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Authors: Lafcadio Hearn

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'Not of this world is the story of sorrow.
The story of the Sai-no-Kawara,
At the roots of the Mountain of Shide;
Not of this world is the tale; yet 'tis most pitiful to hear.
For together in the Sai-no-Kawara are assembled
Children of tender age in multitude,
Infants but two or three years old,
Infants of four or five, infants of less than ten:

In the Sai-no-Kawara are they gathered together.
And the voice of their longing for their parents,
The voice of their crying for their mothers and their fathers—
"Chichi koishi! haha koishi!"—
Is never as the voice of the crying of children in this world,
But a crying so pitiful to hear
That the sound of it would pierce through flesh and bone.
And sorrowful indeed the task which they perform—
Gathering the stones of the bed of the river,
Therewith to heap the tower of prayers.
Saying prayers for the happiness of father, they heap the first tower;
Saying prayers for the happiness of mother, they heap the second tower;
Saying prayers for their brothers, their sisters, and all whom they
loved at home, they heap the third tower.
Such, by day, are their pitiful diversions.
But ever as the sun begins to sink below the horizon,
Then do the Oni, the demons of the hells, appear,
And say to them—"What is this that you do here?
"Lo! your parents still living in the Shaba-world
"Take no thought of pious offering or holy work
"They do nought but mourn for you from the morning unto the evening.
"Oh, how pitiful! alas! how unmerciful!
"Verily the cause of the pains that you suffer
"Is only the mourning, the lamentation of your parents."
And saying also, "Blame never us!"
The demons cast down the heaped-up towers,
They dash the stones down with their clubs of iron.
But lo! the teacher Jizo appears.
All gently he comes, and says to the weeping infants:—
"Be not afraid, dears! be never fearful!
"Poor little souls, your lives were brief indeed!
"Too soon you were forced to make the weary journey to the Meido,
"The long journey to the region of the dead!
"Trust to me! I am your father and mother in the Meido,
"Father of all children in the region of the dead."
And he folds the skirt of his shining robe about them;
So graciously takes he pity on the infants.
To those who cannot walk he stretches forth his strong shakujo;
And he pets the little ones, caresses them, takes them to his loving bosom
So graciously he takes pity on the infants.

Namu Amida Butsu!

Chapter Four -
A Pilgrimage to Enoshima
*
Sec. 1

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,
[16]
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.

Sec. 2

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.

Sec. 3

'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.
[17]

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:-

Sec. 4

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.

Sec. 5

'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.

BOOK: Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan
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