Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things Part 11

Besides these specimens of poetry about b.u.t.terflies, I have one queer example to offer of j.a.panese prose literature on the same topic. The original, of which I have attempted only a free translation, can be found in the curious old book Mushi-Isame ("Insect-Admonitions"); and it a.s.sumes the form of a discourse to a b.u.t.terfly. But it is really a didactic allegory,--suggesting the moral significance of a social rise and fall:--

"Now, under the sun of spring, the winds are gentle, and flowers pinkly bloom, and gra.s.ses are soft, and the hearts of people are glad.

b.u.t.terflies everywhere flutter joyously: so many persons now compose Chinese verses and j.a.panese verses about b.u.t.terflies.

"And this season, O b.u.t.terfly, is indeed the season of your bright prosperity: so comely you now are that in the whole world there is nothing more comely. For that reason all other insects admire and envy you;--there is not among them even one that does not envy you. Nor do insects alone regard you with envy: men also both envy and admire you.

Soshu of China, in a dream, a.s.sumed your shape;--Sakoku of j.a.pan, after dying, took your form, and therein made ghostly apparition. Nor is the envy that you inspire shared only by insects and mankind: even things without soul change their form into yours;--witness the barley-gra.s.s, which turns into a b.u.t.terfly. [13]

"And therefore you are lifted up with pride, and think to yourself: 'In all this world there is nothing superior to me!' Ah! I can very well guess what is in your heart: you are too much satisfied with your own person. That is why you let yourself be blown thus lightly about by every wind;--that is why you never remain still,--always, always thinking, 'In the whole world there is no one so fortunate as I.'

"But now try to think a little about your own personal history. It is worth recalling; for there is a vulgar side to it. How a vulgar side?

Well, for a considerable time after you were born, you had no such reason for rejoicing in your form. You were then a mere cabbage-insect, a hairy worm; and you were so poor that you could not afford even one robe to cover your nakedness; and your appearance was altogether disgusting. Everybody in those days hated the sight of you. Indeed you had good reason to be ashamed of yourself; and so ashamed you were that you collected old twigs and rubbish to hide in, and you made a hiding-nest, and hung it to a branch,--and then everybody cried out to you, 'Raincoat Insect!' (Mino-mushi.) [14] And during that period of your life, your sins were grievous. Among the tender green leaves of beautiful cherry-trees you and your fellows a.s.sembled, and there made ugliness extraordinary; and the expectant eyes of the people, who came from far away to admire the beauty of those cherry-trees, were hurt by the sight of you. And of things even more hateful than this you were guilty. You knew that poor, poor men and women had been cultivating daikon (2) in their fields,--toiling under the hot sun till their hearts were filled with bitterness by reason of having to care for that daikon; and you persuaded your companions to go with you, and to gather upon the leaves of that daikon, and on the leaves of other vegetables planted by those poor people. Out of your greediness you ravaged those leaves, and gnawed them into all shapes of ugliness,--caring nothing for the trouble of those poor folk... Yes, such a creature you were, and such were your doings.

"And now that you have a comely form, you despise your old comrades, the insects; and, whenever you happen to meet any of them, you pretend not to know them [literally, 'You make an I-don't-know face']. Now you want to have none but wealthy and exalted people for friends... Ah! You have forgotten the old times, have you?

"It is true that many people have forgotten your past, and are charmed by the sight of your present graceful shape and white wings, and write Chinese verses and j.a.panese verses about you. The high-born damsel, who could not bear even to look at you in your former shape, now gazes at you with delight, and wants you to perch upon her hairpin, and holds out her dainty fan in the hope that you will light upon it. But this reminds me that there is an ancient Chinese story about you, which is not pretty.

"In the time of the Emperor Genso, the Imperial Palace contained hundreds and thousands of beautiful ladies,--so many, indeed, that it would have been difficult for any man to decide which among them was the loveliest. So all of those beautiful persons were a.s.sembled together in one place; and you were set free to fly among them; and it was decreed that the damsel upon whose hairpin you perched should be augustly summoned to the Imperial Chamber. In that time there could not be more than one Empress--which was a good law; but, because of you, the Emperor Genso did great mischief in the land. For your mind is light and frivolous; and although among so many beautiful women there must have been some persons of pure heart, you would look for nothing but beauty, and so betook yourself to the person most beautiful in outward appearance. Therefore many of the female attendants ceased altogether to think about the right way of women, and began to study how to make themselves appear splendid in the eyes of men. And the end of it was that the Emperor Genso died a pitiful and painful death--all because of your light and trifling mind. Indeed, your real character can easily be seen from your conduct in other matters. There are trees, for example,--such as the evergreen-oak and the pine,--whose leaves do not fade and fall, but remain always green;--these are trees of firm heart, trees of solid character. But you say that they are stiff and formal; and you hate the sight of them, and never pay them a visit.

Only to the cherry-tree, and the kaido [15], and the peony, and the yellow rose you go: those you like because they have showy flowers, and you try only to please them. Such conduct, let me a.s.sure you, is very unbecoming. Those trees certainly have handsome flowers; but hunger-satisfying fruits they have not; and they are grateful to those only who are fond of luxury and show. And that is just the reason why they are pleased by your fluttering wings and delicate shape;--that is why they are kind to you.

"Now, in this spring season, while you sportively dance through the gardens of the wealthy, or hover among the beautiful alleys of cherry-trees in blossom, you say to yourself: 'n.o.body in the world has such pleasure as I, or such excellent friends. And, in spite of all that people may say, I most love the peony,--and the golden yellow rose is my own darling, and I will obey her every least behest; for that is my pride and my delight.'... So you say. But the opulent and elegant season of flowers is very short: soon they will fade and fall. Then, in the time of summer heat, there will be green leaves only; and presently the winds of autumn will blow, when even the leaves themselves will shower down like rain, parari-parari. And your fate will then be as the fate of the unlucky in the proverb, Tanomi ki no s.h.i.ta ni ame furu [Even through the tree upon which I relied for shelter the rain leaks down]. For you will seek out your old friend, the root-cutting insect, the grub, and beg him to let you return into your old-time hole;--but now having wings, you will not be able to enter the hole because of them, and you will not be able to shelter your body anywhere between heaven and earth, and all the moor-gra.s.s will then have withered, and you will not have even one drop of dew with which to moisten your tongue,--and there will be nothing left for you to do but to lie down and die. All because of your light and frivolous heart--but, ah! how lamentable an end!"...

III

Most of the j.a.panese stories about b.u.t.terflies appear, as I have said, to be of Chinese origin. But I have one which is probably indigenous; and it seems to me worth telling for the benefit of persons who believe there is no "romantic love" in the Far East.

Behind the cemetery of the temple of Sozanji, in the suburbs of the capital, there long stood a solitary cottage, occupied by an old man named Takahama. He was liked in the neighborhood, by reason of his amiable ways; but almost everybody supposed him to be a little mad.

Unless a man take the Buddhist vows, he is expected to marry, and to bring up a family. But Takahama did not belong to the religious life; and he could not be persuaded to marry. Neither had he ever been known to enter into a love-relation with any woman. For more than fifty years he had lived entirely alone.

One summer he fell sick, and knew that he had not long to live. He then sent for his sister-in-law, a widow, and for her only son,--a lad of about twenty years old, to whom he was much attached. Both promptly came, and did whatever they could to soothe the old man's last hours.

One sultry afternoon, while the widow and her son were watching at his bedside, Takahama fell asleep. At the same moment a very large white b.u.t.terfly entered the room, and perched upon the sick man's pillow. The nephew drove it away with a fan; but it returned immediately to the pillow, and was again driven away, only to come back a third time.

Then the nephew chased it into the garden, and across the garden, through an open gate, into the cemetery of the neighboring temple. But it continued to flutter before him as if unwilling to be driven further, and acted so queerly that he began to wonder whether it was really a b.u.t.terfly, or a ma [16]. He again chased it, and followed it far into the cemetery, until he saw it fly against a tomb,--a woman's tomb. There it unaccountably disappeared; and he searched for it in vain. He then examined the monument. It bore the personal name "Akiko,"

(3) together with an unfamiliar family name, and an inscription stating that Akiko had died at the age of eighteen. Apparently the tomb had been erected about fifty years previously: moss had begun to gather upon it. But it had been well cared for: there were fresh flowers before it; and the water-tank had recently been filled.

On returning to the sick room, the young man was shocked by the announcement that his uncle had ceased to breathe. Death had come to the sleeper painlessly; and the dead face smiled.

The young man told his mother of what he had seen in the cemetery.

"Ah!" exclaimed the widow, "then it must have been Akiko!"...

"But who was Akiko, mother?" the nephew asked.

The widow answered:--

"When your good uncle was young he was betrothed to a charming girl called Akiko, the daughter of a neighbor. Akiko died of consumption, only a little before the day appointed for the wedding; and her promised husband sorrowed greatly. After Akiko had been buried, he made a vow never to marry; and he built this little house beside the cemetery, so that he might be always near her grave. All this happened more than fifty years ago. And every day of those fifty years--winter and summer alike--your uncle went to the cemetery, and prayed at the grave, and swept the tomb, and set offerings before it. But he did not like to have any mention made of the matter; and he never spoke of it... So, at last, Akiko came for him: the white b.u.t.terfly was her soul."

IV

I had almost forgotten to mention an ancient j.a.panese dance, called the b.u.t.terfly Dance (Kocho-Mai), which used to be performed in the Imperial Palace, by dancers costumed as b.u.t.terflies. Whether it is danced occasionally nowadays I do not know. It is said to be very difficult to learn. Six dancers are required for the proper performance of it; and they must move in particular figures,--obeying traditional rules for every step, pose, or gesture,--and circling about each other very slowly to the sound of hand-drums and great drums, small flutes and great flutes, and pandean pipes of a form unknown to Western Pan.

MOSQUITOES

With a view to self-protection I have been reading Dr. Howard's book, "Mosquitoes." I am persecuted by mosquitoes. There are several species in my neighborhood; but only one of them is a serious torment,--a tiny needly thing, all silver-speckled and silver-streaked. The puncture of it is sharp as an electric burn; and the mere hum of it has a lancinating quality of tone which foretells the quality of the pain about to come,--much in the same way that a particular smell suggests a particular taste. I find that this mosquito much resembles the creature which Dr. Howard calls Stegomyia fasciata, or Culex fasciatus: and that its habits are the same as those of the Stegomyia. For example, it is diurnal rather than nocturnal and becomes most troublesome in the afternoon. And I have discovered that it comes from the Buddhist cemetery,--a very old cemetery,--in the rear of my garden.

Dr. Howard's book declares that, in order to rid a neighborhood of mosquitoes, it is only necessary to pour a little petroleum, or kerosene oil, into the stagnant water where they breed. Once a week the oil should be used, "at the rate of once ounce for every fifteen square feet of water-surface, and a proportionate quant.i.ty for any less surface." ...But please to consider the conditions in my neighborhood!

I have said that my tormentors come from the Buddhist cemetery. Before nearly every tomb in that old cemetery there is a water-receptacle, or cistern, called mizutame. In the majority of cases this mizutame is simply an oblong cavity chiseled in the broad pedestal supporting the monument; but before tombs of a costly kind, having no pedestal-tank, a larger separate tank is placed, cut out of a single block of stone, and decorated with a family crest, or with symbolic carvings. In front of a tomb of the humblest cla.s.s, having no mizutame, water is placed in cups or other vessels,--for the dead must have water. Flowers also must be offered to them; and before every tomb you will find a pair of bamboo cups, or other flower-vessels; and these, of course, contain water.

There is a well in the cemetery to supply water for the graves.

Whenever the tombs are visited by relatives and friends of the dead, fresh water is poured into the tanks and cups. But as an old cemetery of this kind contains thousands of mizutame, and tens of thousands of flower-vessels the water in all of these cannot be renewed every day.

It becomes stagnant and populous. The deeper tanks seldom get dry;--the rainfall at Tokyo being heavy enough to keep them partly filled during nine months out of the twelve.

Well, it is in these tanks and flower-vessels that mine enemies are born: they rise by millions from the water of the dead;--and, according to Buddhist doctrine, some of them may be reincarnations of those very dead, condemned by the error of former lives to the condition of Jiki-ketsu-gaki, or blood-drinking pretas... Anyhow the malevolence of the Culex fasciatus would justify the suspicion that some wicked human soul had been compressed into that wailing speck of a body...

Now, to return to the subject of kerosene-oil, you can exterminate the mosquitoes of any locality by covering with a film of kerosene all stagnant water surfaces therein. The larvae die on rising to breathe; and the adult females perish when they approach the water to launch their rafts of eggs. And I read, in Dr. Howard's book, that the actual cost of freeing from mosquitoes one American town of fifty thousand inhabitants, does not exceed three hundred dollars!...

I wonder what would be said if the city-government of Tokyo--which is aggressively scientific and progressive--were suddenly to command that all water-surfaces in the Buddhist cemeteries should be covered, at regular intervals, with a film of kerosene oil! How could the religion which prohibits the taking of any life--even of invisible life--yield to such a mandate? Would filial piety even dream of consenting to obey such an order? And then to think of the cost, in labor and time, of putting kerosene oil, every seven days, into the millions of mizutame, and the tens of millions of bamboo flower-cups, in the Tokyo graveyards!... Impossible! To free the city from mosquitoes it would be necessary to demolish the ancient graveyards;--and that would signify the ruin of the Buddhist temples attached to them;--and that would mean the disparition of so many charming gardens, with their lotus-ponds and Sanscrit-lettered monuments and humpy bridges and holy groves and weirdly-smiling Buddhas! So the extermination of the Culex fasciatus would involve the destruction of the poetry of the ancestral cult,--surely too great a price to pay!...

Besides, I should like, when my time comes, to be laid away in some Buddhist graveyard of the ancient kind,--so that my ghostly company should be ancient, caring nothing for the fashions and the changes and the disintegrations of Meiji (1). That old cemetery behind my garden would be a suitable place. Everything there is beautiful with a beauty of exceeding and startling queerness; each tree and stone has been shaped by some old, old ideal which no longer exists in any living brain; even the shadows are not of this time and sun, but of a world forgotten, that never knew steam or electricity or magnetism or--kerosene oil! Also in the boom of the big bell there is a quaintness of tone which wakens feelings, so strangely far-away from all the nineteenth-century part of me, that the faint blind stirrings of them make me afraid,--deliciously afraid. Never do I hear that billowing peal but I become aware of a striving and a fluttering in the abyssal part of my ghost,--a sensation as of memories struggling to reach the light beyond the obscurations of a million million deaths and births. I hope to remain within hearing of that bell... And, considering the possibility of being doomed to the state of a Jiki-ketsu-gaki, I want to have my chance of being reborn in some bamboo flower-cup, or mizutame, whence I might issue softly, singing my thin and pungent song, to bite some people that I know.

ANTS

I

This morning sky, after the night's tempest, is a pure and dazzling blue. The air--the delicious air!--is full of sweet resinous odors, shed from the countless pine-boughs broken and strewn by the gale. In the neighboring bamboo-grove I hear the flute-call of the bird that praises the Sutra of the Lotos; and the land is very still by reason of the south wind. Now the summer, long delayed, is truly with us: b.u.t.terflies of queer j.a.panese colors are flickering about; semi (1) are wheezing; wasps are humming; gnats are dancing in the sun; and the ants are busy repairing their damaged habitations... I bethink me of a j.a.panese poem:--

Yuku e naki: Ari no sumai ya!

Go-getsu ame.

[Now the poor creature has nowhere to go!... Alas for the dwellings of the ants in this rain of the fifth month!]

But those big black ants in my garden do not seem to need any sympathy.

They have weathered the storm in some unimaginable way, while great trees were being uprooted, and houses blown to fragments, and roads washed out of existence. Yet, before the typhoon, they took no other visible precaution than to block up the gates of their subterranean town. And the spectacle of their triumphant toil to-day impels me to attempt an essay on Ants.

I should have liked to preface my disquisitions with something from the old j.a.panese literature,--something emotional or metaphysical. But all that my j.a.panese friends were able to find for me on the subject,--excepting some verses of little worth,--was Chinese. This Chinese material consisted chiefly of strange stories; and one of them seems to me worth quoting,--faute de mieux.