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Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan

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






Chapter Four
A Pilgrimage to Enoshima

º1

KAMAKURA.

A long, straggling country village, between low wooded hills, with a
canal passing through it. Old Japanese cottages, dingy, neutral-tinted,
with roofs of thatch, very steeply sloping, above their wooden walls and
paper shoji. Green patches on all the roof-slopes, some sort of grass;
and on the very summits, on the ridges, luxurious growths of yaneshobu,
[1] the roof-plant, bearing pretty purple flowers. In the lukewarm air a
mingling of Japanese odours, smells of sake, smells of seaweed soup,
smells of daikon, the strong native radish; and dominating all, a sweet,
thick, heavy scent of incense,--incense from the shrines of gods.

Akira has hired two jinricksha for our pilgrimage; a speckless azure sky
arches the world; and the land lies glorified in a joy of sunshine. And
yet a sense of melancholy, of desolation unspeakable, weighs upon me as
we roll along the bank of the tiny stream, between the mouldering lines
of wretched little homes with grass growing on their roofs. For this
mouldering hamlet represents all that remains of the million-peopled
streets of Yoritomo's capital, the mighty city of the Shogunate, the
ancient seat of feudal power, whither came the envoys of Kublai Khan
demanding tribute, to lose their heads for their temerity. And only some
of the unnumbered temples of the once magnificent city now remain, saved
from the conflagrations of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,
doubtless because built in high places, or because isolated from the
maze of burning streets by vast courts and groves. Here still dwell the
ancient gods in the great silence of their decaying temples, without
worshippers, without revenues, surrounded by desolations of rice-fields,
where the chanting of frogs replaces the sea-like murmur of the city
that was and is not.

º2

The first great temple--En-gaku-ji--invites us to cross the canal by a
little bridge facing its outward gate--a roofed gate with fine Chinese
lines, but without carving. Passing it, we ascend a long, imposing
succession of broad steps, leading up through a magnificent grove to a
terrace, where we reach the second gate. This gate is a surprise; a
stupendous structure of two stories--with huge sweeping curves of roof
and enormous gables--antique, Chinese, magnificent. It is more than
four hundred years old, but seems scarcely affected by the wearing of
the centuries. The whole of the ponderous and complicated upper
structure is sustained upon an open-work of round, plain pillars and
cross-beams; the vast eaves are full of bird-nests; and the storm of
twittering from the roofs is like a rushing of water. Immense the work
is, and imposing in its aspect of settled power; but, in its way, it has
great severity: there are no carvings, no gargoyles, no dragons; and yet
the maze of projecting timbers below the eaves will both excite and
delude expectation, so strangely does it suggest the grotesqueries and
fantasticalities of another art. You look everywhere for the heads of
lions, elephants, dragons, and see only the four-angled ends of beams,
and feel rather astonished than disappointed. The majesty of the edifice
could not have been strengthened by any such carving.

After the gate another long series of wide steps, and more trees,
millennial, thick-shadowing, and then the terrace of the temple itself,
with two beautiful stone lanterns (toro) at its entrance. The
architecture of the temple resembles that of the gate, although on a
lesser scale. Over the doors is a tablet with Chinese characters,
signifying, 'Great, Pure, Clear, Shining Treasure.' But a heavy
framework of wooden bars closes the sanctuary, and there is no one to
let us in. Peering between the bars I see, in a sort of twilight, first
a pavement of squares of marble, then an aisle of massive wooden pillars
upholding the dim lofty roof, and at the farther end, between the
pillars, Shaka, colossal, black-visaged, gold-robed, enthroned upon a
giant lotus fully forty feet in circumference. At his right hand some
white mysterious figure stands, holding an incense-box; at his left,
another white figure is praying with clasped hands. Both are of
superhuman stature. But it is too dark within the edifice to discern who
they may be--whether disciples of the Buddha, or divinities, or figures
of saints.

Beyond this temple extends an immense grove of trees--ancient cedars
and pines--with splendid bamboos thickly planted between them, rising
perpendicularly as masts to mix their plumes with the foliage of the
giants: the effect is tropical, magnificent. Through this shadowing, a
flight of broad stone steps slant up gently to some yet older shrine.
And ascending them we reach another portal, smaller than the imposing
Chinese structure through which we already passed, but wonderful, weird,
full of dragons, dragons of a form which sculptors no longer carve,
which they have even forgotten how to make, winged dragons rising from a
storm-whirl of waters or thereinto descending. The dragon upon the panel
of the left gate has her mouth closed; the jaws of the dragon on the
panel of the right gate are open and menacing. Female and male they are,
like the lions of Buddha. And the whirls of the eddying water, and the
crests of the billowing, stand out from the panel in astonishing
boldness of relief, in loops and curlings of grey wood time-seasoned to
the hardness of stone.

The little temple beyond contains no celebrated image, but a shari only,
or relic of Buddha, brought from India. And I cannot see it, having no
time to wait until the absent keeper of the shari can be found.

º3

'Now we shall go to look at the big bell,' says Akira.

We turn to the left as we descend along a path cut between hills faced
for the height of seven or eight feet with protection-walls made green
by moss; and reach a flight of extraordinarily dilapidated steps, with
grass springing between their every joint and break--steps so worn down
and displaced by countless feet that they have become ruins, painful and
even dangerous to mount. We reach the summit, however, without mishap,
and find ourselves before a little temple, on the steps of which an old
priest awaits us, with smiling bow of welcome. We return his salutation;
but ere entering the temple turn to look at the tsurigane on the right--
the famous bell.

Under a lofty open shed, with a tilted Chinese roof, the great bell is
hung. I should judge it to be fully nine feet high, and about five feet
in diameter, with lips about eight inches thick. The shape of it is not
like that of our bells, which broaden toward the lips; this has the same
diameter through all its height, and it is covered with Buddhist texts
cut into the smooth metal of it. It is rung by means of a heavy swinging
beam, suspended from the roof by chains, and moved like a battering-ram.
There are loops of palm-fibre rope attached to this beam to pull it by;
and when you pull hard enough, so as to give it a good swing, it strikes
a moulding like a lotus-flower on the side of the bell. This it must
have done many hundred times; for the square, flat end of it, though
showing the grain of a very dense wood, has been battered into a convex
disk with ragged protruding edges, like the surface of a long-used
printer's mallet.

A priest makes a sign to me to ring the bell. I first touch the great
lips with my hand very lightly; and a musical murmur comes from them.
Then I set the beam swinging strongly; and a sound deep as thunder, rich
as the bass of a mighty organ--a sound enormous, extraordinary, yet
beautiful--rolls over the hills and away. Then swiftly follows another
and lesser and sweeter billowing of tone; then another; then an eddying
of waves of echoes. Only once was it struck, the astounding bell; yet it
continues to sob and moan for at least ten minutes!

And the age of this bell is six hundred and fifty years. [2]

In the little temple near by, the priest shows us a series of curious
paintings, representing the six hundredth anniversary of the casting of
the bell. (For this is a sacred bell, and the spirit of a god is
believed to dwell within it.) Otherwise the temple has little of
interest. There are some kakemono representing Iyeyasu and his
retainers; and on either side of the door, separating the inner from the
outward sanctuary, there are life-size images of Japanese warriors in
antique costume. On the altars of the inner shrine are small images,
grouped upon a miniature landscape-work of painted wood--the Jiugo-
Doji, or Fifteen Youths--the Sons of the Goddess Benten. There are
gohei before the shrine, and a mirror upon it; emblems of Shinto. The
sanctuary has changed hands in the great transfer of Buddhist temples to
the State religion.

In nearly every celebrated temple little Japanese prints are sold,
containing the history of the shrine, and its miraculous legends. I find
several such things on sale at the door of the temple, and in one of
them, ornamented with a curious engraving of the bell, I discover, with
Akira's aid, the following traditions:-

º4

In the twelfth year of Bummei, this bell rang itself. And one who
laughed on being told of the miracle, met with misfortune; and another,
who believed, thereafter prospered, and obtained all his desires.

Now, in that time there died in the village of Tamanawa a sick man whose
name was Ono-no-Kimi; and Ono-no-Kimi descended to the region of the
dead, and went before the Judgment-Seat of Emma-O. And Emma, Judge of
Souls, said to him, 'You come too soon! The measure of life allotted you
in the Shaba-world has not yet been exhausted. Go back at once.' But
Ono-no-Kimi pleaded, saying, 'How may I go back, not knowing my way
through the darkness?' And Emma answered him, 'You can find your way
back by listening to the sound of the bell of En-gaku-ji, which is heard
in the Nan-en-budi world, going south.' And Ono-no-Kimi went south, and
heard the bell, and found his way through the darknesses, and revived in
the Shaba-world.

Also in those days there appeared in many provinces a Buddhist priest of
giant stature, whom none remembered to have seen before, and whose name
no man knew, travelling through the land, and everywhere exhorting the
people to pray before the bell of En-gaku-ji. And it was at last
discovered that the giant pilgrim was the holy bell itself, transformed
by supernatural power into the form of a priest. And after these things
had happened, many prayed before the bell, and obtained their wishes.

º5

'Oh! there is something still to see,' my guide exclaims as we reach the
great Chinese gate again; and he leads the way across the grounds by
another path to a little hill, previously hidden from view by trees. The
face of the hill, a mass of soft stone perhaps one hundred feet high, is
hollowed out into chambers, full of images. These look like burial-
caves; and the images seem funereal monuments. There are two stories of
chambers--three above, two below; and the former are connected with the
latter by a narrow interior stairway cut through the living rock. And
all around the dripping walls of these chambers on pedestals are grey
slabs, shaped exactly like the haka in Buddhist cemeteries, and
chiselled with figures of divinities in high relief. All have glory-
disks: some are na´ve and sincere like the work of our own mediaeval
image-makers. Several are not unfamiliar. I have seen before, in the
cemetery of Kuboyama, this kneeling woman with countless shadowy hands;
and this figure tiara-coiffed, slumbering with one knee raised, and
cheek pillowed upon the left hand--the placid and pathetic symbol of
the perpetual rest. Others, like Madonnas, hold lotus-flowers, and their
feet rest upon the coils of a serpent. I cannot see them all, for the
rock roof of one chamber has fallen in; and a sunbeam entering the ruin
reveals a host of inaccessible sculptures half buried in rubbish.

But no!--this grotto-work is not for the dead; and these are not haka,
as I imagined, but only images of the Goddess of Mercy. These chambers
are chapels; and these sculptures are the En-gaku-ji-no-hyaku-Kwannon,
'the Hundred Kwannons of En-gaku-ji.' And I see in the upper chamber
above the stairs a granite tablet in a rock-niche, chiselled with an
inscription in Sanscrit transliterated into Chinese characters,
'Adoration to the great merciful Kwan-ze-on, who looketh down above the
sound of prayer.' [3]

º6

Entering the grounds of the next temple, the Temple of Ken-cho-ji,
through the 'Gate of the Forest of Contemplative Words,' and the 'Gate
of the Great Mountain of Wealth,' one might almost fancy one's self
reentering, by some queer mistake, the grounds of En-gaku-ji. For the
third gate before us, and the imposing temple beyond it, constructed
upon the same models as those of the structures previously visited, were
also the work of the same architect. Passing this third gate--colossal,
severe, superb--we come to a fountain of bronze before the temple
doors, an immense and beautiful lotus-leaf of metal, forming a broad
shallow basin kept full to the brim by a jet in its midst.

This temple also is paved with black and white square slabs, and we can
enter it with our shoes. Outside it is plain and solemn as that of En-
gaku-ji; but the interior offers a more extraordinary spectacle of faded
splendour. In lieu of the black Shaka throned against a background of
flamelets, is a colossal Jizo-Sama, with a nimbus of fire--a single
gilded circle large as a wagon-wheel, breaking into fire-tongues at
three points. He is seated upon an enormous lotus of tarnished gold--
over the lofty edge of which the skirt of his robe trails down. Behind
him, standing on ascending tiers of golden steps, are glimmering hosts
of miniature figures of him, reflections, multiplications of him, ranged
there by ranks of hundreds--the Thousand Jizo. From the ceiling above
him droop the dingy splendours of a sort of dais-work, a streaming
circle of pendants like a fringe, shimmering faintly through the webbed
dust of centuries. And the ceiling itself must once have been a marvel;
all beamed in caissons, each caisson containing, upon a gold ground, the
painted figure of a flying bird. Formerly the eight great pillars
supporting the roof were also covered with gilding; but only a few
traces of it linger still upon their worm-pierced surfaces, and about
the bases of their capitals. And there are wonderful friezes above the
doors, from which all colour has long since faded away, marvellous grey
old carvings in relief; floating figures of tennin, or heavenly spirits
playing upon flutes and biwa.

There is a chamber separated by a heavy wooden screen from the aisle on
the right; and the priest in charge of the building slides the screen
aside, and bids us enter. In this chamber is a drum elevated upon a
brazen stand,--the hugest I ever saw, fully eighteen feet in
circumference. Beside it hangs a big bell, covered with Buddhist texts.
I am sorry to learn that it is prohibited to sound the great drum. There
is nothing else to see except some dingy paper lanterns figured with the
svastika--the sacred Buddhist symbol called by the Japanese manji.

º7

Akira tells me that in the book called Jizo-kyo-Kosui, this legend is
related of the great statue of Jizo in this same ancient temple of Ken-
cho-ji.

Formerly there lived at Kamakura the wife of a Ronin [4] named Soga
Sadayoshi. She lived by feeding silkworms and gathering the silk. She
used often to visit the temple of Kencho-ji; and one very cold day that
she went there, she thought that the image of Jizo looked like one
suffering from cold; and she resolved to make a cap to keep the god's
head warm--such a cap as the people of the country wear in cold
weather. And she went home and made the cap and covered the god's head
with it, saying, 'Would I were rich enough to give thee a warm covering
for all thine august body; but, alas! I am poor, and even this which I
offer thee is unworthy of thy divine acceptance.'

Now this woman very suddenly died in the fiftieth year of her age, in
the twelfth month of the fifth year of the period called Chisho. But her
body remained warm for three days, so that her relatives would not
suffer her to be taken to the burning-ground. And on the evening of the
third day she came to life again.

Then she related that on the day of her death she had gone before the
judgment-seat of Emma, king and judge of the dead. And Emma, seeing her,
became wroth, and said to her: 'You have been a wicked woman, and have
scorned the teaching of the Buddha. All your life you have passed in
destroying the lives of silkworms by putting them into heated water. Now
you shall go to the Kwakkto-Jigoku, and there burn until your sins shall
be expiated.' Forthwith she was seized and dragged by demons to a great
pot filled with molten metal, and thrown into the pot, and she cried out
horribly. And suddenly Jizo-Sama descended into the molten metal beside
her, and the metal became like a flowing of oil and ceased to burn; and
Jizo put his arms about her and lifted her out. And he went with her
before King Emma, and asked that she should be pardoned for his sake,
forasmuch as she had become related to him by one act of goodness. So
she found pardon, and returned to the Shaba-world.

'Akira,' I ask, 'it cannot then be lawful, according to Buddhism, for
any one to wear silk?'

'Assuredly not,' replies Akira; 'and by the law of Buddha priests are
expressly forbidden to wear silk. Nevertheless.' he adds with that quiet
smile of his, in which I am beginning to discern suggestions of sarcasm,
'nearly all the priests wear silk.'

º8

Akira also tells me this:

It is related in the seventh volume of the book Kamakurashi that there
was formerly at Kamakura a temple called Emmei-ji, in which there was
enshrined a famous statue of Jizo, called Hadaka-Jizo, or Naked Jizo.
The statue was indeed naked, but clothes were put upon it; and it stood
upright with its feet upon a chessboard. Now, when pilgrims came to the
temple and paid a certain fee, the priest of the temple would remove the
clothes of the statue; and then all could see that, though the face was
the face of Jizo, the body was the body of a woman.

Now this was the origin of the famous image of Hadaka-Jizo standing upon
the chessboard. On one occasion the great prince Taira-no-Tokyori was
playing chess with his wife in the presence of many guests. And he made
her agree, after they had played several games, that whosoever should
lose the next game would have to stand naked on the chessboard. And in
the next game they played his wife lost. And she prayed to Jizo to save
her from the shame of appearing naked. And Jizo came in answer to her
prayer and stood upon the chessboard, and disrobed himself, and changed
his body suddenly into the body of a woman.

º9

As we travel on, the road curves and narrows between higher elevations,
and becomes more sombre. 'Oi! mat!' my Buddhist guide calls softly to
the runners; and our two vehicles halt in a band of sunshine,
descending, through an opening in the foliage of immense trees, over a
flight of ancient mossy steps. 'Here,' says my friend, 'is the temple of
the King of Death; it is called Emma-Do; and it is a temple of the Zen
sect--Zen-Oji. And it is more than seven hundred years old, and there
is a famous statue in it.'

We ascend to a small, narrow court in which the edifice stands. At the
head of the steps, to the right, is a stone tablet, very old, with
characters cut at least an inch deep into the granite of it, Chinese
characters signifying, 'This is the Temple of Emma, King.'

The temple resembles outwardly and inwardly the others we have visited,
and, like those of Shaka and of the colossal Jizo of Kamakura, has a
paved floor, so that we are not obliged to remove our shoes on entering.
Everything is worn, dim, vaguely grey; there is a pungent scent of
mouldiness; the paint has long ago peeled away from the naked wood of
the pillars. Throned to right and left against the high walls tower nine
grim figures--five on one side, four on the other--wearing strange
crowns with trumpet-shapen ornaments; figures hoary with centuries, and
so like to the icon of Emma, which I saw at Kuboyama, that I ask, 'Are
all these Emma?' 'Oh, no!' my guide answers; 'these are his attendants
only--the Jiu-O, the Ten Kings.' 'But there are only nine?' I query.
'Nine, and Emma completes the number. You have not yet seen Emma.'

Where is he? I see at the farther end of the chamber an altar elevated
upon a platform approached by wooden steps; but there is no image, only
the usual altar furniture of gilded bronze and lacquer-ware. Behind the
altar I see only a curtain about six feet square--a curtain once dark
red, now almost without any definite hue--probably veiling some alcove.
A temple guardian approaches, and invites us to ascend the platform. I
remove my shoes before mounting upon the matted surface, and follow the
guardian behind the altar, in front of the curtain. He makes me a sign
to look, and lifts the veil with a long rod. And suddenly, out of the
blackness of some mysterious profundity masked by that sombre curtain,
there glowers upon me an apparition at the sight of which I
involuntarily start back--a monstrosity exceeding all anticipation--a
Face. [5]

A Face tremendous, menacing, frightful, dull red, as with the redness of
heated iron cooling into grey. The first shock of the vision is no doubt
partly due to the somewhat theatrical manner in which the work is
suddenly revealed out of darkness by the lifting of the curtain. But as
the surprise passes I begin to recognise the immense energy of the
conception--to look for the secret of the grim artist. The wonder of
the I creation is not in the tiger frown, nor in the violence of the
terrific mouth, nor in the fury and ghastly colour of the head as a
whole: it is in the eyes--eyes of nightmare.

º10

Now this weird old temple has its legend.

Seven hundred years ago, 'tis said, there died the great image-maker,
the great busshi; Unke-Sosei. And Unke-Sosei signifies 'Unke who
returned from the dead.' For when he came before Emma, the Judge of
Souls, Emma said to him: 'Living, thou madest no image of me. Go back
unto earth and make one, now that thou hast looked upon me.' And Unke
found himself suddenly restored to the world of men; and they that had
known him before, astonished to see him alive again, called him Unke-
Sosei. And Unke-Sosei, bearing with him always the memory of the
countenance of Emma, wrought this image of him, which still inspires
fear in all who behold it; and he made also the images of the grim Jiu-
O, the Ten Kings obeying Emma, which sit throned about the temple.

I want to buy a picture of Emma, and make my wish known to the temple
guardian. Oh, yes, I may buy a picture of Emma, but I must first see the
Oni. I follow the guardian Out of the temple, down the mossy steps, and
across the village highway into a little Japanese cottage, where I take
my seat upon the floor. The guardian disappears behind a screen, and
presently returns dragging with him the Oni--the image of a demon,
naked, blood-red, indescribably ugly. The Oni is about three feet high.
He stands in an attitude of menace, brandishing a club. He has a head
shaped something like the head of a bulldog, with brazen eyes; and his
feet are like the feet of a lion. Very gravely the guardian turns the
grotesquery round and round, that I may admire its every aspect; while a
na´ve crowd collects before the open door to look at the stranger and
the demon.

Then the guardian finds me a rude woodcut of Emma, with a sacred
inscription printed upon it; and as soon as I have paid for it, he
proceeds to stamp the paper, with the seal of the temple. The seal he
keeps in a wonderful lacquered box, covered with many wrappings of soft
leather. These having been removed, I inspect the seal--an oblong,
vermilion-red polished stone, with the design cut in intaglio upon it.
He moistens the surface with red ink, presses it upon the corner of the
paper bearing the grim picture, and the authenticity of my strange
purchase is established for ever.

º11

You do not see the Dai-Butsu as you enter the grounds of his long-
vanished temple, and proceed along a paved path across stretches of
lawn; great trees hide him. But very suddenly, at a turn, he comes into
full view and you start! No matter how many photographs of the colossus
you may have already seen, this first vision of the reality is an
astonishment. Then you imagine that you are already too near, though the
image is at least a hundred yards away. As for me, I retire at once
thirty or forty yards back, to get a better view. And the jinricksha man
runs after me, laughing and gesticulating, thinking that I imagine the
image alive and am afraid of it.

But, even were that shape alive, none could be afraid of it. The
gentleness, the dreamy passionlessness of those features,--the immense
repose of the whole figure--are full of beauty and charm. And, contrary
to all expectation, the nearer you approach the giant Buddha, the
greater this charm becomes You look up into the solemnly beautiful face
-into the half-closed eyes that seem to watch you through their eyelids
of bronze as gently as those of a child; and you feel that the image
typifies all that is tender and calm in the Soul of the East. Yet you
feel also that only Japanese thought could have created it. Its beauty,
its dignity, its perfect repose, reflect the higher life of the race
that imagined it; and, though doubtless inspired by some Indian model,
as the treatment of the hair and various symbolic marks reveal, the art
is Japanese.

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