beholds the sign upon the sole of my foot shall be
+purified from all his faults. Even he who beholds the sign after my
+death shall be delivered from all the evil results of all his errors.”
+Various other texts of Japanese Buddhism affirm that whoever looks upon
+the footprints of the Buddha “shall be freed from the bonds of error,
+and conducted upon the Way of Enlightenment.”
+
+[Illustration: S’rîpâda-tracing at Dentsu-In, Koishikawa, Tōkyō]
+
+An outline of the footprints as engraved on one of the Japanese
+pedestals[3] should have some interest even for persons familiar with
+Indian sculptures of the S’rîpâda. The double-page drawing,
+accompanying this paper, and showing both footprints, has been made
+after the tracing at Dentsu-In, where the footprints have the full
+legendary dimension, It will be observed that there are only seven
+emblems: these are called in Japan the _Shichi-Sō_, or “Seven
+Appearances.” I got some information about them from the
+_Shō-Ekō-Hō-Kwan_,—a book used by the Jodo sect. This book also
+contains rough woodcuts of the footprints; and one of them I reproduce
+here for the purpose of calling attention to the curious form of the
+emblems upon the toes. They are said to be modifications of the
+_manji_, or svastikâ, but I doubt it. In the
+_Butsu-soku-séki_-tracings, the corresponding figures suggest the
+“flower-like design” mentioned in the tradition of the Maghada stone;
+while the symbols in the book-print suggest fire. Indeed their outline
+so much resembles the conventional flamelet-design of Buddhist
+decoration, that I cannot help thinking them originally intended to
+indicate the traditional luminosity of the footprints. Moreover, there
+is a text in the book called _Hō-Kai-Shidai_ that lends support to this
+supposition:—“The sole of the foot of the Buddha is flat,—like the base
+of a toilet-stand…. Upon it are lines forming the appearance of a wheel
+of a thousand spokes…. The toes are slender, round, long, straight,
+graceful, _and somewhat luminous_.”
+
+ [3] A monument at Nara exhibits the _S’rîpâda_ in a form differing
+ considerably from the design upon the Tōkyō pedestals.
+
+[Illustration: Left: S’rîpâda showing the svastikâ (From the
+Bukkyō-Hyakkwa-Zensho)
+Right: (From the Shō-Ekō-Hō-Kwan)]
+
+The explanation of the Seven Appearances which is given by the
+_Shō-Ekō-Hō-Kwan_ cannot be called satisfactory; but it is not without
+interest in relation to Japanese popular Buddhism. The emblems are
+considered in the following order:—
+
+I.—_The Svastikâ_. The figure upon each toe is said to be a
+modification of the _manji_;[4] and although I doubt whether this is
+always the case, I have observed that on some of the large kakémono
+representing the footprints, the emblem really _is_ the svastikâ,—not a
+flamelet nor a flower-shape.[5] The Japanese commentator explains the
+svastikâ as a symbol of “everlasting bliss.”
+
+ [4] Lit.: “The thousand-character” sign.
+
+
+ [5] On some monuments and drawings there is a sort of disk made by a
+ single line in spiral, on each toe,—together with the image of a small
+ wheel.
+
+
+II.—_The Fish_ (_Gyo_). The fish signifies freedom from all restraints.
+As in the water a fish moves easily in any direction, so in the
+Buddha-state the fully-emancipated knows no restraints or obstructions.
+
+III.—_The Diamond-Mace_ (Jap. _Kongō-sho;_—Sansc. “Vadjra”). Explained
+as signifying the divine force that “strikes and breaks all the lusts
+(_bonnō_) of the world.”
+
+IV.—_The Conch-Shell_ (Jap. “_Hora_”) or _Trumpet_. Emblem of the
+preaching of the Law. The book _Shin-zoku-butsu-ji-hen_ calls it the
+symbol of the voice of the Buddha. The _Dai-hi-kyō_ calls it the token
+of the preaching and of the power of the Mahayana doctrine. The
+_Dai-Nichi-Kyō_ says:—” At the sound of the blowing of the shell, all
+the heavenly deities are filled with delight, and come to hear the
+Law.”
+
+V.—_The Flower-Vase_ (Jap. “_Hanagamé_”). Emblem of _murō_,—a mystical
+word which might be literally rendered as “not-leaking,”—signifying
+that condition of supreme intelligence triumphant over birth and death.
+
+VI.—_The Wheel-of-a-Thousand-Spokes_ (Sansc. “Tchakra “). This emblem,
+called in Japanese _Senfuku-rin-sō_, is curiously explained by various
+quotations. The _Hokké-Monku_ says:—“The effect of a wheel is to crush
+something; and the effect of the Buddha’s preaching is to crush all
+delusions, errors, doubts, and superstitions. Therefore preaching the
+doctrine is called, ‘turning the Wheel.’”… The _Sei-Ri-Ron_ says: “Even
+as the common wheel has its spokes and its hub, so in Buddhism there
+are many branches of the _Hasshi Shōdo_ (‘Eight-fold Path,’ or eight
+rules of conduct).”
+
+VII.—_The Crown of Brahmâ_. Under the heel of the Buddha is the
+Treasure-Crown (_Hō-Kwan_) of Brahmâ (_Bon-Ten-O_),—in symbol of the
+Buddha’s supremacy above the gods.
+
+But I think that the inscriptions upon any of these _Butsu-soku-séki_
+will be found of more significance than the above imperfect attempts at
+an explanation of the emblems. The inscriptions upon the monument at
+Dentsu-In are typical. On different sides of the structure,—near the
+top, and placed by rule so as to face certain points of the
+compass,—there are engraved five Sanscrit characters which are symbols
+of the Five Elemental Buddhas, together with scriptural and
+commemorative texts. These latter have been translated for me as
+follows:—
+
+The HO-KO-HON-NYO-KYO says:—“In that time, from beneath his feet, the
+Buddha radiated a light having the appearance of a wheel of a thousand
+spokes. And all who saw that radiance became strictly upright, and
+obtained the Supreme Enlightenment.”
+
+The KWAN-BUTSU-SANMAI-KYO says:—“Whosoever looks upon the footprints of
+the Buddha shall be freed from the results even of innumerable
+thousands of imperfections.”
+
+The BUTSU-SETSU-MU-RYO-JU-KYO says:—“In the land that the Buddha treads
+in journeying, there is not even one person in all the multitude of the
+villages who is not benefited. Then throughout the world there is peace
+and good will. The sun and the moon shine clear and bright. Wind and
+rain come only at a suitable time. Calamity and pestilence cease. The
+country prospers; the people are free from care. Weapons become
+useless. All men reverence religion, and regulate their conduct in all
+matters with earnestness and modesty.”
+
+[Commemorative Text.]
+
+
+—The Fifth Month of the Eighteenth Year of Meiji, all the priests of
+this temple made and set up this pedestal-stone, bearing the likeness
+of the footprints of the Buddha, and placed the same within the main
+court of Dentsu-In, in order that the seed of holy enlightenment might
+be sown for future time, and for the sake of the advancement of
+Buddhism.
+
+TAIJO, priest,—being the sixty-sixth chief-priest by succession of this
+temple,—has respectfully composed.
+
+JUNYU, the minor priest, has reverentially inscribed.
+
+II
+
+Strange facts crowd into memory as one contemplates those graven
+footprints,—footprints giant-seeming, yet less so than the human
+personality of which they remain the symbol. Twenty-four hundred years
+ago, out of solitary meditation upon the pain and the mystery of being,
+the mind of an Indian pilgrim brought forth the highest truth ever
+taught to men, and in an era barren of science anticipated the
+uttermost knowledge of our present evolutional philosophy regarding the
+secret unity of life, the endless illusions of matter and of mind, and
+the birth and death of universes. He, by pure reason,—and he alone
+before our time,—found answers of worth to the questions of the Whence,
+the Whither, and the Why;—and he made with these answers another and a
+nobler faith than the creed of his fathers. He spoke, and returned to
+his dust; and the people worshipped the prints of his dead feet,
+because of the love that he had taught them. Thereafter waxed and waned
+the name of Alexander, and the power of Rome and the might of
+Islam;—nations arose and vanished;—cities grew and were not;—the
+children of another civilization, vaster than Romes, begirdled the
+earth with conquest, and founded far-off empires, and came at last to
+rule in the land of that pilgrim’s birth. And these, rich in the wisdom
+of four and twenty centuries, wondered at the beauty of his message,
+and caused all that he had said and done to be written down anew in
+languages unborn at the time when he lived and taught. Still burn his
+footprints in the East; and still the great West, marvelling, follows
+their gleam to seek the Supreme Enlightenment. Even thus, of old,
+Milinda the king followed the way to the house of Nagasena,—at first
+only to question, after the subtle method of the Greeks; yet, later, to
+accept with noble reverence the nobler method of the Master.
+
+
+
+
+Ululation
+
+
+She is lean as a wolf, and very old,—the white bitch that guards my
+gate at night. She played with most of the young men and women of the
+neighborhood when they were boys and girls. I found her in charge of my
+present dwelling on the day that I came to occupy it. She had guarded
+the place, I was told, for a long succession of prior
+tenants—apparently with no better reason than that she had been born in
+the woodshed at the back of the house. Whether well or ill treated she
+had served all occupants faultlessly as a watch. The question of food
+as wages had never seriously troubled her, because most of the families
+of the street daily contributed to her support.
+
+She is gentle and silent,—silent at least by day; and in spite of her
+gaunt ugliness, her pointed ears, and her somewhat unpleasant eyes,
+everybody is fond of her. Children ride on her back, and tease her at
+will; but although she has been known to make strange men feel
+uncomfortable, she never growls at a child. The reward of her patient
+good-nature is the friendship of the community. When the dog-killers
+come on their bi-annual round, the neighbors look after her interests.
+Once she was on the very point of being officially executed when the
+wife of the smith ran to the rescue, and pleaded successfully with the
+policeman superintending the massacres. “Put somebody’s name on the
+dog,” said the latter: “then it will be safe. Whose dog is it?” That
+question proved hard to answer. The dog was everybody’s and
+nobody’s—welcome everywhere but owned nowhere. “But where does it
+stay?” asked the puzzled constable. “It stays,” said the smith’s wife,
+“in the house of the foreigner.” “Then let the foreigner’s name be put
+upon the dog,” suggested the policeman.
+
+Accordingly I had my name painted on her back in big Japanese
+characters. But the neighbors did not think that she was sufficiently
+safeguarded by a single name. So the priest of Kobudera painted the
+name of the temple on her left side, in beautiful Chinese text; and the
+smith put the name of his shop on her right side; and the
+vegetable-seller put on her breast the ideographs for
+“eight-hundred,”—which represent the customary abbreviation of the word
+yaoya (vegetable-seller),—any yaoya being supposed to sell eight
+hundred or more different things. Consequently she is now a very
+curious-looking dog; but she is well protected by all that calligraphy.
+
+I have only one fault to find with her: she howls at night. Howling is
+one of the few pathetic pleasures of her existence. At first I tried to
+frighten her out of the habit; but finding that she refused to take me
+seriously, I concluded to let her howl. It would have been monstrous to
+beat her.
+
+Yet I detest her howl. It always gives me a feeling of vague disquiet,
+like the uneasiness that precedes the horror of nightmare. It makes me
+afraid,—indefinably, superstitiously afraid. Perhaps what I am writing
+will seem to you absurd; but you would not think it absurd if you once
+heard her howl. She does not howl like the common street-dogs. She
+belongs to some ruder Northern breed, much more wolfish, and retaining
+wild traits of a very peculiar kind.
+
+And her howl is also peculiar. It is incomparably weirder than the howl
+of any European dog; and I fancy that it is incomparably older. It may
+represent the original primitive cry of her species,—totally unmodified
+by centuries of domestication. It begins with a stifled moan, like the
+moan of a bad dream,—mounts into a long, long wail, like a wailing of
+wind,—sinks quavering into a chuckle,—rises again to a wail, very much
+higher and wilder than before,—breaks suddenly into a kind of atrocious
+laughter,—and finally sobs itself out in a plaint like the crying of a
+little child. The ghastliness of the performance is chiefly—though not
+entirely—in the goblin mockery of the laughing tones as contrasted with
+the piteous agony of the wailing ones: an incongruity that makes you
+think of madness. And I imagine a corresponding incongruity in the soul
+of the creature. I know that she loves me,—that she would throw away
+her poor life for me at an instant’s notice. I am sure that she would
+grieve if I were to die. But she would not think about the matter like
+other dogs,—like a dog with hanging ears, for example. She is too
+savagely close to Nature for that. Were she to find herself alone with
+my corpse in some desolate place, she would first mourn wildly for her
+friend; but, this duty performed, she would proceed to ease her sorrow
+in the simplest way possible,—by eating him,—by cracking his bones
+between those long wolf’s-teeth of hers. And thereafter, with spotless
+conscience, she would sit down and utter to the moon the funeral cry of
+her ancestors.
+
+It fills me, that cry, with a strange curiosity not less than with a
+strange horror,—because of certain extraordinary vowellings in it which
+always recur in the same order of sequence, and must represent
+particular forms of animal speech,—particular ideas. The whole thing is
+a song,—a song of emotions and thoughts not human, and therefore
+humanly unimaginable. But other dogs know what it means, and make
+answer over the miles of the night,—sometimes from so far away that
+only by straining my hearing to the uttermost can I detect the faint
+response. The words—(if I may call them words)—are very few; yet, to
+judge by their emotional effect, they must signify a great deal.
+Possibly they mean things myriads of years old,—things relating to
+odors, to exhalations, to influences and effluences inapprehensible by
+duller human sense,—impulses also, impulses without name, bestirred in
+ghosts of dogs by the light of great moons.
+
+Could we know the sensations of a dog,—the emotions and the ideas of a
+dog, we might discover some strange correspondence between their
+character and the character of that peculiar disquiet which the howl of
+the creature evokes. But since the senses of a dog are totally unlike
+those of a man, we shall never really know. And we can only surmise, in
+the vaguest way, the meaning of the uneasiness in ourselves. Some notes
+in the long cry,—and the weirdest of them,—oddly resemble those tones
+of the human voice that tell of agony and terror. Again, we have reason
+to believe that the sound of the cry itself became associated in human
+imagination, at some period enormously remote, with particular
+impressions of fear. It is a remarkable fact that in almost all
+countries (including Japan) the howling of dogs has been attributed to
+their perception of things viewless to man, and awful,—especially gods
+and ghosts;—and this unanimity of superstitious belief suggests that
+one element of the disquiet inspired by the cry is the dread of the
+supernatural. To-day we have ceased to be consciously afraid of the
+unseen;—knowing that we ourselves are supernatural,—that even the
+physical man, with all his life of sense, is more ghostly than any
+ghost of old imagining: but some dim inheritance of the primitive fear
+still slumbers in our being, and wakens perhaps, like an echo, to the
+sound of that wail in the night.
+
+Whatever thing invisible to human eyes the senses of a dog may at times
+perceive, it can be nothing resembling our idea of a ghost. Most
+probably the mysterious cause of start and whine is not anything
+_seen_. There is no anatomical reason for supposing a dog to possess
+exceptional powers of vision. But a dog’s organs of scent proclaim a
+faculty immeasurably superior to the sense of smell in man. The old
+universal belief in the superhuman perceptivities of the creature was a
+belief justified by fact; but the perceptivities are not visual. Were
+the howl of a dog really—as once supposed—an outcry of ghostly terror,
+the meaning might possibly be, “_I smell Them!_”—but not, “_I see
+Them!_” No evidence exists to support the fancy that a dog can see any
+forms of being which a man cannot see.
+
+But the night-howl of the white creature in my close forces me to
+wonder whether she does not _mentally_ see something really
+terrible,—something which we vainly try to keep out of moral
+consciousness: the ghoulish law of life. Nay, there are times when her
+cry seems to me not the mere cry of a dog, but the voice of the law
+itself,—the very speech of that Nature so inexplicably called by poets
+the loving, the merciful, the divine! Divine, perhaps, in some
+unknowable ultimate way,—but certainly not merciful, and still more
+certainly not loving. Only by eating each other do beings exist!
+Beautiful to the poet’s vision our world may seem,—with its loves, its
+hopes, its memories, its aspirations; but there is nothing beautiful in
+the fact that life is fed by continual murder,—that the tenderest
+affection, the noblest enthusiasm, the purest idealism, must be
+nourished by the eating of flesh and the drinking of blood. All life,
+to sustain itself, must devour life. You may imagine yourself divine if
+you please,—but you have to obey that law. Be, if you will, a
+vegetarian: none the less you must eat forms that have feeling and
+desire. Sterilize your food; and digestion stops. You cannot even drink
+without swallowing life. Loathe the name as we may, we are
+cannibals;—all being essentially is One; and whether we eat the flesh
+of a plant, a fish, a reptile, a bird, a mammal, or a man, the ultimate
+fact is the same. And for all life the end is the same: every creature,
+whether buried or burnt, is devoured,—and not only once or twice,—nor a
+hundred, nor a thousand, nor a myriad times! Consider the ground upon
+which we move, the soil out of which we came;—think of the vanished
+billions that have risen from it and crumbled back into its latency to
+feed what becomes our food! Perpetually we eat the dust of our
+race,—_the substance of our ancient selves_.
+
+But even so-called inanimate matter is self-devouring. Substance preys
+upon substance. As in the droplet monad swallows monad, so in the vast
+of Space do spheres consume each other. Stars give being to worlds and
+devour them; planets assimilate their own moons. All is a ravening that
+never ends but to recommence. And unto whomsoever thinks about these
+matters, the story of a divine universe, made and ruled by paternal
+love, sounds less persuasive than the Polynesian tale that the souls of
+the dead are devoured by the gods.
+
+Monstrous the law seems, because we have developed ideas and sentiments
+which are opposed to this demoniac Nature,—much as voluntary movement
+is opposed to the blind power of gravitation. But the possession of
+such ideas and sentiments does but aggravate the atrocity of our
+situation, without lessening in the least the gloom of the final
+problem.
+
+Anyhow the faith of the Far East meets that problem better than the
+faith of the West. To the Buddhist the Cosmos is not divine at
+all—quite the reverse. It is Karma;—it is the creation of thoughts and
+acts of error;—it is not governed by any providence;—it is a
+ghastliness, a nightmare. Likewise it is an illusion. It seems real
+only for the same reason that the shapes and the pains of an evil dream
+seem real to the dreamer. Our life upon earth is a state of sleep. Yet
+we do not sleep utterly. There are gleams in our darkness,—faint
+auroral wakenings of Love and Pity and Sympathy and Magnanimity: these
+are selfless and true;—these are eternal and divine;—these are the Four
+Infinite Feelings in whose after-glow all forms and illusions will
+vanish, like mists in the light of the sun. But, except in so far as we
+wake to these feelings, we are dreamers indeed,—moaning unaided in
+darkness,—tortured by shadowy horror. All of us dream; none are fully
+awake; and many, who pass for the wise of the world, know even less of
+the truth than my dog that howls in the night.
+
+Could she speak, my dog, I think that she might ask questions which no
+philosopher would be able to answer. For I believe that she is
+tormented by the pain of existence. Of course I do not mean that the
+riddle presents itself to her as it does to us,—nor that she can have
+reached any abstract conclusions by any mental processes like our own.
+The external world to her is “a continuum of smells.” She thinks,
+compares, remembers, reasons by smells. By smell she makes her
+estimates of character: all her judgments are founded upon smells.
+Smelling thousands of things which we cannot smell at all, she must
+comprehend them in a way of which we can form no idea. Whatever she
+knows has been learned through mental operations of an utterly
+unimaginable kind. But we may be tolerably sure that she thinks about
+most things in some odor-relation to the experience of eating or to the
+intuitive dread of being eaten. Certainly she knows a great deal more
+about the earth on which we tread than would be good for us to know;
+and probably, if capable of speech, she could tell us the strangest
+stories of air and water. Gifted, or afflicted, as she is with such
+terribly penetrant power of sense, her notion of apparent realities
+must be worse than sepulchral. Small wonder if she howl at the moon
+that shines upon such a world!
+
+And yet she is more awake, in the Buddhist meaning, than many of us.
+She possesses a rude moral code—inculcating loyalty, submission,
+gentleness, gratitude, and maternal love; together with various minor
+rules of conduct;—and this simple code she has always observed. By
+priests her state is termed a state of darkness of mind, because she
+cannot learn all that men should learn; but according to her light she
+has done well enough to merit some better condition in her next
+rebirth. So think the people who know her. When she dies they will give
+her an humble funeral, and have a sutra recited on behalf of her
+spirit. The priest will let a grave be made for her somewhere in the
+temple-garden, and will place over it a little sotoba bearing the
+text,—_Nyo-zé chikushō hotsu Bodai-shin_:[1] “Even within such as this
+animal, the Knowledge Supreme will unfold at last.”
+
+ [1] Lit., “the Bodhi-mind;”—that is to say, the Supreme Enlightenment,
+ the intelligence of Buddhahood itself.
+
+
+
+
+Bits of Poetry
+
+
+I
+
+Among a people with whom poetry has been for centuries a universal
+fashion of emotional utterance, we should naturally suppose the common
+ideal of life to be a noble one. However poorly the upper classes of
+such a people might compare with those of other nations, we could
+scarcely doubt that its lower classes were morally and otherwise in
+advance of our own lower classes. And the Japanese actually present us
+with such a social phenomenon.
+
+Poetry in Japan is universal as the air. It is felt by everybody. It is
+read by everybody. It is composed by almost everybody,—irrespective of
+class and condition. Nor is it thus ubiquitous in the mental atmosphere
+only: it is everywhere to be heard by the ear, and _seen by the eye!_
+
+As for audible poetry, wherever there is working there is singing. The
+toil of the fields and the labor of the streets are performed to the
+rhythm of chanted verse; and song would seem to be an expression of the
+life of the people in about the same sense that it is an expression of
+the life of cicadæ…. As for visible poetry, it appears everywhere,
+written or graven,—in Chinese or in Japanese characters,—as a form of
+decoration. In thousands and thousands of dwellings, you might observe
+that the sliding-screens, separating rooms or closing alcoves, have
+Chinese or Japanese decorative texts upon them;—and these texts are
+poems. In houses of the better class there are usually a number of
+_gaku_, or suspended tablets to be seen,—each bearing, for all design,
+a beautifully written verse. But poems can be found upon almost any
+kind of domestic utensil,—for example upon braziers, iron kettles,
+vases, wooden trays, lacquer ware, porcelains, chopsticks of the finer
+sort,—even toothpicks! Poems are painted upon shop-signs, panels,
+screens, and fans. Poems are printed upon towels, draperies, curtains,
+kerchiefs, silk-linings, and women’s crêpe-silk underwear. Poems are
+stamped or worked upon letter-paper, envelopes, purses, mirror-cases,
+travelling-bags. Poems are inlaid upon enamelled ware, cut upon
+bronzes, graven upon metal pipes, embroidered upon tobacco-pouches. It
+were a hopeless effort to enumerate a tithe of the articles decorated
+with poetical texts. Probably my readers know of those social
+gatherings at which it is the custom to compose verses, and to suspend
+the compositions to blossoming trees,—also of the Tanabata festival in
+honor of certain astral gods, when poems inscribed on strips of colored
+paper, and attached to thin bamboos, are to be seen even by the
+roadside,—all fluttering in the wind like so many tiny flags…. Perhaps
+you might find your way to some Japanese hamlet in which there are
+neither trees nor flowers, but never to any hamlet in which there is no
+visible poetry. You might wander,—as I have done,—into a settlement so
+poor that you could not obtain there, for love or money, even a cup of
+real tea; but I do not believe that you could discover a settlement in
+which there is nobody capable of making a poem.
+
+II
+
+Recently while looking over a manuscript-collection of verses,—mostly
+short poems of an emotional or descriptive character,—it occurred to me
+that a selection from them might serve to illustrate certain Japanese
+qualities of sentiment, as well as some little-known Japanese theories
+of artistic expression,—and I ventured forthwith, upon this essay. The
+poems, which had been collected for me by different persons at many
+different times and places, were chiefly of the kind written on
+particular occasions, and cast into forms more serried, if not also
+actually briefer, than anything in Western prosody. Probably few of my
+readers are aware of two curious facts relating to this order of
+composition. Both facts are exemplified in the history and in the texts
+of my collection,—though I cannot hope, in my renderings, to reproduce
+the original effect, whether of imagery or of feeling.
+
+The first curious fact is that, from very ancient times, the writing of
+short poems has been practised in Japan even more as a moral duty than
+as a mere literary art. The old ethical teaching was somewhat like
+this:—“Are you very angry?—do not say anything unkind, but compose a
+poem. Is your best-beloved dead?—do not yield to useless grief, but try
+to calm your mind by making a poem. Are you troubled because you are
+about to die, leaving so many things unfinished?—be brave, and write a
+poem on death! Whatever injustice or misfortune disturbs you, put aside
+your resentment or your sorrow as soon as possible, and write a few
+lines of sober and elegant verse for a moral exercise.” Accordingly, in
+the old days, every form of trouble was encountered with a poem.
+Bereavement, separation, disaster called forth verses in lieu of
+plaints. The lady who preferred death to loss of honor, composed a poem
+before piercing her throat The samurai sentenced to die by his own
+hand, wrote a poem before performing _hara-kiri_. Even in this less
+romantic era of Meiji, young people resolved upon suicide are wont to
+compose some verses before quitting the world. Also it is still the
+good custom to write a poem in time of ill-fortune. I have frequently
+known poems to be written under the most trying circumstances of misery
+or suffering,—nay even upon a bed of death;-and if the verses did not
+display any extraordinary talent, they at least afforded extraordinary
+proof of self-mastery under pain…. Surely this fact of composition as
+ethical practice has larger interest than all the treatises ever
+written about the rules of Japanese prosody.
+
+The other curious fact is only a fact of aesthetic theory. The common
+art-principle of the class of poems under present consideration is
+identical with the common principle of Japanese pictorial illustration.
+By the use of a few chosen words the composer of a short poem endeavors
+to do exactly what the painter endeavors to do with a few strokes of
+the brush,—to evoke an image or a mood,—to revive a sensation or an
+emotion. And the accomplishment of this purpose,—by poet or by
+picture-maker,—depends altogether upon capacity to _suggest_, and only
+to suggest. A Japanese artist would be condemned for attempting
+elaboration of detail in a sketch intended to recreate the memory of
+some landscape seen through the blue haze of a spring morning, or under
+the great blond light of an autumn after-noon. Not only would he be
+false to the traditions of his art: he would necessarily defeat his own
+end thereby. In the same way a poet would be condemned for attempting
+any _completeness_ of utterance in a very short poem: his object should
+be only to stir imagination without satisfying it. So the term
+_ittakkiri_—meaning “all gone,” or “entirely vanished,” in the sense of
+“all told,”—is contemptuously applied to verses in which the
+verse-maker has uttered his whole thought;—praise being reserved for
+compositions that leave in the mind the thrilling of a something
+unsaid. Like the single stroke of a temple-bell, the perfect short poem
+should set murmuring and undulating, in the mind of the hearer, many a
+ghostly aftertone of long duration.
+
+III
+
+But for the same reason that Japanese short poems may be said to
+resemble. Japanese pictures, a full comprehension of them requires an
+intimate knowledge of the life which they reflect. And this is
+especially true of the emotional class of such poems,—a literal
+translation of which, in the majority of cases, would signify almost
+nothing to the Western mind. Here, for example, is a little verse,
+pathetic enough to Japanese comprehension:—
+
+Chōchō ni!..
+Kyonen shishitaru
+Tsuma koishi!
+
+
+Translated, this would appear to mean only,—“_Two butterflies!… Last
+year my dear wife died!_” Unless you happen to know the pretty Japanese
+symbolism of the butterfly in relation to happy marriage, and the old
+custom of sending with the wedding-gift a large pair of
+paper-butterflies (_ochō-mechō_), the verse might well seem to be less
+than commonplace. Or take this recent composition, by a University
+student, which has been praised by good judges:—
+
+Furusato ni
+Fubo ari—mushi no
+Koë-goë![1]
+
+
+—“_In my native place the old folks [or, my parents] are—clamor of
+insect-voices!_”
+
+ [1] I must observe, however, that the praise was especially evoked by
+ the use of the term _koë-goë_—(literally meaning “voice after voice”
+ or a crying of many voices);—and the special value of the syllables
+ here can be appreciated only by a Japanese poet.
+
+
+The poet here is a country-lad. In unfamiliar fields he listens to the
+great autumn chorus of insects; and the sound revives for him the
+memory of his far-off home and of his parents. But here is something
+incomparably more touching,—though in literal translation probably more
+obscure,—than either of the preceding specimens;—
+
+Mi ni shimiru
+Kazé ya!
+Shōji ni
+Yubi no ato!
+
+
+—“_Oh, body-piercing wind!—that work of little fingers in the
+shōji!_”[2]…. What does this mean? It means the sorrowing of a mother
+for her dead child. _Shōji_ is the name given to those light
+white-paper screens which in a Japanese house serve both as windows and
+doors, admitting plenty of light, but concealing, like frosted glass,
+the interior from outer observation, and excluding the wind. Infants
+delight to break these by poking their fingers through the soft paper:
+then the wind blows through the holes. In this case the wind blows very
+cold indeed,—into the mother’s very heart;—for it comes through the
+little holes that were made by the fingers of her dead child.
+
+ [2] More literally:—“body-through-pierce wind—ah!—_shōji_ in the
+ traces of [viz.: holes made by] fingers!”
+
+
+The impossibility of preserving the inner quality of such poems in a
+literal rendering, will now be obvious. Whatever I attempt in this
+direction must of necessity be _ittakkiri;_—for the unspoken has to be
+expressed; and what the Japanese poet is able to say in seventeen or
+twenty-one syllables may need in English more than double that number
+of words. But perhaps this fact will lend additional interest to the
+following atoms of emotional expression:—
+
+A MOTHER’S REMEMBRANCE
+
+
+_Sweet and clear in the night, the voice of a boy at study,
+Reading out of a book…. I also once had a boy!_
+
+A MEMORY IN SPRING
+
+
+_She, who, departing hence, left to the flowers of the plum-tree,
+Blooming beside our eaves, the charm of her youth and beauty,
+And maiden pureness of heart, to quicken their flush and fragrance,—
+Ah! where does she dwell to-day, our dear little vanished sister?_
+
+FANCIES OF ANOTHER FAITH
+
+
+_(1) I sought in the place of graves the tomb of my vanished friend:
+From ancient cedars above there rippled a wild doves cry._
+
+_(2) Perhaps a freak of the wind-yet perhaps a sign of remembrance,—
+This fall of a single leaf on the water I pour for the dead._
+
+_(3)I whispered a prayer at the grave: a butterfly rose and fluttered—
+Thy spirit, perhaps, dear friend!…_
+
+IN A CEMETERY AT NIGHT
+
+
+_This light of the moon that plays on the water I pour for the dead,
+Differs nothing at all from the moonlight of other years._
+
+AFTER LONG ABSENCE
+
+
+_The garden that once I loved, and even the hedge of the garden,—
+All is changed and strange: the moonlight only is faithful;—
+The moon alone remembers the charm of the time gone by!_
+
+MOONLIGHT ON THE SEA
+
+
+_O vapory moon of spring!—would that one plunge into ocean
+Could win me renewal of life as a part of thy light on the waters!_
+
+AFTER FAREWELL
+
+
+_Whither now should! look?—where is the place of parting?
+Boundaries all have vanished;—nothing tells of direction:
+Only the waste of sea under the shining moon!_
+
+HAPPY POVERTY
+
+
+_Wafted into my room, the scent of the flowers of the plum-tree
+Changes my broken window into a source of delight._
+
+AUTUMN FANCIES
+
+
+_(1) Faded the clover now;—sere and withered the grasses:
+What dreams the matsumushi_[3] _in the desolate autumn-fields?_
+
+_(2) Strangely sad, I thought, sounded the bell of evening;—
+Haply that tone proclaimed the night in which autumn dies!_
+
+_(3) Viewing this autumn-moon, I dream of my native village
+Under the same soft light,—and the shadows about my home._
+
+ [3] A musical cricket—_calyptotryphus marmoratus_.
+
+
+IN TIME OF GRIEF, HEARING A SÉMI (CICADA)
+
+
+_Only “I,” “I,”—the cry of the foolish semi!
+Any one knows that the world is void as its cast-off shell._
+
+ON THE CAST-OFF SHELL OF A SÉMI
+
+
+_Only the pitiful husk!… O poor singer of summer,
+Wherefore thus consume all thy body in song?_
+
+SUBLIMITY OF INTELLECTUAL POWER
+
+
+_The mind that, undimmed, absorbs the foul and the pure together—
+Call it rather a sea one thousand fathoms deep!_[4]
+
+ [4] This is quite novel in its way,—a product of the University: the
+ original runs thus:—
+
+
+Nigoréru mo
+Suméru mo tomo ni
+Iruru koso
+Chi-hiro no umi no
+Kokoro nari-keré!
+
+
+SHINTŌ REVERY
+
+
+_Mad waves devour The rocks: I ask myself in the darkness,
+“Have I become a god?” Dim is The night and wild!_
+
+“Have I become a god?”—that is to say, “Have I died?—am I only a ghost
+in this desolation?” The dead, becoming _kami_ or gods, are thought to
+haunt wild solitudes by preference.
+
+IV
+
+The poems above rendered are more than pictorial: they suggest
+something of emotion or sentiment. But there are thousands of pictorial
+poems that do not; and these would seem mere insipidities to a reader
+ignorant of their true purpose. When you learn that some exquisite text
+of gold means only, “_Evening-sunlight on the wings of the
+water-fowl_,”—or,”_Now in my garden the flowers bloom, and the
+butterflies dance_,”—then your first interest in decorative poetry is
+apt to wither away. Yet these little texts have a very real merit of
+their own, and an intimate relation to Japanese aesthetic feeling and
+experience. Like the pictures upon screens and fans and cups, they give
+pleasure by recalling impressions of nature, by reviving happy
+incidents of travel or pilgrimage, by evoking the memory of beautiful
+days. And when this plain fact is fully understood, the persistent
+attachment of modern Japanese poets—notwithstanding their University
+training—to the ancient poetical methods, will be found reasonable
+enough.
+
+I need offer only a very few specimens of the purely pictorial poetry.
+The following—mere thumb-nail sketches in verse—are of recent date.
+
+LONESOMENESS
+
+Furu-dera ya:
+Kané mono iwazu;
+Sakura chiru.
+
+
+—“_Old temple: bell voiceless; cherry-flowers fall_.”
+
+MORNING AWAKENING AFTER A NIGHT’S REST IN A TEMPLE
+
+Yamadera no
+Shichō akéyuku:
+Taki no oto.
+
+
+—“_In the mountain-temple the paper mosquito-curtain is lighted by the
+dawn: sound of water-fall_.”
+
+WINTER-SCENE
+
+Yuki no mura;
+Niwatori naité;
+Aké shiroshi.
+
+
+“_Snow-village;—cocks crowing;—white dawn_.”
+
+Let me conclude this gossip on poetry by citing from another group of
+verses—also pictorial, in a certain sense, but chiefly remarkable for
+ingenuity—two curiosities of impromptu. The first is old, and is
+attributed to the famous poetess Chiyo. Having been challenged to make
+a poem of seventeen syllables referring to a square, a triangle, and a
+circle, she is said to have immediately responded,—
+
+Kaya no té wo
+Hitotsu hazushité,
+Tsuki-mi kana!
+
+
+—“_Detaching one corner of the mosquito-net, lo! I behold the moon!_”
+The top of the mosquito-net, suspended by cords at each of its four
+corners, represents the square;—letting down the net at one corner
+converts the square into a triangle;—and the moon represents the
+circle.
+
+[Illustration: Square  Triangle]
+
+The other curiosity is a recent impromptu effort to portray, in one
+verse of seventeen syllables, the last degree of
+devil-may-care-poverty,—perhaps the brave misery of the wandering
+student;—and I very much doubt whether the effort could be improved
+upon:—
+
+Nusundaru
+Kagashi no kasa ni
+Amé kyū nari.
+
+
+—“_Heavily pours the rain on the hat that I stole from the scarecrow!_”
+
+
+
+
+Japanese Buddhist Proverbs
+
+
+As representing that general quality of moral experience which remains
+almost unaffected by social modifications of any sort, the proverbial
+sayings of a people must always possess a special psychological
+interest for thinkers. In this kind of folklore the oral and the
+written literature of Japan is rich to a degree that would require a
+large book to exemplify. To the subject as a whole no justice could be
+done within the limits of a single essay. But for certain classes of
+proverbs and proverbial phrases something can be done within even a few
+pages; and sayings related to Buddhism, either by allusion or
+derivation, form a class which seems to me particularly worthy of
+study. Accordingly, with the help of a Japanese friend, I have selected
+and translated the following series of examples,—choosing the more
+simple and familiar where choice was possible, and placing the
+originals in alphabetical order to facilitate reference. Of course the
+selection is imperfectly representative; but it will serve to
+illustrate certain effects of Buddhist teaching upon popular thought
+and speech.
+
+
+1.—_Akuji mi ni tomaru._
+All evil done clings to the body.[1]
+
+ [1] The consequence of any evil act or thought never,—so long as karma
+ endures,—will cease to act upon the existence of the person guilty of
+ it.
+
+
+2.—_Atama soru yori kokoro wo soré._
+Better to shave the heart than to shave the head.[2]
+
+ [2] Buddhist nuns and priests have their heads completely shaven. The
+ proverb signifies that it is better to correct the heart,—to conquer
+ all vain regrets and desires,—than to become a religious. In common
+ parlance the phrase “to shave the head” means to become a monk or a
+ nun.
+
+
+3.—_Au wa wakaré no hajimé._
+Meeting is only the beginning of separation.[3]
+
+ [3] Regret and desire are equally vain in this world of impermanency;
+ for all joy is the beginning of an experience that must have its pain.
+ This proverb refers directly to the sutra-text,—_Shōja hitsumetsu
+ é-sha-jori_,—” All that live must surely die; and all that meet will
+ surely part.”
+
+
+4.—_Banji wa yumé._
+All things[4] are merely dreams.
+
+ [4] Literally, “ten thousand things.”
+
+
+5.—_Bonbu mo satoréba hotoké nari._
+Even a common man by obtaining knowledge becomes a Buddha.[5]
+
+ [5] The only real differences of condition are differences in
+ knowledge of the highest truth.
+
+
+6.—_Bonnō kunō._
+All lust is grief.[6]
+
+ [6] All sensual desire invariably brings sorrow.
+
+
+7—_Buppō to wara-ya no amé, dété kiké._
+One must go outside to hear Buddhist doctrine or the sound of rain on a
+straw roof.[7]
+
+ [7] There is an allusion here to the condition of the _shukké_
+ (priest): literally, “one who has left his house.” The proverb
+ suggests that the higher truths of Buddhism cannot be acquired by
+ those who continue to live in the world of follies and desires.
+
+
+8.—_Busshō en yori okoru._
+Out of karma-relation even the divine nature itself grows.[8]
+
+ [8] There is good as well as bad karma. Whatever hap-piness we enjoy
+ is not less a consequence of the acts and thoughts of previous lives,
+ than is any misfortune that comes to us. Every good thought and act
+ contributes to the evolution of the Buddha-nature within each of us.
+ Another proverb [No. 10],—_En naki shujō wa doshi gatashi_,—further
+ illustrates the meaning of this one.
+
+
+9.—_Enkō  ga tsuki wo toran to suru ga gotoshi._
+Like monkeys trying to snatch the moon’s reflection on water.[9]
+
+ [9] Allusion to a parable, said to have been related by the Buddha
+ himself, about some monkeys who found a well under a tree, and mistook
+ for reality the image of the moon in the water. They resolved to seize
+ the bright apparition. One monkey suspended himself by the tail from a
+ branch overhanging the well, a second monkey clung to the first, a
+ third to the second, a fourth to the third, and so on,—till the long
+ chain of bodies had almost reached the water. Suddenly the branch
+ broke under the unaccustomed weight; and all the monkeys were drowned.
+
+
+10.—_En naki shujō wa doshi gatashi._
+To save folk having no karma-relation would be difficult indeed![10]
+
+ [10] No karma-relation would mean an utter absence of merit as well as
+ of demerit.
+
+
+11.—_Fujō seppō suru hōshi wa, birataké ni umaru._
+The priest who preaches foul doctrine shall be reborn as a fungus.
+
+12.—_Gaki mo ninzu._
+Even gaki (_prêtas_) can make a crowd.[11]
+
+ [11] Literally: “Even gaki are a multitude (or, ‘population’).” This
+ is a popular saying used in a variety of ways. The ordinary meaning is
+ to the effect that no matter how poor or miserable the individuals
+ composing a multitude, they collectively represent a respectable
+ force. Jocosely the saying is sometimes used of a crowd of wretched or
+ tired-looking people,—sometimes of an assembly of weak boys desiring
+ to make some demonstration,—sometimes of a miserable-looking company
+ of soldiers.—Among the lowest classes of the people it is not uncommon
+ to call a deformed or greedy person a “gaki.”
+
+
+13.—_Gaki no mé ni midzu miézu._
+To the eyes of gaki water is viewless.[12]
+
+ [12] Some authorities state that those _prêtas_ who suffer especially
+ from thirst, as a consequence of faults committed in former lives, are
+ unable to see water.—This proverb is used in speaking of persons too
+ stupid or vicious to perceive a moral truth.
+
+
+14.—_Goshō wa daiji._
+The future life is the all-important thing.[13]
+
+ [13] The common people often use the curious expression
+ “_gosho-daiji_” as an equivalent for “extremely important.”
+
+
+15.—_Gun-mō no tai-zō wo saguru ga gotoshi._
+Like a lot of blind men feeling a great elephant.[14]
+
+ [14] Said of those who ignorantly criticise the doctrines of
+ Buddhism.—The proverb alludes to a celebrated fable in the _Avadânas_,
+ about a number of blind men who tried to decide the form of an
+ elephant by feeling the animal. One, feeling the leg, declared the
+ elephant to be like a tree; another, feeling the trunk only, declared
+ the elephant to be like a serpent; a third, who felt only the side,
+ said that the elephant was like a wall; a fourth, grasping the tail,
+ said that the elephant was like a rope, etc.
+
+
+16.—_Gwai-men nyo-Bosatsu; nai shin nyo-Yasha._
+In outward aspect a Bodhisattva; at innermost heart a demon.[15]
+
+ [15] _Yasha_ (Sanscrit _Yaksha_), a man-devouring demon.
+
+
+17.—_Hana wa né ni kaeru._
+The flower goes back to its root.[16]
+
+ [16] This proverb is most often used in reference to death,—signifying
+ that all forms go back into the nothingness out of which they spring.
+ But it may also be used in relation to the law of cause-and-effect.
+
+
+18.—_Hibiki no koë ni ozuru ga gotoshi._
+Even as the echo answers to the voice.[17]
+
+ [17] Referring to the doctrine of cause-and-effect. The philosophical
+ beauty of the comparison will be appreciated only if we bear in mind
+ that even the _tone_ of the echo repeats the tone of the voice.
+
+
+19.—_Hito wo tasukéru ga shukhé no yuku._
+The task of the priest is to save mankind.
+
+20.—_Hi wa kiyurédomo tō-shin wa kiyédzu._
+Though the flame be put out, the wick remains.[18]
+
+ [18] Although the passions may be temporarily overcome, their sources
+ remain. A proverb of like meaning is, _Bonnō no inu oëdomo sarazu:_
+ “Though driven away, the Dog of Lust cannot be kept from coming back
+ again.”
+
+
+21.—_Hotoké mo motowa bonbu._
+Even the Buddha was originally but a common man.
+
+22.—_Hotoké ni naru mo shami wo beru._
+Even to become a Buddha one must first become a novice.
+
+23.—_Hotoké no kao mo sando._
+Even a Buddha’s face,—only three times.[19]
+
+ [19] This is a short popular form of the longer proverb, _Hotoké no
+ kao mo sando nazuréba, hara wo tatsu:_ “Stroke even the face of a
+ Buddha three times, and his anger will be roused.”
+
+
+24.—_Hotoké tanondé Jigoku é yuku._
+Praying to Buddha one goes to hell.[20]
+
+ [20] The popular saying, _Oni no Nembutsu_,—“a devil’s praying,”—has a
+ similar meaning.
+
+
+25.—_Hotoké tsukutté tamashii irédzu._
+Making a Buddha without putting in the soul.[21]
+
+ [21] That is to say, making an image of the Buddha without giving it a
+ soul. This proverb is used in reference to the conduct of those who
+ undertake to do some work, and leave the most essential part of the
+ work unfinished. It contains an allusion to the curious ceremony
+ called _Kai-gen_, or “Eye-Opening.” This _Kai-gen_ is a kind of
+ consecration, by virtue of which a newly-made image is supposed to
+ become animated by the real presence of the divinity represented.
+
+
+26.—_Ichi-ju no kagé, ichi-ga no nagaré, tashō no en._
+Even [the experience of] a single shadow or a single flowing of water,
+is [made by] the karma-relations of a former life.[22]
+
+ [22] Even so trifling an occurrence as that of resting with another
+ person under the shadow of a tree, or drinking from the same spring
+ with another person, is caused by the karma-relations of some previous
+ existence.
+
+
+27.—_Ichi-mō shū-mō wo hiku._
+One blind man leads many blind men.[23]
+
+ [23] From the Buddhist work _Dai-chi-dō-ron_.—The reader will find a
+ similar proverb in Rhys-David’s “_Buddhist Suttas_” (Sacred Books of
+ the East), p. 173,—together with a very curious parable, cited in a
+ footnote, which an Indian commentator gives in explanation.
+
+
+28.—_Ingwa na ko._
+A karma-child.[24]
+
+ [24] A common saying among the lower classes in reference to an
+ unfortunate or crippled child. Here the word _ingwa_ is used
+ especially in the retributive sense. It usually signifies evil karma;
+ _kwahō_ being the term used in speaking of meritorious karma and its
+ results. While an unfortunate child is spoken of as “a child of
+ _ingwa_,” a very lucky person is called a “_kwahō-mono_,”—that is to
+ say, an instance, or example of _kwahō_.
+
+
+29.—_Ingwa wa, kuruma no wa._
+Cause-and-effect is like a wheel.[25]
+
+ [25] The comparison of _karma_ to the wheel of a wagon will be
+ familiar to students of Buddhism. The meaning of this proverb is
+ identical with that of the _Dhammapada_ verse:—“If a man speaks or
+ acts with an evil thought, pain follows him as the wheel follows the
+ foot of the ox that draws the carriage.”
+
+
+30.—_Innen ga fukai._
+The karma-relation is deep.[26]
+
+ [26] A saying very commonly used in speaking of the attachment of
+ lovers, or of the unfortunate results of any close relation between
+ two persons.
+
+
+31.—_Inochi wa fū-zen no tomoshibi._
+Life is a lamp-flame before a wind.[27]
+
+ [27] Or, “like the flame of a lamp exposed to the wind.” A frequent
+ expression in Buddhist literature is “the Wind of Death.”
+
+
+32.—_Issun no mushi ni mo, gobu no tamashii._
+Even a worm an inch long has a soul half-an-inch long.[28]
+
+ [28] Literally, “has a soul of five _bu_,”—five _bu_ being equal to
+ half of the Japanese inch. Buddhism forbids all taking of life, and
+ classes as _living_ things (_Ujō_) all forms having sentiency. The
+ proverb, however,—as the use of the word “soul” (_tamashii_)
+ implies,—reflects popular belief rather than Buddhist philosophy. It
+ signifies that any life, however small or mean, is entitled to mercy.
+
+
+33.—_Iwashi[29] no atama mo shinjin kara._
+Even the head of an _iwashi_, by virtue of faith, [will have power to
+save, or heal].
+
+ [29] The _iwashi_ is a very small fish, much resembling a sardine. The
+ proverb implies that the object of worship signifies little, so long
+ as the prayer is made with perfect faith and pure intention.
+
+
+34.—_Jigō-jitoku._[30]
+The fruit of ones own deeds [in a previous state of existence].
+
+ [30] Few popular Buddhist phrases are more often used than this.
+ _Jigō_ signifies ones own acts or thoughts; _jitoku_, to bring upon
+ oneself,—nearly always in the sense of misfortune, when the word is
+ used in the Buddhist way. “Well, it is a matter of _Jigō-jitoku_,”
+ people will observe on seeing a man being taken to prison; meaning,
+ “He is reaping the consequence of his own faults.”
+
+
+35.—_Jigoku dé hotoké._
+Like meeting with a Buddha in hell.[31]
+
+ [31] Refers to the joy of meeting a good friend in time of misfortune.
+ The above is an abbreviation. The full proverb is, _Jigoku dé hotoké
+ hotoke ni ōta yo da_.
+
+
+36.—_Jigoku Gokuraku wa kokoro ni ari._
+Hell and Heaven are in the hearts of men.[32]
+
+ [32] A proverb in perfect accord with the higher Buddhism.
+
+
+37.—_Jigoku mo sumika._
+Even Hell itself is a dwelling-place.[33]
+
+ [33] Meaning that even those obliged to live in hell must learn to
+ accommodate themselves to the situation. One should always try to make
+ the best of circumstances. A proverb of kindred signification is,
+ _Sumeba, Miyako:_ “Wheresoever ones home is, that is the Capital [or,
+ imperial City].”
+
+
+38.—_Jigoku ni mo shiru bito._
+Even in hell old acquaintances are welcome.
+
+39.—_Kagé no katachi ni shitagau gotoshi._
+Even as the shadow follows the shape.[34]
+
+ [34] Referring to the doctrine of cause-and-effect. Compare with verse
+ 2 of the _Dhammapada_.
+
+
+40.—_Kané wa Amida yori bikaru._
+Money shines even more brightly than Amida.[35]
+
+ [35] Amitâbha, the Buddha of Immeasurable Light. His image in the
+ temples is usually gilded from head to foot.—There are many other
+ ironical proverbs about the power of wealth,—such as _Jigoku no sata
+ mo kané shidai:_ “Even the Judgments of Hell may be influenced by
+ money.”
+
+
+41.—_Karu-toki no Jizō-gao; nasu-toki no Emma-gao._
+Borrowing-time, the face of Jizō; repaying-time, the face of Emma.[36]
+
+ [36] Emma is the Chinese and Japanese Yama,—in Buddhism the Lord of
+ Hell, and the Judge of the Dead. The proverb is best explained by the
+ accompanying drawings, which will serve to give an idea of the
+ commoner representations of both divinities.
+
+[Illustration: Jizō]
+
+[Illustration: Emma Dai-ō]
+
+42.—_Kiité Gokuraku, mité Jigoku._
+Heard of only, it is Paradise; seen, it is Hell.[37]
+
+ [37] Rumor is never trustworthy.
+
+
+43.—_Kōji mon wo idézu: akuji sen ni wo hashiru._
+Good actions go not outside of the gate: bad deeds travel a thousand
+_ri_.
+
+44.—_Kokoro no koma ni tadzuna wo yuru-suna._
+Never let go the reins of the wild colt of the heart.
+
+45.—_Kokoro no oni ga mi wo séméru._
+The body is tortured only by the demon of the heart.[38]
+
+ [38] Or “mind.” That is to say that we suffer only from the
+ consequences of our own faults.—The demon-torturer in the Buddhist
+ hell says to his victim:—“Blame not me!—I am only the creation of your
+ own deeds and thoughts: you made me for this!”—Compare with No. 36.
+
+
+46.—_Kokoro no shi to wa naré; kokoro wo shi to sezaré._
+Be the teacher of your heart: do not allow your heart to become your
+teacher.
+
+47.—_Kono yo wa kari no yado._
+This world is only a resting-place.[39]
+
+ [39] “This world is but a travellers’ inn,” would be an almost equally
+ correct translation. _Yado_ literally means a lodging, shelter, inn;
+ and the word is applied often to those wayside resting-houses at which
+ Japanese travellers halt during a journey. _Kari_ signifies temporary,
+ transient, fleeting,—as in the common Buddhist saying, _Kono yo kari
+ no yo:_ “This world is a fleeting world.” Even Heaven and Hell
+ represent to the Buddhist only halting places upon the journey to
+ Nirvâna.
+
+
+48.—_Kori wo chiribamé; midzu ni égaku._
+To inlay ice; to paint upon water.[40]
+
+ [40] Refers to the vanity of selfish effort for some merely temporary
+ end.
+
+
+49.—_Korokoro to
+Naku wa yamada no
+Hototogisu,
+Chichi nitéya aran,
+Haha nitéya aran._
+The bird that cries _korokoro_ in the mountain rice-field I know to be
+a _hototogisu;_—yet it may have been my father; it may have been my
+mother.[41]
+
+ [41] This verse-proverb is cited in the Buddhist work _Wōjō Yōshū_,
+ with the following comment:—“Who knows whether the animal in the
+ field, or the bird in the mountain-wood, has not been either his
+ father or his mother in some former state of existence?”—The
+ _hototogisu_ is a kind of cuckoo.
+
+
+50.—_Ko wa Sangai no kubikase._
+A child is a neck-shackle for the Three States of Existence.[42]
+
+ [42] That is to say, The love of parents for their child may impede
+ their spiritual progress—not only in this world, but through all their
+ future states of being,—just as a _kubikasé_, or Japanese cangue,
+ impedes the movements of the person upon whom it is placed. Parental
+ affection, being the strongest of earthly attachments, is particularly
+ apt to cause those whom it enslaves to commit wrongful acts in the
+ hope of benefiting their offspring.—The term Sangai here signifies the
+ three worlds of Desire, Form, and Formlessness,—all the states of
+ existence below Nirvâna. But the word is sometimes used to signify the
+ Past, the Present, and the Future.
+
+
+51.—_Kuchi wa wazawai no kado._
+The mouth is the front-gate of all misfortune.[43]
+
+ [43] That is to say, The chief cause of trouble is unguarded speech.
+ The word Kado means always the main entrance to a residence.
+
+
+52.—_Kwahō wa, nété maté._
+If you wish for good luck, sleep and wait.[44]
+
+ [44] _Kwahō_, a purely Buddhist term, signifying good fortune as the
+ result of good actions in a previous life, has come to mean in common
+ parlance good fortune of any kind. The proverb is often used in a
+ sense similar to that of the English saying: “Watched pot never
+ boils.” In a strictly Buddhist sense it would mean, “Do not be too
+ eager for the reward of good deeds.”
+
+
+53.—_Makanu tané wa haënu._
+Nothing will grow, if the seed be not sown.[45]
+
+ [45] Do not expect harvest, unless you sow the seed. Without earnest
+ effort no merit can be gained.
+
+
+54.—_Matéba, kanrō no hiyori._
+If you wait, ambrosial weather will come.[46]
+
+ [46] _Kanrō_, the sweet dew of Heaven, or _amrita_. All good things
+ come to him who waits.
+
+
+55.—_Meidō no michi ni Ō wa nashi._
+There is no King on the Road of Death.[47]
+
+ [47] Literally, “on the Road of Meidō.” The _Meidō_ is the Japanese
+ Hades,—the dark under-world to which all the dead must journey.
+
+
+56.—_Mekura hebi ni ojizu._
+The blind man does not fear the snake.[48]
+
+ [48] The ignorant and the vicious, not understanding the law of
+ cause-and-effect, do not fear the certain results of their folly.
+
+
+57.—_Mitsuréba, hakuru._
+Having waxed, wanes.[49]
+
+ [49] No sooner has the moon waxed full than it begins to wane. So the
+ height of prosperity is also the beginning of fortunes decline.
+
+
+58.—_Mon zen no kozō narawanu kyō wo yomu._
+The shop-boy in front of the temple-gate repeats the sutra which he
+never learned.[50]
+
+ [50] _Kozō_ means “acolyte” as well as “shop-boy,”“errand-boy,” or
+ “apprentice;” but in this case it refers to a boy employed in a shop
+ situated near or before the gate of a Buddhist temple. By constantly
+ hearing the sutra chanted in the temple, the boy learns to repeat the
+ words. A proverb of kindred meaning is, _Kangaku-In no suzumé wa,
+ Mōgyū wo sayézuru:_ “The sparrows of Kangaku-In [an ancient seat of
+ learning] chirp the Mōgyū,”—a Chinese text formerly taught to young
+ students. The teaching of either proverb is excellently expressed by a
+ third:—_Narau yori wa naréro:_ “Rather than study [an art], get
+ accustomed to it,”—that is to say, “keep constantly in contact with
+ it.” Observation and practice are even better than study.
+
+
+59.—_Mujō no kazé wa, toki erabazu._
+The Wind of Impermanency does not choose a time.[51]
+
+ [51] Death and Change do not conform their ways to human expectation.
+
+
+60.—_Neko mo Busshō ari._
+In even a cat the Buddha-nature exists.[52]
+
+ [52] Notwithstanding the legend that only the cat and the _mamushi_ (a
+ poisonous viper) failed to weep for the death of the Buddha.
+
+
+61.—_Néta ma ga Gokuraku._
+The interval of sleep is Paradise.[53]
+
+ [53] Only during sleep can we sometimes cease to know the sorrow and
+ pain of this world. (Compare with No. 83.)
+
+
+62.—_Nijiu-go Bosatsu mo soré-soré no yaku._
+Even each of the Twenty-five Bodhisattvas has his own particular duty
+to perform.
+
+63.—_Nin mité, hō toké._
+[First] see the person, [then] preach the doctrine.[54]
+
+ [54] The teaching of Buddhist doctrine should always be adapted to the
+ intelligence of the person to be instructed. There is another proverb
+ of the same kind,—_Ki ni yorité, hō wo toké:_ “According to the
+ understanding [of the person to be taught], preach the Law.”
+
+
+64.—_Ninshin ukégataku Buppoō aigatashi._
+It is not easy to be born among men, and to meet with [the good fortune
+of hearing the doctrine of] Buddhism.[55]
+
+ [55] Popular Buddhism teaches that to be born in the world of mankind,
+ and especially among a people professing Buddhism, is a very great
+ privilege. However miserable human existence, it is at least a state
+ in which some knowledge of divine truth may be obtained; whereas the
+ beings in other and lower conditions of life are relatively incapable
+ of spiritual progress.
+
+
+65.—_Oni mo jiu-hachi._
+Even a devil [is pretty] at eighteen.[56]
+
+ [56] There are many curious sayings and proverbs about the oni, or
+ Buddhist devil,—such as _Oni no mé ni mo namida_, “tears in even a
+ devil’s eyes;”—Oni no kakuran, “devil’s cholera” (said of the
+ unexpected sickness of some very strong and healthy person), etc.,
+ etc.—The class of demons called _Oni_, properly belong to the Buddhist
+ hells, where they act as torturers and jailers. They are not to be
+ confounded with the _Ma, Yasha, Kijin_, and other classes of evil
+ spirits. In Buddhist art they are represented as beings of enormous
+ strength, with the heads of bulls and of horses. The bull-headed
+ demons are called _Go-zu;_ the horse-headed _Mé-zu_.
+
+
+66.—_Oni mo mi, narétaru ga yoshi._
+Even a devil, when you become accustomed to the sight of him, may prove
+a pleasant acquaintance.
+
+67.—_Oni ni kanabō._
+An iron club for a demon.[57]
+
+ [57] Meaning that great power should be given only to the strong.
+
+
+68.—_Oni no nyōbo ni kijin._
+A devil takes a goblin to wife.[58]
+
+ [58] Meaning that a wicked man usually marries a wicked woman.
+
+
+69.—_Onna no ké ni wa dai-zō mo tsunagaru._
+With one hair of a woman you can tether even a great elephant.
+
+70.—_Onna wa Sangai ni iyé nashi._
+Women have no homes of their own in the Three States of Existence.
+
+71.—_Oya no ingwa ga ko ni mukuü._
+The karma of the parents is visited upon the child.[59]
+
+ [59] Said of the parents of crippled or deformed children. But the
+ popular idea here expressed is not altogether in accord with the
+ teachings of the higher Buddhism.
+
+
+72.—_Rakkwa éda ni kaerazu._
+The fallen blossom never returns to the branch.[60]
+
+ [60] That which has been done never can be undone: the past cannot be
+ recalled.—This proverb is an abbreviation of the longer Buddhist text:
+ _Rakkwa éda ni kaerazu; ha-kyō futatabi terasazu:_ “The fallen blossom
+ never returns to the branch; the shattered mirror never again
+ reflects.”
+
+
+73.—_Raku wa ku no tané; ku wa raku no tané._
+Pleasure is the seed of pain; pain is the seed of pleasure.
+
+74.—_Rokudō wa, mé no maë._
+The Six Roads are right before your eyes.[61]
+
+ [61] That is to say, Your future life depends upon your conduct in
+ this life; and you are thus free to choose for yourself the place of
+ your next birth.
+
+
+75.—_Sangai mu-an._
+There is no rest within the Three States of Existence.
+
+76.—_Sangai ni kaki nashi;—Rokudō ni hotori nashi._
+There is no fence to the Three States of Existence;—there is no
+neighborhood to the Six Roads.[62]
+
+ [62] Within the Three States (Sangai), or universes, of Desire, Form,
+ and Formlessness; and within the Six Worlds, or conditions of
+ being,—_Jigokudō_ (Hell), _Gakidō_ (Pretas), _Chikushōdō_ (Animal
+ Life), _Shuradō_ (World of Fighting and Slaughter), _Ningendō_
+ (Mankind), _Tenjōdō_ (Heavenly Spirits)—all existence is included.
+ Beyond there is only Nirvâna. “There is no fence,” “no
+ neighborhood,”—that is to say, no limit beyond which to escape,—no
+ middle-path between any two of these states. We shall be reborn into
+ some one of them according to our karma.—Compare with No. 74.
+
+
+77.—_Sangé ni wa sannen no tsumi mo hōrobu._
+One confession effaces the sins of even three years.
+
+78.—_San nin yoréba, kugai._
+Where even three persons come together, there is a world of pain.[63]
+
+ [63] _Kugai_ (lit.: “bitter world”) is a term often used to describe
+ the life of a prostitute.
+
+
+79.—_San nin yoréba, Monjū no chié._
+Where three persons come together, there is the wisdom of _Monjū_.[64]
+
+ [64] Monjū Bosatsu [_Mañdjus’ri Bodhisattva_] figures in Japanese
+ Buddhism as a special divinity of wisdom.—The proverb signifies that
+ three heads are better than one. A saying of like meaning is,_ Hiza to
+ mo dankō:_ “Consult even with your own knee;” that is to say, Despise
+ no advice, no matter how humble the source of it.
+
+
+80.—_Shaka ni sekkyō._
+Preaching to Sâkyamuni.
+
+81.—_Shami kara chōrō._
+To become an abbot one must begin as a novice.
+
+82.—_Shindaréba, koso ikitaré._
+Only by reason of having died does one enter into life.[65]
+
+ [65] I never hear this singular proverb without being re-minded of a
+ sentence in Huxley’s famous essay, _On the Physical Basis of
+ Life:_—“The living protoplasm not only ultimately dies and is resolved
+ into its mineral and lifeless constituents, but is always dying, and,
+ strange as the paradox may sound, _could not live unless it died_.”
+
+
+83.—_Shiranu ga, hotoké; minu ga, Gokuraku._
+Not to know is to be a Buddha; not to see is Paradise.
+
+84.—_Shōbo ni kidoku nashi._
+There is no miracle in true doctrine.[66]
+
+ [66] Nothing can happen except as a result of eternal and irrevocable
+ law.
+
+
+85.—_Shō-chié wa Bodai no samatagé._
+A little wisdom is a stumbling-block on the way to Buddhahood.[67]
+
+ [67] _Bodai_ is the same word as the Sanscrit _Bodhi_, signifying the
+ supreme enlightenment,—the knowledge that leads to Buddhahood; but it
+ is often used by Japanese Buddhists in the sense of divine bliss, or
+ the Buddha-state itself.
+
+
+86.—_Shōshi no kukai hetori nashi._
+There is no shore to the bitter Sea of Birth and Death.[68]
+
+ [68] Or, “the Pain-Sea of Life and Death.”
+
+
+87.—_Sodé no furi-awasé mo tashō no en._
+Even the touching of sleeves in passing is caused by some relation in a
+former life.
+
+88.—_Sun zen; shaku ma._
+An inch of virtue; a foot of demon.[69]
+
+ [69] _Ma_ (Sanscrit, _Mârakâyikas_) is the name given to a particular
+ class of spirits who tempt men to evil. But in Japanese folklore the
+ _Ma_ have a part much resembling that occupied in Western popular
+ superstition by goblins and fairies.
+
+
+89.—_Tanoshimi wa hanasimi no motoi._
+All joy is the source of sorrow.
+
+90.—_Tondé hi ni iru natsu no mushi._
+So the insects of summer fly to the flame.[70]
+
+ [70] Said especially in reference to the result of sensual indulgence.
+
+
+91.—_Tsuchi-botoké no midzu-asobi._
+Clay-Buddha’s water-playing.[71]
+
+ [71] That is to say, “As dangerous as for a clay Buddha to play with
+ water.” Children often amuse themselves by making little Buddhist
+ images of mud, which melt into shapelessness, of course, if placed in
+ water.
+
+
+92.—_Tsuki ni murakumo, hana ni kazé._
+Cloud-wrack to the moon; wind to flowers.[72]
+
+ [72] The beauty of the moon is obscured by masses of clouds; the trees
+ no sooner blossom than their flowers are scattered by the wind. All
+ beauty is evanescent.
+
+
+93.—_Tsuyu no inochi._
+Human life is like the dew of morning.
+
+94.—_U-ki wa, kokoro ni ari._
+Joy and sorrow exist only in the mind.
+
+95.—_Uri no tsuru ni nasubi wa naranu._
+Egg-plants do not grow upon melon-vines.
+
+96.—_Uso mo hōben._
+Even an untruth may serve as a device.[73]
+
+ [73] That is, a pious device for effecting conversion. Such a device
+ is justified especially by the famous parable of the third chapter of
+ the _Saddharma Pundarîka_.
+
+
+97.—_Waga ya no hotoké tattoshi._
+My family ancestors were all excellent Buddhas.[74]
+
+ [74] Meaning that one most reveres the _hotoké_—the spirits of the
+ dead regarded as Buddhas—in one’s own household-shrine. There is an
+ ironical play upon the word _hotoké_, which may mean either a dead
+ person simply, or a Buddha. Perhaps the spirit of this proverb may be
+ better explained by the help of another: _Nigéta sakana ni chisai wa
+ nai; shinda kodomo ni warui ko wa nai_—“Fish that escaped was never
+ small; child that died was never bad.”
+
+
+98.—_Yuki no haté wa, Nehan._
+The end of snow is Nirvâna.[75]
+
+ [75] This curious saying is the only one in my collection containing
+ the word _Nehan_ (Nirvâna), and is here inserted chiefly for that
+ reason. The common people seldom speak of _Nehan_, and have little
+ knowledge of those profound doctrines to which the term is related.
+ The above phrase, as might be inferred, is not a popular expression:
+ it is rather an artistic and poetical reference to the aspect of a
+ landscape covered with snow to the horizon-line,—so that beyond the
+ snow-circle there is only the great void of the sky.
+
+
+99.—_Zen ni wa zen no mukui; aku ni wa aku no mukui._
+Goodness [or, virtue] is the return for goodness; evil is the return
+for evil.[76]
+
+ [76] Not so commonplace a proverb as might appear at first sight; for
+ it refers especially to the Buddhist belief that every kindness shown
+ to us in this life is a return of kindness done to others in a former
+ life, and that every wrong inflicted upon us is the reflex of some
+ injustice which we committed in a previous birth.
+
+
+100.—_Zensé no yakusoku-goto._
+Promised [or, destined] from a former birth.[77]
+
+ [77] A very common saying,—often uttered as a comment upon the
+ unhappiness of separation, upon sudden misfortune, upon sudden death,
+ etc. It is used especially in relation to _shinjū_, or lovers’
+ suicide. Such suicide is popularly thought to be a result of cruelty
+ in some previous state of being, or the consequence of having broken,
+ in a former life, the mutual promise to become husband and wife.
+
+
+
+
+Suggestion
+
+
+I had the privilege of meeting him in Tōkyō, where he was making a
+brief stay on his way to India;—and we took a long walk together, and
+talked of Eastern religions, about which he knew incomparably more than
+I. Whatever I could tell him concerning local beliefs, he would comment
+upon in the most startling manner,—citing weird correspondences in some
+living cult of India, Burmah, or Ceylon. Then, all of a sudden, he
+turned the conversation into a totally unexpected direction.
+
+“I have been thinking,” he said, “about the constancy of the relative
+proportion of the sexes, and wondering whether Buddhist doctrine
+furnishes an explanation. For it seems to me that, under ordinary
+conditions of karma, human rebirth would necessarily proceed by a
+regular alternation.”
+
+“Do you mean,” I asked, “that a man would be reborn as a woman, and a
+woman as a man?”
+
+“Yes,” he replied, “because desire is creative, and the desire of
+either sex is towards the other.”
+
+“And how many men,” I said, “would want to be reborn as women?”
+
+“Probably very few,” he answered. “But the doctrine that desire is
+creative does not imply that the individual longing creates its own
+satisfaction,—quite the contrary. The true teaching is that the result
+of every selfish wish is in the nature of a penalty, and that what the
+wish creates must prove—to higher knowledge at least—the folly of
+wishing.”
+
+“There you are right,” I said; “but I do not yet understand your
+theory.”
+
+“Well,” he continued, “if the physical conditions of human rebirth are
+all determined by the karma of the will relating to physical
+conditions, then sex would be determined by the will in relation to
+sex. Now the will of either sex is towards the other. Above all things
+else, excepting life, man desires woman, and woman man. Each
+individual, moreover, independently of any personal relation, feels
+perpetually, you say, the influence of some inborn feminine or
+masculine ideal, which you call ‘a ghostly reflex of countless
+attachments in countless past lives.’ And the insatiable desire
+represented by this ideal would of itself suffice to create the
+masculine or the feminine body of the next existence.”
+
+“But most women,” I observed, “would like to be reborn as men; and the
+accomplishment of that wish would scarcely be in the nature of a
+penalty.”
+
+“Why not?” he returned. “The happiness or unhappiness of the new
+existence would not be decided by sex alone: it would of necessity
+depend upon many conditions in combination.”
+
+“Your theory is interesting,” I said;—“but I do not know how far it
+could be made to accord with accepted doctrine…. And what of the person
+able, through knowledge and practice of the higher law, to remain
+superior to all weaknesses of sex?”
+
+“Such a one,” he replied, “would be reborn neither as man nor as
+woman,—providing there were no pre-existent karma powerful enough to
+check or to weaken the results of the self-conquest.”
+
+“Reborn in some one of the heavens?” I queried,—“by the
+Apparitional Birth?”
+
+“Not necessarily,” he said. “Such a one might be reborn in a world of
+desire,—like this,—but neither as man only, nor as woman only.”
+
+“Reborn, then, in what form?” I asked.
+
+“In that of a perfect being,” he responded. “A man or a woman is
+scarcely more than half-a-being,—because in our present imperfect state
+either sex can be evolved only at the cost of the other. In the mental
+and the physical composition of every man, there is undeveloped woman;
+and in the composition of every woman there is undeveloped man. But a
+being complete would be both perfect man and perfect woman, possessing
+the highest faculties of both sexes, with the weaknesses of neither.
+Some humanity higher than our own,—in other worlds,—might be thus
+evolved.”
+
+“But you know,” I observed, “that there are Buddhist texts,—in the
+_Saddharma Pundarîka_, for example, and in the _Vinayas_,—which
+forbid….”
+
+“Those texts,” he interrupted, “refer to imperfect beings—less than man
+and less than woman: they could not refer to the condition that I have
+been supposing…. But, remember, I am not preaching a doctrine;—I am
+only hazarding a theory.”
+
+“May I put your theory some day into print?” I asked.
+
+“Why, yes,” he made answer,—“if you believe it worth thinking about.”
+
+And long afterwards I wrote it down thus, as fairly as I was able, from
+memory.
+
+
+
+
+Ingwa-banashi[1]
+
+
+ [1] Lit., “a tale of _ingwa_.” _Ingwa_ is a Japanese Buddhist term for
+ evil karma, or the evil consequence of faults committed in a former
+ state of existence. Perhaps the curious title of the narrative is best
+ explained by the Buddhist teaching that the dead have power to injure
+ the living only in consequence of evil actions committed by their
+ victims in some former life. Both title and narrative may be found in
+ the collection of weird stories entitled _Hyaku-Monogatari_.
+
+
+The daimyō’s wife was dying, and knew that she was dying. She had not
+been able to leave her bed since the early autumn of the tenth Bunsei.
+It was now the fourth month of the twelfth Bunsei,—the year 1829 by
+Western counting; and the cherry-trees were blossoming. She thought of
+the cherry-trees in her garden, and of the gladness of spring. She
+thought of her children. She thought of her husband’s various
+concubines,—especially the Lady Yukiko, nineteen years old.
+
+“My dear wife,” said the daimyō, “you have suffered very much for three
+long years. We have done all that we could to get you well,—watching
+beside you night and day, praying for you, and often fasting for your
+sake, But in spite of our loving care, and in spite of the skill of our
+best physicians, it would now seen that the end of your life is not far
+off. Probably we shall sorrow more than you will sorrow because of your
+having to leave what the Buddha so truly termed ‘this burning-house of
+the world. I shall order to be performed—no matter what the cost—every
+religious rite that can serve you in regard to your next rebirth; and
+all of us will pray without ceasing for you, that you may not have to
+wander in the Black Space, but may quickly enter Paradise, and attain
+to Buddha-hood.”
+
+He spoke with the utmost tenderness, pressing her the while. Then, with
+eyelids closed, she answered him in a voice thin as the voice of in
+insect:—
+
+“I am grateful—most grateful—for your kind words…. Yes, it is true, as
+you say, that I have been sick for three long years, and that I have
+been treated with all possible care and affection…. Why, indeed, should
+I turn away from the one true Path at the very moment of my death?…
+Perhaps to think of worldly matters at such a time is not right;—but I
+have one last request to make,—only one…. Call here to me the Lady
+Yukiko;—you know that I love her like a sister. I want to speak to her
+about the affairs of this household.”
+
+Yukiko came at the summons of the lord, and, in obedience to a sign
+from him, knelt down beside the couch. The daimyō’s wife opened her
+eyes, and looked at Yukiko, and spoke:—“Ah, here is Yukiko!… I am so
+pleased to see you, Yukiko!… Come a little closer,—so that you can hear
+me well: I am not able to speak loud…. Yukiko, I am going to die. I
+hope that you will be faithful in all things to our dear lord;—for I
+want you to take my place when I am gone…. I hope that you will always
+be loved by him,—yes, even a hundred times more than I have been,—and
+that you will very soon be promoted to a higher rank, and become his
+honored wife…. And I beg of you always to cherish our dear lord: never
+allow another woman to rob you of his affection…. This is what I wanted
+to say to you, dear Yukiko…. Have you been able to understand?”
+
+“Oh, my dear Lady,” protested Yukiko, “do not, I entreat you, say such
+strange things to me! You well know that I am of poor and mean
+condition:—how could I ever dare to aspire to become the wife of our
+lord!”
+
+“Nay, nay!” returned the wife, huskily,—“this is not a time for words
+of ceremony: let us speak only the truth to each other. After my death,
+you will certainly be promoted to a higher place; and I now assure you
+again that I wish you to become the wife of our lord—yes, I wish this,
+Yukiko, even more than I wish to become a Buddha!… Ah, I had almost
+forgotten!—I want you to do something for me, Yukiko. You know that in
+the garden there is a _yaë-zakura_,[2] which was brought here, the year
+before last, from Mount Yoshino in Yamato. I have been told that it is
+now in full bloom;—and I wanted so much to see it in flower! In a
+little while I shall be dead;—I must see that tree before I die. Now I
+wish you to carry me into the garden—at once, Yukiko,—so that I can see
+it…. Yes, upon your back, Yukiko;—take me upon your back….”
+
+ [2] _Yaë-zakura, yaë-no-sakura_, a variety of Japanese cherry-tree
+ that bears double-blossoms.
+
+
+While thus asking, her voice had gradually become clear and strong,—as
+if the intensity of the wish had given her new force: then she suddenly
+burst into tears. Yukiko knelt motionless, not knowing what to do; but
+the lord nodded assent.
+
+“It is her last wish in this world,” he said. “She always loved
+cherry-flowers; and I know that she wanted very much to see that
+Yamato-tree in blossom. Come, my dear Yukiko, let her have her will.”
+
+As a nurse turns her back to a child, that the child may cling to it,
+Yukiko offered her shoulders to the wife, and said:—
+
+“Lady, I am ready: please tell me how I best can help you.”
+
+“Why, this way!”—responded the dying woman, lifting herself with an
+almost superhuman effort by clinging to Yukiko’s shoulders. But as she
+stood erect, she quickly slipped her thin hands down over the
+shoulders, under the robe, and clutched the breasts of the girl,, and
+burst into a wicked laugh.
+
+“I have my wish!” she cried—“I have my wish for the
+cherry-bloom,[3]—but not the cherry-bloom of the garden!… I could not
+die before I got my wish. Now I have it!—oh, what a delight!”
+
+ [3] In Japanese poetry and proverbial phraseology, the physical beauty
+ of a woman is compared to the cherry-flower; while feminine moral
+ beauty is compared to the plum-flower.
+
+
+And with these words she fell forward upon the crouching girl, and
+died.
+
+The attendants at once attempted to lift the body from Yukiko’s
+shoulders, and to lay it upon the bed. But—strange to say!—this
+seemingly easy thing could not be done. The cold hands had attached
+themselves in some unaccountable way to the breasts of the
+girl,—appeared to have grown into the quick flesh. Yukiko became
+senseless with fear and pain.
+
+Physicians were called. They could not understand what had taken place.
+By no ordinary methods could the hands of the dead woman be unfastened
+from the body of her victim;—they so clung that any effort to remove
+them brought blood. This was not because the fingers held: it was
+because the flesh of the palms had united itself in some inexplicable
+manner to the flesh of the breasts!
+
+At that time the most skilful physician in Yedo was a foreigner,—a
+Dutch surgeon. It was decided to summon him. After a careful
+examination he said that he could not understand the case, and that for
+the immediate relief of Yukiko there was nothing to be done except to
+cut the hands from the corpse. He declared that it would be dangerous
+to attempt to detach them from the breasts. His advice was accepted;
+and the hands’ were amputated at the wrists. But they remained clinging
+to the breasts; and there they soon darkened and dried up,—like the
+hands of a person long dead.
+
+Yet this was only the beginning of the horror.
+
+Withered and bloodless though they seemed, those hands were not dead.
+At intervals they would stir—stealthily, like great grey spiders. And
+nightly thereafter,—beginning always at the Hour of the Ox,[4]—they
+would clutch and compress and torture. Only at the Hour of the Tiger
+the pain would cease.
+
+ [4] In ancient Japanese time, the Hour of the Ox was the special hour
+ of ghosts. It began at 2 A.M., and lasted until 4 A.M.—for the old
+ Japanese hour was double the length of the modern hour. The Hour of
+ the Tiger began at 4 A.M.
+
+
+Yukiko cut off her hair, and became a mendicant-nun,—taking the
+religious name of Dassetsu. She had an _ihai_ (mortuary tablet) made,
+bearing the _kaimyō_ of her dead mistress,—“_Myō-Kō-In-Den
+Chizan-Ryō-Fu Daishi_”;—and this she carried about with her in all her
+wanderings; and every day before it she humbly besought the dead for
+pardon, and performed a Buddhist service in order that the jealous
+spirit might find rest. But the evil karma that had rendered such an
+affliction possible could not soon be exhausted. Every night at the
+Hour of the Ox, the hands never failed to torture her, during more than
+seventeen years,—according to the testimony of those persons to whom
+she last told her story, when she stopped for one evening at the house
+of Noguchi Dengozayémon, in the village of Tanaka in the district of
+Kawachi in the province of Shimotsuké. This was in the third year of
+Kōkwa (1846). Thereafter nothing more was ever heard of her.
+
+
+
+
+Story of a Tengu[1]
+
+
+ [1] This story may be found in the curious old Japanese book called
+ _Jikkun-Shō_. The same legend has furnished the subject of an
+ interesting _Nō_-play, called _Dai-É_ (“The Great Assembly”).
+    In Japanese popular art, the Tengu are commonly represented either
+    as winged men with beak-shaped noses, or as birds of prey. There
+    are different kinds of Tengu; but all are supposed to be
+    mountain-haunting spirits, capable of assuming many forms, and
+    occasionally appearing as crows, vultures, or eagles. Buddhism
+    appears to class the Tengu among the Mârakâyikas.
+
+
+In the days of the Emperor Go-Reizei, there was a holy priest living in
+the temple of Saito, on the mountain called Hiyei-Zan, near Kyōto. One
+summer day this good priest, after a visit to the city, was returning
+to his temple by way of Kita-no-Ōji, when he saw some boys ill-treating
+a kite. They had caught the bird in a snare, and were beating it with
+sticks. “Oh, the, poor creature!” compassionately exclaimed the
+priest;—“why do you torment it so, children?” One of the boys made
+answer:—“We want to kill it to get the feathers.” Moved by pity, the
+priest persuaded the boys to let him have the kite in exchange for a
+fan that he was carrying; and he set the bird free. It had not been
+seriously hurt, and was able to fly away.
+
+Happy at having performed this Buddhist act of merit, the priest then
+resumed his walk. He had not proceeded very far when he saw a strange
+monk come out of a bamboo-grove by the road-side, and hasten towards
+him. The monk respectfully saluted him, and said:—“Sir, through your
+compassionate kindness my life has been saved; and I now desire to
+express my gratitude in a fitting manner.” Astonished at hearing
+himself thus addressed, the priest replied:—“Really, I cannot remember
+to have ever seen you before: please tell me who you are.” “It is not
+wonderful that you cannot recognize me in this form,” returned the
+monk: “I am the kite that those cruel boys were tormenting at
+Kita-no-Ōji. You saved my life; and there is nothing in this world more
+precious than life. So I now wish to return your kindness in some way
+or other. If there be anything that you would like to have, or to know,
+or to see,—anything that I can do for you, in short,—please to tell me;
+for as I happen to possess, in a small degree, the Six Supernatural
+Powers, I am able to gratify almost any wish that you can express.” On
+hearing these words, the priest knew that he was speaking with a Tengu;
+and he frankly made answer:—“My friend, I have long ceased to care for
+the things of this world: I am now seventy years of age; neither fame
+nor pleasure has any attraction for me. I feel anxious only about my
+future birth; but as that is a matter in which no one can help me, it
+were useless to ask about it. Really, I can think of but one thing
+worth wishing for. It has been my life-long regret that I was not in
+India in the time of the Lord Buddha, and could not attend the great
+assembly on the holy mountain Gridhrakûta. Never a day passes in which
+this regret does not come to me, in the hour of morning or of evening
+prayer. Ah, my friend! if it were possible to conquer Time and Space,
+like the Bodhisattvas, so that I could look upon that marvellous
+assembly, how happy should I be!”
+
+“Why,” the Tengu exclaimed, “that pious wish of yours can easily be
+satisfied. I perfectly well remember the assembly on the Vulture Peak;
+and I can cause everything that happened there to reappear before you,
+exactly as it occurred. It is our greatest delight to represent such
+holy matters…. Come this way with me!”
+
+And the priest suffered himself to be led to a place among pines, on
+the slope of a hill. “Now,” said the Tengu, “you have only to wait here
+for awhile, with your eyes shut. Do not open them until you hear the
+voice of the Buddha preaching the Law. Then you can look. But when you
+see the appearance of the Buddha, you must not allow your devout
+feelings to influence you in any way;—you must not bow down, nor pray,
+nor utter any such exclamation as, ‘_Even so, Lord!_’ or ‘_O thou
+Blessed One!_’ You must not speak at all. Should you make even the
+least sign of reverence, something very unfortunate might happen to
+me.” The priest gladly promised to follow these injunctions; and the
+Tengu hurried away as if to prepare the spectacle.
+
+The day waned and passed, and the darkness came; but the old priest
+waited patiently beneath a tree, keeping his eyes closed. At last a
+voice suddenly resounded above him,—a wonderful voice, deep and clear
+like the pealing of a mighty bell,—the voice of the Buddha Sâkyamuni
+proclaiming the Perfect Way. Then the priest, opening his eyes in a
+great radiance, perceived that all things had been changed: the place
+was indeed the Vulture Peak,—the holy Indian mountain Gridhrakûta; and
+the time was the time of the Sûtra of the Lotos of the Good Law. Now
+there were no pines about him, but strange shining trees made of the
+Seven Precious Substances, with foliage and fruit of gems;—and the
+ground was covered with Mandârava and Manjûshaka flowers showered from
+heaven;—and the night was filled with fragrance and splendour and the
+sweetness of the great Voice. And in mid-air, shining as a moon above
+the world, the priest beheld the Blessed One seated upon the
+Lion-throne, with Samantabhadra at his right hand, and Manjusri at his
+left,—and before them assembled—immeasurably spreading into Space, like
+a flood Of stars—the hosts of the Mahâsattvas and the Bodhisattvas with
+their countless following: “gods, demons, Nâgas, goblins, men, and
+beings not human.” Sâriputra he saw, and Kâsyapa, and Ânanda, with all
+the disciples of the Tathâgata,—and the Kings of the Devas,—and the
+Kings of the Four Directions, like pillars of fire,—and the great
+Dragon-Kings,—and the Gandharvas and Garudas,—and the Gods of the Sun
+and the Moon and the Wind,—and the shining myriads of Brahmâ’s heaven.
+And incomparably further than even the measureless circling of the
+glory of these, he saw—made visible by a single ray of light that shot
+from the forehead of the Blessed One to pierce beyond uttermost
+Time—the eighteen hundred thousand Buddha-fields of the Eastern Quarter
+with all their habitants,—and the beings in each of the Six States of
+Existence,—and even the shapes of the Buddhas extinct, that had entered
+into Nirvâna. These, and all the gods, and all the demons, he saw bow
+down before the Lion-throne; and he heard that multitude incalculable
+of beings praising the Sûtra of the Lotos of the Good Law,—like the
+roar of a sea before the Lord. Then forgetting utterly his
+pledge,—foolishly dreaming that he stood in the very presence of the
+very Buddha,—he cast himself down in worship with tears of love and
+thanksgiving; crying out with a loud voice, “_O thou Blessed One!_”…
+
+Instantly with a shock as of earthquake the stupendous spectacle
+disappeared; and the priest found himself alone in the dark, kneeling
+upon the grass of the mountain-side. Then a sadness unspeakable fell
+upon him, because of the loss of the vision, and because of the
+thoughtlessness that had caused him to break his word. As he
+sorrowfully turned his steps homeward, the goblin-monk once more
+appeared before him, and said to him in tones of reproach and
+pain:—“Because you did not keep the promise which you made to me, and
+heedlessly allowed your feelings to overcome you, the Gohotendó, who is
+the Guardian of the Doctrine, swooped down suddenly from heaven upon
+us, and smote us in great anger, crying out, ‘_How do ye dare thus to
+deceive a pious person?_’ Then the other monks, whom I had assembled,
+all fled in fear. As for myself, one of my wings has been broken,—so
+that now I cannot fly.” And with these words the Tengu vanished
+forever.
+
+
+
+
+At Yaidzu
+
+
+I
+
+Under a bright sun the old fishing-town of Yaidzu has a particular
+charm of neutral color. Lizard-like it takes the grey tints of the rude
+grey coast on which it rests,—curving along a little bay. It is
+sheltered from heavy seas by an extraordinary rampart of boulders. This
+rampart, on the water-side, is built in the form of terrace-steps;—the
+rounded stones of which it is composed being kept in position by a sort
+of basket-work woven between rows of stakes driven deeply into the
+ground,—a separate row of stakes sustaining each of the grades. Looking
+landward from the top of the structure, your gaze ranges over the whole
+town,—a broad space of grey-tiled roofs and weather-worn grey timbers,
+with here and there a pine-grove marking the place of a temple-court.
+Seaward, over leagues of water, there is a grand view,—a jagged blue
+range of peaks crowding sharply into the horizon, like prodigious
+amethysts,—and beyond them, to the left, the glorious spectre of Fuji,
+towering enormously above everything. Between sea-wall and sea there is
+no sand,—only a grey slope of stones, chiefly boulders; and these roll
+with the surf so that it is ugly work trying to pass the breakers on a
+rough day. If you once get struck by a stone-wave,—as I did several
+times,—you will not soon forget the experience.
+
+At certain hours the greater part of this rough slope is occupied by
+ranks of strange-looking craft,—fishing-boats of a form peculiar to the
+locality. They are very large,—capable of carrying forty or fifty men
+each;—and they have queer high prows, to which Buddhist or Shintō
+charms (_mamori_ or _shugo_) are usually attached. A common form of
+Shintō written charm (_shugo_) is furnished for this purpose from the
+temple of the Goddess of Fuji: the text reads:—_Fuji-san chōjō
+Sengen-gu dai-gyō manzoku_,—meaning that the owner of the boat pledges
+himself, in case of good-fortune at fishing, to perform great
+austerities in honor of the divinity whose shrine is upon the summit of
+Fuji.
+
+In every coast-province of Japan,—and even at different
+fishing-settlements of the same province,—the forms of boats and
+fishing-implements are peculiar to the district or settlement. Indeed
+it will sometimes be found that settlements, within a few miles of each
+other, respectively manufacture nets or boats as dissimilar in type as
+might be the inventions of races living thousands of miles apart. This
+amazing variety may be in some degree due to respect for local
+tradition,—to the pious conservatism that preserves ancestral teaching
+and custom unchanged through hundreds of years: but it is better
+explained by the fact that different communities practise different
+kinds of fishing; and the shapes of the nets or the boats made, at any
+one place, are likely to prove, on investigation, the inventions of a
+special experience. The big Yaidzu boats illustrate this fact. They
+were devised according to the particular requirements of the
+Yaidzu-fishing-industry, which supplies dried _katsuo_ (bonito) to all
+parts of the Empire; and it was necessary that they should be able to
+ride a very rough sea. To get them in or out of the water is a heavy
+job; but the whole village helps. A kind of slipway is improvised in a
+moment by laying flat wooden frames on the slope in a line; and over
+these frames the flat-bottomed vessels are hauled up or down by means
+of long ropes. You will see a hundred or more persons thus engaged in
+moving a single boat,—men, women, and children pulling together, in
+time to a curious melancholy chant. At the coming of a typhoon, the
+boats are moved far back into the streets. There is plenty of fun in
+helping at such work; and if you are a stranger, the fisher-folk will
+perhaps reward your pains by showing you the wonders of their sea:
+crabs with legs of astonishing length, balloon-fish that blow
+themselves up in the most absurd manner, and various other creatures of
+shapes so extraordinary that you can scarcely believe them natural
+without touching them.
+
+The big boats with holy texts at their prows are not the strangest
+objects on the beach. Even more remarkable are the bait-baskets of
+split bamboo,—baskets six feet high and eighteen feet round, with one
+small hole in the dome-shaped top. Ranged along the sea-wall to dry,
+they might at some distance be mistaken for habitations or huts of some
+sort. Then you see great wooden anchors, shaped like ploughshares, and
+shod with metal; iron anchors, with four flukes; prodigious wooden
+mallets, used for driving stakes; and various other implements, still
+more unfamiliar, of which you cannot even imagine the purpose. The
+indescribable antique queerness of everything gives you that weird
+sensation of remoteness,—of the far away in time and place,—which makes
+one doubt the reality of the visible. And the life of Yaidzu is
+certainly the life of many centuries ago. The people, too, are the
+people of Old Japan: frank and kindly as children—good children,—honest
+to a fault, innocent of the further world, loyal to the ancient
+traditions and the ancient gods.
+
+II
+
+I happened to be at Yaidzu during the three days of the _Bon_ or
+Festival of the Dead; and I hoped to see the beautiful farewell
+ceremony of the third and last day. In many parts of Japan, the ghosts
+are furnished with miniature ships for their voyage,—little models of
+junks or fishing-craft, each containing offerings of food and water and
+kindled incense; also a tiny lantern or lamp, if the ghost-ship be
+despatched at night. But at Yaidzu lanterns only are set afloat; and I
+was told that they would be launched after dark. Midnight being the
+customary hour elsewhere, I supposed that it was the hour of farewell
+at Yaidzu also, and I rashly indulged in a nap after supper, expecting
+to wake up in time for the spectacle. But by ten o’clock, when I went
+to the beach again, all was over, and everybody had gone home. Over the
+water I saw something like a long swarm of fire-flies,—the lanterns
+drifting out to sea in procession; but they were already too far to be
+distinguished except as points of colored light. I was much
+disappointed: I felt that I had lazily missed an opportunity which
+might never again return,—for these old Bon-customs are dying rapidly.
+But in another moment it occurred to me that I could very well venture
+to swim out to the lights. They were moving slowly. I dropped my robe
+on the beach, and plunged in. The sea was calm, and beautifully
+phosphorescent. Every stroke kindled a stream of yellow fire. I swam
+fast, and overtook the last of the lantern-fleet much sooner than I had
+hoped. I felt that it would be unkind to interfere with the little
+embarcations, or to divert them from their silent course: so I
+contented myself with keeping close to one of them, and studying its
+details.
+
+[Illustration: The Lights of the Dead]
+
+The structure was very simple. The bottom was a piece of thick plank,
+perfectly square, and measuring about ten inches across. Each one of
+its corners supported a slender slick about sixteen inches high; and
+these four uprights, united above by cross-pieces, sustained the paper
+sides. Upon the point of a long nail, driven up through the centre of
+the bottom, was fixed a lighted candle. The top was left open. The four
+sides presented five different colors,—blue, yellow, red, white, and
+black; these five colors respectively symbolizing Ether, Wind, Fire,
+Water, and Earth,—the five Buddhist elements which are metaphysically
+identified with the Five Buddhas. One of the paper-panes was red, one
+blue, one yellow; and the right half of the fourth pane was black,
+while the left half, uncolored, represented white. No _kaimyō_ was
+written upon any of the transparencies. Inside the lantern there was
+only the flickering candle.
+
+I watched those frail glowing shapes drifting through the night, and
+ever as they drifted scattering, under impulse of wind and wave, more
+and more widely apart. Each, with its quiver of color, seemed a life
+afraid,—trembling on the blind current that was bearing it into the
+outer blackness…. Are not we ourselves as lanterns launched upon a
+deeper and a dimmer sea, and ever separating further and further one
+from another as we drift to the inevitable dissolution? Soon the
+thought-light in each burns itself out: then the poor frames, and all
+that is left of their once fair colors, must melt forever into the
+colorless Void.
+
+Even in the moment of this musing I began to doubt whether I was really
+alone,—to ask myself whether there might not be something more than a
+mere shuddering of light in the thing that rocked beside me: some
+presence that haunted the dying flame, and was watching the watcher. A
+faint cold thrill passed over me,—perhaps some chill uprising from the
+depths,—perhaps the creeping only of a ghostly fancy. Old superstitions
+of the coast recurred to me,—old vague warnings of peril in the time of
+the passage of Souls. I reflected that were any evil to befall me out
+there in the night,—meddling, or seeming to meddle, with the lights of
+the Dead,—I should myself furnish the subject of some future weird
+legend…. I whispered the Buddhist formula of farewell—to the
+lights,—and made speed for shore.
+
+As I touched the stones again, I was startled by seeing two white
+shadows before me; but a kindly voice, asking if the water was cold,
+set me at ease. It was the voice of my old landlord, Otokichi the
+fishseller, who had come to look for me, accompanied by his wife.
+
+“Only pleasantly cool,” I made answer, as I threw on my robe to go home
+with them.
+
+“Ah,” said the wife, “it is not good to go out there on the night of
+the Bon!”
+
+“I did not go far,” I replied;—“I only wanted to look at the lanterns.”
+
+“Even a Kappa gets drowned sometimes,”[1] protested Otokichi. “There
+was a man of this village who swam home a distance of seven ri, in bad
+weather, after his boat had been broken. But he was drowned
+afterwards.”
+
+ [1] This is a common proverb:—_Kappa mo oboré-shini_. The Kappa is a
+ water-goblin, haunting rivers especially.
+
+
+Seven _ri_ means a trifle less than eighteen miles. I asked if any of
+the young men now in the settlement could do as much.
+
+“Probably some might,” the old man replied. “There are many strong
+swimmers. All swim here,—even the little children. But when fisher-folk
+swim like that, it is only to save their lives.”
+
+“Or to make love,” the wife added,—“like the Hashima girl.”
+
+“Who?” queried I.
+
+“A fisherman’s daughter,” said Otokichi. “She had a lover in Ajiro,
+several _ri_ distant; and she used to swim to him at night, and swim
+back in the morning. He kept a light burning to guide her. But one dark
+night the light was neglected—or blown out; and she lost her way, and
+was drowned…. The story is famous in Idzu.”
+
+—“So,” I said to myself, “in the Far East, it is poor Hero that does
+the swimming. And what, under such circumstances, would have been the
+Western estimate of Leander?”
+
+III
+
+Usually about the time of the Bon, the sea gets rough; and I was not
+surprised to find next morning that the surf was running high. All day
+it grew. By the middle of the afternoon, the waves had become
+wonderful; and I sat on the sea-wall, and watched them until sundown.
+
+It was a long slow rolling,—massive and formidable. Sometimes, just
+before breaking, a towering swell would crack all its green length with
+a tinkle as of shivering glass; then would fall and flatten with a peal
+that shook the wall beneath me…. I thought of the great dead Russian
+general who made his army to storm as a sea,—wave upon wave of
+steel,—thunder following thunder…. There was yet scarcely any wind; but
+there must have been wild weather elsewhere,—and the breakers were
+steadily heightening. Their motion fascinated. How indescribably
+complex such motion is,—yet how eternally new! Who could fully describe
+even five minutes of it? No mortal ever saw two waves break in exactly
+the same way.
+
+And probably no mortal ever watched the ocean-roll or heard its thunder
+without feeling serious. I have noticed that even animals,—horses and
+cows,—become meditative in the presence of the sea: they stand and
+stare and listen as if the sight and sound of that immensity made them
+forget all else in the world.
+
+There is a folk-saying of the coast:—“_The Sea has a soul and hears_.”
+And the meaning is thus explained: Never speak of your fear when you
+feel afraid at sea;—if you say that you are afraid, the waves will
+suddenly rise higher. Now this imagining seems to me absolutely
+natural. I must confess that when I am either in the sea, or upon it, I
+cannot fully persuade myself that it is not alive,—a conscious and a
+hostile power. Reason, for the time being, avails nothing against this
+fancy. In order to be able to think of the sea as a mere body of water,
+I must be upon some height from whence its heaviest billowing appears
+but a lazy creeping of tiny ripples.
+
+But the primitive fancy may be roused even more strongly in darkness
+than by daylight. How living seem the smoulderings and the flashings of
+the tide on nights of phosphorescence!—how reptilian the subtle
+shifting of the tints of its chilly flame! Dive into such a
+night-sea;—open your eyes in the black-blue gloom, and watch the weird
+gush of lights that follow your every motion: each luminous point, as
+seen through the flood, like the opening and closing of an eye! At such
+a moment, one feels indeed as if enveloped by some monstrous
+sentiency,—suspended within some vital substance that feels and sees
+and wills alike in every part, an infinite soft cold Ghost.
+
+IV
+
+Long I lay awake that night, and listened to the thunder-rolls and
+crashings of the mighty tide. Deeper than these distinct shocks of
+noise, and all the storming of the nearer waves, was the bass of the
+further surf,—a ceaseless abysmal muttering to which the building
+trembled,—a sound that seemed to imagination like the sound of the
+trampling of infinite cavalry, the massing of incalculable
+artillery,—some rushing, from the Sunrise, of armies wide as the world.
+
+Then I found myself thinking of the vague terror with which I had
+listened, when a child, to the voice of the sea;—and I remembered that
+in after-years, on different coasts in different parts of the world,
+the sound of surf had always revived the childish emotion. Certainly
+this emotion was older than I by thousands of thousands of
+centuries,—the inherited sum of numberless terrors ancestral. But
+presently there came to me the conviction that fear of the sea alone
+could represent but one element of the multitudinous awe awakened by
+its voice. For as I listened to that wild tide of the Suruga coast, I
+could distinguish nearly every sound of fear known to man: not merely
+noises of battle tremendous,—of interminable volleying,—of immeasurable
+charging,—but the roaring of beasts, the crackling and hissing of fire,
+the rumbling of earthquake, the thunder of ruin, and, above all these,
+a clamor continual as of shrieks and smothered shoutings,—the Voices
+that are said to be the voices of the drowned., Awfulness supreme of
+tumult,—combining all imaginable echoings of fury and destruction and
+despair!
+
+And to myself I said:—Is it wonderful that the voice of the sea should
+make us serious? Consonantly to its multiple utterance must respond all
+waves of immemorial fear that move in the vaster sea of
+soul-experience. Deep calleth unto deep. The visible abyss calls to
+that abyss invisible of elder being whose flood-flow made the ghosts of
+us.
+
+Wherefore there is surely more than a little truth in the ancient
+belief that the speech of the dead is the roar of the sea. Truly the
+fear and the pain of the dead past speak to us in that dim deep awe
+which the roar of the sea awakens.
+
+But there are sounds that move us much more profoundly than the voice
+of the sea can do, and in stranger ways,—sounds that also make us
+serious at times, and very serious,—sounds of music.
+
+Great music is a psychical storm, agitating to unimaginable depth the
+mystery of the past within us. Or we might say that it is a prodigious
+incantation, every different instrument and voice making separate
+appeal to different billions of prenatal memories. There are tones that
+call up all ghosts of youth and joy and tenderness;—there are tones
+that evoke all phantom pain of perished passion;—there are tones that
+resurrect all dead sensations of majesty and might and glory,—all
+expired exultations,—all forgotten magnanimities. Well may the
+influence of music seem inexplicable to the man who idly dreams that
+his life began less than a hundred years ago! But the mystery lightens
+for whomsoever learns that the substance of Self is older than the sun.
+He finds that music is a Necromancy;—he feels that to every ripple of
+melody, to every billow of harmony, there answers within him, out of
+the Sea of Death and Birth, some eddying immeasurable of ancient
+pleasure and pain.
+
+Pleasure and pain: they commingle always in great music; and therefore
+it is that music can move us more profoundly than the voice of ocean or
+than any other voice can do. But in music’s larger utterance it is ever
+the sorrow that makes the undertone,—the surf-mutter of the Sea of
+Soul…. Strange to think how vast the sum of joy and woe that must have
+been experienced before the sense of music could evolve in the brain of
+man!
+
+Somewhere it is said that human life is the music of the Gods,—that its
+sobs and laughter, its songs and shrieks and orisons, its outcries of
+delight and of despair, rise never to the hearing of the Immortals but
+as a perfect harmony…. Wherefore they could not desire to hush the
+tones of pain: it would spoil their music! The combination, without the
+agony-tones, would prove a discord unendurable to ears divine.
+
+And in one way we ourselves are as Gods,—since it is only the sum of
+the pains and the joys of past lives innumerable that makes for us,
+through memory organic, the ecstasy of music. All the gladness and the
+grief of dead generations come back to haunt us in countless forms of
+harmony and of melody. Even so,—a million years after we shall have
+ceased to view the sun,—will the gladness and the grief of our own
+lives pass with richer music into other hearts—there to bestir, for one
+mysterious moment, some deep and exquisite thrilling of voluptuous
+pain.
+
+
+
+
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