Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (30 page)

In the family of one Sengoku, a samurai of Matsue, there was a Tokutaro-
San which had a local reputation scarcely inferior to that of Kishibojin
—she to whom Japanese wives pray for offspring. And childless couples
used to borrow that doll, and keep it for a time—ministering unto it—
and furnish it with new clothes before gratefully returning it to its
owners. And all who did so, I am assured, became parents, according to
their heart's desire. 'Sengoku's doll had a soul.' There is even a
legend that once, when the house caught fire, the TokutarO-San ran out
safely into the garden of its own accord!

The idea about such a doll seems to be this: The new doll is only a
doll. But a doll which is preserved for a great many years in one
family,
[72]
and is loved and played with by generations of children,
gradually acquires a soul. I asked a charming Japanese girl: 'How can a
doll live?'

'Why,' she answered, 'if you love it enough, it will live!'

What is this but Renan's thought of a deity in process of evolution,
uttered by the heart of a child?

But even the most beloved dolls are worn out at last, or get broken in
the course of centuries. And when a doll must be considered quite dead,
its remains are still entitled to respect. Never is the corpse of a doll
irreverently thrown away. Neither is it burned or cast into pure running
water, as all sacred objects of the miya must be when they have ceased
to be serviceable. And it is not buried. You could not possibly imagine
what is done with it.

It is dedicated to the God Kojin,
[73]
—a somewhat mysterious divinity,
half-Buddhist, half-Shinto. The ancient Buddhist images of Kojin
represented a deity with many arms;—the Shinto Kojin of Izumo has, I
believe, no artistic representation whatever. But in almost every
Shinto, and also in many Buddhist, temple grounds, is planted the tree
called enoki
[74]
which is sacred to him, and in which he is supposed by
the peasantry to dwell; for they pray before the enoki always to Kojin.
And there is usually a small shrine placed before the tree, and a little
torii also. Now you may often see laid upon such a shrine of Kojin, or
at the foot of his sacred tree, or in a hollow thereof—if there be any
hollow—pathetic remains of dolls. But a doll is seldom given to Kojin
during the lifetime of its possessor. When you see one thus exposed, you
may be almost certain that it was found among the effects of some poor
dead woman—the innocent memento of her girlhood, perhaps even also of
the girlhood of her mother and of her mother's mother.

And now we are to see the Honen-odori—which begins at eight o'clock.
There is no moon; and the night is pitch-black overhead: but there is
plenty of light in the broad court of the Guji's residence, for a
hundred lanterns have been kindled and hung out. I and my friend have
been provided with comfortable places in the great pavilion which opens
upon the court, and the pontiff has had prepared for us a delicious
little supper.

Already thousands have assembled before the pavilion—young men of
Kitzuki and young peasants from the environs, and women and children in
multitude, and hundreds of young girls. The court is so thronged that it
is difficult to assume the possibility of any dance. Illuminated by the
lantern-light, the scene is more than picturesque: it is a carnivalesque
display of gala-costume. Of course the peasants come in their ancient
attire: some in rain-coats (mino), or overcoats of yellow straw; others
with blue towels tied round their heads; many with enormous mushroom
hats—all with their blue robes well tucked up. But the young townsmen
come in all guises and disguises. Many have dressed themselves in female
attire; some are all in white duck, like police; some have mantles on;
others wear shawls exactly as a Mexican wears his zarape; numbers of
young artisans appear almost as lightly clad as in working-hours,
barelegged to the hips, and barearmed to the shoulders. Among the girls
some wonderful dressing is to be seen—ruby-coloured robes, and rich
greys and browns and purples, confined with exquisite obi, or girdles of
figured satin; but the best taste is shown in the simple and very
graceful black and white costumes worn by some maidens of the better
classes—dresses especially made for dancing, and not to be worn at any
other time. A few shy damsels have completely masked themselves by tying
down over their cheeks the flexible brims of very broad straw hats. I
cannot attempt to talk about the delicious costumes of the children: as
well try to describe without paint the variegated loveliness of moths
and butterflies.

In the centre of this multitude I see a huge rice-mortar turned upside
down; and presently a sandalled peasant leaps upon it lightly, and
stands there—with an open paper umbrella above his head. Nevertheless
it is not raining. That is the Ondo-tori, the leader of the dance, who
is celebrated through all Izumo as a singer. According to ancient
custom, the leader of the Honen-odori
[75]
always holds an open umbrella
above his head while he sings.

Suddenly, at a signal from the Guji, who has just taken his place in the
pavilion, the voice of the Ondo-tori, intoning the song of thanksgiving,
rings out over all the murmuring of the multitude like a silver cornet.
A wondrous voice, and a wondrous song, full of trills and quaverings
indescribable, but full also of sweetness and true musical swing. And as
he sings, he turns slowly round upon his high pedestal, with the
umbrella always above his head; never halting in his rotation from right
to left, but pausing for a regular interval in his singing, at the close
of each two verses, when the people respond with a joyous outcry:
'Ya-ha-to-nai!-ya-ha-to-nai!' Simultaneously, an astonishingly rapid
movement of segregation takes place in the crowd; two enormous rings of
dancers form, one within the other, the rest of the people pressing back
to make room for the odori. And then this great double-round, formed by
fully five hundred dancers, begins also to revolve from right to
left—lightly, fantastically—all the tossing of arms and white twinkling of
feet keeping faultless time to the measured syllabification of the
chant. An immense wheel the dance is, with the Ondo-tori for its
axis—always turning slowly upon his rice-mortar, under his open umbrella, as
he sings the song of harvest thanksgiving:

[76]
Ichi-wa—Izumo-no-Taisha-Sama-ye;
Ni-ni-wa—Niigata-no-Irokami-Sama-ye;
San-wa—Sanuki-no-Kompira-Sama-ye;
Shi-ni-wa—Shinano-no-Zenkoji-Sama-ye;
Itsutsu—Ichibata-O-Yakushi-Sama-ye;
Roku-niwa—Rokkakudo-no-O-Jizo-Sama-ye;
Nanatsu—Nana-ura-no-O-Ebisu-Sama-ye;
Yattsu—Yawata-no-Hachiman-Sama-ye;
Kokonotsu—Koya-no-O-teradera-ye;
To-niwa—Tokoro-no-Ujigami-Sama-ye.

And the voices of all the dancers in unison roll out the chorus:

Ya-ha-to-nai!
Ya-ha-to-nail

Utterly different this whirling joyous Honen-odori from the Bon-odori
which I witnessed last year at Shimo-Ichi, and which seemed to me a very
dance of ghosts. But it is also much more difficult to describe. Each
dancer makes a half-wheel alternately to left and right, with a peculiar
bending of the knees and tossing up of the hands at the same time—as
in the act of lifting a weight above the head; but there are other
curious movements-jerky with the men, undulatory with the women—as
impossible to describe as water in motion. These are decidedly complex,
yet so regular that five hundred pairs of feet and hands mark the
measure of the song as truly as if they were under the control of a
single nervous system.

It is strangely difficult to memorise the melody of a Japanese popular
song, or the movements of a Japanese dance; for the song and the dance
have been evolved through an aesthetic sense of rhythm in sound and in
motion as different from the corresponding Occidental sense as English
is different from Chinese. We have no ancestral sympathies with these
exotic rhythms, no inherited aptitudes for their instant comprehension,
no racial impulses whatever in harmony with them. But when they have
become familiar through study, after a long residence in the Orient, how
nervously fascinant the oscillation of the dance, and the singular swing
of the song!

This dance, I know, began at eight o'clock; and the Ondo-tori, after
having sung without a falter in his voice for an extraordinary time, has
been relieved by a second. But the great round never breaks, never
slackens its whirl; it only enlarges as the night wears on. And the
second Ondo-tori is relieved by a third; yet I would like to watch that
dance for ever.

'What time do you think it is?' my friend asks, looking at his watch.

'Nearly eleven o'clock,' I make answer.

'Eleven o'clock! It is exactly eight minutes to three o'clock. And our
host will have little time for sleep before the rising of the sun.'

KITZUKI, August 10, 1891.

MY Japanese friends urge me to visit Hinomisaki, where no European has
ever been, and where there is a far-famed double temple dedicated to
Amaterasu-oho-mi-Kami, the Lady of Light, and to her divine brother
Take-haya-susa-no-wo-no-mikoto. Hinomisaki is a little village on the
Izumo coast about five miles from Kitzuki. It maybe reached by a
mountain path, but the way is extremely steep, rough, and fatiguing. By
boat, when the weather is fair, the trip is very agreeable. So, with a
friend, I start for Hinomisaki in a very cozy ryosen, skilfully sculled
by two young fishermen.

Leaving the pretty bay of Inasa, we follow the coast to the right—a
very lofty and grim coast without a beach. Below us the clear water
gradually darkens to inky blackness, as the depth increases; but at
intervals pale jagged rocks rise up from this nether darkness to catch
the light fifty feet under the surface. We keep tolerably close to the
cliffs, which vary in height from three hundred to six hundred feet—
their bases rising from the water all dull iron-grey, their sides and
summits green with young pines and dark grasses that toughen in sea-
wind. All the coast is abrupt, ravined, irregular—curiously breached
and fissured. Vast masses of it have toppled into the sea; and the black
ruins project from the deep in a hundred shapes of menace. Sometimes our
boat glides between a double line of these; or takes a zigzag course
through labyrinths of reef-channels. So swiftly and deftly is the little
craft impelled to right and left, that one could almost believe it sees
its own way and moves by its own intelligence. And again we pass by
extraordinary islets of prismatic rock whose sides, just below the
water-line, are heavily mossed with seaweed. The polygonal masses
composing these shapes are called by the fishermen 'tortoise-shell
stones.' There is a legend that once Oho-kuni-nushi-no-Kami, to try his
strength, came here, and, lifting up one of these masses of basalt,
flung it across the sea to the mountain of Sanbeyama. At the foot of
Sanbe the mighty rock thus thrown by the Great Deity of Kitzuki may
still be seen, it is alleged, even unto this day.

More and more bare and rugged and ghastly the coast becomes as we
journey on, and the sunken ledges more numerous, and the protruding
rocks more dangerous, splinters of strata piercing the sea-surface from
a depth of thirty fathoms. Then suddenly our boat makes a dash for the
black cliff, and shoots into a tremendous cleft of it—an earthquake
fissure with sides lofty and perpendicular as the walls of a canon-and
lo! there is daylight ahead. This is a miniature strait, a short cut to
the bay. We glide through it in ten minutes, reach open water again, and
Hinomisaki is before us-a semicircle of houses clustering about a bay
curve, with an opening in their centre, prefaced by a torii.

Of all bays I have ever seen, this is the most extraordinary. Imagine an
enormous sea-cliff torn out and broken down level with the sea, so as to
leave a great scoop-shaped hollow in the land, with one original
fragment of the ancient cliff still standing in the middle of the gap—
a monstrous square tower of rock, bearing trees upon its summit. And a
thousand yards out from the shore rises another colossal rock, fully one
hundred feet high. This is known by the name of Fumishima or
Okyogashima; and the temple of the Sun-goddess, which we are now about
to see, formerly stood upon that islet. The same appalling forces which
formed the bay of Hinomisaki doubtless also detached the gigantic mass
of Fumishima from this iron coast.

We land at the right end of the bay. Here also there is no beach; the
water is black-deep close to the shore, which slopes up rapidly. As we
mount the slope, an extraordinary spectacle is before us. Upon thousands
and thousands of bamboo frames—shaped somewhat like our clothes-horses
-are dangling countless pale yellowish things, the nature of which I
cannot discern at first glance. But a closer inspection reveals the
mystery. Millions of cuttlefish drying in the sun! I could never have
believed that so many cuttlefish existed in these waters. And there is
scarcely any variation in the dimensions of them: out of ten thousand
there is not the difference of half an inch in length.

The great torii which forms the sea-gate of Hinomisaki is of white
granite, and severely beautiful. Through it we pass up the main street
of the village—surprisingly wide for about a thousand yards, after
which it narrows into a common highway which slopes up a wooded hill and
disappears under the shadow of trees. On the right, as you enter the
street, is a long vision of grey wooden houses with awnings and
balconies—little shops, little two-story dwellings of fishermen—and
ranging away in front of these other hosts of bamboo frames from which
other millions of freshly caught cuttlefish are hanging. On the other
side of the street rises a cyclopean retaining wall, massive as the wall
of a daimyo's castle, and topped by a lofty wooden parapet pierced with
gates; and above it tower the roofs of majestic buildings, whose
architecture strongly resembles that of the structures of Kitzuki; and
behind all appears a beautiful green background of hills. This is the
Hinomisaki-jinja. But one must walk some considerable distance up the
road to reach the main entrance of the court, which is at the farther
end of the inclosure, and is approached by an imposing broad flight of
granite steps.