Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (7 page)

What immediately rivets the attention is a terrible figure, all
vermilion red, towering above many smaller images—a goblin shape with
immense cavernous eyes. His mouth is widely opened as if speaking in
wrath, and his brows frown terribly. A long red beard descends upon his
red breast. And on his head is a strangely shaped crown, a crown of
black and gold, having three singular lobes: the left lobe bearing an
image of the moon; the right, an image of the sun; the central lobe is
all black. But below it, upon the deep gold-rimmed black band, flames
the mystic character signifying KING. Also, from the same crown-band
protrude at descending angles, to left and right, two gilded sceptre-
shaped objects. In one hand the King holds an object similar of form,
but larger his shaku or regal wand. And Akira explains.

This is Emma-O, Lord of Shadows, Judge of Souls, King of the Dead.'
[12]
Of any man having a terrible countenance the Japanese are wont to say,
'His face is the face of Emma.'

At his right hand white Jizo-Sama stands upon a many-petalled rosy
lotus.

At his left is the image of an aged woman—weird Sodzu-Baba, she who
takes the garments of the dead away by the banks of the River of the
Three Roads, which flows through the phantom-world. Pale blue her robe
is; her hair and skin are white; her face is strangely wrinkled; her
small, keen eyes are hard. The statue is very old, and the paint is
scaling from it in places, so as to lend it a ghastly leprous aspect.

There are also images of the Sea-goddess Benten and of Kwannon-Sama,
seated on summits of mountains forming the upper part of miniature
landscapes made of some unfamiliar composition, and beautifully
coloured; the whole being protected from careless fingering by strong
wire nettings stretched across the front of the little shrines
containing the panorama. Benten has eight arms: two of her hands are
joined in prayer; the others, extended above her, hold different objects
-a sword, a wheel, a bow, an arrow, a key, and a magical gem. Below
her, standing on the slopes of her mountain throne, are her ten robed
attendants, all in the attitude of prayer; still farther down appears
the body of a great white serpent, with its tail hanging from one
orifice in the rocks, and its head emerging from another. At the very
bottom of the hill lies a patient cow. Kwannon appears as Senjiu-
Kwannon, offering gifts to men with all the multitude of her arms of
mercy.

But this is not what we came to see. The pictures of heaven and hell
await us in the Zen-Shu temple close by, whither we turn our steps.

On the way my guide tells me this:

'When one dies the body is washed and shaven, and attired in white, in
the garments of a pilgrim. And a wallet (sanyabukkero), like the wallet
of a Buddhist pilgrim, is hung about the neck of the dead; and in this
wallet are placed three rin.
[13]
And these coin are buried with the
dead.

'For all who die must, except children, pay three rin at the Sanzu-no-
Kawa, "The River of the Three Roads." When souls have reached that
river, they find there the Old Woman of the Three Roads, Sodzu-Baba,
waiting for them: she lives on the banks of that river, with her
husband, Ten Datsu-Ba. And if the Old Woman is not paid the sum of three
rin, she takes away the clothes of the dead, and hangs them upon the
trees.'

The temple is small, neat, luminous with the sun pouring into its widely
opened shoji; and Akira must know the priests well, so affable their
greeting is. I make a little offering, and Akira explains the purpose of
our visit. Thereupon we are invited into a large bright apartment in a
wing of the building, overlooking a lovely garden. Little cushions are
placed on the floor for us to sit upon; and a smoking-box is brought in,
and a tiny lacquered table about eight inches high. And while one of the
priests opens a cupboard, or alcove with doors, to find the kakemono,
another brings us tea, and a plate of curious confectionery consisting
of various pretty objects made of a paste of sugar and rice flour. One
is a perfect model of a chrysanthemum blossom; another is a lotus;
others are simply large, thin, crimson lozenges bearing admirable
designs—flying birds, wading storks, fish, even miniature landscapes.
Akira picks out the chrysanthemum, and insists that I shall eat it; and
I begin to demolish the sugary blossom, petal by petal, feeling all the
while an acute remorse for spoiling so beautiful a thing.

Meanwhile four kakemono have been brought forth, unrolled, and suspended
from pegs upon the wall; and we rise to examine them.

They are very, very beautiful kakemono, miracles of drawing and of
colour-subdued colour, the colour of the best period of Japanese art;
and they are very large, fully five feet long and more than three broad,
mounted upon silk.

And these are the legends of them:

First kakemono:

In the upper part of the painting is a scene from the Shaba, the world
of men which we are wont to call the Real—a cemetery with trees in
blossom, and mourners kneeling before tombs. All under the soft blue
light of Japanese day.

Underneath is the world of ghosts. Down through the earth-crust souls
are descending. Here they are flitting all white through inky
darknesses; here farther on, through weird twilight, they are wading the
flood of the phantom River of the Three Roads, Sanzu-no-Kawa. And here
on the right is waiting for them Sodzu-Baba, the Old Woman of the Three
Roads, ghastly and grey, and tall as a nightmare. From some she is
taking their garments;—the trees about her are heavily hung with the
garments of others gone before.

Farther down I see fleeing souls overtaken by demons—hideous blood-red
demons, with feet like lions, with faces half human, half bovine, the
physiognomy of minotaurs in fury. One is rending a soul asunder. Another
demon is forcing souls to reincarnate themselves in bodies of horses, of
dogs, of swine. And as they are thus reincarnated they flee away into
shadow.

Second kakemono:

Such a gloom as the diver sees in deep-sea water, a lurid twilight. In
the midst a throne, ebon-coloured, and upon it an awful figure seated—
Emma Dai-O, Lord of Death and Judge of Souls, unpitying, tremendous.
Frightful guardian spirits hover about him—armed goblins. On the left,
in the foreground below the throne, stands the wondrous Mirror,
Tabarino-Kagami, reflecting the state of souls and all the happenings of
the world. A landscape now shadows its surface,—a landscape of cliffs
and sand and sea, with ships in the offing. Upon the sand a dead man is
lying, slain by a sword slash; the murderer is running away. Before this
mirror a terrified soul stands, in the grasp of a demon, who compels him
to look, and to recognise in the murderer's features his own face. To
the right of the throne, upon a tall-stemmed flat stand, such as
offerings to the gods are placed upon in the temples, a monstrous shape
appears, like a double-faced head freshly cut off, and set upright upon
the stump of the neck. The two faces are the Witnesses: the face of the
Woman (Mirume) sees all that goes on in the Shaba; the other face is the
face of a bearded man, the face of Kaguhana, who smells all odours, and
by them is aware of all that human beings do. Close to them, upon a
reading-stand, a great book is open, the record-book of deeds. And
between the Mirror and the Witnesses white shuddering souls await
judgment.

Farther down I see the sufferings of souls already sentenced. One, in
lifetime a liar, is having his tongue torn out by a demon armed with
heated pincers. Other souls, flung by scores into fiery carts, are being
dragged away to torment. The carts are of iron, but resemble in form
certain hand-wagons which one sees every day being pulled and pushed
through the streets by bare-limbed Japanese labourers, chanting always
the same melancholy alternating chorus, Haidak! hei! haidah hei! But
these demon-wagoners—naked, blood-coloured, having the feet of lions
and the heads of bulls—move with their flaming wagons at a run, like
jinricksha-men.

All the souls so far represented are souls of adults.

Third kakemono:

A furnace, with souls for fuel, blazing up into darkness. Demons stir
the fire with poles of iron. Down through the upper blackness other
souls are falling head downward into the flames.

Below this scene opens a shadowy landscape—a faint-blue and faint-grey
world of hills and vales, through which a river serpentines—the Sai-
no-Kawara. Thronging the banks of the pale river are ghosts of little
children, trying to pile up stones. They are very, very pretty, the
child-souls, pretty as real Japanese children are (it is astonishing how
well is child-beauty felt and expressed by the artists of Japan). Each
child has one little short white dress.

In the foreground a horrible devil with an iron club has just dashed
down and scattered a pile of stones built by one of the children. The
little ghost, seated by the ruin of its work, is crying, with both
pretty hands to its eyes. The devil appears to sneer. Other children
also are weeping near by. But, lo! Jizo comes, all light and sweetness,
with a glory moving behind him like a great full moon; and he holds out
his shakujo, his strong and holy staff, and the little ghosts catch it
and cling to it, and are drawn into the circle of his protection. And
other infants have caught his great sleeves, and one has been lifted to
the bosom of the god.

Below this Sai-no-Kawara scene appears yet another shadow-world, a
wilderness of bamboos! Only white-robed shapes of women appear in it.
They are weeping; the fingers of all are bleeding. With finger-nails
plucked out must they continue through centuries to pick the sharp-edged
bamboo-grass.

Fourth kakemono:

Floating in glory, Dai-Nichi-Nyorai, Kwannon-Sama, Amida Buddha. Far
below them as hell from heaven surges a lake of blood, in which souls
float. The shores of this lake are precipices studded with sword-blades
thickly set as teeth in the jaws of a shark; and demons are driving
naked ghosts up the frightful slopes. But out of the crimson lake
something crystalline rises, like a beautiful, clear water-spout; the
stem of a flower,—a miraculous lotus, hearing up a soul to the feet of
a priest standing above the verge of the abyss. By virtue of his prayer
was shaped the lotus which thus lifted up and saved a sufferer.

Alas! there are no other kakemonos. There were several others: they have
been lost!

No: I am happily mistaken; the priest has found, in some mysterious
recess, one more kakemono, a very large one, which he unrolls and
suspends beside the others. A vision of beauty, indeed! but what has
this to do with faith or ghosts? In the foreground a garden by the
waters of the sea, of some vast blue lake,—a garden like that at
Kanagawa, full of exquisite miniature landscape-work: cascades,
grottoes, lily-ponds, carved bridges, and trees snowy with blossom, and
dainty pavilions out-jutting over the placid azure water. Long, bright,
soft bands of clouds swim athwart the background. Beyond and above them
rises a fairy magnificence of palatial structures, roof above roof,
through an aureate haze like summer vapour: creations aerial, blue,
light as dreams. And there are guests in these gardens, lovely beings,
Japanese maidens. But they wear aureoles, star-shining: they are
spirits!

For this is Paradise, the Gokuraku; and all those divine shapes are
Bosatsu. And now, looking closer, I perceive beautiful weird things
which at first escaped my notice.

They are gardening, these charming beings!—they are caressing the
lotus-buds, sprinkling their petals with something celestial, helping
them to blossom. And what lotus-buds with colours not of this world.
Some have burst open; and in their luminous hearts, in a radiance like
that of dawn, tiny naked infants are seated, each with a tiny halo.
These are Souls, new Buddhas, hotoke born into bliss. Some are very,
very small; others larger; all seem to be growing visibly, for their
lovely nurses are feeding them with something ambrosial. I see one which
has left its lotus-cradle, being conducted by a celestial Jizo toward
the higher splendours far away.

Above, in the loftiest blue, are floating tennin, angels of the Buddhist
heaven, maidens with phoenix wings. One is playing with an ivory
plectrum upon some stringed instrument, just as a dancing-girl plays her
samisen; and others are sounding those curious Chinese flutes, composed
of seventeen tubes, which are used still in sacred concerts at the great
temples.

Akira says this heaven is too much like earth. The gardens, he declares,
are like the gardens of temples, in spite of the celestial lotus-
flowers; and in the blue roofs of the celestial mansions he discovers
memories of the tea-houses of the city of Saikyo.
[14]

Well, what after all is the heaven of any faith but ideal reiteration
and prolongation of happy experiences remembered—the dream of dead
days resurrected for us, and made eternal? And if you think this
Japanese ideal too simple, too naive, if you say there are experiences
of the material life more worthy of portrayal in a picture of heaven
than any memory of days passed in Japanese gardens and temples and tea-
houses, it is perhaps because you do not know Japan, the soft, sweet
blue of its sky, the tender colour of its waters, the gentle splendour
of its sunny days, the exquisite charm of its interiors, where the least
object appeals to one's sense of beauty with the air of something not
made, but caressed, into existence.

'Now there is a wasan of Jizo,' says Akira, taking from a shelf in the
temple alcove some much-worn, blue-covered Japanese book. 'A wasan is
what you would call a hymn or psalm. This book is two hundred years old:
it is called Saino-Kawara-kuchi-zu-sami-no-den, which is, literally,
"The Legend of the Humming of the Sai-no-Kawara." And this is the
wasan'; and he reads me the hymn of Jizo—the legend of the murmur of
the little ghosts, the legend of the humming of the Sai-no-Kawara-
rhythmically, like a song:
[15]