Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan Volume I Part 2

I climb and climb and climb, halting perforce betimes, to ease the violent aching of my quadriceps muscles; reach the top completely out of breath; and find myself between two lions of stone; one showing his fangs, the other with jaws closed. Before me stands the temple, at the farther end of a small bare plateau surrounded on three sides by low cliffs,-a small temple, looking very old and grey. From a rocky height to the left of the building, a little cataract rumbles down into a pool, ringed in by a palisade. The voice of the water drowns all other sounds.

A sharp wind is blowing from the ocean: the place is chill even in the sun, and bleak, and desolate, as if no prayer had been uttered in it for a hundred years.

Cha taps and calls, while I take off my shoes upon the worn wooden steps of the temple; and after a minute of waiting, we bear a m.u.f.fled step approaching and a hollow cough behind the paper screens. They slide open; and an old white-robed priest appears, and motions me, with a low bow, to enter. He has a kindly face; and his smile of welcome seems to me one of the most exquisite I have ever been greeted 'with Then he coughs again, so badly that I think if I ever come here another time, I shall ask for him in vain.

I go in, feeling that soft, spotless, cushioned matting beneath my feet with which the floors of all j.a.panese buildings are covered. I pa.s.s the indispensable bell and lacquered reading-desk; and before me I see other screens only, stretching from floor to ceiling. The old man, still coughing, slides back one of these upon the right, and waves me into the dimness of an inner sanctuary, haunted by faint odours of incense. A colossal bronze lamp, with snarling gilded dragons coiled about its columnar stem, is the first object I discern; and, in pa.s.sing it, my shoulder sets ringing a festoon of little bells suspended from the lotus-shaped summit of it. Then I reach the altar, gropingly, unable yet to distinguish forms clearly. But the priest, sliding back screen after screen, pours in light upon the gilded bra.s.ses and the inscriptions; and I look for the image of the Deity or presiding Spirit between the altar- groups of convoluted candelabra. And I see--only a mirror, a round, pale disk of polished metal, and my own face therein, and behind this mockery of me a phantom of the far sea.

Only a mirror! Symbolising what? Illusion? or that the Universe exists for us solely as the reflection of our own souls? or the old Chinese teaching that we must seek the Buddha only in our own hearts? Perhaps some day I shall be able to find out all these things.

As I sit on the temple steps, putting on my shoes preparatory to going, the kind old priest approaches me again, and, bowing, presents a bowl. I hastily drop some coins in it, imagining it to be a Buddhist alms-bowl, before discovering it to be full of hot water. But the old man's beautiful courtesy saves me from feeling all the grossness of my mistake. Without a word, and still preserving his kindly smile, he takes the bowl away, and, returning presently with another bowl, empty, fills it with hot water from a little kettle, and makes a sign to me to drink.

Tea is most usually offered to visitors at temples; but this little shrine is very, very poor; and I have a suspicion that the old priest suffers betimes for want of what no fellow-creature should be permitted to need. As I descend the windy steps to the roadway I see him still looking after me, and I hear once more his hollow cough.

Then the mockery of the mirror recurs to me. I am beginning to wonder whether I shall ever be able to discover that which I seek--outside of myself! That is, outside of my own imagination.

Sec. 10

'Tera?' once more queries Cha.

'Tera, no--it is getting late. Hotel, Cha.'

But Cha, turning the corner of a narrow street, on our homeward route, halts the jinricksha before a shrine or tiny temple scarcely larger than the smallest of j.a.panese shops, yet more of a surprise to me than any of the larger sacred edifices already visited. For, on either side of the entrance, stand two monster-figures, nude, blood-red, demoniac, fearfully muscled, with feet like lions, and hands brandishing gilded thunderbolts, and eyes of delirious fury; the guardians of holy things, the Ni-O, or "Two Kings." [4] And right between these crimson monsters a young girl stands looking at us; her slight figure, in robe of silver grey and girdle of iris-violet, relieved deliciously against the twilight darkness of the interior. Her face, impa.s.sive and curiously delicate, would charm wherever seen; but here, by strange contrast with the frightful grotesqueries on either side of her, it produces an effect unimaginable. Then I find myself wondering whether my feeling of repulsion toward those twin monstrosities be altogether l.u.s.t, seeing that so charming a maiden deems them worthy of veneration. And they even cease to seem ugly as I watch her standing there between them, dainty and slender as some splendid moth, and always naively gazing at the foreigner, utterly unconscious that they might have seemed to him both unholy and uncomely.

What are they? Artistically they are Buddhist transformations of Brahma and of Indra. Enveloped by the absorbing, all-transforming magical atmosphere of Buddhism, Indra can now wield his thunderbolts only in defence of the faith which has dethroned him: he has become a keeper of the temple gates; nay, has even become a servant of Bosatsu (Bodhisattvas), for this is only a shrine of Kwannon, G.o.ddess of Mercy, not yet a Buddha.

'Hotel, Cha, hotel!' I cry out again, for the way is long, and the sun sinking,--sinking in the softest imaginable glow of topazine light. I have not seen Shaka (so the j.a.panese have transformed the name Sakya- Muni); I have not looked upon the face of the Buddha. Perhaps I may be able to find his image to-morrow, somewhere in this wilderness of wooden streets, or upon the summit of some yet unvisited hill.

The sun is gone; the topaz-light is gone; and Cha stops to light his lantern of paper; and we hurry on again, between two long lines of painted paper lanterns suspended before the shops: so closely set, so level those lines are, that they seem two interminable strings of pearls of fire. And suddenly a sound--solemn, profound, mighty--peals to my ears over the roofs of the town, the voice of the tsurigane, the great temple-bell of Nogiyama.

All too short the day seemed. Yet my eyes have been so long dazzled by the great white light, and so confused by the sorcery of that interminable maze of mysterious signs which made each street vista seem a glimpse into some enormous grimoire, that they are now weary even of the soft glowing of all these paper lanterns, likewise covered with characters that look like texts from a Book of Magic. And I feel at last the coming of that drowsiness which always follows enchantment.

Sec. 11

'Amma-kamishimo-go-hyakmon!'

A woman's voice ringing through the night, chanting in a tone of singular sweetness words of which each syllable comes through my open window like a wavelet of flute-sound. My j.a.panese servant, who speaks a little English, has told me what they mean, those words:

'Amma-kamishimo-go-hyakmon!'

And always between these long, sweet calls I hear a plaintive whistle, one long note first, then two short ones in another key. It is the whistle of the amma, the poor blind woman who earns her living by shampooing the sick or the weary, and whose whistle warns pedestrians and drivers of vehicles to take heed for her sake, as she cannot see.

And she sings also that the weary and the sick may call her in.

'Amma-kamishimo-go-hyakmon!'

The saddest melody, but the sweetest voice. Her cry signifies that for the sum of 'five hundred mon' she will come and rub your weary body 'above and below,' and make the weariness or the pain go away. Five hundred mon are the equivalent of five sen (j.a.panese cents); there are ten rin to a sen, and ten mon to one rin. The strange sweetness of the voice is haunting,--makes me even wish to have some pains, that I might pay five hundred mon to have them driven away.

I lie down to sleep, and I dream. I see Chinese texts--mult.i.tudinous, weird, mysterious--fleeing by me, all in one direction; ideographs white and dark, upon signboards, upon paper screens, upon backs of sandalled men. They seem to live, these ideographs, with conscious life; they are moving their parts, moving with a movement as of insects, monstrously, like phasmidae. I am rolling always through low, narrow, luminous streets in a phantom jinricksha, whose wheels make no sound.

And always, always, I see the huge white mushroom-shaped hat of Cha dancing up and down before me as he runs.

Chapter Two The Writing of Kobodaishi

Sec. 1

KOBODAISHI, most holy of Buddhist priests, and founder of the Shingon- sho--which is the sect of Akira--first taught the men of j.a.pan to write the writing called Hiragana and the syllabary I-ro-ha; and Kobodaishi was himself the most wonderful of all writers, and the most skilful wizard among scribes.

And in the book, Kobodaishi-ichi-dai-ki, it is related that when he was in China, the name of a certain room in the palace of the Emperor having become effaced by time, the Emperor sent for him and bade him write the name anew. Thereupon Kobodaishi took a brush in his right hand, and a brush in his left, and one brush between the toes of his left foot, and another between the toes of his right, and one in his mouth also; and with those five brushes, so holding them, he limned the characters upon the wall. And the characters were beautiful beyond any that had ever been seen in China--smooth-flowing as the ripples in the current of a river. And Kobodaishi then took a brush, and with it from a distance spattered drops of ink upon the wall; and the drops as they fell became transformed and turned into beautiful characters. And the Emperor gave to Kobodaishi the name Gohitsu Osho, signifying The Priest who writes with Five Brushes.

At another time, while the saint was dwelling in Takawasan, near to Kyoto, the Emperor, being desirous that Kobodaishi should write the tablet for the great temple called Kongo-jo-ji, gave the tablet to a messenger and bade him carry it to Kobodaishi, that Kobodaishi might letter it. But when the Emperor's messenger, bearing the tablet, came near to the place where Kobodaishi dwelt, he found a river before him so much swollen by rain that no man might cross it. In a little while, however, Kobodaishi appeared upon the farther bank, and, hearing from the messenger what the Emperor desired, called to him to hold up the tablet. And the messenger did so; and Kobodaishi, from his place upon the farther bank, made the movements of the letters with his brush; and as fast as he made them they appeared upon the tablet which the messenger was holding up.

Sec. 2

Now in that time Kobodaishi was wont to meditate alone by the river- side; and one day, while so meditating, he was aware of a boy standing before him, gazing at him curiously. The garments of the boy were as the garments worn by the needy; but his face was beautiful. And while Kobodaishi wondered, the boy asked him: 'Are you Kobodaishi, whom men call "Gohitsu-Osho"--the priest who writes with five brushes at once?'

And Kobodaishi answered: 'I am he.' Then said the boy: 'If you be he, write, I pray you, upon the sky.' And Kobodaishi, rising, took his brush, and made with it movements toward the sky as if writing; and presently upon the face of the sky the letters appeared, most beautifully wrought. Then the boy said: 'Now I shall try;' and he wrote also upon the sky as Kobodaishi had done. And he said again to Kobodaishi: 'I pray you, write for me--write upon the surface of the river.' Then Kobodaishi wrote upon the water a poem in praise of the water; and for a moment the characters remained, all beautiful, upon the face of the stream, as if they had fallen upon it like leaves; but presently they moved with the current and floated away. 'Now I will try,' said the boy; and he wrote upon the water the Dragon-character-- the character Ryu in the writing which is called Sosho, the 'Gra.s.s- character;' and the character remained upon the flowing surface and moved not. But Kobodaishi saw that the boy had not placed the ten, the little dot belonging to the character, beside it. And he asked the boy: 'Why did you not put the ten?' 'Oh, I forgot!' answered the boy; 'please put it there for me,' and Kobodaishi then made the dot. And lo! the Dragon-character became a Dragon; and the Dragon moved terribly in the waters; and the sky darkened with thunder-clouds, and blazed with lightnings; and the Dragon ascended in a whirl of tempest to heaven.

Then Kobodaishi asked the boy: 'Who are you?' And the boy made answer: 'I am he whom men worship on the mountain Gotai; I am the Lord of Wisdom,--Monju Bosatsu!' And even as he spoke the boy became changed; and his beauty became luminous like the beauty of G.o.ds; and his limbs became radiant, shedding soft light about. And, smiling, he rose to heaven and vanished beyond the clouds.

Sec. 3

But Kobodaishi himself once forgot to put the ten beside the character O on the tablet which he painted with the name of the Gate O-Te-mon of the Emperor's palace. And the Emperor at Kyoto having asked him why he had not put the ten beside the character, Kobodaishi answered: 'I forgot; but I will put it on now.' Then the Emperor bade ladders be brought; for the tablet was already in place, high above the gate. But Kobodaishi, standing on the pavement before the gate, simply threw his brush at the tablet; and the brush, so thrown, made the ten there most admirably, and fell back into his hand.

Kobodaishi also painted the tablet of the gate called Ko-kamon of the Emperor's palace at Kyoto. Now there was a man, dwelling near that gate, whose name was Kino Momoye; and he ridiculed the characters which Kobodaishi had made, and pointed to one of them, saying: 'Why, it looks like a swaggering wrestler!' But the same night Momoye dreamed that a wrestler had come to his bedside and leaped upon him, and was beating him with his fists. And, crying out with the pain of the blows, he awoke, and saw the wrestler rise in air, and change into the written character he had laughed at, and go back to the tablet over the gate.

And there was another writer, famed greatly for his skill, named Onomo Toku, who laughed at some characters on the tablet of the Gate Shukaku- mon, written by Kobodaishi; and he said, pointing to the character Shu: 'Verily shu looks like the character "rice".' And that night he dreamed that the character he had mocked at became a man; and that the man fell upon him and beat him, and jumped up and down upon his face many times-- even as a kometsuki, a rice-cleaner, leaps up and down to move the hammers that beat the rice--saying the while: 'Lo! I am the messenger of Kobodaishi!' And, waking, he found himself bruised and bleeding as one that had been grievously trampled.

And long after Kobodaishi's death it was found that the names written by him on the two gates of the Emperor's palace Bi-f.u.ku-mon, the Gate of Beautiful Fortune; and Ko-ka-mon, the Gate of Excellent Greatness--were well-nigh effaced by time. And the Emperor ordered a Dainagon [1], whose name was Yukinari, to restore the tablets. But Yukinari was afraid to perform the command of the Emperor, by reason of what had befallen other men; and, fearing the divine anger of Kobodaishi, he made offerings, and prayed for some token of permission. And the same night, in a dream, Kobodaishi appeared to him, smiling gently, and said: 'Do the work even as the Emperor desires, and have no fear.' So he restored the tablets in the first month of the fourth year of Kw.a.n.ko, as is recorded in the book, Hon-cho-bun-sui.

And all these things have been related to me by my friend Akira.

Chapter Three Jizo

Sec. 1

I HAVE pa.s.sed another day in wandering among the temples, both Shinto and Buddhist. I have seen many curious things; but I have not yet seen the face of the Buddha.

Repeatedly, after long wearisome climbing of stone steps, and pa.s.sing under gates full of gargoyles--heads of elephants and heads of lions-- and entering shoeless into scented twilight, into enchanted gardens of golden lotus-flowers of paper, and there waiting for my eyes to become habituated to the dimness, I have looked in vain for images. Only an opulent glimmering confusion of things half-seen--vague altar- splendours created by gilded bronzes twisted into riddles, by vessels of indescribable shape, by enigmatic texts of gold, by mysterious glittering pendent things--all framing in only a shrine with doors fast closed.

What has most impressed me is the seeming joyousness of popular faith. I have seen nothing grim, austere, or self-repressive. I have not even noted anything approaching the solemn. The bright temple courts and even the temple steps are thronged with laughing children, playing curious games; arid mothers, entering the sanctuary to pray, suffer their little ones to creep about the matting and crow. The people take their religion lightly and cheerfully: they drop their cash in the great alms-box, clap their hands, murmur a very brief prayer, then turn to laugh and talk and smoke their little pipes before the temple entrance. Into some shrines, I have noticed the worshippers do not enter at all; they merely stand before the doors and pray for a few seconds, and make their small offerings. Blessed are they who do not too much fear the G.o.ds which they have made!

Sec. 2

Akira is bowing and smiling at the door. He slips off his sandals, enters in his white digitated stockings, and, with another smile and bow, sinks gently into the proffered chair. Akira is an interesting boy.

With his smooth beardless face and clear bronze skin and blue-black hair trimmed into a shock that shadows his forehead to the eyes, he has almost the appearance, in his long wide-sleeved robe and snowy stockings, of a young j.a.panese girl.

I clap my hands for tea, hotel tea, which he calls 'Chinese tea.' I offer him a cigar, which he declines; but with my permission, he will smoke his pipe. Thereupon he draws from his girdle a j.a.panese pipe-case and tobacco-pouch combined; pulls out of the pipe-case a little bra.s.s pipe with a bowl scarcely large enough to hold a pea; pulls out of the pouch some tobacco so finely cut that it looks like hair, stuffs a tiny pellet of this preparation in the pipe, and begins to smoke. He draws the smoke into his lungs, and blows it out again through his nostrils.

Three little whiffs, at intervals of about half a minute, and the pipe, emptied, is replaced in its case.