Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan Volume II Part 18

It was in Oki that I first heard of an extraordinary superst.i.tion about the cause of okori (ague, or intermittent fever), mild forms of which prevail in certain districts at certain seasons; but I have since learned that this quaint belief is an old one in Izumo and in many parts of the San-indo. It is a curious example of the manner in which Buddhism has been used to explain all mysteries.

Okori is said to be caused by the Gaki-botoke, or hungry ghosts.

Strictly speaking, the Gaki-botoke are the Pretas of Indian Buddhism, spirits condemned to sojourn in the Gakido, the sphere of the penance of perpetual hunger and thirst. But in j.a.panese Buddhism, the name Gaki is given also to those souls who have none among the living to remember them, and to prepare for them the customary offerings of food and tea.

These suffer, and seek to obtain warmth and nutriment by entering into the bodies of the living. The person into whom a gaki enters at first feels intensely cold and shivers, because the gaki is cold. But the chill is followed by a feeling of intense heat, as the gaki becomes warm. Having warmed itself and absorbed some nourishment at the expense of its unwilling host, the gaki goes away, and the fever ceases for a time. But at exactly the same hour upon another day the gaki will return, and the victim must shiver and burn until the haunter has become warm and has satisfied its hunger. Some gaki visit their patients every day; others every alternate day, or even less often. In brief: the paroxysms of any form of intermittent fever are explained by the presence of the gaki, and the intervals between the paroxysms by its absence.

Sec. 25

Of the word hotoke (which becomes botoke in such com-pounds as nure- botoke, [12] gaki-botoke) there is something curious to say.

Hotoke signifies a Buddha.

Hotoke signifies also the Souls of the Dead--since faith holds that these, after worthy life, either enter upon the way to Buddhahood, or become Buddhas.

Hotoke, by euphemism, has likewise come to mean a corpse: hence the verb hotoke-zukuri, 'to look ghastly,' to have the semblance of one long dead.

And Hotoke-San is the name of the Image of a Face seen in the pupil of the eye--Hotoke-San, 'the Lord Buddha.' Not the Supreme of the Hokkekyo, but that lesser Buddha who dwelleth in each one of us,--the Spirit. [13]

Sang Rossetti: 'I looked and saw your heart in the shadow of your eyes.'

Exactly converse is the Oriental thought. A j.a.panese lover would have said: 'I looked and saw my own Buddha in the shadow of your eyes.

What is the psychical theory connected with so singular a belief? [14] I think it might be this: The Soul, within its own body, always remains viewless, yet may reflect itself in the eyes of another, as in the mirror of a necromancer. Vainly you gaze into the eyes of the beloved to discern her soul: you see there only your own soul's shadow, diaphanous; and beyond is mystery alone--reaching to the Infinite.

But is not this true? The Ego, as Schopenhauer wonderfully said, is the dark spot in consciousness, even as the point whereat the nerve of sight enters the eye is blind. We see ourselves in others only; only through others do we dimly guess that which we are. And in the deepest love of another being do we not indeed love ourselves? What are the personalities, the individualities of us but countless vibrations in the Universal Being? Are we not all One in the unknowable Ultimate? One with the inconceivable past? One with the everlasting future?

Sec. 26

In Oki, as in Izumo, the public school is slowly but surely destroying many of the old superst.i.tions. Even the fishermen of the new generation laugh at things in which their fathers believed. I was rather surprised to receive from an intelligent young sailor, whom I had questioned through an interpreter about the ghostly fire of Takuhizan, this scornful answer: 'Oh, we used to believe those things when we were savages; but we are civilised now!'

Nevertheless, he was somewhat in advance of his time. In the village to which he belonged I discovered that the Fox-.superst.i.tion prevails to a degree scarcely paralleled in any part of Izumo. The history of the village was quite curious. From time immemorial it had been reputed a settlement of Kitsune-mochi: in other words, all its inhabitants were commonly believed, and perhaps believed themselves, to be the owners of goblin-foxes. And being all alike kitsune-mochi, they could eat and drink together, and marry and give in marriage among themselves without affliction. They were feared with a ghostly fear by the neighbouring peasantry, who obeyed their demands both in matters reasonable and unreasonable. They prospered exceedingly. But some twenty years ago an Izumo stranger settled among them. He was energetic, intelligent, and possessed of some capital. He bought land, made various shrewd investments, and in a surprisingly short time became the wealthiest citizen in the place. He built a very pretty Shinto temple and presented it to the community. There was only one obstacle in the way of his becoming a really popular person: he was not a kitsune-mochi, and he had even said that he hated foxes. This singularity threatened to beget discords in the mura, especially as he married his children to strangers, and thus began in the midst of the kitsune-mochi to establish a sort of anti-Fox-holding colony.

Wherefore, for a long time past, the Fox-holders have been trying to force their superfluous goblins upon him. Shadows glide about the gate of his dwelling on moonless nights, muttering: 'Kaere! kyo kara kokoye: kuruda!' [Be off now! from now hereafter it is here that ye must dwell: go!] Then are the upper shoji violently pushed apart; and the voice of the enraged house owner is heard: 'Koko Wa kiraida! modori!' [Detestable is that which ye do! get ye gone!] And the Shadows flee away.[15]

Sec. 27

Because there were no cuttlefish at Hishi-ura, and no horrid smells, I enjoyed myself there more than I did anywhere else in Oki. But, in any event, Hishi-ura would have interested me more than Saigo. The life of the pretty little town is peculiarly old-fashioned; and the ancient domestic industries, which the introduction of machinery has almost destroyed in Izumo and elsewhere, still exist in Hishi-ura. It was pleasant to watch the rosy girls weaving robes of cotton and robes of silk, relieving each other whenever the work became fatiguing. All this quaint gentle life is open to inspection, and I loved to watch it. I had other pleasures also: the bay is a delightful place for swimming, and there were always boats ready to take me to any place of interest along the coast. At night the sea breeze made the rooms which I occupied deliciously cool; and from the balcony I could watch the bay-swell breaking in slow, cold fire on the steps of the wharves--a beautiful phosph.o.r.escence; and I could hear Oki mothers singing their babes to sleep with one of the oldest lullabys in the world:

Nenneko, O-yama no Usagi. no ko, Naze mata O-mimi ga Nagai e yara?

Okkasan no O-nak ni Oru toku ni, BiWa no ha, Sasa no ha, Tabeta sona; Sore de O-mimi ga Nagai e sona. [16]

The air was singularly sweet and plaintive, quite different from that to which the same words are sung in Izumo, and in other parts of j.a.pan.

One morning I had hired a boat to take me to Beppu, and was on the point of leaving the hotel for the day, when the old landlady, touching my arm, exclaimed: 'Wait a little while; it is not good to cross a funeral.' I looked round the corner, and saw the procession coming along the sh.o.r.e. It was a Shinto funeral--a child's funeral. Young lads came first, carrying Shinto emblems--little white flags, and branches of the sacred sakaki; and after the coffin the mother walked, a young peasant, crying very loud, and wiping her eyes with the long sleeves of her coa.r.s.e blue dress. Then the old woman at my side murmured: 'She sorrows; but she is very young: perhaps It will come back to her.' For she was a pious Buddhist, my good old landlady, and doubtless supposed the mother's belief like her own, although the funeral was conducted according to the Shinto rite.

Sec. 28

There are in Buddhism certain weirdly beautiful consolations unknown to Western faith.

The young mother who loses her first child may at least pray that it will come back to her out of the night of death--not in dreams only, but through reincarnation. And so praying, she writes within the hand of the little corpse the first ideograph of her lost darling's name.

Months pa.s.s; she again becomes a mother. Eagerly she examines the flower-soft hand of the infant. And lo! the self-same ideograph is there--a rosy birth-mark on the tender palm; and the Soul returned looks out upon her through the eyes of the newly-born with the gaze of other days.

Sec. 29

While on the subject of death I may speak of a primitive but touching custom which exists both in Oki and Izumo--that of calling the name of the dead immediately after death. For it is thought that the call may be heard by the fleeting soul, which might sometimes be thus induced to return. Therefore, when a mother dies, the children should first call her, and of all the children first the youngest (for she loved that one most); and then the husband and all those who loved the dead cry to her in turn.

And it is also the custom to call loudly the name of one who faints, or becomes insensible from any cause; and there are curious beliefs underlying this custom.

It is said that of those who swoon from pain or grief especially, many approach very nearly to death, and these always have the same experience. 'You feel,' said one to me in answer to my question about the belief, 'as if you were suddenly somewhere else, and quite happy-- only tired. And you know that you want to go to a Buddhist temple which is quite far away. At last you reach the gate of the temple court, and you see the temple inside, and it is wonderfully large and beautiful.

And you pa.s.s the gate and enter the court to go to the temple. But suddenly you hear voices of friends far behind you calling your name-- very, very earnestly. So you turn back, and all at once you come to yourself again. At least it is so if your heart cares to live. But one who is really tired of living will not listen to the voices, and walks on to the temple. And what there happens no man knows, for they who enter that temple never return to their friends.

'That is why people call loudly into the ear of one who swoons.

'Now, it is said that all who die, before going to the Meido, make one pilgrimage to the great temple of Zenkoji, which is in the country of Shinano, in Nagano-Ken. And they say that whenever the priest of that temple preaches, he sees the Souls gather there in the hondo to hear him, all with white wrappings about their heads. So Zenkoji might be the temple which is seen by those who swoon. But I do not know.'

Sec. 30

I went by boat from Hishi-ura to Amamura, in Nakanoshima, to visit the tomb of the exiled Emperor Go-Toba. The scenery along the way was beautiful, and of softer outline than I had seen on my first pa.s.sage through the archipelago. Small rocks rising from the water were covered with sea-gulls and cormorants, which scarcely took any notice of the boat, even when we came almost within an oar's length. This fearlessness of wild creatures is one of the most charming impressions of travel in these remoter parts of j.a.pan, yet unvisited by tourists with shotguns.

The early European and American hunters in j.a.pan seem to have found no difficulty and felt no compunction in exterminating what they considered 'game' over whole districts, destroying life merely for the wanton pleasure of destruction. Their example is being imitated now by 'Young j.a.pan,' and the destruction of bird life is only imperfectly checked by game laws. Happily, the Government does interfere sometimes to check particular forms of the hunting vice. Some brutes who had observed the habits of swallows to make their nests in j.a.panese houses, last year offered to purchase some thousands of swallow-skins at a tempting price.

The effect of the advertis.e.m.e.nt was cruel enough; but the police were promptly notified to stop the murdering, which they did. About the same time, in one of the Yokohama papers, there appeared a letter from some holy person announcing, as a triumph of Christian sentiment, that a 'converted' fisherman had been persuaded by foreign proselytisers to kill a turtle, which his Buddhist comrades had vainly begged him to spare.

Amarnura, a very small village, lies in a narrow plain of rice-fields extending from the sea to a range of low hills. From the landing-place to the village is about a quarter of a mile. The narrow path leading to it pa.s.ses round the base of a small hill, covered with pines, on the outskirts of the village. There is quite a handsome Shinto temple on the hill, small, but admirably constructed, approached by stone steps and a paved walk.

There are the usual lions and lamps of stone, and the ordinary simple offerings of paper and women's hair before the shrine. But I saw among the ex-voto a number of curious things which I had never seen in Izumo-- tiny miniature buckets, well-buckets, with rope and pole complete, neatly fashioned out of bamboo. The boatman said that farmers bring these to the shrine when praying for rain. The deity was called Suwa- Dai-Myojin.

It was at the neighbouring village, of which Suwa-Dai-Myojin seems to be the ujigami, that the Emperor Go-Toba is said to have dwelt, in the house of the Choja Shikekuro. The Shikekuro homestead remains, and still belongs to the Choja'sa descendants, but they have become very poor. I asked permission to see the cups from which the exiled emperor drank, and other relics of his stay said to be preserved by the family; but in consequence of illness in the house I could not be received. So I had only a glimpse of the garden, where there is a celebrated pond--a kembutsu.

The pond is called Shikekuro's Pond,--Shikekuro-no-ike. And for seven hundred years, 'tis said, the frogs of that pond have never been heard to croak.

For the Emperor Go-Toba, having one night been kept awake by the croaking of the frogs in that pond, arose and went out and commanded them, saying: 'Be silent!' Wherefore they have remained silent through all the centuries even unto this day.

Near the pond there was in that time a great pine-tree, of which the rustling upon windy nights disturbed the emperor's rest. And he spoke to the pine-tree, and said to it: 'Be still!' And never thereafter was that tree heard to rustle, even in time of storms.

But that tree has ceased to be. Nothing remains of it but a few fragments of its wood and hark, which are carefully preserved as relics by the ancients of Oki. Such a fragment was shown to me in the toko of the guest chamber of the dwelling of a physician of Saigo--the same gentleman whose kindness I have related elsewhere.

The tomb of the emperor lies on the slope of a low hill, at a distance of about ten minutes' walk from the village. It is far less imposing than the least of the tombs of the Matsudaira at Matsue, in the grand old courts of Gesshoji; but it was perhaps the best which the poor little country of Oki could furnish. This is not, however, the original place of the tomb, which was moved by imperial order in the sixth year of Meiji to its present site. A lofty fence, or rather stockade of heavy wooden posts, painted black, incloses a piece of ground perhaps one hundred and fifty feet long, by about fifty broad, and graded into three levels, or low terraces. All the s.p.a.ce within is shaded by pines. In the centre of the last and highest of the little terraces the tomb is placed: a single large slab of grey rock laid horizontally. A narrow paved walk leads from the gate to the tomb; ascending each terrace by three or four stone steps. A little within this gateway, which is opened to visitors only once a year, there is a torii facing the sepulchre; and before the highest terrace there are a pair of stone lamps. All this is severely simple, but effective in a certain touching way. The country stillness is broken only by the shrilling of the semi and the tintinnabulation of that strange little insect, the suzumushi, whose calling sounds just like the tinkling of the tiny bells which are shaken by the miko in her sacred dance.

Sec. 31

I remained nearly eight days at Hishi-ura on the occasion of my second visit there, but only three at Urago. Urago proved a less pleasant place to stay in--not because its smells were any stronger than those of Saigo, but for other reasons which shall presently appear.

More than one foreign man-of-war has touched at Saigo, and English and Russian officers of the navy have been seen in the streets. They were tall, fair-haired, stalwart men; and the people of Oki still imagine that all foreigners from the West have the same stature and complexion.

I was the first foreigner who ever remained even a night in the town, and I stayed there two weeks; but being small and dark, and dressed like a j.a.panese, I excited little attention among the common people: it seemed to them that I was only a curious-looking j.a.panese from some remote part of the empire. At Hishi-ura the same impression prevailed for a time; and even after the fact of my being a foreigner had become generally known, the population caused me no annoyance whatever: they had already become accustomed to see me walking about the streets or swimming across the bay. But it was quite otherwise at Urago. The first time I landed there I had managed to escape notice, being in j.a.panese costume, and wearing a very large Izumo hat, which partly concealed my face. After I left for Saigo, the people must have found out that a foreigner--the very first ever seen in Dozen--had actually been in Urago without their knowledge; for my second visit made a sensation such as I had never been the cause of anywhere else, except at Kaka-ura.

I had barely time to enter the hotel, before the street became entirely blockaded by an amazing crowd desirous to see. The hotel was unfortunately situated on a corner, so that it was soon besieged on two sides. I was shown to a large back room on the second floor; and I had no sooner squatted down on my mat, than the people began to come upstairs quite noiselessly, all leaving their sandals at the foot of the steps. They were too polite to enter the room; but four or five would put their heads through the doorway at once, and bow, and smile, and look, and retire to make way for those who filled the stairway behind them. It was no easy matter for the servant to bring me my dinner.

Meanwhile, not only had the upper rooms of the houses across the way become packed with gazers, but all the roofs--north, east, and south-- which commanded a view of my apartment had been occupied by men and boys in mult.i.tude. Numbers of lads had also climbed (I never could imagine how) upon the narrow eaves over the galleries below my windows; and all the openings of my room, on three sides, were full of faces. Then tiles gave way, and boys fell, but n.o.body appeared to be hurt. And the queerest fact was that during the performance of these extraordinary gymnastics there was a silence of death: had I not seen the throng, I might have supposed there was not a soul in the street.

The landlord began to scold; but, finding scolding of no avail, he summoned a policeman. The policeman begged me to excuse the people, who had never seen a foreigner before; and asked me if I wished him to clear the street. He could have done that by merely lifting his little finger; but as the scene amused me, I begged him not to order the people away, but only to tell the boys not to climb upon the awnings, some of which they had already damaged. He told them most effectually, speaking in a very low voice. During all the rest of the time I was in Urago, no one dared to go near the awnings. A j.a.panese policeman never speaks more than once about anything new, and always speaks to the purpose.