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Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan

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




When Naomasu, grandson of the great Iyeyasu, and first daimyo of that
mighty Matsudaira family who ruled Izumo for two hundred and fifty
years, came to this province, he paid a visit to the Temple of Kitzuki,
and demanded that the miya of the shrine within the shrine should be
opened that he might look upon the sacred objects--upon the shintai or
body of the deity. And this being an impious desire, both of the Kokuzo
[13] unitedly protested against it. But despite their remonstrances and
their pleadings, he persisted angrily in his demand, so that the priests
found themselves compelled to open the shrine. And the miya being
opened, Naomasu saw within it a great awabi [14] of nine holes--so
large that it concealed everything behind it. And when he drew still
nearer to look, suddenly the awabi changed itself into a huge serpent
more than fifty feet in length; [15]--and it massed its black coils
before the opening of the shrine, and hissed like the sound of raging
fire, and looked so terrible, that Naomasu and those with him fled away
-having been able to see naught else. And ever thereafter Naomasu
feared and reverenced the god.

º12

The Guji then calls my attention to the quaint relics lying upon the
long low bench between us, which is covered with white silk: a metal
mirror, found in preparing the foundation of the temple when rebuilt
many hundred years ago; magatama jewels of onyx and jasper; a Chinese
flute made of jade; a few superb swords, the gifts of shoguns and
emperors; helmets of splendid antique workmanship; and a bundle of
enormous arrows with double-pointed heads of brass, fork-shaped and
keenly edged.

After I have looked at these relics and learned something of their
history, the Guji rises and says to me, 'Now we will show you the
ancient fire-drill of Kitzuki, with which the sacred fire is kindled.'

Descending the steps, we pass again before the Haiden, and enter a
spacious edifice on one side of the court, of nearly equal size with the
Hall of Prayer. Here I am agreeably surprised to find a long handsome
mahogany table at one end of the main apartment into which we are
ushered, and mahogany chairs placed all about it for the reception of
guests. I am motioned to one chair, my interpreter to another; and the
Guji and his priests take their seats also at the table. Then an
attendant sets before me a handsome bronze stand about three feet long,
on which rests an oblong something carefully wrapped in snow-white
cloths. The Guji removes the wrappings; and I behold the most primitive
form of fire-drill known to exist in the Orient. [16] It is simply a
very thick piece of solid white plank, about two and a half feet long,
with a line of holes drilled along its upper edge, so that the upper
part of each hole breaks through the sides of the plank. The sticks
which produce the fire, when fixed in the holes and rapidly rubbed
between the palms of the hands, are made of a lighter kind of white
wood; they are about two feet long, and as thick as a common lead
pencil.

While I am yet examining this curious simple utensil, the invention of
which tradition ascribes to the gods, and modern science to the earliest
childhood of the human race, a priest places upon the table a light,
large wooden box, about three feet long, eighteen inches wide, and four
inches high at the sides, but higher in the middle, as the top is arched
like the shell of a tortoise. This object is made of the same hinoki
wood as the drill; and two long slender sticks are laid beside it. I at
first suppose it to be another fire-drill. But no human being could
guess what it really is. It is called the koto-ita, and is one of the
most primitive of musical instruments; the little sticks are used to
strike it. At a sign from the Guji two priests place the box upon the
floor, seat themselves on either side of it, and taking up the little
sticks begin to strike the lid with them, alternately and slowly, at the
same time uttering a most singular and monotonous chant. One intones
only the sounds, 'Ang! ang!' and the other responds, 'Ong! ong!' The
koto-ita gives out a sharp, dead, hollow sound as the sticks fall upon
it in time to each utterance of 'Ang! ang!' 'Ong! ong!' [17]

º 13

These things I learn:

Each year the temple receives a new fire-drill; but the fire-drill is
never made in Kitzuki, but in Kumano, where the traditional regulations
as to the manner of making it have been preserved from the time of the
gods. For the first Kokuzo of Izumo, on becoming pontiff, received the
fire-drill for the great temple from the hands of the deity who was the
younger brother of the Sun-Goddess, and is now enshrined at Kumano. And
from his time the fire-drills for the Oho-yashiro of Kitzuki have been
made only at Kumano.

Until very recent times the ceremony of delivering the new fire-drill to
the Guji of Kitzuki always took place at the great temple of Oba, on the
occasion of the festival called Unohimatauri. This ancient festival,
which used to be held in the eleventh month, became obsolete after the
Revolution everywhere except at Oba in Izumo, where Izanami-no-Kami, the
mother of gods and men, is enshrined.

Once a year, on this festival, the Kokuzo always went to Oba, taking
with him a gift of double rice-cakes. At Oba he was met by a personage
called the Kame-da-yu, who brought the fire-drill from Kumano and
delivered it to the priests at Oba. According to tradition, the Kame-da-
yu had to act a somewhat ludicrous role so that no Shinto priest ever
cared to perform the part, and a man was hired for it. The duty of the
Kame-da-yu was to find fault with the gift presented to the temple by
the Kokuzo; and in this district of Japan there is still a proverbial
saying about one who is prone to find fault without reason, 'He is like
the Kame-da-yu.'

The Kame-da-yu would inspect the rice-cakes and begin to criticise them.
'They are much smaller this year,' he would observe, 'than they were
last year.' The priests would reply: 'Oh, you are honourably mistaken;
they are in truth very much larger.' 'The colour is not so white this
year as it was last year; and the rice-flour is not finely ground.' For
all these imaginary faults of the mochi the priests would offer
elaborate explanations or apologies.

At the conclusion of the ceremony, the sakaki branches used in it were
eagerly bid for, and sold at high prices, being believed to possess
talismanic virtues.

º 14

It nearly always happened that there was a great storm either on the day
the Kokuzo went to Oba, or upon the day he returned therefrom. The
journey had to be made during what is in Izumo the most stormy season
(December by the new calendar). But in popular belief these storms were
in some tremendous way connected with the divine personality of the
Kokuzo whose attributes would thus appear to present some curious
analogy with those of the Dragon-God. Be that as it may, the great
periodical storms of the season are still in this province called
Kokuzo-are [18]; it is still the custom in Izumo to say merrily to the
guest who arrives or departs in a time of tempest, 'Why, you are like
the Kokuzo!'

º15

The Guji waves his hand, and from the farther end of the huge apartment
there comes a sudden burst of strange music--a sound of drums and
bamboo flutes; and turning to look, I see the musicians, three men,
seated upon the matting, and a young girl with them. At another sign
from the Guji the girl rises. She is barefooted and robed in snowy
white, a virgin priestess. But below the hem of the white robe I see the
gleam of hakama of crimson silk. She advances to a little table in the
middle of the apartment, upon which a queer instrument is lying, shaped
somewhat like a branch with twigs bent downward, from each of which
hangs a little bell. Taking this curious object in both hands, she
begins a sacred dance, unlike anything I ever saw before. Her every
movement is a poem, because she is very graceful; and yet her
performance could scarcely be called a dance, as we understand the word;
it is rather a light swift walk within a circle, during which she shakes
the instrument at regular intervals, making all the little bells ring.
Her face remains impassive as a beautiful mask, placid and sweet as the
face of a dreaming Kwannon; and her white feet are pure of line as the
feet of a marble nymph. Altogether, with her snowy raiment and white
flesh and passionless face, she seems rather a beautiful living statue
than a Japanese maiden. And all the while the weird flutes sob and
shrill, and the muttering of the drums is like an incantation.

What I have seen is called the Dance of the Miko, the Divineress.

º16

Then we visit the other edifices belonging to the temple: the
storehouse; the library; the hall of assembly, a massive structure two
stories high, where may be seen the portraits of the Thirty-Six Great
Poets, painted by Tosano Mitsu Oki more than a thousand years ago, and
still in an excellent state of preservation. Here we are also shown a
curious magazine, published monthly by the temple--a record of Shinto
news, and a medium for the discussion of questions relating to the
archaic texts.

After we have seen all the curiosities of the temple, the Guji invites
us to his private residence near the temple to show us other treasures--
letters of Yoritomo, of Hideyoshi, of Iyeyasu; documents in the
handwriting of the ancient emperors and the great shoguns, hundreds of
which precious manuscripts he keeps in a cedar chest. In case of fire
the immediate removal of this chest to a place of safety would be the
first duty of the servants of the household.

Within his own house the Guji, attired in ordinary Japanese full dress
only, appears no less dignified as a private gentleman than he first
seemed as pontiff in his voluminous snowy robe. But no host could be
more kindly or more courteous or more generous. I am also much impressed
by the fine appearance of his suite of young priests, now dressed, like
himself, in the national costume; by the handsome, aquiline,
aristocratic faces, totally different from those of ordinary Japanese-
faces suggesting the soldier rather than the priest. One young man has a
superb pair of thick black moustaches, which is something rarely to be
seen in Japan.

At parting our kind host presents me with the ofuda, or sacred charms
given to pilgrimsh--two pretty images of the chief deities of Kitzuki--
and a number of documents relating to the history of the temple and of
its treasures.

º17

Having taken our leave of the kind Guji and his suite, we are guided to
Inasa-no-hama, a little sea-bay at the rear of the town, by the priest
Sasa, and another kannushi. This priest Sasa is a skilled poet and a man
of deep learning in Shinto history and the archaic texts of the sacred
books. He relates to us many curious legends as we stroll along the
shore.

This shore, now a popular bathing resort--bordered with airy little
inns and pretty tea-houses--is called Inasa because of a Shinto
tradition that here the god Oho-kuni-nushi-noKami, the Master-of-the-
Great-Land, was first asked to resign his dominion over the land of
Izumo in favour of Masa-ka-a-katsu-kachi-hayabi-ame-no-oshi-ho-mimi-no-
mikoto; the word Inasa signifying 'Will you consent or not?' [19] In
the thirty-second section of the first volume of the Kojiki the legend
is written: I cite a part thereof:

'The two deities (Tori-bune-no-Kami and Take-mika-dzuchi-no-wo-no-Kami),
descending to the little shore of Inasa in the land of Izumo, drew their
swords ten handbreadths long, and stuck them upside down on the crest of
a wave, and seated themselves cross-legged upon the points of the
swords, and asked the Deity Master-of-the-Great-Land, saying: "The
Heaven-Shining-Great-August-Deity and the High-Integrating-Deity have
charged us and sent us to ask, saying: 'We have deigned to charge our
august child with thy dominion, as the land which he should govern. So
how is thy heart?'" He replied, saying: "I am unable to say. My son Ya-
he-koto-shiro-nushi-no-Kami will be the one to tell you." . . . So they
asked the Deity again, saying: "Thy son Koto-shiro-nushi-no-Kami has now
spoken thus. Hast thou other sons who should speak?" He spoke again,
saying: "There is my other son, Take-mi-na-gata-no-Kami." . . . While he
was thus speaking the Deity Take-mi-na-gata-no-Kami came up [from the
sea], bearing on the tips of his fingers a rock which it would take a
thousand men to lift, and said, "I should like to have a trial of
strength."'

Here, close to the beach, stands a little miya called Inasa-no-kami-no-
yashiro, or, the Temple of the God of Inasa; and therein Take-mika-dzu-
chi-no-Kami, who conquered in the trial of strength, is enshrined. And
near the shore the great rock which Take-mi-na-gata-no-Kami lifted upon
the tips of his fingers, may be seen rising from the water. And it is
called Chihiki-noiha.

We invite the priests to dine with us at one of the little inns facing
the breezy sea; and there we talk about many things, but particularly
about Kitzuki and the Kokuzo.

º18

Only a generation ago the religious power of the Kokuzo extended over
the whole of the province of the gods; he was in fact as well as in name
the Spiritual Governor of Izumo. His jurisdiction does not now extend
beyond the limits of Kitzuki, and his correct title is no longer Kokuzo,
but Guji. [20] Yet to the simple-hearted people of remoter districts he
is still a divine or semi-divine being, and is mentioned by his ancient
title, the inheritance of his race from the epoch of the gods. How
profound a reverence was paid to him in former ages can scarcely be
imagined by any who have not long lived among the country folk of Izumo.
Outside of Japan perhaps no human being, except the Dalai Lama of
Thibet, was so humbly venerated and so religiously beloved. Within Japan
itself only the Son of Heaven, the 'Tenshi-Sama,' standing as mediator
'between his people and the Sun,' received like homage; but the
worshipful reverence paid to the Mikado was paid to a dream rather than
to a person, to a name rather than to a reality, for the Tenshi-Sama was
ever invisible as a deity 'divinely retired,' and in popular belief no
man could look upon his face and live. [21] Invisibility and mystery
vastly enhanced the divine legend of the Mikado. But the Kokuzo, within
his own province, though visible to the multitude and often journeying
among the people, received almost equal devotion; so that his material
power, though rarely, if ever, exercised, was scarcely less than that of
the Daimyo of Izumo himself. It was indeed large enough to render him a
person with whom the shogunate would have deemed it wise policy to
remain upon good terms. An ancestor of the present Guji even defied the
great Taiko Hideyoshi, refusing to obey his command to furnish troops
with the haughty answer that he would receive no order from a man of
common birth. [22] This defiance cost the family the loss of a large
part of its estates by confiscation, but the real power of the Kokuzo
remained unchanged until the period of the new civilisation.

Out of many hundreds of stories of a similar nature, two little
traditions may be cited as illustrations of the reverence in which the
Kokuzo was formerly held.

It is related that there was a man who, believing himself to have become
rich by favour of the Daikoku of Kitzuki, desired to express his
gratitude by a gift of robes to the Kokuzo.

The Kokuzo courteously declined the proffer; but the pious worshipper
persisted in his purpose, and ordered a tailor to make the robes. The
tailor, having made them, demanded a price that almost took his patron's
breath away. Being asked to give his reason for demanding such a price,
he made answer: Having made robes for the Kokuzo, I cannot hereafter
make garments for any other person. Therefore I must have money enough
to support me for the rest of my life.'

The second story dates back to about one hundred and seventy years ago.

Among the samurai of the Matsue clan in the time of Nobukori, fifth
daimyo of the Matsudaira family, there was one Sugihara Kitoji, who was
stationed in some military capacity at Kitzuki. He was a great favourite
with the Kokuzo, and used often to play at chess with him. During a
game, one evening, this officer suddenly became as one paralysed, unable
to move or speak. For a moment all was anxiety and confusion; but the
Kokuzo said: 'I know the cause. My friend was smoking, and although
smoking disagrees with me, I did not wish to spoil his pleasure by
telling him so. But the Kami, seeing that I felt ill, became angry with
him. Now I shall make him well.' Whereupon the Kokuzo uttered some
magical word, and the officer was immediately as well as before.

º 19

Once more we are journeying through the silence of this holy land of
mists and of legends; wending our way between green leagues of ripening
rice white-sprinkled with arrows of prayer between the far processions
of blue and verdant peaks whose names are the names of gods. We have
left Kitzuki far behind. But as in a dream I still see the mighty
avenue, the long succession of torii with their colossal shimenawa, the
majestic face of the Guji, the kindly smile of the priest Sasa, and the
girl priestess in her snowy robes dancing her beautiful ghostly dance.
It seems to me that I can still hear the sound of the clapping of hands,
like the crashing of a torrent. I cannot suppress some slight exultation
at the thought that I have been allowed to see what no other foreigner
has been privileged to see--the interior of Japan's most ancient
shrine, and those sacred utensils and quaint rites of primitive worship
so well worthy the study of the anthropologist and the evolutionist.

But to have seen Kitzuki as I saw it is also to have seen something much
more than a single wonderful temple. To see Kitzuki is to see the living
centre of Shinto, and to feel the life-pulse of the ancient faith,
throbbing as mightily in this nineteenth century as ever in that unknown
past whereof the Kojiki itself, though written in a tongue no longer
spoken, is but a modern record. [23] Buddhism, changing form or slowly
decaying through the centuries, might seem doomed to pass away at last
from this Japan to which it came only as an alien faith; but Shinto,
unchanging and vitally unchanged, still remains all dominant in the land
of its birth, and only seems to gain in power and dignity with time.[24]
Buddhism has a voluminous theology, a profound philosophy, a literature
vast as the sea. Shinto has no philosophy, no code of ethics, no
metaphysics; and yet, by its very immateriality, it can resist the
invasion of Occidental religious thought as no other Orient faith can.
Shinto extends a welcome to Western science, but remains the
irresistible opponent of Western religion; and the foreign zealots who
would strive against it are astounded to find the power that foils their
uttermost efforts indefinable as magnetism and invulnerable as air.
Indeed the best of our scholars have never been able to tell us what
Shinto is. To some it appears to be merely ancestor-worship, to others
ancestor-worship combined with nature-worship; to others, again, it
seems to be no religion at all; to the missionary of the more ignorant
class it is the worst form of heathenism. Doubtless the difficulty of
explaining Shinto has been due simply to the fact that the sinologists
have sought for the source of it in books: in the Kojiki and the
Nihongi, which are its histories; in the Norito, which are its prayers;
in the commentaries of Motowori and Hirata, who were its greatest
scholars. But the reality of Shinto lives not in books, nor in rites,
nor in commandments, but in the national heart, of which it is the
highest emotional religious expression, immortal and ever young. Far
underlying all the surface crop of quaint superstitions and artless
myths and fantastic magic there thrills a mighty spiritual force, the
whole soul of a race with all its impulses and powers and intuitions. He
who would know what Shinto is must learn to know that mysterious soul in
which the sense of beauty and the power of art and the fire of heroism
and magnetism of loyalty and the emotion of faith have become inherent,
immanent, unconscious, instinctive.

Trusting to know something of that Oriental soul in whose joyous love of
nature and of life even the unlearned may discern a strange likeness to
the soul of the old Greek race, I trust also that I may presume some day
to speak of the great living power of that faith now called Shinto, but
more anciently Kami-no-michi, or 'The Way of the Gods.'




Chapter Nine
In the Cave of the Children's Ghosts

º1

IT is forbidden to go to Kaka if there be wind enough 'to move three
hairs.'

Now an absolutely windless day is rare on this wild western coast. Over
the Japanese Sea, from Korea, or China, or boreal Siberia, some west or
north-west breeze is nearly always blowing. So that I have had to wait
many long months for a good chance to visit Kaka.

Taking the shortest route, one goes first to Mitsu-ura from Matsue,
either by kuruma or on foot. By kuruma this little journey occupies
nearly two hours and a half, though the distance is scarcely seven
miles, the road being one of the worst in all Izumo. You leave Matsue to
enter at once into a broad plain, level as a lake, all occupied by rice-
fields and walled in by wooded hills. The path, barely wide enough for a
single vehicle, traverses this green desolation, climbs the heights
beyond it, and descends again into another and a larger level of rice-
fields, surrounded also by hills. The path over the second line of hills
is much steeper; then a third rice-plain must be crossed and a third
chain of green altitudes, lofty enough to merit the name of mountains.
Of course one must make the ascent on foot: it is no small labour for a
kurumaya to pull even an empty kuruma up to the top; and how he manages
to do so without breaking the little vehicle is a mystery, for the path
is stony and rough as the bed of a torrent. A tiresome climb I find it;
but the landscape view from the summit is more than compensation.

Then descending, there remains a fourth and last wide level of rice-
fields to traverse. The absolute flatness of the great plains between
the ranges, and the singular way in which these latter 'fence off' the
country into sections, are matters for surprise even in a land of
surprises like Japan. Beyond the fourth rice-valley there is a fourth
hill-chain, lower and richly wooded, on reaching the base of which the
traveller must finally abandon his kuruma, and proceed over the hills on
foot. Behind them lies the sea. But the very worst bit of the journey
now begins. The path makes an easy winding ascent between bamboo growths
and young pine and other vegetation for a shaded quarter of a mile,
passing before various little shrines and pretty homesteads surrounded
by high-hedged gardens. Then it suddenly breaks into steps, or rather
ruins of steps--partly hewn in the rock, partly built, everywhere
breached and worn which descend, all edgeless, in a manner amazingly
precipitous, to the village of Mitsu-ura. With straw sandals, which
never slip, the country folk can nimbly hurry up or down such a path;
but with foreign footgear one slips at nearly every step; and when you
reach the bottom at last, the wonder of how you managed to get there,
even with the assistance of your faithful kurumaya, keeps you for a
moment quite unconscious of the fact that you are already in Mitsu-ura.

º2

Mitsu-ura stands with its back to the mountains, at the end of a small
deep bay hemmed in by very high cliffs. There is only one narrow strip
of beach at the foot of the heights; and the village owes its existence
to that fact, for beaches are rare on this part of the coast. Crowded
between the cliffs and the sea, the houses have a painfully compressed
aspect; and somehow the greater number give one the impression of things
created out of wrecks of junks. The little streets, or rather alleys,
are full of boats and skeletons of boats and boat timbers; and
everywhere, suspended from bamboo poles much taller than the houses,
immense bright brown fishing-nets are drying in the sun. The whole curve
of the beach is also lined with boats, lying side by side so that I
wonder how it will be possible to get to the water's edge without
climbing over them. There is no hotel; but I find hospitality in a
fisherman's dwelling, while my kurumaya goes somewhere to hire a boat
for Kaka-ura.

In less than ten minutes there is a crowd of several hundred people
about the house, half-clad adults and perfectly naked boys. They
blockade the building; they obscure the light by filling up the doorways
and climbing into the windows to look at the foreigner. The aged
proprietor of the cottage protests in vain, says harsh things; the crowd
only thickens. Then all the sliding screens are closed. But in the paper
panes there are holes; and at all the lower holes the curious take
regular turns at peeping. At a higher hole I do some peeping myself. The
crowd is not prepossessing: it is squalid, dull-featured, remarkably
ugly. But it is gentle and silent; and there are one or two pretty faces
in it which seem extraordinary by reason of the general homeliness of
the rest.

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