Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (18 page)

At the farther end of the bridge, close to the wharf where the little
steamboats are, is a very small Jizo temple (Jizo-do). Here are kept
many bronze drags; and whenever anyone has been drowned and the body not
recovered, these are borrowed from the little temple and the river is
dragged. If the body be thus found, a new drag must be presented to the
temple.

From here, half a mile southward to the great Shinto temple of Tenjin,
deity of scholarship and calligraphy, broadly stretches Tenjinmachi, the
Street of the Rich Merchants, all draped on either side with dark blue
hangings, over which undulate with every windy palpitation from the lake
white wondrous ideographs, which are names and signs, while down the
wide way, in white perspective, diminishes a long line of telegraph
poles.

Beyond the temple of Tenjin the city is again divided by a river, the
Shindotegawa, over which arches the bridge Tenjin-bashi. Again beyond
this other large quarters extend to the hills and curve along the lake
shore. But in the space between the two rivers is the richest and
busiest life of the city, and also the vast and curious quarter of the
temples. In this islanded district are likewise the theatres, and the
place where wrestling-matches are held, and most of the resorts of
pleasure.

Parallel with Tenjinmachi runs the great street of the Buddhist temples,
or Teramachi, of which the eastern side is one unbroken succession of
temples—a solid front of court walls tile-capped, with imposing
gateways at regular intervals. Above this long stretch of tile-capped
wall rise the beautiful tilted massive lines of grey-blue temple roofs
against the sky. Here all the sects dwell side by side in harmony—
Nichirenshu, Shingon-shu, Zen-shu, Tendai-shu, even that Shin-shu,
unpopular in Izumo because those who follow its teaching strictly must
not worship the Kami. Behind each temple court there is a cemetery, or
hakaba; and eastward beyond these are other temples, and beyond them yet
others—masses of Buddhist architecture mixed with shreds of gardens
and miniature homesteads, a huge labyrinth of mouldering courts and
fragments of streets.

To-day, as usual, I find I can pass a few hours very profitably in
visiting the temples; in looking at the ancient images seated within the
cups of golden lotus-flowers under their aureoles of gold; in buying
curious mamori; in examining the sculptures of the cemeteries, where I
can nearly always find some dreaming Kwannon or smiling Jizo well worth
the visit.

The great courts of Buddhist temples are places of rare interest for one
who loves to watch the life of the people; for these have been for
unremembered centuries the playing-places of the children. Generations
of happy infants have been amused in them. All the nurses, and little
girls who carry tiny brothers or sisters upon their backs, go thither
every morning that the sun shines; hundreds of children join them; and
they play at strange, funny games—'Onigokko,' or the game of Devil,
'Kage-Oni,' which signifies the Shadow and the Demon, and
'Mekusangokko,' which is a sort of 'blindman's buff.'

Also, during the long summer evenings, these temples are wrestling-
grounds, free to all who love wrestling; and in many of them there is a
dohyo-ba, or wrestling-ring. Robust young labourers and sinewy artisans
come to these courts to test their strength after the day's tasks are
done, and here the fame of more than one now noted wrestler was first
made. When a youth has shown himself able to overmatch at wrestling all
others in his own district, he is challenged by champions of other
districts; and if he can overcome these also, he may hope eventually to
become a skilled and popular professional wrestler.

It is also in the temple courts that the sacred dances are performed and
that public speeches are made. It is in the temple courts, too, that the
most curious toys are sold, on the occasion of the great holidays—toys
most of which have a religious signification. There are grand old trees,
and ponds full of tame fish, which put up their heads to beg for food
when your shadow falls upon the water. The holy lotus is cultivated
therein.

'Though growing in the foulest slime, the flower remains pure and
undefiled.

'And the soul of him who remains ever pure in the midst of temptation is
likened unto the lotus.

'Therefore is the lotus carven or painted upon the furniture of temples;
therefore also does it appear in allthe representations of our Lord
Buddha.

'In Paradise the blessed shall sit at ease enthroned upon the cups of
golden lotus-flowers.'
[36]

A bugle-call rings through the quaint street; and round the corner of
the last temple come marching a troop of handsome young riflemen,
uniformed somewhat like French light infantry, marching by fours so
perfectly that all the gaitered legs move as if belonging to a single
body, and every sword-bayonet catches the sun at exactly the same angle,
as the column wheels into view. These are the students of the Shihan-
Gakko, the College of Teachers, performing their daily military
exercises. Their professors give them lectures upon the microscopic
study of cellular tissues, upon the segregation of developing nerve
structure, upon spectrum analysis, upon the evolution of the colour
sense, and upon the cultivation of bacteria in glycerine infusions. And
they are none the less modest and knightly in manner for all their
modern knowledge, nor the less reverentially devoted to their dear old
fathers and mothers whose ideas were shaped in the era of feudalism.

Here come a band of pilgrims, with yellow straw overcoats, 'rain-coats'
(mino), and enormous yellow straw hats, mushroom-shaped, of which the
down-curving rim partly hides the face. All carry staffs, and wear their
robes well girded up so as to leave free the lower limbs, which are
inclosed in white cotton leggings of a peculiar and indescribable kind.
Precisely the same sort of costume was worn by the same class of
travellers many centuries ago; and just as you now see them trooping by
-whole families wandering together, the pilgrim child clinging to the
father's hands—so may you see them pass in quaint procession across
the faded pages of Japanese picture-books a hundred years old.

At intervals they halt before some shop-front to look at the many
curious things which they greatly enjoy seeing, but which they have no
money to buy.

I myself have become so accustomed to surprises, to interesting or
extraordinary sights, that when a day happens to pass during which
nothing remarkable has been heard or seen I feel vaguely discontented.
But such blank days are rare: they occur in my own case only when the
weather is too detestable to permit of going out-of-doors. For with ever
so little money one can always obtain the pleasure of looking at curious
things. And this has been one of the chief pleasures of the people in
Japan for centuries and centuries, for the nation has passed its
generations of lives in making or seeking such things. To divert one's
self seems, indeed, the main purpose of Japanese existence, beginning
with the opening of the baby's wondering eyes. The faces of the people
have an indescribable look of patient expectancy—the air of waiting
for something interesting to make its appearance. If it fail to appear,
they will travel to find it: they are astonishing pedestrians and
tireless pilgrims, and I think they make pilgrimages not more for the
sake of pleasing the gods than of pleasing themselves by the sight of
rare and pretty things. For every temple is a museum, and every hill and
valley throughout the land has its temple and its wonders.

Even the poorest farmer, one so poor that he cannot afford to eat a
grain of his own rice, can afford to make a pilgrimage of a month's
duration; and during that season when the growing rice needs least
attention hundreds of thousands of the poorest go on pilgrimages. This
is possible, because from ancient times it has been the custom for
everybody to help pilgrims a little; and they can always find rest and
shelter at particular inns (kichinyado) which receive pilgrims only, and
where they are charged merely the cost of the wood used to cook their
food.

But multitudes of the poor undertake pilgrimages requiring much more
than a month to perform, such as the pilgrimage to the thirty-three
great temples of Kwannon, or that to the eighty-eight temples of
Kobodaishi; and these, though years be needed to accomplish them, are as
nothing compared to the enormous Sengaji, the pilgrimage to the thousand
temples of the Nichiren sect. The time of a generation may pass ere this
can be made. One may begin it in early youth, and complete it only when
youth is long past. Yet there are several in Matsue, men and women, who
have made this tremendous pilgrimage, seeing all Japan, and supporting
themselves not merely by begging, but by some kinds of itinerant
peddling.

The pilgrim who desires to perform this pilgrimage carries on his
shoulders a small box, shaped like a Buddhist shrine, in which he keeps
his spare clothes and food. He also carries a little brazen gong, which
he constantly sounds while passing through a city or village, at the
same time chanting the Namu-myo-ho-ren-ge-kyo; and he always bears with
him a little blank book, in which the priest of every temple visited
stamps the temple seal in red ink. The pilgrimage over, this book with
its one thousand seal impressions becomes an heirloom in the family of
the pilgrim.

I too must make divers pilgrimages, for all about the city, beyond the
waters or beyond the hills, lie holy places immemorially old.

Kitzuki, founded by the ancient gods, who 'made stout the pillars upon
the nethermost rock bottom, and made high the cross-beams to the Plain
of High Heaven'—Kitzuki, the Holy of Holies, whose high-priest claims
descent from the Goddess of the Sun; and Ichibata, famed shrine of
Yakushi-Nyorai, who giveth sight to the blind—Ichibata-no-Yakushi,
whose lofty temple is approached by six hundred and forty steps of
stone; and Kiomidzu, shrine of Kwannon of the Eleven Faces, before whose
altar the sacred fire has burned without ceasing for a thousand years;
and Sada, where the Sacred Snake lies coiled for ever on the sambo of
the gods; and Oba, with its temples of Izanami and Izanagi, parents of
gods and men, the makers of the world; and Yaegaki, whither lovers go to
pray for unions with the beloved; and Kaka, Kaka-ura, Kaka-noKukedo San
-all these I hope to see.

But of all places, Kaka-ura! Assuredly I must go to Kaka. Few pilgrims
go thither by sea, and boatmen are forbidden to go there if there be
even wind enough 'to move three hairs.' So that whosoever wishes to
visit Kaka must either wait for a period of dead calm—very rare upon
the coast of the Japanese Sea—or journey thereunto by land; and by
land the way is difficult and wearisome. But I must see Kaka. For at
Kaka, in a great cavern by the sea, there is a famous Jizo of stone; and
each night, it is said, the ghosts of little children climb to the high
cavern and pile up before the statue small heaps of pebbles; and every
morning, in the soft sand, there may be seen the fresh prints of tiny
naked feet, the feet of the infant ghosts. It is also said that in the
cavern there is a rock out of which comes a stream of milk, as from a
woman's breast; and the white stream flows for ever, and the phantom
children drink of it. Pilgrims bring with them gifts of small straw
sandals—the zori that children wear—and leave them before the
cavern, that the feet of the little ghosts may not be wounded by the
sharp rocks. And the pilgrim treads with caution, lest he should
overturn any of the many heaps of stones; for if this be done the
children cry.

The city proper is as level as a table, but is bounded on two sides by
low demilunes of charming hills shadowed with evergreen foliage and
crowned with temples or shrines. There are thirty-five thousand souls
dwelling in ten thousand houses forming thirty-three principal and many
smaller streets; and from each end of almost every street, beyond the
hills, the lake, or the eastern rice-fields, a mountain summit is always
visible—green, blue, or grey according to distance. One may ride,
walk, or go by boat to any quarter of the town; for it is not only
divided by two rivers, but is also intersected by numbers of canals
crossed by queer little bridges curved like a well-bent bow.
Architecturally (despite such constructions in European style as the
College of Teachers, the great public school, the Kencho, the new post-
office), it is much like other quaint Japanese towns; the structure of
its temples, taverns, shops, and private dwellings is the same as in
other cities of the western coast. But doubtless owing to the fact that
Matsue remained a feudal stronghold until a time within the memory of
thousands still living, those feudal distinctions of caste so sharply
drawn in ancient times are yet indicated with singular exactness by the
varying architecture of different districts. The city can be definitely
divided into three architectural quarters: the district of the merchants
and shop-keepers, forming the heart of the settlement, where all the
houses are two stories high; the district of the temples, including
nearly the whole south-eastern part of the town; and the district or
districts of the shizoku (formerly called samurai), comprising a vast
number of large, roomy, garden-girt, one-story dwellings. From these
elegant homes, in feudal days, could be summoned at a moment's notice
five thousand 'two-sworded men' with their armed retainers, making a
fighting total for the city alone of probably not less than thirteen
thousand warriors. More than one-third of all the city buildings were
then samurai homes; for Matsue was the military centre of the most
ancient province of Japan. At both ends of the town, which curves in a
crescent along the lake shore, were the two main settlements of samurai;
but just as some of the most important temples are situated outside of
the temple district, so were many of the finest homesteads of this
knightly caste situated in other quarters. They mustered most thickly,
however, about the castle, which stands to-day on the summit of its
citadel hill—the Oshiroyama—solid as when first built long centuries
ago, a vast and sinister shape, all iron-grey, rising against the sky
from a cyclopean foundation of stone. Fantastically grim the thing is,
and grotesquely complex in detail; looking somewhat like a huge pagoda,
of which the second, third, and fourth stories have been squeezed down
and telescoped into one another by their own weight. Crested at its
summit, like a feudal helmet, with two colossal fishes of bronze lifting
their curved bodies skyward from either angle of the roof, and bristling
with horned gables and gargoyled eaves and tilted puzzles of tiled
roofing at every story, the creation is a veritable architectural
dragon, made up of magnificent monstrosities—a dragon, moreover, full
of eyes set at all conceivable angles, above below, and on every side.
From under the black scowl of the loftiest eaves, looking east and
south, the whole city can be seen at a single glance, as in the vision
of a soaring hawk; and from the northern angle the view plunges down
three hundred feet to the castle road, where walking figures of men
appear no larger than flies.