Bab Bab 6 · Bon-odori

--the

ceremony of farewell. All that the living may do to please the dead has

been done; the time allotted by the powers of the unseen worlds unto the

ghostly visitants is well nigh past, and their friends must send them

all back again.

Everything has been prepared for them. In each home small boats made of

barley straw closely woven have been freighted with supplies of choice

food, with tiny lanterns, and written messages of faith and love. Seldom

more than two feet in length are these boats; but the dead require

little room. And the frail craft are launched on canal, lake, sea, or

river--each with a miniature lantern glowing at the prow, and incense

burning at the stern. And if the night be fair, they voyage long. Down

all the creeks and rivers and canals the phantom fleets go glimmering to

the sea; and all the sea sparkles to the horizon with the lights of the

dead, and the sea wind is fragrant with incense.

But alas! it is now forbidden in the great seaports to launch the

shoryobune, 'the boats of the blessed ghosts.'

Sec. 4

It is so narrow, the Street of the Aged Men, that by stretching out

one's arms one can touch the figured sign-draperies before its tiny

shops on both sides at once. And these little ark-shaped houses really

seem toy-houses; that in which Akira lives is even smaller than the

rest, having no shop in it, and no miniature second story. It is all

closed up. Akira slides back the wooden amado which forms the door, and

then the paper-paned screens behind it; and the tiny structure, thus

opened, with its light unpainted woodwork and painted paper partitions,

looks something like a great bird-cage. But the rush matting of the

elevated floor is fresh, sweet-smelling, spotless; and as we take off

our footgear to mount upon it I see that all within is neat, curious,

and pretty.

'The woman has gone out,' says Akira, setting the smoking-box (hibachi)

in the middle of the floor, and spreading beside it a little mat for me

to squat upon.

'But what is this, Akira?' I ask, pointing to a thin board suspended by

a ribbon on the wall--a board so cut from the middle of a branch as

to leave the bark along its edges. There are two columns of mysterious

signs exquisitely painted upon it.

'Oh, that is a calendar,' answers Akira. 'On the right side are the

names of the months having thirty-one days; on the left, the names of

those having less. Now here is a household shrine.'

Occupying the alcove, which is an indispensable part of the structure of

Japanese guest-rooms, is a native cabinet painted with figures of flying

birds; and on this cabinet stands the butsuma. It is a small lacquered

and gilded shrine, with little doors modelled after those of a temple

gate--a shrine very quaint, very much dilapidated (one door has lost its

hinges), but still a dainty thing despite its crackled lacquer and faded

gilding. Akira opens it with a sort of compassionate smile; and I look

inside for the image. There is none; only a wooden tablet with a band of

white paper attached to it, bearing Japanese characters--the name of a

dead baby girl--and a vase of expiring flowers, a tiny print of Kwannon,

the Goddess of Mercy, and a cup filled with ashes of incense.

'Tomorrow,' Akira says, 'she will decorate this, and make the offerings

of food to the little one.'

Hanging from the ceiling, on the opposite side of the room, and in front

of the shrine, is a wonderful, charming, funny, white-and-rosy mask--the

face of a laughing, chubby girl with two mysterious spots upon her

forehead, the face of Otafuku. [2] It twirls round and round in the soft

air-current coming through the open shoji; and every time those funny

black eyes, half shut with laughter, look at me, I cannot help smiling.

And hanging still higher, I see little Shinto emblems of paper (gohei),

a miniature mitre-shaped cap in likeness of those worn in the sacred

dances, a pasteboard emblem of the magic gem (Nio-i hojiu) which the

gods bear in their hands, a small Japanese doll, and a little

wind-wheel which will spin around with the least puff of air, and other

indescribable toys, mostly symbolic, such as are sold on festal days in

the courts of the temples--the playthings of the dead child.

'Komban!' exclaims a very gentle voice behind us. The mother is

standing there, smiling as if pleased at the stranger's interest in her

butsuma--a middle-aged woman of the poorest class, not comely, but with

a most kindly face. We return her evening greeting; and while I sit down

upon the little mat laid before the hibachi, Akira whispers something to

her, with the result that a small kettle is at once set to boil over a

very small charcoal furnace. We are probably going to have some tea.

As Akira takes his seat before me, on the other side of the hibachi, I

ask him:

'What was the name I saw on the tablet?'

'The name which you saw,' he answers, 'was not the real name. The real

name is written upon the other side. After death another name is given

by the priest. A dead boy is called Ryochi Doji; a dead girl, Mioyo

Donyo.'

While we are speaking, the woman approaches the little shrine, opens it,

arranges the objects in it, lights the tiny lamp, and with joined hands

and bowed head begins to pray. Totally unembarrassed by our presence

and our chatter she seems, as one accustomed to do what is right and

beautiful heedless of human opinion; praying with that brave, true

frankness which belongs to the poor only of this world--those simple

souls who never have any secret to hide, either from each other or from

heaven, and of whom Ruskin nobly said, 'These are our holiest.' I do not

know what words her heart is murmuring: I hear only at moments that

soft sibilant sound, made by gently drawing the breath through the lips,

which among this kind people is a token of humblest desire to please.

As I watch the tender little rite, I become aware of something dimly

astir in the mystery of my own life--vaguely, indefinably familiar,

like a memory ancestral, like the revival of a sensation forgotten two

thousand years. Blended in some strange way it seems to be with my faint

knowledge of an elder world, whose household gods were also the beloved

dead; and there is a weird sweetness in this place, like a shadowing of

Lares.

Then, her brief prayer over, she turns to her miniature furnace again.

She talks and laughs with Akira; she prepares the tea, pours it out

in tiny cups and serves it to us, kneeling in that graceful

attitude--picturesque, traditional--which for six hundred years has been

the attitude of the Japanese woman serving tea. Verily, no small part of

the life of the woman of Japan is spent thus in serving little cups of

tea. Even as a ghost, she appears in popular prints offering to somebody

spectral tea-cups of spectral tea. Of all Japanese ghost-pictures, I

know of none more pathetic than that in which the phantom of a woman

kneeling humbly offers to her haunted and remorseful murderer a little

cup of tea!

'Now let us go to the Bon-ichi,' says Akira, rising; 'she must go there

herself soon, and it is already getting dark. Sayonara!'

It is indeed almost dark as we leave the little house: stars are

pointing in the strip of sky above the street; but it is a beautiful

night for a walk, with a tepid breeze blowing at intervals, and sending

long flutterings through the miles of shop draperies. The market is in

the narrow street at the verge of the city, just below the hill where

the great Buddhist temple of Zoto-Kuin stands--in the Motomachi, only

ten squares away.

Sec. 5

The curious narrow street is one long blaze of lights--lights of lantern

signs, lights of torches and lamps illuminating unfamiliar rows of

little stands and booths set out in the thoroughfare before all

the shop-fronts on each side; making two far-converging lines of

multi-coloured fire. Between these moves a dense throng, filling the

night with a clatter of geta that drowns even the tide-like murmuring of

voices and the cries of the merchant. But how gentle the movement!--

there is no jostling, no rudeness; everybody, even the weakest and

smallest, has a chance to see everything; and there are many things to

see.

'Hasu-no-hana!--hasu-no-hana!' Here are the venders of lotus-flowers for

the tombs and the altars, of lotus leaves in which to wrap the food of

the beloved ghosts. The leaves, folded into bundles, are heaped upon

tiny tables; the lotus-flowers, buds and blossoms intermingled, are

fixed upright in immense bunches, supported by light frames of bamboo.

'Ogara!--ogara-ya! White sheaves of long peeled rods. These are

hemp-sticks. The thinner ends can be broken up into hashi for the use of

the ghosts; the rest must be consumed in the mukaebi. Rightly all these

sticks should be made of pine; but pine is too scarce and dear for the

poor folk of this district, so the ogara are substituted.

'Kawarake!--kawarake-ya!' The dishes of the ghosts: small red shallow

platters of unglazed earthenware; primeval pottery suku-makemasu!' Eh!

what is all this? A little booth shaped like a sentry-box, all made of

laths, covered with a red-and-white chess pattern of paper; and out of

this frail structure issues a shrilling keen as the sound of leaking

steam. 'Oh, that is only insects,' says Akira, laughing; 'nothing to

do with the Bonku.' Insects, yes!--in cages! The shrilling is made by

scores of huge green crickets, each prisoned in a tiny bamboo cage by

itself. 'They are fed with eggplant and melon rind,' continues Akira,

'and sold to children to play with.' And there are also beautiful little

cages full of fireflies--cages covered with brown mosquito-netting, upon

each of which some simple but very pretty design in bright colours

has been dashed by a Japanese brush. One cricket and cage, two cents.

Fifteen fireflies and cage, five cents.

Here on a street corner squats a blue-robed boy behind a low wooden

table, selling wooden boxes about as big as match-boxes, with red paper

hinges. Beside the piles of these little boxes on the table are shallow

dishes filled with clear water, in which extraordinary thin flat shapes

are floating--shapes of flowers, trees, birds, boats, men, and women.

Open a box; it costs only two cents. Inside, wrapped in tissue paper,

are bundles of little pale sticks, like round match-sticks, with pink

ends. Drop one into the water, it instantly unrolls and expands into

the likeness of a lotus-flower. Another transforms itself into a fish.

A third becomes a boat. A fourth changes to an owl. A fifth becomes a

tea-plant, covered with leaves and blossoms. . . . So delicate are these

things that, once immersed, you cannot handle them without breaking

them. They are made of seaweed.

'Tsukuri hana!--tsukuri-hana-wa-irimasenka?' The sellers of artificial

flowers, marvellous chrysanthemums and lotus-plants of paper, imitations

of bud and leaf and flower so cunningly wrought that the eye alone

cannot detect the beautiful trickery. It is only right that these should

cost much more than their living counterparts.

Sec. 6

High above the thronging and the clamour and the myriad fires of the

merchants, the great Shingon temple at the end of the radiant street

towers upon its hill against the starry night, weirdly, like a

dream--strangely illuminated by rows of paper lanterns hung all along

its curving eaves; and the flowing of the crowd bears me thither. Out

of the broad entrance, over a dark gliding mass which I know to be heads

and shoulders of crowding worshippers, beams a broad band of yellow

light; and before reaching the lion-guarded steps I hear the continuous

clanging of the temple gong, each clang the signal of an offering and

a prayer. Doubtless a cataract of cash is pouring into the great

alms-chest; for to-night is the Festival of Yakushi-Nyorai, the

Physician of Souls. Borne to the steps at last, I find myself able to

halt a moment, despite the pressure of the throng, before the stand of

a lantern-seller selling the most beautiful lanterns that I have ever

seen. Each is a gigantic lotus-flower of paper, so perfectly made in

every detail as to seem a great living blossom freshly plucked; the

petals are crimson at their bases, paling to white at their tips; the

calyx is a faultless mimicry of nature, and beneath it hangs a beautiful

fringe of paper cuttings, coloured with the colours of the flower, green

below the calyx, white in the middle, crimson at the ends. In the heart

of the blossom is set a microscopic oil-lamp of baked clay; and this

being lighted, all the flower becomes luminous, diaphanous--a lotus of

white and crimson fire. There is a slender gilded wooden hoop by which

to hang it up, and the price is four cents! How can people afford to

make such things for four cents, even in this country of astounding

cheapness?

Akira is trying to tell me something about the hyaku-hachino-mukaebi,

the Hundred and Eight Fires, to be lighted to-morrow evening, which bear

some figurative relation unto the Hundred and Eight Foolish Desires;

but I cannot hear him for the clatter of the geta and the komageta,

the wooden clogs and wooden sandals of the worshippers ascending to the

shrine of Yakushi-Nyorai. The light straw sandals of the poorer men, the

zori and the waraji, are silent; the great clatter is really made by the

delicate feet of women and girls, balancing themselves carefully upon

their noisy geta. And most of these little feet are clad with spotless

tabi, white as a white lotus. White feet of little blue-robed mothers

they mostly are--mothers climbing patiently and smilingly, with pretty

placid babies at their backs, up the hill to Buddha.

And while through the tinted lantern light I wander on with the gentle

noisy people, up the great steps of stone, between other displays

of lotus-blossoms, between other high hedgerows of paper flowers, my

thought suddenly goes back to the little broken shrine in the poor

woman's room, with the humble playthings hanging before it, and the

laughing, twirling mask of Otafuku. I see the happy, funny little eyes,

oblique and silky-shadowed like Otafuku's own, which used to look at

those toys,--toys in which the fresh child-senses found a charm that

I can but faintly divine, a delight hereditary, ancestral. I see the

tender little creature being borne, as it was doubtless borne many

times, through just such a peaceful throng as this, in just such a

lukewarm, luminous night, peeping over the mother's shoulder, softly

clinging at her neck with tiny hands.

Somewhere among this multitude she is--the mother. She will feel again

to-night the faint touch of little hands, yet will not turn her head to

look and laugh, as in other days.

Chapter 6. Bon-odori

Sec. 1

Over the mountains to Izumo, the land of the Kamiyo, [1] the land of

the Ancient Gods. A journey of four days by kuruma, with strong runners,

from the Pacific to the Sea of Japan; for we have taken the longest and

least frequented route.

Through valleys most of this long route lies, valleys always open to

higher valleys, while the road ascends, valleys between mountains with

rice-fields ascending their slopes by successions of diked terraces

which look like enormous green flights of steps. Above them are

shadowing sombre forests of cedar and pine; and above these wooded

summits loom indigo shapes of farther hills overtopped by peaked

silhouettes of vapoury grey. The air is lukewarm and windless; and

distances are gauzed by delicate mists; and in this tenderest of blue

skies, this Japanese sky which always seems to me loftier than any other

sky which I ever saw, there are only, day after day, some few filmy,

spectral, diaphanous white wandering things: like ghosts of clouds,

riding on the wind.

But sometimes, as the road ascends, the rice-fields disappear a while:

fields of barley and of indigo, and of rye and of cotton, fringe the

route for a little space; and then it plunges into forest shadows.

Above all else, the forests of cedar sometimes bordering the way are

astonishments; never outside of the tropics did I see any growths

comparable for density and perpendicularity with these. Every trunk is

straight and bare as a pillar: the whole front presents the spectacle

of an immeasurable massing of pallid columns towering up into a cloud

of sombre foliage so dense that one can distinguish nothing overhead but

branchings lost in shadow. And the profundities beyond the rare gaps in

the palisade of blanched trunks are night-black, as in Dore's pictures

of fir woods.

No more great towns; only thatched villages nestling in the folds of the

hills, each with its Buddhist temple, lifting a tilted roof of blue-grey

tiles above the congregation of thatched homesteads, and its miya, or

Shinto shrine, with a torii before it like a great ideograph shaped in

stone or wood. But Buddhism still dominates; every hilltop has its tera;

and the statues of Buddhas or of Bodhisattvas appear by the roadside, as

we travel on, with the regularity of milestones. Often a village tera is

so large that the cottages of the rustic folk about it seem like little

out-houses; and the traveller wonders how so costly an edifice of prayer

can be supported by a community so humble. And everywhere the signs of

the gentle faith appear: its ideographs and symbols are chiselled upon

the faces of the rocks; its icons smile upon you from every shadowy

recess by the way; even the very landscape betimes would seem to have

been moulded by the soul of it, where hills rise softly as a prayer. And

the summits of some are domed like the head of Shaka, and the dark bossy

frondage that clothes them might seem the clustering of his curls.

But gradually, with the passing of the days, as we journey into the

loftier west, I see fewer and fewer tera. Such Buddhist temples as we

pass appear small and poor; and the wayside images become rarer and

rarer. But the symbols of Shinto are more numerous, and the structure of

its miya larger and loftier. And the torii are visible everywhere, and

tower higher, before the approaches to villages, before the entrances

of courts guarded by strangely grotesque lions and foxes of stone, and

before stairways of old mossed rock, upsloping, between dense growths of

ancient cedar and pine, to shrines that moulder in the twilight of holy

groves.

At one little village I see, just beyond, the torii leading to a great

Shinto temple, a particularly odd small shrine, and feel impelled by

curiosity to examine it. Leaning against its closed doors are many short

gnarled sticks in a row, miniature clubs. Irreverently removing these,

and opening the little doors, Akira bids me look within. I see only a

mask--the mask of a goblin, a Tengu, grotesque beyond description, with

an enormous nose--so grotesque that I feel remorse for having looked at

it.

The sticks are votive offerings. By dedicating one to the shrine, it

is believed that the Tengu may be induced to drive one's enemies away.

Goblin-shaped though they appear in all Japanese paintings and carvings

of them, the Tengu-Sama are divinities, lesser divinities, lords of the

art of fencing and the use of all weapons.

And other changes gradually become manifest. Akira complains that he

can no longer understand the language of the people. We are traversing

regions of dialects. The houses are also architecturally different from

those of the country-folk of the north-east; their high thatched roofs

are curiously decorated with bundles of straw fastened to a pole of

bamboo parallel with the roof-ridge, and elevated about a foot above it.

The complexion of the peasantry is darker than in the north-east; and I

see no more of those charming rosy faces one observes among the women of

the Tokyo districts. And the peasants wear different hats, hats pointed

like the straw roofs of those little wayside temples curiously enough

called an (which means a straw hat).

The weather is more than warm, rendering clothing oppressive; and as

we pass through the little villages along the road, I see much healthy

cleanly nudity: pretty naked children; brown men and boys with only a

soft narrow white cloth about their loins, asleep on the matted floors,

all the paper screens of the houses having been removed to admit the

breeze. The men seem to be lightly and supply built; but I see no

saliency of muscles; the lines of the figure are always smooth. Before

almost every dwelling, indigo, spread out upon little mats of rice

straw, may be seen drying in the sun.

The country-folk gaze wonderingly at the foreigner. At various places

where we halt, old men approach to touch my clothes, apologising with

humble bows and winning smiles for their very natural curiosity, and

asking my interpreter all sorts of odd questions. Gentler and kindlier

faces I never beheld; and they reflect the souls behind them; never yet

have I heard a voice raised in anger, nor observed an unkindly act.

And each day, as we travel, the country becomes more

beautiful--beautiful with that fantasticality of landscape only to be

found in volcanic lands. But for the dark forests of cedar and pine, and

this far faint dreamy sky, and the soft whiteness of the light, there

are moments of our journey when I could fancy myself again in the West

Indies, ascending some winding way over the mornes of Dominica or of

Martinique. And, indeed, I find myself sometimes looking against the

horizon glow for shapes of palms and ceibas. But the brighter green

of the valleys and of the mountain-slopes beneath the woods is not the

green of young cane, but of rice-fields--thousands upon thousands of

tiny rice-fields no larger than cottage gardens, separated from each

other by narrow serpentine dikes.

Sec. 2

In the very heart of a mountain range, while rolling along the verge

of a precipice above rice-fields, I catch sight of a little shrine in

a cavity of the cliff overhanging the way, and halt to examine it. The

sides and sloping roof of the shrine are formed by slabs of unhewn

rock. Within smiles a rudely chiselled image of

Bato-Kwannon--Kwannon-with-the-Horse's-Head--and before it bunches of

wild flowers have been placed, and an earthen incense-cup, and scattered

offerings of dry rice. Contrary to the idea suggested by the strange

name, this form of Kwannon is not horse-headed; but the head of a horse

is sculptured upon the tiara worn by the divinity. And the symbolism is

fully explained by a large wooden sotoba planted beside the shrine, and

bearing, among other inscriptions, the words, 'Bato Kwan-ze-on Bosatsu,

giu ba bodai han ye.' For Bato-Kwannon protects the horses and the

cattle of the peasant; and he prays her not only that his dumb servants

may be preserved from sickness, but also that their spirits may enter

after death, into a happier state of existence. Near the sotoba there

has been erected a wooden framework about four feet square, filled

with little tablets of pine set edge to edge so as to form one smooth

surface; and on these are written, in rows of hundreds, the names of all

who subscribed for the statue and its shrine. The number announced is

ten thousand. But the whole cost could not have exceeded ten Japanese

dollars (yen); wherefore I surmise that each subscriber gave not more

than one rin--one tenth of one sen, or cent. For the hyakusho are

unspeakably poor. [2]

In the midst of these mountain solitudes, the discovery of that little

shrine creates a delightful sense of security. Surely nothing save

goodness can be expected from a people gentle-hearted enough to pray for

the souls of their horses and cows. [3]

As we proceed rapidly down a slope, my kurumaya swerves to one side with

a suddenness that gives me a violent start, for the road overlooks a

sheer depth of several hundred feet. It is merely to avoid hurting a

harmless snake making its way across the path. The snake is so little

afraid that on reaching the edge of the road it turns its head to look

after us.

Sec. 3

And now strange signs begin to appear in all these rice-fields: I

see everywhere, sticking up above the ripening grain, objects like

white-feathered arrows. Arrows of prayer! I take one up to examine

it. The shaft is a thin bamboo, split down for about one-third of its

length; into the slit a strip of strong white paper with ideographs upon

it--an ofuda, a Shinto charm--is inserted; and the separated ends of the

cane are then rejoined and tied together just above it. The whole, at

a little distance, has exactly the appearance of a long, light,

well-feathered arrow. That which I first examine bears the words,

'Yu-Asaki-jinja-kozen-son-chu-an-zen' (From the God whose shrine

is before the Village of Peace). Another reads,

'Mihojinja-sho-gwan-jo-ju-go-kito-shugo,' signifying that the Deity of

the temple Miho-jinja granteth fully every supplication made unto him.

Everywhere, as we proceed, I see the white arrows of prayer glimmering

above the green level of the grain; and always they become more

numerous. Far as the eye can reach the fields are sprinkled with them,

so that they make upon the verdant surface a white speckling as of

flowers.

Sometimes, also, around a little rice-field, I see a sort of magical

fence, formed by little bamboo rods supporting a long cord from which

long straws hang down, like a fringe, and paper cuttings, which

are symbols (gohei) are suspended at regular intervals. This is the

shimenawa, sacred emblem of Shinto. Within the consecrated space

inclosed by it no blight may enter--no scorching sun wither the young

shoots. And where the white arrows glimmer the locust shall not prevail,

nor shall hungry birds do evil.

But now I look in vain for the Buddhas. No more great tera, no Shaka,

no Amida, no Dai-Nichi-Nyorai; even the Bosatsu have been left behind.

Kwannon and her holy kin have disappeared; Koshin, Lord of Roads, is

indeed yet with us; but he has changed his name and become a Shinto

deity: he is now Saruda-hiko-no-mikoto; and his presence is revealed

only by the statues of the Three Mystic Apes which are his

servants--Mizaru, who sees no evil, covering his eyes with his hands,

Kikazaru, who hears no evil, covering his ears with his hands. Iwazaru,

who speaks no evil, covering his mouth with his hands.

Yet no! one Bosatsu survives in this atmosphere of magical Shinto: still

by the roadside I see at long intervals the image of Jizo-Sama, the

charming playfellow of dead children. But Jizo also is a little changed;

even in his sextuple representation, [4] the Roku-Jizo, he appears not

standing, but seated upon his lotus-flower, and I see no stones piled up

before him, as in the eastern provinces.

Sec. 4

At last, from the verge of an enormous ridge, the roadway suddenly

slopes down into a vista of high peaked roofs of thatch and green-mossed

eaves--into a village like a coloured print out of old Hiroshige's

picture-books, a village with all its tints and colours precisely

like the tints and colours of the landscape in which it lies. This is

Kami-Ichi, in the land of Hoki.

We halt before a quiet, dingy little inn, whose host, a very aged man,

comes forth to salute me; while a silent, gentle crowd of villagers,

mostly children and women, gather about the kuruma to see the stranger,

to wonder at him, even to touch his clothes with timid smiling

curiosity. One glance at the face of the old innkeeper decides me to

accept his invitation. I must remain here until to-morrow: my runners

are too wearied to go farther to-night.

Weather-worn as the little inn seemed without, it is delightful within.

Its polished stairway and balconies are speckless, reflecting like

mirror-surfaces the bare feet of the maid-servants; its luminous rooms

are fresh and sweet-smelling as when their soft mattings were first laid

down. The carven pillars of the alcove (toko) in my chamber, leaves and

flowers chiselled in some black rich wood, are wonders; and the kakemono

or scroll-picture hanging there is an idyll, Hotei, God of Happiness,

drifting in a bark down some shadowy stream into evening mysteries of

vapoury purple. Far as this hamlet is from all art-centres, there is no

object visible in the house which does not reveal the Japanese sense of

beauty in form. The old gold-flowered lacquer-ware, the astonishing

box in which sweetmeats (kwashi) are kept, the diaphanous porcelain

wine-cups dashed with a single tiny gold figure of a leaping shrimp, the

tea-cup holders which are curled lotus-leaves of bronze, even the iron

kettle with its figurings of dragons and clouds, and the brazen hibachi

whose handles are heads of Buddhist lions, delight the eye and surprise

the fancy. Indeed, wherever to-day in Japan one sees something totally

uninteresting in porcelain or metal, something commonplace and ugly,

one may be almost sure that detestable something has been shaped under

foreign influence. But here I am in ancient Japan; probably no European

eyes ever looked upon these things before.

A window shaped like a heart peeps out upon the garden, a wonderful

little garden with a tiny pond and miniature bridges and dwarf trees,

like the landscape of a tea-cup; also some shapely stones of course, and

some graceful stone-lanterns, or toro, such as are placed in the courts

of temples. And beyond these, through the warm dusk, I see lights,

coloured lights, the lanterns of the Bonku, suspended before each home

to welcome the coming of beloved ghosts; for by the antique calendar,

according to which in this antique place the reckoning of time is still

made, this is the first night of the Festival of the Dead.

As in all the other little country villages where I have been stopping,

I find the people here kind to me with a kindness and a courtesy

unimaginable, indescribable, unknown in any other country, and even in

Japan itself only in the interior. Their simple politeness is not

an art; their goodness is absolutely unconscious goodness; both come

straight from the heart. And before I have been two hours among these

people, their treatment of me, coupled with the sense of my utter

inability to repay such kindness, causes a wicked wish to come into

my mind. I wish these charming folk would do me some unexpected wrong,

something surprisingly evil, something atrociously unkind, so that I

should not be obliged to regret them, which I feel sure I must begin to

do as soon as I go away.

While the aged landlord conducts me to the bath, where he insists upon

washing me himself as if I were a child, the wife prepares for us a

charming little repast of rice, eggs, vegetables, and sweetmeats. She

is painfully in doubt about her ability to please me, even after I have

eaten enough for two men, and apologises too much for not being able to

offer me more.

'There is no fish,' she says, 'for to-day is the first day of the Bonku,

the Festival of the Dead; being the thirteenth day of the month. On the

thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth of the month nobody may eat fish.

But on the morning of the sixteenth day, the fishermen go out to catch

fish; and everybody who has both parents living may eat of it. But if

one has lost one's father or mother then one must not eat fish, even

upon the sixteenth day.'

While the good soul is thus explaining I become aware of a strange

remote sound from without, a sound I recognise through memory of

tropical dances, a measured clapping of hands. But this clapping is very

soft and at long intervals. And at still longer intervals there comes to

us a heavy muffled booming, the tap of a great drum, a temple drum.

'Oh! we must go to see it,' cries Akira; 'it is the Bon-odori, the Dance

of the Festival of the Dead. And you will see the Bon-odori danced here

as it is never danced in cities--the Bon-odori of ancient days. For

customs have not changed here; but in the cities all is changed.'

So I hasten out, wearing only, like the people about me, one of those

light wide-sleeved summer robes--yukata--which are furnished to male

guests at all Japanese hotels; but the air is so warm that even thus

lightly clad, I find myself slightly perspiring. And the night is

divine, still, clear, vaster than nights of Europe, with a big white

moon flinging down queer shadows of tilted eaves and horned gables and

delightful silhouettes of robed Japanese. A little boy, the grandson of

our host, leads the way with a crimson paper lantern; and the sonorous

echoing of geta, the koro-koro of wooden sandals, fills all the street,

for many are going whither we are going, to see the dance.

A little while we proceed along the main street; then, traversing a

narrow passage between two houses, we find ourselves in a great open

space flooded by moonlight. This is the dancing-place; but the dance has

ceased for a time. Looking about me, I perceive that we are in the

court of an ancient Buddhist temple. The temple building itself remains

intact, a low long peaked silhouette against the starlight; but it is

void and dark and unhallowed now; it has been turned, they tell me, into

a schoolhouse. The priests are gone; the great bell is gone; the Buddhas

and the Bodhisattvas have vanished, all save one--a broken-handed Jizo

of stone, smiling with eyelids closed, under the moon.

In the centre of the court is a framework of bamboo supporting a

great drum; and about it benches have been arranged, benches from the

schoolhouse, on which villagers are resting. There is a hum of voices,

voices of people speaking very low, as if expecting something solemn;

and cries of children betimes, and soft laughter of girls. And far

behind the court, beyond a low hedge of sombre evergreen shrubs, I see

soft white lights and a host of tall grey shapes throwing long shadows;

and I know that the lights are the white lanterns of the dead (those

hung in cemeteries only), and that the grey shapes are shapes of tombs.

Suddenly a girl rises from her seat, and taps the huge drum once. It is

the signal for the Dance of Souls.

Sec. 5

Out of the shadow of the temple a processional line of dancers files

into the moonlight and as suddenly halts--all young women or girls,

clad in their choicest attire; the tallest leads; her comrades follow in

order of stature; little maids of ten or twelve years compose the end

of the procession. Figures lightly poised as birds--figures that somehow

recall the dreams of shapes circling about certain antique vases; those

charming Japanese robes, close-clinging about the knees, might seem, but

for the great fantastic drooping sleeves, and the curious broad girdles

confining them, designed after the drawing of some Greek or Etruscan

artist. And, at another tap of the drum, there begins a performance

impossible to picture in words, something unimaginable, phantasmal--a

dance, an astonishment.

All together glide the right foot forward one pace, without lifting

the sandal from the ground, and extend both hands to the right, with a

strange floating motion and a smiling, mysterious obeisance. Then the

right foot is drawn back, with a repetition of the waving of hands

and the mysterious bow. Then all advance the left foot and repeat the

previous movements, half-turning to the left. Then all take two gliding

paces forward, with a single simultaneous soft clap of the hands, and

the first performance is reiterated, alternately to right and left;

all the sandalled feet gliding together, all the supple hands waving

together, all the pliant bodies bowing and swaying together. And so

slowly, weirdly, the processional movement changes into a great round,

circling about the moonlit court and around the voiceless crowd of

spectators. [5]

And always the white hands sinuously wave together, as if weaving

spells, alternately without and within the round, now with palms upward,

now with palms downward; and all the elfish sleeves hover duskily

together, with a shadowing as of wings; and all the feet poise together

with such a rhythm of complex motion, that, in watching it, one feels

a sensation of hypnotism--as while striving to watch a flowing and

shimmering of water.

And this soporous allurement is intensified by a dead hush. No one

speaks, not even a spectator. And, in the long intervals between the

soft clapping of hands, one hears only the shrilling of the crickets in

the trees, and the shu-shu of sandals, lightly stirring the dust. Unto

what, I ask myself, may this be likened? Unto nothing; yet it suggests

some fancy of somnambulism--dreamers, who dream themselves flying,

dreaming upon their feet.

And there comes to me the thought that I am looking at something

immemorially old, something belonging to the unrecorded beginnings of

this Oriental life, perhaps to the crepuscular Kamiyo itself, to the

magical Age of the Gods; a symbolism of motion whereof the meaning

has been forgotten for innumerable years. Yet more and more unreal the

spectacle appears, with its silent smilings, with its silent bowings, as

if obeisance to watchers invisible; and I find myself wondering whether,

were I to utter but a whisper, all would not vanish for ever save the

grey mouldering court and the desolate temple, and the broken statue of

Jizo, smiling always the same mysterious smile I see upon the faces of

the dancers.

Under the wheeling moon, in the midst of the round, I feel as one within

the circle of a charm. And verily this is enchantment; I am bewitched,

bewitched by the ghostly weaving of hands, by the rhythmic gliding of

feet, above all by the flitting of the marvellous sleeves--apparitional,

soundless, velvety as a flitting of great tropical bats. No; nothing I

ever dreamed of could be likened to this. And with the consciousness of

the ancient hakaba behind me, and the weird invitation of its lanterns,

and the ghostly beliefs of the hour and the place there creeps upon me

a nameless, tingling sense of being haunted. But no! these gracious,

silent, waving, weaving shapes are not of the Shadowy Folk, for whose

coming the white fires were kindled: a strain of song, full of sweet,

clear quavering, like the call of a bird, gushes from some girlish

mouth, and fifty soft voices join the chant:

Sorota soroimashita odorikoga sorota, Soroikite, kita hare yukata.

'Uniform to view [as ears of young rice ripening in the field] all clad

alike in summer festal robes, the company of dancers have assembled.'

Again only the shrilling of the crickets, the shu-shu of feet, the

gentle clapping; and the wavering hovering measure proceeds in silence,

with mesmeric lentor--with a strange grace, which, by its very naivete,

seems old as the encircling hills.

Those who sleep the sleep of centuries out there, under the grey stones

where the white lanterns are, and their fathers, and the fathers of

their fathers' fathers, and the unknown generations behind them, buried

in cemeteries of which the place has been forgotten for a thousand

years, doubtless looked upon a scene like this. Nay! the dust stirred

by those young feet was human life, and so smiled and so sang under this

self-same moon, 'with woven paces, and with waving hands.'

Suddenly a deep male chant breaks the hush. Two giants have joined the

round, and now lead it, two superb young mountain peasants nearly nude,

towering head and shoulders above the whole of the assembly. Their

kimono are rolled about their waistilike girdles, leaving their bronzed

limbs and torsos naked to the warm air; they wear nothing else save

their immense straw hats, and white tabi, donned expressly for the

festival. Never before among these people saw I such men, such thews;

but their smiling beardless faces are comely and kindly as those of

Japanese boys. They seem brothers, so like in frame, in movement, in the

timbre of their voices, as they intone the same song:

No demo yama demo ko wa umiokeyo, Sen ryo kura yori ko ga takara.

'Whether brought forth upon the mountain or in the field, it matters

nothing: more than a treasure of one thousand ryo, a baby precious is.'

And Jizo the lover of children's ghosts, smiles across the silence.

Souls close to nature's Soul are these; artless and touching their

thought, like the worship of that Kishibojin to whom wives pray. And

after the silence, the sweet thin voices of the women answer:

Oomu otoko ni sowa sanu oya Wa, Qyade gozaranu ko no kataki.

'The parents who will not allow their girl to be united with her lover;

they are not the parents, but the enemies of their child.'

And song follows song; and the round ever becomes larger; and the hours

pass unfelt, unheard, while the moon wheels slowly down the blue steeps

of the night.

A deep low boom rolls suddenly across the court, the rich tone of some

temple bell telling the twelfth hour. Instantly the witchcraft ends,

like the wonder of some dream broken by a sound; the chanting ceases;

the round dissolves in an outburst of happy laughter, and chatting, and

softly-vowelled callings of flower-names which are names of girls, and

farewell cries of 'Sayonara!' as dancers and spectators alike betake

themselves homeward, with a great koro-koro of getas.

And I, moving with the throng, in the bewildered manner of one suddenly

roused from sleep, know myself ungrateful. These silvery-laughing folk

who now toddle along beside me upon their noisy little clogs, stepping

very fast to get a peep at my foreign face, these but a moment ago were

visions of archaic grace, illusions of necromancy, delightful phantoms;

and I feel a vague resentment against them for thus materialising into

simple country-girls.

Sec. 6

Lying down to rest, I ask myself the reason of the singular emotion

inspired by that simple peasant-chorus. Utterly impossible to recall the

air, with its fantastic intervals and fractional tones--as well attempt

to fix in memory the purlings of a bird; but the indefinable charm of it

lingers with me still.

Melodies of Europe awaken within us feelings we can utter, sensations

familiar as mother-speech, inherited from all the generations behind us.

But how explain the emotion evoked by a primitive chant totally unlike

anything in Western melody,--impossible even to write in those tones

which are the ideographs of our music-tongue?

And the emotion itself--what is it? I know not; yet I feel it to be

something infinitely more old than I--something not of only one place

or time, but vibrant to all common joy or pain of being, under the

universal sun. Then I wonder if the secret does not lie in some untaught

spontaneous harmony of that chant with Nature's most ancient song, in

some unconscious kinship to the music of solitudes--all trillings of

summer life that blend to make the great sweet Cry of the Land.