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Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan

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




Like the priestesses of Delphi, the miko was in ancient times also a
divineress--a living oracle, uttering the secrets of the future when
possessed by the god whom she served. At no temple does the miko now act
as sibyl, oracular priestess, or divineress. But there still exists a
class of divining-women, who claim to hold communication with the dead,
and to foretell the future, and who call themselves miko--practising
their profession secretly; for it has been prohibited by law.

In the various great Shinto shrines of the Empire the Mikokagura is
differently danced. In Kitzuki, most ancient of all, the dance is the
most simple and the most primitive. Its purpose being to give pleasure
to the gods, religious conservatism has preserved its traditions and
steps unchanged since the period of the beginning of the faith. The
origin of this dance is to be found in the Kojiki legend of the dance of
Ame-nouzume-no-mikoto--she by whose mirth and song the Sun-goddess was
lured from the cavern into which she had retired, and brought back to
illuminate the world. And the suzu--the strange bronze instrument with
its cluster of bells which the miko uses in her dance--still preserves
the form of that bamboo-spray to which Ame-no-uzume-no-mikoto fastened
small bells with grass, ere beginning her mirthful song.

º4

Behind the library in the rear of the great shrine, there stands a more
ancient structure which is still called the Miko-yashiki, or dwelling-
place of the miko. Here in former times all the maiden-priestesses were
obliged to live, under a somewhat stricter discipline than now. By day
they could go out where they pleased; but they were under obligation to
return at night to the yashiki before the gates of the court were
closed. For it was feared that the Pets of the Gods might so far forget
themselves as to condescend to become the darlings of adventurous
mortals. Nor was the fear at all unreasonable; for it was the duty of a
miko to be singularly innocent as well as beautiful. And one of the most
beautiful miko who belonged to the service of the Oho-yashiro did
actually so fall from grace--giving to the Japanese world a romance
which you can buy in cheap printed form at any large bookstore in Japan.

Her name was O-Kuni, and she was the daughter of one Nakamura Mongoro of
Kitzuki, where her descendants still live at the present day. While
serving as dancer in the great temple she fell in love with a ronin
named Nagoya Sanza--a desperate, handsome vagabond, with no fortune in
the world but his sword. And she left the temple secretly, and fled away
with her lover toward Kyoto. All this must have happened not less than
three hundred years ago.

On their way to Kyoto they met another ronin, whose real name I have not
been able to learn. For a moment only this 'wave-man' figures in the
story, and immediately vanishes into the eternal Night of death and all
forgotten things. It is simply recorded that he desired permission to
travel with them, that he became enamoured of the beautiful miko, and
excited the jealousy of her lover to such an extent that a desperate
duel was the result, in which Sanza slew his rival.

Thereafter the fugitives pursued their way to Kyoto without other
interruption. Whether the fair O-Kuni had by this time found ample
reason to regret the step she had taken, we cannot know. But from the
story of her after-life it would seem that the face of the handsome
ronin who had perished through his passion for her became a haunting
memory.

We next hear of her in a strange role at Kyoto. Her lover appears to
have been utterly destitute; for, in order to support him, we find her
giving exhibitions of the Miko-kagura in the Shijo-Kawara--which is the
name given to a portion of the dry bed of the river Kamagawa--doubtless
the same place in which the terrible executions by torture took place.
She must have been looked upon by the public of that day as an outcast.
But her extraordinary beauty seems to have attracted many spectators,
and to have proved more than successful as an exhibition. Sanza's purse
became well filled. Yet the dance of O-Kuni in the Shijo-Kawara was
nothing more than the same dance which the miko of Kitzuki dance to-day,
in their crimson hakama and snowy robes--a graceful gliding walk.

The pair next appear in Tokyo--or, as it was then called, Yedo--as
actors. O-Kuni, indeed, is universally credited by tradition, with
having established the modern Japanese stage--the first profane drama.
Before her time only religious plays, of Buddhist authorship, seem to
have been known. Sanza himself became a popular and successful actor,
under his sweetheart's tuition. He had many famous pupils, among them
the great Saruwaka, who subsequently founded a theatre in Yedo; and the
theatre called after him Saruwakaza, in the street Saruwakacho, remains
even unto this day. But since the time of O-Kuni, women have been--at
least until very recently-excluded from the Japanese stage; their
parts, as among the old Greeks, being taken by men or boys so effeminate
in appearance and so skilful in acting that the keenest observer could
never detect their sex.

Nagoya Sanza died many years before his companion. O-Kuni then returned
to her native place, to ancient Kitzuki, where she cut off her beautiful
hair, and became a Buddhist nun. She was learned for her century, and
especially skilful in that art of poetry called Renga; and this art she
continued to teach until her death. With the small fortune she had
earned as an actress she built in Kitzuki the little Buddhist temple
called Rengaji, in the very heart of the quaint town--so called because
there she taught the art of Renga. Now the reason she built the temple
was that she might therein always pray for the soul of the man whom the
sight of her beauty had ruined, and whose smile, perhaps, had stirred
something within her heart whereof Sanza never knew. Her family enjoyed
certain privileges for several centuries because she had founded the
whole art of the Japanese stage; and until so recently as the
Restoration the chief of the descendants of Nakamura Mongoro was always
entitled to a share in the profits of the Kitzuki theatre, and enjoyed
the title of Zamoto. The family is now, however, very poor.

I went to see the little temple of Rengaji, and found that it had
disappeared. Until within a few years it used to stand at the foot of
the great flight of stone steps leading to the second Kwannondera, the
most imposing temple of Kwannon in Kitzuki. Nothing now remains of the
Rengaji but a broken statue of Jizo, before which the people still pray.
The former court of the little temple has been turned into a vegetable
garden, and the material of the ancient building utilised, irreverently
enough, for the construction of some petty cottages now occupying its
site. A peasant told me that the kakemono and other sacred objects had
been given to the neighbouring temple, where they might be seen.

º5

Not far from the site of the Rengaji, in the grounds of the great hakaba
of the Kwannondera, there stands a most curious pine. The trunk of the
tree is supported, not on the ground, but upon four colossal roots which
lift it up at such an angle that it looks like a thing walking upon four
legs. Trees of singular shape are often considered to be the dwelling-
places of Kami; and the pine in question affords an example of this
belief. A fence has been built around it, and a small shrine placed
before it, prefaced by several small torii; and many poor people may be
seen, at almost any hour of the day, praying to the Kami of the place.
Before the little shrine I notice, besides the usual Kitzuki ex-voto of
seaweed, several little effigies of horses made of straw. Why these
offerings of horses of straw? It appears that the shrine is dedicated to
Koshin, the Lord of Roads; and those who are anxious about the health of
their horses pray to the Road-God to preserve their animals from
sickness and death, at the same time bringing these straw effigies in
token of their desire. But this role of veterinarian is not commonly
attributed to Koshin;--and it appears that something in the fantastic
form of the tree suggested the idea.

º6 KITZUKI, July 24th

Within the first court of the Oho-yashiro, and to the left of the chief
gate, stands a small timber structure, ashen-coloured with age, shaped
like a common miya or shrine. To the wooden gratings of its closed doors
are knotted many of those white papers upon which are usually written
vows or prayers to the gods. But on peering through the grating one sees
no Shinto symbols in the dimness within. It is a stable! And there, in
the central stall, is a superb horse--looking at you. Japanese
horseshoes of straw are suspended to the wall behind him. He does not
move. He is made of bronze!

Upon inquiring of the learned priest Sasa the story of this horse, I was
told the following curious things:

On the eleventh day of the seventh month, by the ancient calendar,[1]
falls the strange festival called Minige,or 'The Body escaping.' Upon
that day, 'tis said that the Great Deity of Kitzuki leaves his shrine to
pass through all the streets of the city, and along the seashore, after
which he enters into the house of the Kokuzo. Wherefore upon that day
the Kokuzo was always wont to leave his house; and at the present time,
though he does not actually abandon his home, he and his family retire
into certain apartments, so as to leave the larger part of the dwelling
free for the use of the god. This retreat of the Kokuzo is still called
the Minige.

Now while the great Deity Oho-kuni-nushi-no-Kami is passing through the
streets, he is followed by the highest Shinto priest of the shrine--
this kannushi having been formerly called Bekkwa. The word 'Bekkwa'
means 'special' or 'sacred fire'; and the chief kannushi was so called
because for a week before the festival he had been nourished only with
special food cooked with the sacred fire, so that he might be pure in
the presence of the God. And the office of Bekkwa was hereditary; and
the appellation at last became a family name. But he who performs the
rite to-day is no longer called Bekkwa.

Now while performing his function, if the Bekkwa met anyone upon the
street, he ordered him to stand aside with the words: 'Dog, give way!'
And the common people believed, and still believe, that anybody thus
spoken to by the officiating kannushi would be changed into a dog. So on
that day of the Minige nobody used to go out into the streets after a
certain hour, and even now very few of the people of the little city
leave their homes during the festival.[2]

After having followed the deity through all the city, the Bekkwa used to
perform, between two and three o'clock in the darkness of the morning,
some secret rite by the seaside. (I am told this rite is still annually
performed at the same hour.) But, except the Bekkwa himself, no man
might be present; and it was believed, and is still believed by the
common people, that were any man, by mischance, to see the rite he would
instantly fall dead, or become transformed into an animal.

So sacred was the secret of that rite, that the Bekkwa could not even
utter it until after he was dead, to his successor in office.

Therefore, when he died, the body was laid upon the matting of a certain
inner chamber of the temple, and the son was left alone with the corpse,
after all the doors had been carefully closed. Then, at a certain hour
of the night, the soul returned into the body of the dead priest, and he
lifted himself up, and whispered the awful secret into the ear of his
son--and fell back dead again.

But what, you may ask, has all this to do with the Horse of Bronze?

Only this:

Upon the festival of the Minige, the Great Deity of Kitzuki rides
through the streets of his city upon the Horse of Bronze.

º7

The Horse of Bronze, however, is far from being the only statue in Izumo
which is believed to run about occasionally at night: at least a score
of other artistic things are, or have been, credited with similar
ghastly inclinations. The great carven dragon which writhes above the
entrance of the Kitzuki haiden used, I am told, to crawl about the roofs
at night--until a carpenter was summoned to cut its wooden throat with
a chisel, after which it ceased its perambulations. You can see for
yourself the mark of the chisel on its throat! At the splendid Shinto
temple of Kasuga, in Matsue, there are two pretty life-size bronze deer,
-stag and doe--the heads of which seemed to me to have been separately
cast, and subsequently riveted very deftly to the bodies. Nevertheless I
have been assured by some good country-folk that each figure was
originally a single casting, but that it was afterwards found necessary
to cut off the heads of the deer to make them keep quiet at night. But
the most unpleasant customer of all this uncanny fraternity to have
encountered after dark was certainly the monster tortoise of Gesshoji
temple in Matsue, where the tombs of the Matsudairas are. This stone
colossus is almost seventeen feet in length and lifts its head six feet
from the ground. On its now broken back stands a prodigious cubic
monolith about nine feet high, bearing a half-obliterated inscription.
Fancy--as Izumo folks did--this mortuary incubus staggering abroad at
midnight, and its hideous attempts to swim in the neighbouring lotus-
pond! Well, the legend runs that its neck had to be broken in
consequence of this awful misbehaviour. But really the thing looks as if
it could only have been broken by an earthquake.

º8 KITZUKI, July 25th. At the Oho-yashiro it is the annual festival of
the God of Scholarship, the God of Calligraphy--Tenjin. Here in
Kitzuki, the festival of the Divine Scribe, the Tenjin-Matsuri, is still
observed according to the beautiful old custom which is being forgotten
elsewhere. Long ranges of temporary booths have been erected within the
outer court of the temple; and in these are suspended hundreds of long
white tablets, bearing specimens of calligraphy. Every schoolboy in
Kitzuki has a sample of his best writing on exhibition. The texts are
written only in Chinese characters--not in hirakana or katakana-and
are mostly drawn from the works of Confucius or Mencius.

To me this display of ideographs seems a marvellous thing of beauty--
almost a miracle, indeed, since it is all the work of very, very young
boys. Rightly enough, the word 'to write' (kaku) in Japanese signifies
also to 'paint' in the best artistic sense. I once had an opportunity of
studying the result of an attempt to teach English children the art of
writing Japanese. These children were instructed by a Japanese writing-
master; they sat upon the same bench with Japanese pupils of their own
age, beginners likewise. But they could never learn like the Japanese
children. The ancestral tendencies within them rendered vain the efforts
of the instructor to teach them the secret of a shapely stroke with the
brush. It is not the Japanese boy alone who writes; the fingers of the
dead move his brush, guide his strokes.

Beautiful, however, as this writing seems to me, it is far from winning
the commendation of my Japanese companion, himself a much experienced
teacher. 'The greater part of this work,' he declares, 'is very bad.'
While I am still bewildered by this sweeping criticism, he points out to
me one tablet inscribed with rather small characters, adding: 'Only that
is tolerably good.'

'Why,' I venture to observe, 'that one would seem to have cost much less
trouble; the characters are so small.'

'Oh, the size of the characters has nothing to do with the matter,'
interrupts the master, 'it is a question of form.'

'Then I cannot understand. What you call very bad seems to me
exquisitely beautiful.'

'Of course you cannot understand,' the critic replies; 'it would take
you many years of study to understand. And even then-,

'And even then?'

'Well, even then you could only partly understand.'

Thereafter I hold my peace on the topic of calligraphy.

º9

Vast as the courts of the Oho-yashiro are, the crowd within them is now
so dense that one must move very slowly, for the whole population of
Kitzuki and its environs has been attracted here by the matsuri. All are
making their way very gently toward a little shrine built upon an island
in the middle of an artificial lake and approached by a narrow causeway.
This little shrine, which I see now for the first time (Kitzuki temple
being far too large a place to be all seen and known in a single visit),
is the Shrine of Tenjin. As the sound of a waterfall is the sound of the
clapping of hands before it, and myriads of nin, and bushels of handfuls
of rice, are being dropped into the enormous wooden chest there placed
to receive the offerings. Fortunately this crowd, like all Japanese
crowds, is so sympathetically yielding that it is possible to traverse
it slowly in any direction, and thus to see all there is to be seen.
After contributing my mite to the coffer of Tenjin, I devote my
attention to the wonderful display of toys in the outer counts.

At almost every temple festival in Japan there is a great sale of toys,
usually within the count itself--a miniature street of small booths
being temporarily erected for this charming commence. Every matsuri is a
children's holiday. No mother would think of attending a temple-festival
without buying her child a toy: even the poorest mother can afford it;
for the price of the toys sold in a temple court varies from one-fifth
of one sen [3] or Japanese cent, to three or four sen; toys worth so
much as five sen being rarely displayed at these little shops. But cheap
as they are, these frail playthings are full of beauty and
suggestiveness, and, to one who knows and loves Japan, infinitely more
interesting than the costliest inventions of a Parisian toy-
manufacturer. Many of them, however, would be utterly incomprehensible
to an English child. Suppose we peep at a few of them.

Here is a little wooden mallet, with a loose tiny ball fitted into a
socket at the end of the handle. This is for the baby to suck. On either
end of the head of the mallet is painted the mystic tomoye--that
Chinese symbol, resembling two huge commas so united as to make a
perfect circle, which you may have seen on the title-page of Mr.
Lowell's beautiful Soul of the Far East. To you, however, this little
wooden mallet would seem in all probability just a little wooden mallet
and nothing more. But to the Japanese child it is full of suggestions.
It is the mallet of the Great Deity of Kitzuki, Ohokuni-nushi-no-Kami--
vulgarly called Daikoku--the God of Wealth, who, by one stroke of his
hammer, gives fortune to his worshippers.

Perhaps this tiny drum, of a form never seen in the Occident (tsudzumi),
or this larger drum with a mitsudomoye, or triple-comma symbol, painted
on each end, might seem to you without religious signification; but both
are models of drums used in the Shinto and the Buddhist temples. This
queer tiny table is a miniature sambo: it is upon such a table that
offerings are presented to the gods. This curious cap is a model of the
cap of a Shinto priest. Here is a toy miya, or Shinto shrine, four
inches high. This bunch of tiny tin bells attached to a wooden handle
might seem to you something corresponding to our Occidental tin rattles;
but it is a model of the sacred suzu used by the virgin priestess in her
dance before the gods. This face of a smiling chubby girl, with two
spots upon her forehead-a mask of baked clay--is the traditional image
of Ame-no-uzume-no-mikoto, commonly called Otafuku, whose merry
laughter lured the Goddess of the Sun out of the cavern of darkness. And
here is a little Shinto priest in full hieratic garb: when this little
string between his feet is pulled, he claps his hands as if in prayer.

Hosts of other toys are here--mysterious to the uninitiated European,
but to the Japanese child full of delightful religious meaning. In these
faiths of the Far East there is little of sternness or grimness--the
Kami are but the spirits of the fathers of the people; the Buddhas and
the Bosatsu were men. Happily the missionaries have not succeeded as yet
in teaching the Japanese to make religion a dismal thing. These gods
smile for ever: if you find one who frowns, like Fudo, the frown seems
but half in earnest; it is only Emma, the Lord of Death, who somewhat
appals. Why religion should be considered too awful a subject for
children to amuse themselves decently with never occurs to the common
Japanese mind. So here we have images of the gods and saints for toys--
Tenjin, the Deity of Beautiful Writing--and Uzume, the laughter-loving
-and Fukusuke, like a happy schoolboy--and the Seven Divinities of
Good Luck, in a group--and Fukurojin, the God of Longevity, with head
so elongated that only by the aid of a ladder can his barber shave the
top of it--and Hotei, with a belly round and huge as a balloon--and
Ebisu, the Deity of Markets and of fishermen, with a tai-fish under his
arm--and Daruma, ancient disciple of Buddha, whose legs were worn off
by uninterrupted meditation.

Here likewise are many toys which a foreigner could scarcely guess the
meaning of, although they have no religious signification. Such is this
little badger, represented as drumming upon its own belly with both
forepaws. The badger is believed to be able to use its belly like a
drum, and is credited by popular superstition with various supernatural
powers. This toy illustrates a pretty fairy-tale about some hunter who
spared a badger's life and was rewarded by the creature with a wonderful
dinner and a musical performance. Here is a hare sitting on the end of
the handle of a wooden pestle which is set horizontally upon a pivot. By
pulling a little string, the pestle is made to rise and fall as if moved
by the hare. If you have been even a week in Japan you will recognise
the pestle as the pestle of a kometsuki, or rice-cleaner, who works it
by treading on the handle. But what is the hare? This hare is the Hare-
in-the-Moon, called Usagi-no-kometsuki: if you look up at the moon on a
clear night you can see him cleaning his rice.

Now let us see what we can discover in the way of cheap ingenuities.

Tombo, 'the Dragon-Fly.' Merely two bits of wood joined together in the
form of a T. The lower part is a little round stick, about as thick as a
match, but twice as long; the upper piece is flat, and streaked with
paint. Unless you are accustomed to look for secrets, you would scarcely
be able to notice that the flat piece is trimmed along two edges at a
particular angle. Twirl the lower piece rapidly between the palms of
both hands, and suddenly let it go. At once the strange toy rises
revolving in the air, and then sails away slowly to quite a distance,
performing extraordinary gyrations, and imitating exactly--to the eye
at least--the hovering motion of a dragon-fly. Those little streaks of
paint you noticed upon the top-piece now reveal their purpose; as the
tombo darts hither and thither, even the tints appear to be those of a
real dragon-fly; and even the sound of the flitting toy imitates the
dragon-fly's hum. The principle of this pretty invention is much like
that of the boomerang; and an expert can make his tombo, after flying
across a large room, return into his hand. All the tombo sold, however,
are not as good as this one; we have been lucky. Price, one-tenth of one
cent!

Here is a toy which looks like a bow of bamboo strung with wire. The
wire, however, is twisted into a corkscrew spiral. On this spiral a pair
of tiny birds are suspended by a metal loop. When the bow is held
perpendicularly with the birds at the upper end of the string, they
descend whirling by their own weight, as if circling round one another;
and the twittering of two birds is imitated by the sharp grating of the
metal loop upon the spiral wire. One bird flies head upward, and the
other tail upward. As soon as they have reached the bottom, reverse the
bow, and they will recommence their wheeling flight. Price, two cents--
because the wire is dear.

O-Saru, the 'Honourable Monkey.' [4] A little cotton monkey, with a blue
head and scarlet body, hugging a bamboo rod. Under him is a bamboo
spring; and when you press it, he runs up to the top of the rod. Price,
one-eighth of one cent.

O-Saru. Another Honourable Monkey. This one is somewhat more complex in
his movements, and costs a cent. He runs up a string, hand over hand,
when you pull his tail.

Tori-Kago. A tiny gilded cage, with a bird in it, and plum flowers.
Press the edges of the bottom of the cage, and a minuscule wind-
instrument imitates the chirping of the bird. Price, one cent.

Karuwazashi, the Acrobat. A very loose-jointed wooden boy clinging with
both hands to a string stretched between two bamboo sticks, which are
curiously rigged together in the shape of an open pair of scissors.
Press the ends of the sticks at the bottom; and the acrobat tosses his
legs over the string, seats himself upon it, and finally turns a
somersault. Price, one-sixth of one cent.

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