Kimono Part 47

Asako was taken to the October festival, because her father too was buried in the temple grounds--one small bone of him, that is to say, an _ikotsu_ or legacy bone, posted home from Paris before the rest of his mortality found alien sepulture at Pere Lachaise. Ma.s.ses were said for the dead; and Asako was introduced to the tablet. But she did not feel the same emotion as when she first visited the Fujinami house.

Now, she had heard her father's authentic voice. She knew his scorn for pretentiousness of all kinds, for false conventions, for false emotions, his hatred of priestcraft, his condemnation of the family wealth, and his contempt for the little respectabilities of j.a.panese life.

A temple in j.a.pan is not merely a building; it is a site. These sites were most carefully chosen with the same genius which guided our Benedictines and Carthusians. The site of Ikegami is a long-abrupt hill, half-way between Tokyo and Yokohama. It is clothed with _cryptomeria_ trees. These dark conifers, like immense cypresses, give to the spot that grave, silent, irrevocable atmosphere, with which Boecklin has invested his picture of the Island of the Dead. These majestic trees are essentially a part of the temple. They correspond to the pillars of our Gothic cathedrals. The roof is the blue vault of heaven; and the actual buildings are but altars, chantries and monuments.

A steep flight of steps is suspended like a cascade from the crest of the hill. Up and down these steps, the wooden clogs of the j.a.panese people patter incessantly like water-drops. At the top of the steps stands the towered gateway, painted with red ochre, which leads to the precincts. The guardians of the gate, _Ni-O_, the two gigantic Deva kings, who have pa.s.sed from India into j.a.panese mythology, are encaged in the gateway building. Their cage and their persons are littered with nasty morsels of chewed paper, wherever their worshippers have literally spat their prayers at them.

Within the enclosure are the various temple buildings, the bell-tower, the library, the washing-trough, the hall of votive offerings, the sacred bath-house, the stone lanterns and the lodgings for the pilgrims; also the two main halls for the temple services, which are raised on low piles and are linked together by a covered bridge, so that they look like twin arks of safety, floating just five feet above the troubles of this life. These buildings are most of them painted red; and there is fine carving on panels, friezes and pediments, and also much tawdry gaudiness. Behind these two sanctuaries is the mortuary chapel where repose the memories of many of the greatest in the land. Behind this again are the priests' dormitories, with a lovely hidden garden hanging on the slopes of a sudden ravine; its presiding genius is an old pine-tree, beneath which Nichiren himself, a contemporary and a counterpart of Saint Dominic, used to meditate on his project for a Universal Church, founded on the life of Buddha, and led by the apostolate of j.a.pan.

For the inside of a week the Fujinami dwelt in one of a row of stalls, like loose-boxes, within the temple precincts. The festival might have some affinity with the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, when the devout left their city dwellings to live in booths outside the walls.

_Namu my[=o]h[=o] renge ky[=o]._

(Adoration to the Wonderful Law of the Lotus Scriptures!)

The famous formula of the priests of the Nichiren sect was being repeated over and over again to the accompaniment of drums; for in the sacred text itself lies the only authentic Way of Salvation. With exemplary insistence Mr. Fujinami Gennosuke was beating out the rhythm of the prayer with a wooden clapper on the _mokugy[=o]_, a wooden drum, shaped like a fish's head.

_Namu my[=o]h[=o] renge ky[=o]_.

From every corner of the temple _enclave_ the invocation was droning like a threshing machine. Asako's Catholic conscience, now awakening from the spell which j.a.pan had cast upon it, became uneasy about its share in these pagan rites. In order to drive the echo of the litany out of her ears, she tried to concentrate her attention upon watching the crowd.

_Namu my[=o]h[=o] renge ky[=o]_.

Around her was a dense mult.i.tude of pilgrims, in their hundreds of thousands, shuffling, chaffering and staring. Some, like the Fujinami, had hired temporary lodgings, and had cooks and servants in attendance. Some were camping in the open. Others were merely visiting the temple for the inside of the day. The crowds kept on shifting and mingling like ants on an ant-hill.

Enjoyment, rather than piety, was the prevailing spirit; for this was one of the few annual holidays of the industrious Tokyo artisan.

In the central buildings, five feet above this noisy confluence of people, where the golden images of the Buddhas are enthroned, the mitred priests with their copes of gold-embroidered brown were performing the rituals of their order. To right and left of the high altar, the canons squatting at their red-lacquered praying-desks, were reciting the _sutras_ in strophe and antistrophe. Clouds of incense rose.

In the adjoining building an earnest young preacher was exhorting a congregation of elderly and somnolent ladies to eschew the l.u.s.ts of the flesh and to renounce the world and its gauds, marking each point in his discourse with raps of his fan. Foxy-faced satellites of the abbey were doing a roaring trade in charms against various accidents, and in sacred scrolls printed with prayers or figures of Nichiren.

The temple-yard was an immense fancy fair. The temple pigeons wheeled disconsolately in the air or perched upon the roofs, unable to find one square foot of the familiar flagstones, where they were used to strut and peck. Stalls lined the stone pathways and choked the s.p.a.ces between the buildings. Merchants were peddling objects of piety, sacred images, charms and rosaries; and there were flowers for the women's hair, and toys for the children, and cakes and biscuits, _biiru_ (beer) and _ramune_ (lemonade) and a distressing sickly drink called "champagne cider" and all manner of vanities. In one corner of the square a theatre was in full swing, the actors making up in public on a balcony above the crowd, so as to whet their curiosity and attract their custom. Beyond was a cinematograph, advertised by lurid paintings of murders and apparitions; and farther on there was a circus with a mangy zoo.

The crowd was astonishingly mixed. There were prosperous merchants of Tokyo with their wives, children, servants and apprentices. There were students with their blue and white spotted cloaks, their _kepis_ with the school badge, and their ungainly stride. There were modern young men in _y[=o]f.u.ku_ (European dress), with panama hats, swagger canes and side-spring shoes, supercilious in att.i.tude and proud of their unbelief. There were troops of variegated children, dragging at their elders' hands or kimonos, or getting lost among the legs of the mult.i.tude like little leaves in an eddy. There were excursion parties from the country, with their kimonos caught up to the knees, and with baked earthen faces stupidly staring, sporting each a red flower or a coloured towel for identification purposes. There were labourers in tight trousers and tabard jackets, inscribed with the name and profession of their employer. There were _geisha_ girls on their best behaviour, in charge of a professional auntie, and recognizable only by the smart cut of their cloaks and the deep s.p.a.ce between the collar and the nape of the neck, where the black _chignon_ lay.

Close to the tomb of Nichiren stood a j.a.panese Salvationist, a zealous pimply young man, wearing the red and blue uniform of General Booth with _kaiseigun_ (World-saving Army) in j.a.panese letters round his staff cap. He stood in front of a screen, on which the first verse of "Onward, Christian Soldiers," was written in a j.a.panese translation.

An a.s.sistant officiated at a wheezy harmonium. The tune was vaguely akin to its Western prototype; and the two evangelists were trying to induce a tolerant but uninterested crowd to join in the chorus.

Everywhere beggars were crawling over the compound in various states of filth. Some, however, were so ghastly that they were excluded from the temple enclosure. They had lined up among the trunks of the cryptomeria trees, among the little grey tombs with their fading inscriptions and the moss-covered statues of kindly Buddhas.

Asako gave a penny into the crooked hand of one poor sightless wretch.

"Oh, no!" cried cousin Sadako; "do not go near to them. Do not touch them. They are lepers."

Some of them had no arms, or had mere stumps ending abruptly in a red and sickening object like a bone which a dog has been chewing. Some had no legs, and were pulled along on little wheeled trolleys by their less dilapidated companions in misfortune. Some had no features.

Their faces were mere glabrous disks, from which eyes and nose had completely vanished; only the mouth remained, a toothless gap fringed with straggling hairs. Some had faces abnormally bloated, with powerful foreheads and heavy jowls, which gave them an expression of stony immobility like Byzantine lions. All were fearfully dirty and covered with sores and lice.

The people pa.s.sing by smiled at their grim unsightliness, and threw pennies to them, for which they scrambled and scratched like beasts.

_Namu my[=o]h[=o] renge ky[=o]_.

Asako's relatives spent the day in eating, drinking and gossiping to the rhythm of the interminable prayer.

It was a perfect day of autumn, which is the sweetest season in j.a.pan.

A warm bright sun had been shining on the sumptuous colours of the waning year, on the brilliant reds and yellows which clothed the neighbouring hills, on the broad brown plain with its tesselated design of bare rice-fields, on the brown villas and cottages huddled in their fences of evergreen like birds in their nests, on the red trunks of the cryptomeria trees, on the brown carpet of matted pine-needles, on the grey crumbling stones of the old graveyard, on the high-pitched temple roofs, and on the inconsequential swarms of humanity drifting to their devotions, casting their pennies into the great alms-trough in front of the shrine, clanging the bra.s.s bell with a prayer for good luck, and drifting home again with their bewildered, happy children.

Asako no longer felt like a j.a.panese. The sight of her countrymen in their drab monotonous thousands sickened her. The hiss and cackle of their incomprehensible tongue beat upon her brain with a deadly incessant sound, like raindrops to one who is impatiently awaiting the return of fine weather.

Here at Ikegami, the distant view of the sea and the Yokohama shipping invited Asako to escape. But where could she escape to? To England.

She was an Englishwoman no longer. She had cast her husband off for insufficient reasons. She had been cold, loveless, narrow-minded and silly. She had acted, as she now recognised, largely on the suggestion of others. Like a fool she had believed what had been told. She had not trusted her love for her husband. As usual, her thoughts returned to Geoffrey, and to the constant danger which threatened him. Lately, she had started to write a letter to him several times, but had never got further than "Dearest Geoffrey."

She was glad when the irritating day was over, when the rosy sunset clouds showed through the trunks of the cryptomerias, when the night fell and the great stars like lamps hung in the branches. But the night brought no silence. Paper lanterns were lighted round the temple; and rough acetylene flares lit up the tawdry fairings. The chattering, the bargaining, the clatter of the _geta_ became more terrifying even than in daytime. It was like being in the darkness in a cage of wild beasts, heard, felt, but unseen.

The evening breeze was cold. In spite of the big wooden fireboxes strewn over their stall, the Fujinami were shivering.

"Let us go for a walk," suggested cousin Sadako.

The two girls strolled along the ridge of the hill as far as the five-storied paG.o.da. They pa.s.sed the tea-house, so famous for its plum-blossoms in early March. It was brightly lighted. The paper rectangles of the _shoji_ were aglow like an illuminated honeycomb.

The wooden walls resounded with the jangle of the _samisen_, the high screaming _geisha_ voices, and the rough laughter of the guests. From one room the _shoji_ were pushed open; and drunken men could be seen with kimonos thrown back from their shoulders showing a body reddened with _sake_. They had taken the _geishas_' instruments from them, and were performing an impromptu song and dance, while the girls clapped their hands and writhed with laughter. Beyond the tea-house, the din of the festival was hushed. Only from the distance came the echo of the song, the rasp of the forced merriment, the clatter of the _geta_, and the hum of the crowd.

Starlight revealed the landscape. The moon was rising through a cloud's liquescence. Soon the hundreds of rice-plots would catch her full reflection. The outline of the coast of Tokyo Bay was visible as far as Yokohama; so were the broad pool of Ikegami and the lumpy ma.s.ses of the hills inland.

The landscape was alive with lights, lights dim, lights bright, lights stationary, lights in swaying movement round each centre of population. It looked as if the stars had fallen from heaven, and were being shifted and sorted by careful gleaners. As each nebula of white illumination a.s.sembled itself, it began to move across the vast plain, drawn inwards towards Ikegami from every point of the compa.s.s as though by a magnetic force. These were the lantern processions of pilgrims. They looked like the souls of the righteous rising from earth to heaven in a canto from Dante.

The cl.u.s.ters of lights started, moved onwards, paused, re-grouped themselves, and struggled forward, until in the narrow street of the village under the hill Asako could distinguish the shapes of the lantern-bearers and their strange antics, and the sacred palanquin, a kind of enormous wooden bee-hive, which was the centre of each procession, borne on the st.u.r.dy shoulders of a swarm of young men to the beat of drums and the inevitable chant.

_Namu my[=o]h[=o] renge ky[=o]_.

Slowly the procession jolted up the steep stairway, and came to rest with their heavy burdens in front of the temple of Nichiren.

"It is very silly," said cousin Sadako, "to be so superst.i.tious, I think."

"Then why are we here?" asked Asako.

"My grandfather is very superst.i.tious; and my father is afraid to say 'No' to him. My father does not believe in any G.o.ds or Buddhas; but he says it does no harm, and it may do good. All our family is _gohei-katsugi_ (brandishers of sacred symbols). We think that with all this prayer we can turn away the trouble of Takeshi."

"Why, what is the matter with Mr. Takeshi? Why is he not here? and Matsuko San and the children?"

"It is a great secret," said the Fujinami cousin, "you will tell no one. You will pretend also even with me that you do not know. Takeshi San is very sick. The doctor says that he is a leper."

Asako stared, uncomprehending. Sadako went on,--

"You saw this morning those ugly beggars. They were all so terrible to see, and their bodies were so rotten. My brother is becoming like that. It is a sickness. It cannot be cured. It will kill him very slowly. Perhaps his wife Matsu and his children also have the sickness. Perhaps we too are sick. No one can tell, not for many years."

Ugly wings seemed to cover the night. The world beneath the hill had become the Pit of h.e.l.l, and the points of light were devils' spears.