Chương Chương 7 · The Chief City of the Province of the Gods

. The Chief City of the Province of the Gods

Sec. 1

THE first of the noises of a Matsue day comes to the sleeper like the

throbbing of a slow, enormous pulse exactly under his ear. It is a

great, soft, dull buffet of sound--like a heartbeat in its regularity,

in its muffled depth, in the way it quakes up through one's pillow so as

to be felt rather than heard. It is simply the pounding of the ponderous

pestle of the kometsuki, the cleaner of rice--a sort of colossal wooden

mallet with a handle about fifteen feet long horizontally balanced on

a pivot. By treading with all his force on the end of the handle, the

naked kometsuki elevates the pestle, which is then allowed to fall back

by its own weight into the rice-tub. The measured muffled echoing of its

fall seems to me the most pathetic of all sounds of Japanese life; it is

the beating, indeed, of the Pulse of the Land.

Then the boom of the great bell of Tokoji the Zenshu temple, shakes over

the town; then come melancholy echoes of drumming from the tiny little

temple of Jizo in the street Zaimokucho, near my house, signalling the

Buddhist hour of morning prayer. And finally the cries of the earliest

itinerant venders begin--'Daikoyai! kabuya-kabu!'--the sellers of daikon

and other strange vegetables. 'Moyaya-moya!'--the plaintive call of the

women who sell little thin slips of kindling-wood for the lighting of

charcoal fires.

Sec. 2

Roused thus by these earliest sounds of the city's wakening life, I

slide open my little Japanese paper window to look out upon the morning

over a soft green cloud of spring foliage rising from the river-bounded

garden below. Before me, tremulously mirroring everything upon its

farther side, glimmers the broad glassy mouth of the Ohashigawa, opening

into the grand Shinji Lake, which spreads out broadly to the right in

a dim grey frame of peaks. Just opposite to me, across the stream, the

blue-pointed Japanese dwellings have their to [1] all closed; they are

still shut up like boxes, for it is not yet sunrise, although it is day.

But oh, the charm of the vision--those first ghostly love-colours of

a morning steeped in mist soft as sleep itself resolved into a visible

exhalation! Long reaches of faintly-tinted vapour cloud the far lake

verge--long nebulous bands, such as you may have seen in old Japanese

picture-books, and must have deemed only artistic whimsicalities unless

you had previously looked upon the real phenomena. All the bases of the

mountains are veiled by them, and they stretch athwart the loftier peaks

at different heights like immeasurable lengths of gauze (this singular

appearance the Japanese term 'shelving'), [2] so that the lake appears

incomparably larger than it really is, and not an actual lake, but a

beautiful spectral sea of the same tint as the dawn-sky and mixing with

it, while peak-tips rise like islands from the brume, and visionary

strips of hill-ranges figure as league-long causeways stretching out

of sight--an exquisite chaos, ever-changing aspect as the delicate fogs

rise, slowly, very slowly. As the sun's yellow rim comes into sight,

fine thin lines of warmer tone--spectral violets and opalines--shoot

across the flood, treetops take tender fire, and the unpainted façades

of high edifices across the water change their wood-colour to vapoury

gold through the delicious haze.

Looking sunward, up the long Ohashigawa, beyond the many-pillared wooden

bridge, one high-pooped junk, just hoisting sail, seems to me the most

fantastically beautiful craft I ever saw--a dream of Orient seas, so

idealised by the vapour is it; the ghost of a junk, but a ghost

that catches the light as clouds do; a shape of gold mist, seemingly

semi-diaphanous, and suspended in pale blue light.

Sec. 3

And now from the river-front touching my garden there rises to me a

sound of clapping of hand,--one, two, three, four claps,--but the owner

of the hands is screened from view by the shrubbery. At the same time,

however, I see men and women descending the stone steps of the wharves

on the opposite side of the Ohashigawa, all with little blue towels

tucked into their girdles. They wash their faces and hands and rinse

their mouths--the customary ablution preliminary to Shinto prayer. Then

they turn their faces to the sunrise and clap their hands four times and

pray. From the long high white bridge come other clappings, like

echoes, and others again from far light graceful craft, curved like

new moons--extraordinary boats, in which I see bare-limbed fishermen

standing with foreheads bowed to the golden East. Now the clappings

multiply--multiply at last into an almost continuous volleying of sharp

sounds. For all the population are saluting the rising sun, O-Hi-San,

the Lady of Fire--Ama-terasu-oho-mi-Kami, the Lady of the Great Light.

[3] 'Konnichi-Sama! Hail this day to thee, divinest Day-Maker! Thanks

unutterable unto thee, for this thy sweet light, making beautiful the

world!' So, doubt-less, the thought, if not the utterance, of countless

hearts. Some turn to the sun only, clapping their hands; yet many turn

also to the West, to holy Kitzuki, the immemorial shrine and not a few

turn their faces successively to all the points of heaven, murmuring

the names of a hundred gods; and others, again, after having saluted the

Lady of Fire, look toward high Ichibata, toward the place of the great

temple of Yakushi Nyorai, who giveth sight to the blind--not clapping

their hands as in Shinto worship, but only rubbing the palms softly

together after the Buddhist manner. But all--for in this most antique

province of Japan all Buddhists are Shintoists likewise--utter the

archaic words of Shinto prayer: 'Harai tamai kiyome tamai to Kami imi

tami.'

Prayer to the most ancient gods who reigned before the coming of the

Buddha, and who still reign here in their own Izumo-land,--in the Land

of Reed Plains, in the Place of the Issuing of Clouds; prayer to the

deities of primal chaos and primeval sea and of the beginnings of the

world--strange gods with long weird names, kindred of U-hiji-ni-no-Kami,

the First Mud-Lord, kindred of Su-hiji-ni-no-Kanii, the First Sand-Lady;

prayer to those who came after them--the gods of strength and beauty,

the world-fashioners, makers of the mountains and the isles, ancestors

of those sovereigns whose lineage still is named 'The Sun's Succession';

prayer to the Three Thousand Gods 'residing within the provinces,' and

to the Eight Hundred Myriads who dwell in the azure

Takamano-hara--in the blue Plain of High Heaven.

'Nippon-koku-chu-yaoyorozu-no-Kami-gami-sama!'

Sec. 4

'Ho--ke-kyo!'

My uguisu is awake at last, and utters his morning prayer. You do not

know what an uguisu is? An uguisu is a holy little bird that professes

Buddhism. All uguisu have professed Buddhism from time immemorial; all

uguisu preach alike to men the excellence of the divine Sutra.

'Ho--ke-kyo!'

In the Japanese tongue, Ho-ke-kyo; in Sanscrit, Saddharma Pundarika:

'The Sutra of the Lotus of the Good Law,' the divine book of the

Nichiren sect. Very brief, indeed, is my little feathered Buddhist's

confession of faith--only the sacred name reiterated over and over again

like a litany, with liquid bursts of twittering between.

'Ho--ke-kyo!'

Only this one phrase, but how deliciously he utters it! With what

slow amorous ecstasy he dwells upon its golden syllables! It hath been

written: 'He who shall keep, read, teach, or write this Sutra shall

obtain eight hundred good qualities of the Eye. He shall see the whole

Triple Universe down to the great hell Aviki, and up to the extremity of

existence. He shall obtain twelve hundred good qualities of the Ear. He

shall hear all sounds in the Triple Universe,--sounds of gods, goblins,

demons, and beings not human.'

'Ho--ke-kyo!'

A single word only. But it is also written: 'He who shall joyfully

accept but a single word from this Sutra, incalculably greater shall be

his merit than the merit of one who should supply all beings in the

four hundred thousand Asankhyeyas of worlds with all the necessaries for

happiness.'

'Ho--ke-kyo!'

Always he makes a reverent little pause after uttering it and before

shrilling out his ecstatic warble--his bird-hymn of praise. First the

warble; then a pause of about five seconds; then a slow, sweet, solemn

utterance of the holy name in a tone as of meditative wonder; then

another pause; then another wild, rich, passionate warble. Could you see

him, you would marvel how so powerful and penetrating a soprano could

ripple from so minute a throat; for he is one of the very tiniest of

all feathered singers, yet his chant can be heard far across the broad

river, and children going to school pause daily on the bridge, a whole

cho away, to listen to his song. And uncomely withal: a neutral-tinted

mite, almost lost in his immense box-cage of hinoki wood, darkened with

paper screens over its little wire-grated windows, for he loves the

gloom.

Delicate he is and exacting even to tyranny. All his diet must be

laboriously triturated and weighed in scales, and measured out to him

at precisely the same hour each day. It demands all possible care and

attention merely to keep him alive. He is precious, nevertheless. 'Far

and from the uttermost coasts is the price of him,' so rare he is.

Indeed, I could not have afforded to buy him. He was sent to me by one

of the sweetest ladies in Japan, daughter of the governor of Izumo, who,

thinking the foreign teacher might feel lonesome during a brief illness,

made him the exquisite gift of this dainty creature.

Sec. 5

The clapping of hands has ceased; the toil of the day begins;

continually louder and louder the pattering of geta over the bridge. It

is a sound never to be forgotten, this pattering of geta over the

Ohashi--rapid, merry, musical, like the sound of an enormous dance; and

a dance it veritably is. The whole population is moving on tiptoe, and

the multitudinous twinkling of feet over the verge of the sunlit roadway

is an astonishment. All those feet are small, symmetrical--light as the

feet of figures painted on Greek vases--and the step is always taken

toes first; indeed, with geta it could be taken no other way, for the

heel touches neither the geta nor the ground, and the foot is tilted

forward by the wedge-shaped wooden sole. Merely to stand upon a pair of

geta is difficult for one unaccustomed to their use, yet you see

Japanese children running at full speed in geta with soles at least

three inches high, held to the foot only by a forestrap fastened between

the great toe and the other toes, and they never trip and the geta never

falls off. Still more curious is the spectacle of men walking in bokkuri

or takageta, a wooden sole with wooden supports at least five inches

high fitted underneath it so as to make the whole structure seem the

lacquered model of a wooden bench. But the wearers stride as freely as

if they had nothing upon their feet.

Now children begin to appear, hurrying to school. The undulation of

the wide sleeves of their pretty speckled robes, as they run, looks

precisely like a fluttering of extraordinary butterflies. The junks

spread their great white or yellow wings, and the funnels of the little

steamers which have been slumbering all night by the wharves begin to

smoke.

One of the tiny lake steamers lying at the opposite wharf has just

opened its steam-throat to utter the most unimaginable, piercing,

desperate, furious howl. When that cry is heard everybody laughs. The

other little steamboats utter only plaintive mooings, but unto this

particular vessel--newly built and launched by a rival company--there

has been given a voice expressive to the most amazing degree of reckless

hostility and savage defiance. The good people of Matsue, upon

hearing its voice for the first time, gave it forthwith a new and just

name--Okami-Maru. 'Maru' signifies a steamship. 'Okami' signifies a

wolf.

Sec. 6

A very curious little object now comes slowly floating down the river,

and I do not think that you could possibly guess what it is.

The Hotoke, or Buddhas, and the beneficent Kami are not the only

divinities worshipped by the Japanese of the poorer classes. The deities

of evil, or at least some of them, are duly propitiated upon certain

occasions, and requited by offerings whenever they graciously vouchsafe

to inflict a temporary ill instead of an irremediable misfortune. [4]

(After all, this is no more irrational than the thanksgiving prayer

at the close of the hurricane season in the West Indies, after the

destruction by storm of twenty-two thousand lives.) So men sometimes

pray to Ekibiogami, the God of Pestilence, and to Kaze-no-Kami, the God

of Wind and of Bad Colds, and to Hoso-no-Kami, the God of Smallpox, and

to divers evil genii.

Now when a person is certainly going to get well of smallpox a feast is

given to the Hoso-no-Kami, much as a feast is given to the Fox-God when

a possessing fox has promised to allow himself to be cast out. Upon a

sando-wara, or small straw mat, such as is used to close the end of

a rice-bale, one or more kawarake, or small earthenware vessels, are

placed. These are filled with a preparation of rice and red beans,

called adzukimeshi, whereof both Inari-Sama and Hoso-no-Kami are

supposed to be very fond. Little bamboo wands with gohei (paper

cuttings) fastened to them are then planted either in the mat or in the

adzukimeshi, and the colour of these gohei must be red. (Be it observed

that the gohei of other Kami are always white.) This offering is then

either suspended to a tree, or set afloat in some running stream at a

considerable distance from the home of the convalescent. This is called

'seeing the God off.'

Sec. 7

The long white bridge with its pillars of iron is recognisably modern.

It was, in fact, opened to the public only last spring with great

ceremony. According to some most ancient custom, when a new bridge has

been built the first persons to pass over it must be the happiest of the

community. So the authorities of Matsue sought for the happiest folk,

and selected two aged men who had both been married for more than half

a century, and who had had not less than twelve children, and had

never lost any of them. These good patriarchs first crossed the bridge,

accompanied by their venerable wives, and followed by their grown-up

children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, amidst a great clamour

of rejoicing, the showering of fireworks, and the firing of cannon.

But the ancient bridge so recently replaced by this structure was

much more picturesque, curving across the flood and supported upon

multitudinous feet, like a long-legged centipede of the innocuous kind.

For three hundred years it had stood over the stream firmly and well,

and it had its particular tradition.

When Horio Yoshiharu, the great general who became daimyo of Izumo in

the Keicho era, first undertook to put a bridge over the mouth of this

river, the builders laboured in vain; for there appeared to be no solid

bottom for the pillars of the bridge to rest upon. Millions of great

stones were cast into the river to no purpose, for the work constructed

by day was swept away or swallowed up by night. Nevertheless, at last

the bridge was built, but the pillars began to sink soon after it was

finished; then a flood carried half of it away and as often as it was

repaired so often it was wrecked. Then a human sacrifice was made to

appease the vexed spirits of the flood. A man was buried alive in the

river-bed below the place of the middle pillar, where the current is

most treacherous, and thereafter the bridge remained immovable for three

hundred years.

This victim was one Gensuke, who had lived in the street Saikamachi; for

it had been determined that the first man who should cross the bridge

wearing hakama without a machi [5] should be put under the bridge; and

Gensuke sought to pass over not having a machi in his hakama, so they

sacrificed him Wherefore the midmost pillar of the bridge was for three

hundred years called by his name--Gensuke-bashira. It is averred that

upon moonless nights a ghostly fire flitted about that pillar--always in

the dead watch hour between two and three; and the colour of the light

was red, though I am assured that in Japan, as in other lands, the fires

of the dead are most often blue.

Sec. 8

Now some say that Gensuke was not the name of a man, but the name of

an era, corrupted by local dialect into the semblance of a personal

appellation. Yet so profoundly is the legend believed, that when the new

bridge was being built thousands of country folk were afraid to come

to town; for a rumour arose that a new victim was needed, who was to

be chosen from among them, and that it had been determined to make the

choice from those who still wore their hair in queues after the ancient

manner. Wherefore hundreds of aged men cut off their queues. Then

another rumour was circulated to the effect that the police had been

secretly instructed to seize the one-thousandth person of those who

crossed the new bridge the first day, and to treat him after the manner

of Gensuke. And at the time of the great festival of the Rice-God, when

the city is usually thronged by farmers coming to worship at the many

shrines of Inari this year there came but few; and the loss to local

commerce was estimated at several thousand yen.

The vapours have vanished, sharply revealing a beautiful little islet in

the lake, lying scarcely half a mile away--a low, narrow strip of land

with a Shinto shrine upon it, shadowed by giant pines; not pines like

ours, but huge, gnarled, shaggy, tortuous shapes, vast-reaching like

ancient oaks. Through a glass one can easily discern a torii, and before

it two symbolic lions of stone (Kara-shishi), one with its head broken

off, doubtless by its having been overturned and dashed about by heavy

waves during some great storm. This islet is sacred to Benten, the

Goddess of Eloquence and Beauty, wherefore it is called Benten-no-shima.

But it is more commonly called Yomega-shima, or 'The Island of the Young

Wife,' by reason of a legend. It is said that it arose in one night,

noiselessly as a dream, bearing up from the depths of the lake the

body of a drowned woman who had been very lovely, very pious, and very

unhappy. The people, deeming this a sign from heaven, consecrated the

islet to Benten, and thereon built a shrine unto her, planted trees

about it, set a torii before it, and made a rampart about it with great

curiously-shaped stones; and there they buried the drowned woman.

Now the sky is blue down to the horizon, the air is a caress of spring.

I go forth to wander through the queer old city.

Sec. 10

I perceive that upon the sliding doors, or immediately above the

principal entrance of nearly every house, are pasted oblong white papers

bearing ideographic inscriptions; and overhanging every threshold I see

the sacred emblem of Shinto, the little rice-straw rope with its long

fringe of pendent stalks. The white papers at once interest me; for they

are ofuda, or holy texts and charms, of which I am a devout collector.

Nearly all are from temples in Matsue or its vicinity; and the Buddhist

ones indicate by the sacred words upon them to what particular shu

or sect, the family belong--for nearly every soul in this community

professes some form of Buddhism as well as the all-dominant and more

ancient faith of Shinto. And even one quite ignorant of Japanese

ideographs can nearly always distinguish at a glance the formula of

the great Nichiren sect from the peculiar appearance of the column

of characters composing it, all bristling with long sharp points and

banneret zigzags, like an army; the famous text Namu-myo-ho-ren-gekyo

inscribed of old upon the flag of the great captain Kato Kiyomasa, the

extirpator of Spanish Christianity, the glorious vir ter execrandus of

the Jesuits. Any pilgrim belonging to this sect has the right to call at

whatever door bears the above formula and ask for alms or food.

But by far the greater number of the ofuda are Shinto. Upon almost every

door there is one ofuda especially likely to attract the attention of a

stranger, because at the foot of the column of ideographs composing

its text there are two small figures of foxes, a black and a white fox,

facing each other in a sitting posture, each with a little bunch of

rice-straw in its mouth, instead of the more usual emblematic key. These

ofuda are from the great Inari temple of Oshiroyama, [6] within the

castle grounds, and are charms against fire. They represent, indeed,

the only form of assurance against fire yet known in Matsue, so far, at

least, as wooden dwellings are concerned. And although a single spark

and a high wind are sufficient in combination to obliterate a larger

city in one day, great fires are unknown in Matsue, and small ones are

of rare occurrence.

The charm is peculiar to the city; and of the Inari in question this

tradition exists:

When Naomasu, the grandson of Iyeyasu, first came to Matsue to rule the

province, there entered into his presence a beautiful boy, who said: 'I

came hither from the home of your august father in Echizen, to protect

you from all harm. But I have no dwelling-place, and am staying

therefore at the Buddhist temple of Fu-mon-in. Now if you will make for

me a dwelling within the castle grounds, I will protect from fire the

buildings there and the houses of the city, and your other residence

likewise which is in the capital. For I am Inari Shinyemon.' With these

words he vanished from sight. Therefore Naomasu dedicated to him the

great temple which still stands in the castle grounds, surrounded by one

thousand foxes of stone.

Sec. 11

I now turn into a narrow little street, which, although so ancient that

its dwarfed two-story houses have the look of things grown up from the

ground, is called the Street of the New Timber. New the timber may have

been one hundred and fifty years ago; but the tints of the structures

would ravish an artist--the sombre ashen tones of the woodwork, the

furry browns of old thatch, ribbed and patched and edged with the

warm soft green of those velvety herbs and mosses which flourish upon

Japanesese roofs.

However, the perspective of the street frames in a vision more

surprising than any details of its mouldering homes. Between very lofty

bamboo poles, higher than any of the dwellings, and planted on both

sides of the street in lines, extraordinary black nets are stretched,

like prodigious cobwebs against the sky, evoking sudden memories of

those monster spiders which figure in Japanese mythology and in the

picture-books of the old artists. But these are only fishing-nets of

silken thread; and this is the street of the fishermen. I take my way to

the great bridge.

Sec. 12

A stupendous ghost!

Looking eastward from the great bridge over those sharply beautiful

mountains, green and blue, which tooth the horizon, I see a glorious

spectre towering to the sky. Its base is effaced by far mists: out of

the air the thing would seem to have shaped itself--a phantom cone,

diaphanously grey below, vaporously white above, with a dream of

perpetual snow--the mighty mountain of Daisen.

At the first approach of winter it will in one night become all blanched

from foot to crest; and then its snowy pyramid so much resembles that

Sacred Mountain, often compared by poets to a white inverted fan, half

opened, hanging in the sky, that it is called Izumo-Fuji, 'the Fuji of

Izumo.' But it is really in Hoki, not in Izumo, though it cannot be

seen from any part of Hoki to such advantage as from here. It is the one

sublime spectacle of this charming land; but it is visible only when the

air is very pure. Many are the marvellous legends related concerning

it, and somewhere upon its mysterious summit the Tengu are believed to

dwell.

Sec. 13

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 all the representations of our Lord

Buddha.

'In Paradise the blessed shall sit at ease enthroned upon the cups of

golden lotus-flowers.' [7]

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.

Sec. 14

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.

Sec. 15

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-no-Kukedo

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.

Sec. 16

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.

Sec. 17

The grim castle has its legend.

It is related that, in accordance with some primitive and barbarous

custom, precisely like that of which so terrible a souvenir has

been preserved for us in the most pathetic of Servian ballads, 'The

Foundation of Skadra,' a maiden of Matsue was interred alive under the

walls of the castle at the time of its erection, as a sacrifice to some

forgotten gods. Her name has never been recorded; nothing concerning her

is remembered except that she was beautiful and very fond of dancing.

Now after the castle had been built, it is said that a law had to be

passed forbidding that any girl should dance in the streets of Matsue.

For whenever any maiden danced the hill Oshiroyama would shudder, and

the great castle quiver from basement to summit.

Sec. 18

One may still sometimes hear in the streets a very humorous song, which

every one in town formerly knew by heart, celebrating the Seven Wonders

of Matsue. For Matsue was formerly divided into seven quarters, in each

of which some extraordinary object or person was to be seen. It is now

divided into five religious districts, each containing a temple of the

State religion. People living within those districts are called ujiko,

and the temple the ujigami, or dwelling-place of the tutelary god. The

ujiko must support the ujigami. (Every village and town has at least one

ujigami.)

There is probably not one of the multitudinous temples of Matsue which

has not some marvellous tradition attached to it; each of the districts

has many legends; and I think that each of the thirty-three streets

has its own special ghost story. Of these ghost stories I cite two

specimens: they are quite representative of one variety of Japanese

folk-lore.

Near to the Fu-mon-in temple, which is in the north-eastern quarter,

there is a bridge called Adzuki-togi-bashi, or The Bridge of the Washing

of Peas. For it was said in other years that nightly a phantom woman sat

beneath that bridge washing phantom peas. There is an exquisite

Japanese iris-flower, of rainbow-violet colour, which flower is

named kaki-tsubata; and there is a song about that flower called

kaki-tsubata-no-uta. Now this song must never be sung near the

Adzuki-togi-bashi, because, for some strange reason which seems to have

been forgotten, the ghosts haunting that place become so angry upon

hearing it that to sing it there is to expose one's self to the most

frightful calamities. There was once a samurai who feared nothing,

who one night went to that bridge and loudly sang the song. No ghost

appearing, he laughed and went home. At the gate of his house he met

a beautiful tall woman whom he had never seen before, and who, bowing,

presented him with a lacquered box-fumi-bako--such as women keep their

letters in. He bowed to her in his knightly way; but she said, 'I am

only the servant--this is my mistress's gift,' and vanished out of

his sight. Opening the box, he saw the bleeding head of a young child.

Entering his house, he found upon the floor of the guest-room the dead

body of his own infant son with the head torn off.

Of the cemetery Dai-Oji, which is in the street called Nakabaramachi,

this story is told. In Nakabaramachi there is an ameya, or little shop

in which midzu-ame is sold--the amber-tinted syrup, made of malt, which

is given to children when milk cannot be obtained for them. Every night

at a late hour there came to that shop a very pale woman, all in white,

to buy one rin [8] worth of midzu-ame. The ame-seller wondered that she

was so thin and pale, and often questioned her kindly; but she answered

nothing. At last one night he followed her, out of curiosity. She went

to the cemetery; and he became afraid and returned.

The next night the woman came again, but bought no midzu-ame, and only

beckoned to the man to go with her. He followed her, with friends, into

the cemetery. She walked to a certain tomb, and there disappeared; and

they heard, under the ground, the crying of a child. Opening the tomb,

they saw within it the corpse of the woman who nightly visited the

ameya, with a living infant, laughing to see the lantern light, and

beside the infant a little cup of midzu-ame. For the mother had been

prematurely buried; the child was born in the tomb, and the ghost of the

mother had thus provided for it--love being stronger than death.

Sec. 19

Over the Tenjin-bashi, or Bridge of Tenjin, and through small streets

and narrow of densely populated districts, and past many a tenantless

and mouldering feudal homestead, I make my way to the extreme

south-western end of the city, to watch the sunset from a little sobaya

[9] facing the lake. For to see the sun sink from this sobaya is one of

the delights of Matsue.

There are no such sunsets in Japan as in the tropics: the light is

gentle as a light of dreams; there are no furies of colour; there are no

chromatic violences in nature in this Orient. All in sea or sky is tint

rather than colour, and tint vapour-toned. I think that the exquisite

taste of the race in the matter of colours and of tints, as exemplified

in the dyes of their wonderful textures, is largely attributable to the

sober and delicate beauty of nature's tones in this all-temperate world

where nothing is garish.

Before me the fair vast lake sleeps, softly luminous, far-ringed with

chains of blue volcanic hills shaped like a sierra. On my right, at its

eastern end, the most ancient quarter of the city spreads its roofs of

blue-grey tile; the houses crowd thickly down to the shore, to dip their

wooden feet into the flood. With a glass I can see my own windows and

the far-spreading of the roofs beyond, and above all else the green

citadel with its grim castle, grotesquely peaked. The sun begins to set,

and exquisite astonishments of tinting appear in water and sky.

Dead rich purples cloud broadly behind and above the indigo blackness

of the serrated hills--mist purples, fading upward smokily into faint

vermilions and dim gold, which again melt up through ghostliest greens

into the blue. The deeper waters of the lake, far away, take a tender

violet indescribable, and the silhouette of the pine-shadowed island

seems to float in that sea of soft sweet colour. But the shallower and

nearer is cut from the deeper water by the current as sharply as by

a line drawn, and all the surface on this side of that line is a

shimmering bronze--old rich ruddy gold-bronze.

All the fainter colours change every five minutes,--wondrously change

and shift like tones and shades of fine shot-silks.

Sec. 20

Often in the streets at night, especially on the nights of sacred

festivals (matsuri), one's attention will be attracted to some small

booth by the spectacle of an admiring and perfectly silent crowd

pressing before it. As soon as one can get a chance to look one finds

there is nothing to look at but a few vases containing sprays of

flowers, or perhaps some light gracious branches freshly cut from a

blossoming tree. It is simply a little flower-show, or, more correctly,

a free exhibition of master skill in the arrangement of flowers. For

the Japanese do not brutally chop off flower-heads to work them up into

meaningless masses of colour, as we barbarians do: they love nature

too well for that; they know how much the natural charm of the flower

depends upon its setting and mounting, its relation to leaf and stem,

and they select a single graceful branch or spray just as nature made

it. At first you will not, as a Western stranger, comprehend such an

exhibition at all: you are yet a savage in such matters compared with

the commonest coolies about you. But even while you are still wondering

at popular interest in this simple little show, the charm of it will

begin to grow upon you, will become a revelation to you; and, despite

your Occidental idea of self-superiority, you will feel humbled by the

discovery that all flower displays you have ever seen abroad were only

monstrosities in comparison with the natural beauty of those few simple

sprays. You will also observe how much the white or pale blue screen

behind the flowers enhances the effect by lamp or lantern light. For

the screen has been arranged with the special purpose of showing the

exquisiteness of plant shadows; and the sharp silhouettes of sprays and

blossoms cast thereon are beautiful beyond the imagining of any Western

decorative artist.

Sec. 21

It is still the season of mists in this land whose most ancient name

signifies the Place of the Issuing of Clouds. With the passing of

twilight a faint ghostly brume rises over lake and landscape, spectrally

veiling surfaces, slowly obliterating distances. As I lean over the

parapet of the Tenjin-bashi, on my homeward way, to take one last look

eastward, I find that the mountains have already been effaced. Before

me there is only a shadowy flood far vanishing into vagueness without a

horizon--the phantom of a sea. And I become suddenly aware that little

white things are fluttering slowly down into it from the fingers of a

woman standing upon the bridge beside me, and murmuring something in a

low sweet voice. She is praying for her dead child. Each of those little

papers she is dropping into the current bears a tiny picture of Jizo and

perhaps a little inscription. For when a child dies the mother buys

a small woodcut (hanko) of Jizo, and with it prints the image of the

divinity upon one hundred little papers. And she sometimes also writes

upon the papers words signifying 'For the sake of...'--inscribing never

the living, but the kaimyo or soul-name only, which the Buddhist

priest has given to the dead, and which is written also upon the little

commemorative tablet kept within the Buddhist household shrine, or

butsuma. Then, upon a fixed day (most commonly the forty-ninth day

after the burial), she goes to some place of running water and drops the

little papers therein one by one; repeating, as each slips through her

fingers, the holy invocation, 'Namu Jizo, Dai Bosatsu!'

Doubtless this pious little woman, praying beside me in the dusk, is

very poor. Were she not, she would hire a boat and scatter her tiny

papers far away upon the bosom of the lake. (It is now only after

dark that this may be done; for the police--I know not why--have been

instructed to prevent the pretty rite, just as in the open ports they

have been instructed to prohibit the launching of the little straw boats

of the dead, the shoryobune.)

But why should the papers be cast into running water? A good old Tendai

priest tells me that originally the rite was only for the souls of

the drowned. But now these gentle hearts believe that all waters flow

downward to the Shadow-world and through the Sai-no-Kawara, where Jizo

is.

Sec. 22

At home again, I slide open once more my little paper window, and look

out upon the night. I see the paper lanterns flitting over the bridge,

like a long shimmering of fireflies. I see the spectres of a hundred

lights trembling upon the black flood. I see the broad shoji of

dwellings beyond the river suffused with the soft yellow radiance of

invisible lamps; and upon those lighted spaces I can discern slender

moving shadows, silhouettes of graceful women. Devoutly do I pray that

glass may never become universally adopted in Japan--there would be no

more delicious shadows.

I listen to the voices of the city awhile. I hear the great bell of

Tokoji rolling its soft Buddhist thunder across the dark, and the songs

of the night-walkers whose hearts have been made merry with wine, and

the long sonorous chanting of the night-peddlers.

'U-mu-don-yai-soba-yai!' It is the seller of hot soba, Japanese

buckwheat, making his last round.

'Umai handan, machibito endan, usemono ninso kaso kichikyo no urainai!'

The cry of the itinerant fortune-teller.

'Ame-yu!' The musical cry of the seller of midzu-ame, the sweet amber

syrup which children love.

'Amail' The shrilling call of the seller of amazake, sweet rice wine.

'Kawachi-no-kuni-hiotan-yama-koi-no-tsuji-ura!' The peddler of

love-papers, of divining-papers, pretty tinted things with little

shadowy pictures upon them. When held near a fire or a lamp, words

written upon them with invisible ink begin to appear. These are always

about sweethearts, and sometimes tell one what he does not wish to

know. The fortunate ones who read them believe themselves still more

fortunate; the unlucky abandon all hope; the jealous become even more

jealous than they were before.

From all over the city there rises into the night a sound like the

bubbling and booming of great frogs in a march--the echoing of the tiny

drums of the dancing-girls, of the charming geisha. Like the rolling of

a waterfall continually reverberates the multitudinous pattering of geta

upon the bridge. A new light rises in the east; the moon is wheeling up

from behind the peaks, very large and weird and wan through the white

vapours. Again I hear the sounds of the clapping of many hands. For the

wayfarers are paying obeisance to O-Tsuki-San: from the long bridge they

are saluting the coming of the White Moon-Lady.[10]

I sleep, to dream of little children, in some mouldering mossy temple

court, playing at the game of Shadows and of Demons.