Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan

L >> Lafcadio Hearn >> Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan

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5

Here are Hokusai's own figures walking about in straw raincoats, and
immense mushroom-shaped hats of straw, and straw sandals--bare-limbed
peasants, deeply tanned by wind and sun; and patient-faced mothers with
smiling bald babies on their backs, toddling by upon their geta (high,
noisy, wooden clogs), and robed merchants squatting and smoking their
little brass pipes among the countless riddles of their shops.

Then I notice how small and shapely the feet of the people are--whether
bare brown feet of peasants, or beautiful feet of children wearing tiny,
tiny geta, or feet of young girls in snowy tabi. The tabi, the white
digitated stocking, gives to a small light foot a mythological aspect--
the white cleft grace of the foot of a fauness. Clad or bare, the
Japanese foot has the antique symmetry: it has not yet been distorted by
the infamous foot-gear which has deformed the feet of Occidentals. Of
every pair of Japanese wooden clogs, one makes in walking a slightly
different sound from the other, as kring to krang; so that the echo of
the walker's steps has an alternate rhythm of tones. On a pavement, such
as that of a railway station, the sound obtains immense sonority; and a
crowd will sometimes intentionally fall into step, with the drollest
conceivable result of drawling wooden noise.

6

'Tera e yuke!'

I have been obliged to return to the European hotel--not because of the
noon-meal, as I really begrudge myself the time necessary to eat it, but
because I cannot make Cha understand that I want to visit a Buddhist
temple. Now Cha understands; my landlord has uttered the mystical words:
'Tera e yuke!'

A few minutes of running along broad thoroughfares lined with gardens
and costly ugly European buildings; then passing the bridge of a canal
stocked with unpainted sharp-prowed craft of extraordinary construction,
we again plunge into narrow, low, bright pretty streets--into another
part of the Japanese city. And Cha runs at the top of his speed between
more rows of little ark-shaped houses, narrower above than below;
between other unfamiliar lines of little open shops. And always over the
shops little strips of blue-tiled roof slope back to the paper-screened
chamber of upper floors; and from all the facades hang draperies dark
blue, or white, or crimson--foot-breadths of texture covered with
beautiful Japanese lettering, white on blue, red on black, black on
white. But all this flies by swiftly as a dream. Once more we cross a
canal; we rush up a narrow street rising to meet a hill; and Cha,
halting suddenly before an immense flight of broad stone steps, sets the
shafts of his vehicle on the ground that I may dismount, and, pointing
to the steps, exclaims: 'Tera!'

I dismount, and ascend them, and, reaching a broad terrace, find myself
face to face with a wonderful gate, topped by a tilted, peaked, many-
cornered Chinese roof. It is all strangely carven, this gate. Dragons
are inter-twined in a frieze above its open doors; and the panels of the
doors themselves are similarly sculptured; and there are gargoyles--
grotesque lion heads--protruding from the eaves. And the whole is grey,
stone-coloured; to me, nevertheless, the carvings do not seem to have
the fixity of sculpture; all the snakeries and dragonries appear to
undulate with a swarming motion, elusively, in eddyings as of water.

I turn a moment to look back through the glorious light. Sea and sky
mingle in the same beautiful pale clear blue. Below me the billowing of
bluish roofs reaches to the verge of the unruffled bay on the right, and
to the feet of the green wooded hills flanking the city on two sides.
Beyond that semicircle of green hills rises a lofty range of serrated
mountains, indigo silhouettes. And enormously high above the line of
them towers an apparition indescribably lovely--one solitary snowy
cone, so filmily exquisite, so spiritually white, that but for its
immemorially familiar outline, one would surely deem it a shape of
cloud. Invisible its base remains, being the same delicious tint as the
sky: only above the eternal snow-line its dreamy cone appears, seeming
to hang, the ghost of a peak, between the luminous land and the luminous
heaven--the sacred and matchless mountain, Fujiyama.

And suddenly, a singular sensation comes upon me as I stand before this
weirdly sculptured portal--a sensation of dream and doubt. It seems to
me that the steps, and the dragon-swarming gate, and the blue sky
arching over the roofs of the town, and the ghostly beauty of Fuji, and
the shadow of myself there stretching upon the grey masonry, must all
vanish presently. Why such a feeling? Doubtless because the forms before
me--the curved roofs, the coiling dragons, the Chinese grotesqueries of
carving--do not really appear to me as things new, but as things
dreamed: the sight of them must have stirred to life forgotten memories
of picture-books. A moment, and the delusion vanishes; the romance of
reality returns, with freshened consciousness of all that which is truly
and deliciously new; the magical transparencies of distance, the
wondrous delicacy of the tones of the living picture, the enormous
height of the summer blue, and the white soft witchery of the Japanese
sun.

7

I pass on and climb more steps to a second gate with similar gargoyles
and swarming of dragons, and enter a court where graceful votive
lanterns of stone stand like monuments. On my right and left two great
grotesque stone lions are sitting--the lions of Buddha, male and
female. Beyond is a long low light building, with curved and gabled roof
of blue tiles, and three wooden steps before its entrance. Its sides are
simple wooden screens covered with thin white paper. This is the temple.

On the steps I take off my shoes; a young man slides aside the screens
closing the entrance, and bows me a gracious welcome. And I go in,
feeling under my feet a softness of matting thick as bedding. An immense
square apartment is before me, full of an unfamiliar sweet smell--the
scent of Japanese incense; but after the full blaze of the sun, the
paper-filtered light here is dim as moonshine; for a minute or two I can
see nothing but gleams of gilding in a soft gloom. Then, my eyes
becoming accustomed to the obscurity, I perceive against the paper-paned
screens surrounding the sanctuary on three sides shapes of enormous
flowers cutting like silhouettes against the vague white light. I
approach and find them to be paper flowers--symbolic lotus-blossoms
beautifully coloured, with curling leaves gilded on the upper surface
and bright green beneath, At the dark end of the apartment, facing the
entrance, is the altar of Buddha, a rich and lofty altar, covered with
bronzes and gilded utensils clustered to right and left of a shrine like
a tiny gold temple. But I see no statue; only a mystery of unfamiliar
shapes of burnished metal, relieved against darkness, a darkness behind
the shrine and altar--whether recess or inner sanctuary I cannot
distinguish.

The young attendant who ushered me into the temple now approaches, and,
to my great surprise, exclaims in excellent English, pointing to a
richly decorated gilded object between groups of candelabra on the
altar:

'That is the shrine of Buddha.'
'And I would like to make an offering to Buddha,' I respond.
'It is not necessary,' he says, with a polite smile.

But I insist; and he places the little offering for me upon the altar.
Then he invites me to his own room, in a wing of the building--a large
luminous room, without furniture, beautifully matted. And we sit down
upon the floor and chat. He tells me he is a student in the temple. He
learned English in Tokyo and speaks it with a curious accent, but with
fine choice of words. Finally he asks me:

'Are you a Christian?'
And I answer truthfully:
'No.'
'Are you a Buddhist?'
'Not exactly.'
'Why do you make offerings if you do not believe in Buddha?'
'I revere the beauty of his teaching, and the faith of those who
follow it.'
'Are there Buddhists in England and America?'
'There are, at least, a great many interested in Buddhist
philosophy.'

And he takes from an alcove a little book, and gives it to me to
examine. It is an English copy of Olcott's Buddhist Catechism.

'Why is there no image of Buddha in your temple?' I ask.
'There is a small one in the shrine upon the altar,' the student
answers; 'but the shrine is closed. And we have several large ones. But
the image of Buddha is not exposed here every day--only upon festal
days. And some images are exposed only once or twice a year.

From my place, I can see, between the open paper screens, men and women
ascending the steps, to kneel and pray before the entrance of the
temple. They kneel with such naive reverence, so gracefully and so
naturally, that the kneeling of our Occidental devotees seems a clumsy
stumbling by comparison. Some only join their hands; others clap them
three times loudly and slowly; then they bow their heads, pray silently
for a moment, and rise and depart. The shortness of the prayers
impresses me as something novel and interesting. From time to time I
hear the clink and rattle of brazen coin cast into the great wooden
money-box at the entrance.

I turn to the young student, and ask him:
'Why do they clap their hands three times before they pray?'

He answers:
'Three times for the Sansai, the Three Powers: Heaven, Earth, Man.'

'But do they clap their hands to call the Gods, as Japanese clap their
hands to summon their attendants?'

'Oh, no!' he replied. 'The clapping of hands represents only the
awakening from the Dream of the Long Night.' [1]

'What night? what dream?'

He hesitates some moments before making answer:
'The Buddha said: All beings are only dreaming in this fleeting world
of unhappiness.'

'Then the clapping of hands signifies that in prayer the soul awakens
from such dreaming?'

'Yes.'

'You understand what I mean by the word "soul"?'

'Oh, yes! Buddhists believe the soul always was--always will be.'

'Even in Nirvana?'

'Yes.'

While we are thus chatting the Chief Priest of the temple enters--a
very aged man-accompanied by two young priests, and I am presented to
them; and the three bow very low, showing me the glossy crowns of their
smoothly-shaven heads, before seating themselves in the fashion of gods
upon the floor. I observe they do not smile; these are the first
Japanese I have seen who do not smile: their faces are impassive as the
faces of images. But their long eyes observe me very closely, while the
student interprets their questions, and while I attempt to tell them
something about the translations of the Sutras in our Sacred Books of
the East, and about the labours of Beal and Burnouf and Feer and Davids
and Kern, and others. They listen without change of countenance, and
utter no word in response to the young student's translation of my
remarks. Tea, however, is brought in and set before me in a tiny cup,
placed in a little brazen saucer, shaped like a lotus-leaf; and I am
invited to partake of some little sugar-cakes (kwashi), stamped with a
figure which I recognise as the Swastika, the ancient Indian symbol of
the Wheel of the Law.

As I rise to go, all rise with me; and at the steps the student asks for
my name and address. 'For,' he adds, 'you will not see me here again, as
I am going to leave the temple. But I will visit you.'

'And your name?' I ask.

'Call me Akira,' he answers.

At the threshold I bow my good-bye; and they all bow very, very low,-
one blue-black head, three glossy heads like balls of ivory. And as I
go, only Akira smiles.

8

'Tera?' queries Cha, with his immense white hat in his hand, as I resume
my seat in the jinricksha at the foot of the steps. Which no doubt
means, do I want to see any more temples? Most certainly I do: I have
not yet seen Buddha.

'Yes, tera, Cha.'

And again begins the long panorama of mysterious shops and tilted eaves,
and fantastic riddles written over everything. I have no idea in what
direction Cha is running. I only know that the streets seem to become
always narrower as we go, and that some of the houses look like great
wickerwork pigeon-cages only, and that we pass over several bridges
before we halt again at the foot of another hill. There is a lofty
flight of steps here also, and before them a structure which I know is
both a gate and a symbol, imposing, yet in no manner resembling the
great Buddhist gateway seen before. Astonishingly simple all the lines
of it are: it has no carving, no colouring, no lettering upon it; yet it
has a weird solemnity, an enigmatic beauty. It is a torii.

'Miya,' observes Cha. Not a tera this time, but a shrine of the gods of
the more ancient faith of the land--a miya.

I am standing before a Shinto symbol; I see for the first time, out of a
picture at least, a torii. How describe a torii to those who have never
looked at one even in a photograph or engraving? Two lofty columns, like
gate-pillars, supporting horizontally two cross-beams, the lower and
lighter beam having its ends fitted into the columns a little distance
below their summits; the uppermost and larger beam supported upon the
tops of the columns, and projecting well beyond them to right and left.
That is a torii: the construction varying little in design, whether made
of stone, wood, or metal. But this description can give no correct idea
of the appearance of a torii, of its majestic aspect, of its mystical
suggestiveness as a gateway. The first time you see a noble one, you
will imagine, perhaps, that you see the colossal model of some beautiful
Chinese letter towering against the sky; for all the lines of the thing
have the grace of an animated ideograph,--have the bold angles and
curves of characters made with four sweeps of a master-brush. [2]

Passing the torii I ascend a flight of perhaps one hundred stone steps,
and find at their summit a second torii, from whose lower cross-beam
hangs festooned the mystic shimenawa. It is in this case a hempen rope
of perhaps two inches in diameter through its greater length, but
tapering off at either end like a snake. Sometimes the shimenawa is made
of bronze, when the torii itself is of bronze; but according to
tradition it should be made of straw, and most commonly is. For it
represents the straw rope which the deity Futo-tama-no-mikoto stretched
behind the Sun-goddess, Ama-terasu-oho-mi-Kami, after Ame-no-ta-jikara-
wo-no-Kami, the Heavenly-hand-strength-god, had pulled her out, as is
told in that ancient myth of Shinto which Professor Chamberlain has
translated. [3] And the shimenawa, in its commoner and simpler form,
has pendent tufts of straw along its entire length, at regular
intervals, because originally made, tradition declares, of grass pulled
up by the roots which protruded from the twist of it.

Advancing beyond this torii, I find myself in a sort of park or
pleasure-ground on the summit of the hill. There is a small temple on
the right; it is all closed up; and I have read so much about the
disappointing vacuity of Shinto temples that I do not regret the absence
of its guardian. And I see before me what is infinitely more
interesting,--a grove of cherry-trees covered with something
unutterably beautiful,--a dazzling mist of snowy blossoms clinging like
summer cloud-fleece about every branch and twig; and the ground beneath
them, and the path before me, is white with the soft, thick, odorous
snow of fallen petals.

Beyond this loveliness are flower-plots surrounding tiny shrines; and
marvellous grotto-work, full of monsters--dragons and mythologic beings
chiselled in the rock; and miniature landscape work with tiny groves of
dwarf trees, and Lilliputian lakes, and microscopic brooks and bridges
and cascades. Here, also, are swings for children. And here are
belvederes, perched on the verge of the hill, wherefrom the whole fair
city, and the whole smooth bay speckled with fishing-sails no bigger
than pin-heads, and the far, faint, high promontories reaching into the
sea, are all visible in one delicious view--blue-pencilled in a beauty
of ghostly haze indescribable.

Why should the trees be so lovely in Japan? With us, a plum or cherry
tree in flower is not an astonishing sight; but here it is a miracle of
beauty so bewildering that, however much you may have previously read
about it, the real spectacle strikes you dumb. You see no leaves--only
one great filmy mist of petals. Is it that the trees have been so long
domesticated and caressed by man in this land of the Gods, that they
have acquired souls, and strive to show their gratitude, like women
loved, by making themselves more beautiful for man's sake? Assuredly
they have mastered men's hearts by their loveliness, like beautiful
slaves. That is to say, Japanese hearts. Apparently there have been some
foreign tourists of the brutal class in this place, since it has been
deemed necessary to set up inscriptions in English announcing that 'IT
IS FORBIDDEN TO INJURE THE TREES.'

9

'Tera?'

'Yes, Cha, tera.'

But only for a brief while do I traverse Japanese streets. The houses
separate, become scattered along the feet of the hills: the city thins
away through little valleys, and vanishes at last behind. And we follow
a curving road overlooking the sea. Green hills slope steeply down to
the edge of the way on the right; on the left, far below, spreads a vast
stretch of dun sand and salty pools to a line of surf so distant that it
is discernible only as a moving white thread. The tide is out; and
thousands of cockle-gatherers are scattered over the sands, at such
distances that their stooping figures, dotting the glimmering sea-bed,
appear no larger than gnats. And some are coming along the road before
us, returning from their search with well-filled baskets--girls with
faces almost as rosy as the faces of English girls.

As the jinricksha rattles on, the hills dominating the road grow higher.
All at once Cha halts again before the steepest and loftiest flight of
temple steps I have yet seen.

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 muffled 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 Japanese buildings are covered. I pass 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 passing 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 brasses 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.

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 Japanese 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, impassive 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 lust, 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, Goddess 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 Japanese 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.

11

'Amma-kamishimo-go-hyakmon!'

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