Lafcadio Hearn

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—“Even the worst tea is sweet when first made from the new leaf.”—Japanese proverb.

Exotics and Retrospectives

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Fuji-no-Yama

KitÉ mirÉba,
Sahodo madÉ nashi,
Fuji no Yama!

Seen on close approach, the mountain of Fuji does not come up to expectation.—Japanese proverbial philosophy.

The most beautiful sight in Japan, and certainly one of the most beautiful in the world, is the distant apparition of Fuji on cloudless days,—more especially days of spring and autumn, when the greater part of the peak is covered with late or with early snows. You can seldom distinguish the snowless base, which remains the same color as the sky: you perceive only the white cone seeming to hang in heaven; and the Japanese comparison of its shape to an inverted half-open fan is made wonderfully exact by the fine streaks that spread downward from the notched top, like shadows of fan-ribs. Even lighter than a fan the vision appears,—rather the ghost or dream of a fan;—yet the material reality a hundred miles away is grandiose among the mountains of the globe. Rising to a height of nearly 12,500 feet, Fuji is visible from thirteen provinces of the Empire. Nevertheless it is one of the easiest of lofty mountains to climb; and for a thousand years it has been scaled every summer by multitudes of pilgrims. For it is not only a sacred mountain, but the most sacred mountain of Japan,—the holiest eminence of the land that is called Divine,—the Supreme Altar of the Sun;—and to ascend it at least once in a life-time is the duty of all who reverence the ancient gods. So from every district of the Empire pilgrims annually wend their way to Fuji; and in nearly all the provinces there are pilgrim-societies—Fuji-Ko,—organized for the purpose of aiding those desiring to visit the sacred peak. If this act of faith cannot be performed by everybody in person, it can at least be performed by proxy. Any hamlet, however remote, can occasionally send one representative to pray before the shrine of the divinity of Fuji, and to salute the rising sun from that sublime eminence. Thus a single company of Fuji-pilgrims may be composed of men from a hundred different settlements.

By both of the national religions Fuji is held in reverence. The Shinto deity of Fuji is the beautiful goddess Ko-no-hana-saku-ya-himÉ,—she who brought forth her children in fire without pain, and whose name signifies “Radiant-blooming-as-the-flowers-of-the-trees,” or, according to some commentators, “Causing-the-flowers-to-blossom-brightly.” On the summit is her temple; and in ancient books it is recorded that mortal eyes have beheld her hovering, like a luminous cloud, above the verge of the crater. Her viewless servants watch and wait by the precipices to hurl down whomsoever presumes to approach her shrine with unpurified heart.... Buddhism loves the grand peak because its form is like the white bud of the Sacred Flower,—and because the eight cusps of its top, like the eight petals of the Lotos, symbolize the Eight Intelligences of Perception, Purpose, Speech, Conduct, Living, Effort, Mindfulness, and Contemplation.

But the legends and traditions about Fuji, the stories of its rising out of the earth in a single night,—of the shower of pierced-jewels once flung down from it,—of the first temple built upon its summit eleven hundred years ago,—of the Luminous Maiden that lured to the crater an Emperor who was never seen afterward, but is still worshipped at a little shrine erected on the place of his vanishing,—of the sand that daily rolled down by pilgrim feet nightly reascends to its former position,—have not all these things been written in books? There is really very little left for me to tell about Fuji except my own experience of climbing it.

I made the ascent by way of Gotemba,—the least picturesque, but perhaps also the least difficult of the six or seven routes open to choice. Gotemba is a little village chiefly consisting of pilgrim-inns. You reach it from Tokyo in about three hours by the Tokaido railway, which rises for miles as it approaches the neighborhood of the mighty volcano. Gotemba is considerably more than two thousand feet above the sea, and therefore comparatively cool in the hottest season. The open country about it slopes to Fuji; but the slope is so gradual that the table-land seems almost level to the eye. From Gotemba in perfectly clear weather the mountain looks uncomfortably near,—formidable by proximity,—though actually miles away. During the rainy season it may appear and disappear alternately many times in one day,—like an enormous spectre. But on the grey August morning when I entered Gotemba as a pilgrim, the landscape was muffled in vapors; and Fuji was totally invisible. I arrived too late to attempt the ascent on the same day; but I made my preparations at once for the day following, and engaged a couple of goriki (“strong-pull men”), or experienced guides. I felt quite secure on seeing their broad honest faces and sturdy bearing. They supplied me with a pilgrim-staff, heavy blue tabi (that is to say, cleft-stockings, to be used with sandals), a straw hat shaped like Fuji, and the rest of a pilgrim’s outfit;—telling me to be ready to start with them at four o’clock in the morning.

What is hereafter set down consists of notes taken on the journey, but afterwards amended and expanded,—for notes made while climbing are necessarily hurried and imperfect.

I

August 24th, 1897.

From strings stretched above the balcony upon which my inn-room opens, hundreds of towels are hung like flags,—blue towels and white, having printed upon them in Chinese characters the names of pilgrim-companies and of the divinity of Fuji. These are gifts to the house, and serve as advertisements.... Raining from a uniformly grey sky. Fuji always invisible.

August 25th.

3:30 a.m.—No sleep;—tumult all night of parties returning late from the mountain, or arriving for the pilgrimage;—constant clapping of hands to summon servants;—banqueting and singing in the adjoining chambers, with alarming bursts of laughter every few minutes.... Breakfast of soup, fish, and rice. Goriki arrive in professional costume, and find me ready. Nevertheless they insist that I shall undress again and put on heavy underclothing;—warning me that even when it is Doyo (the period of greatest summer heat) at the foot of the mountain, it is Daikan (the period of greatest winter cold) at the top. Then they start in advance, carrying provisions and bundles of heavy clothing.... A kuruma waits for me, with three runners,—two to pull, and one to push, as the work will be hard uphill. By kuruma I can go to the height of five thousand feet.

Morning black and slightly chill, with fine rain; but I shall soon be above the rain-clouds.... The lights of the town vanish behind us;—the kuruma is rolling along a country-road. Outside of the swinging penumbra made by the paper-lantern of the foremost runner, nothing is clearly visible; but I can vaguely distinguish silhouettes of trees and, from time to time, of houses,—peasants’ houses with steep roofs.

Grey wan light slowly suffuses the moist air;—day is dawning through drizzle.... Gradually the landscape defines with its colors. The way lies through thin woods. Occasionally we pass houses with high thatched roofs that look like farmhouses; but cultivated land is nowhere visible....

Open country with scattered clumps of trees,—larch and pine. Nothing in the horizon but scraggy tree-tops above what seems to be the rim of a vast down. No sign whatever of Fuji.... For the first time I notice that the road is black,—black sand and cinders apparently, volcanic cinders: the wheels of the kuruma and the feet of the runners sink into it with a crunching sound.

The rain has stopped, and the sky becomes a clearer grey.... The trees decrease in size and number as we advance.

What I have been taking for the horizon, in front of us, suddenly breaks open, and begins to roll smokily away to left and right. In the great rift part of a dark-blue mass appears,—a portion of Fuji. Almost at the same moment the sun pierces the clouds behind us; but the road now enters a copse covering the base of a low ridge, and the view is cut off.... Halt at a little house among the trees,—a pilgrims’ resting-place,—and there find the goriki, who have advanced much more rapidly than my runners, waiting for us. Buy eggs, which a goriki rolls up in a narrow strip of straw matting;—tying the matting tightly with straw cord between the eggs,—so that the string of eggs has somewhat the appearance of a string of sausages.... Hire a horse.

Sky clears as we proceed;—white sunlight floods everything. Road reascends; and we emerge again on the moorland. And, right in front, Fuji appears,—naked to the summit,—stupendous,—startling as if newly risen from the earth. Nothing could be more beautiful. A vast blue cone,—warm-blue, almost violet through the vapors not yet lifted by the sun,—with two white streaklets near the top which are great gullies full of snow, though they look from here scarcely an inch long. But the charm of the apparition is much less the charm of color than of symmetry,—a symmetry of beautiful bending lines with a curve like the curve of a cable stretched over a space too wide to allow of pulling taut. (This comparison did not at once suggest itself: The first impression given me by the grace of those lines was an impression of femininity;—I found myself thinking of some exquisite sloping of shoulders towards the neck.) I can imagine nothing more difficult to draw at sight. But the Japanese artist, through his marvellous skill with the writing-brush,—the skill inherited from generations of calligraphists,—easily faces the riddle: he outlines the silhouette with two flowing strokes made in the fraction of a second, and manages to hit the exact truth of the curves,—much as a professional archer might hit a mark, without consciously taking aim, through long exact habit of hand and eye.

II

I see the goriki hurrying forward far away,—one of them carrying the eggs round his neck!... Now there are no more trees worthy of the name,—only scattered stunted growths resembling shrubs. The black road curves across a vast grassy down; and here and there I see large black patches in the green surface,—bare spaces of ashes and scoriÆ; showing that this thin green skin covers some enormous volcanic deposit of recent date.... As a matter of history, all this district was buried two yards deep in 1707 by an eruption from the side of Fuji. Even in far-off Tokyo the rain of ashes covered roofs to a depth of sixteen centimetres. There are no farms in this region, because there is little true soil; and there is no water. But volcanic destruction is not eternal destruction; eruptions at last prove fertilizing; and the divine “Princess-who-causes-the-flowers-to-blossom-brightly” will make this waste to smile again in future hundreds of years.

... The black openings in the green surface become more numerous and larger. A few dwarf-shrubs still mingle with the coarse grass.... The vapors are lifting; and Fuji is changing color. It is no longer a glowing blue, but a dead sombre blue. Irregularities previously hidden by rising ground appear in the lower part of the grand curves. One of these to the left,—shaped like a camel’s hump,—represents the focus of the last great eruption.

The land is not now green with black patches, but black with green patches; and the green patches dwindle visibly in the direction of the peak. The shrubby growths have disappeared. The wheels of the kuruma, and the feet of the runners sink deeper into the volcanic sand.... The horse is now attached to the kuruma with ropes, and I am able to advance more rapidly. Still the mountain seems far away; but we are really running up its flank at a height of more than five thousand feet.

Fuji has ceased to be blue of any shade. It is black,—charcoal-black,—a frightful extinct heap of visible ashes and cinders and slaggy lava.... Most of the green has disappeared. Likewise all of the illusion. The tremendous naked black reality,—always becoming more sharply, more grimly, more atrociously defined,—is a stupefaction, a nightmare.... Above—miles above—the snow patches glare and gleam against that blackness,—hideously. I think of a gleam of white teeth I once saw in a skull,—a woman’s skull,—otherwise burnt to a sooty crisp.

So one of the fairest, if not the fairest of earthly visions, resolves itself into a spectacle of horror and death.... But have not all human ideals of beauty, like the beauty of Fuji seen from afar, been created by forces of death and pain?—are not all, in their kind, but composites of death, beheld in retrospective through the magical haze of inherited memory?

III

The green has utterly vanished;—all is black. There is no road,—only the broad waste of black sand sloping and narrowing up to those dazzling, grinning patches of snow. But there is a track,—a yellowish track made by thousands and thousands of cast-off sandals of straw (waraji), flung aside by pilgrims. Straw sandals quickly wear out upon this black grit; and every pilgrim carries several pair for the journey. Had I to make the ascent alone, I could find the path by following that wake of broken sandals,—a yellow streak zigzagging up out of sight across the blackness.

6:40 a.m.—We reach Tarobo, first of the ten stations on the ascent: height, 6000 feet. The station is a large wooden house, of which two rooms have been fitted up as a shop for the sale of staves, hats, raincoats, sandals,—everything pilgrims need. I find there a peripatetic photographer offering for sale photographs of the mountain which are really very good as well as very cheap.... Here the goriki take their first meal; and I rest. The kuruma can go no further; and I dismiss my three runners, but keep the horse,—a docile and surefooted creature; for I can venture to ride him up to Ni-go-gosÉki, or Station No. 2½.

Start for No. 2½ up the slant of black sand, keeping the horse at a walk. No. 2½ is shut up for the season.... Slope now becomes steep as a stairway, and further riding would be dangerous. Alight and make ready for the climb. Cold wind blowing so strongly that I have to tie on my hat tightly. One of the goriki unwinds from about his waist a long stout cotton girdle, and giving me one end to hold, passes the other over his shoulder for the pull. Then he proceeds over the sand at an angle, with a steady short step, and I follow; the other guide keeping closely behind me to provide against any slip.

There is nothing very difficult about this climbing, except the weariness of walking through sand and cinders: it is like walking over dunes.... We mount by zigzags. The sand moves with the wind; and I have a slightly nervous sense—the feeling only, not the perception; for I keep my eyes on the sand,—of height growing above depth.... Have to watch my steps carefully, and to use my staff constantly, as the slant is now very steep.... We are in a white fog,—passing through clouds! Even if I wished to look back, I could see nothing through this vapor; but I have not the least wish to look back. The wind has suddenly ceased—cut off, perhaps, by a ridge; and there is a silence that I remember from West Indian days: the Peace of High Places. It is broken only by the crunching of the ashes beneath our feet. I can distinctly hear my heart beat.... The guide tells me that I stoop too much,—orders me to walk upright, and always in stepping to put down the heel first. I do this, and find it relieving. But climbing through this tiresome mixture of ashes and sand begins to be trying. I am perspiring and panting. The guide bids me keep my honorable mouth closed, and breathe only through my honorable nose.

We are out of the fog again.... All at once I perceive above us, at a little distance, something like a square hole in the face of the mountain,—a door! It is the door of the third station,—a wooden hut half-buried in black drift.... How delightful to squat again,—even in a blue cloud of wood-smoke and under smoke-blackened rafters! Time, 8:30 a.m. Height, 7,085 feet.

In spite of the wood-smoke the station is comfortable enough inside; there are clean mattings and even kneeling-cushions. No windows, of course, nor any other opening than the door; for the building is half-buried in the flank of the mountain. We lunch.... The station-keeper tells us that recently a student walked from Gotemba to the top of the mountain and back again—in geta! Geta are heavy wooden sandals, or clogs, held to the foot only by a thong passing between the great and the second toe. The feet of that student must have been made of steel!

Having rested, I go out to look around. Far below white clouds are rolling over the landscape in huge fluffy wreaths. Above the hut, and actually trickling down over it, the sable cone soars to the sky. But the amazing sight is the line of the monstrous slope to the left,—a line that now shows no curve whatever, but shoots down below the clouds, and up to the gods only know where (for I cannot see the end of it), straight as a tightened bowstring. The right flank is rocky and broken. But as for the left,—I never dreamed it possible that a line so absolutely straight and smooth, and extending for so enormous a distance at such an amazing angle, could exist even in a volcano. That stupendous pitch gives me a sense of dizziness, and a totally unfamiliar feeling of wonder. Such regularity appears unnatural, frightful; seems even artificial,—but artificial upon a superhuman and demoniac scale. I imagine that to fall thence from above would be to fall for leagues. Absolutely nothing to take hold of. But the goriki assure me that there is no danger on that slope: it is all soft sand.

IV

Though drenched with perspiration by the exertion of the first climb, I am already dry, and cold.... Up again.... The ascent is at first through ashes and sand as before; but presently large stones begin to mingle with the sand; and the way is always growing steeper.... I constantly slip. There is nothing firm, nothing resisting to stand upon: loose stones and cinders roll down at every step.... If a big lava-block were to detach itself from above!... In spite of my helpers and of the staff, I continually slip, and am all in perspiration again. Almost every stone that I tread upon turns under me. How is it that no stone ever turns under the feet of the goriki? They never slip,—never make a false step,—never seem less at ease than they would be in walking over a matted floor. Their small brown broad feet always poise upon the shingle at exactly the right angle. They are heavier men than I; but they move lightly as birds.... Now I have to stop for rest every half-a-dozen steps.... The line of broken straw sandals follows the zigzags we take.... At last—at last another door in the face of the mountain. Enter the fourth station, and fling myself down upon the mats. Time, 10:30 a.m. Height, only 7,937 feet;—yet it seemed such a distance!

Off again.... Way worse and worse.... Feel a new distress due to the rarefaction of the air. Heart beating as in a high fever.... Slope has become very rough. It is no longer soft ashes and sand mixed with stones, but stones only,—fragments of lava, lumps of pumice, scoriÆ of every sort, all angled as if freshly broken with a hammer. All would likewise seem to have been expressly shaped so as to turn upside-down when trodden upon. Yet I must confess that they never turn under the feet of the goriki.... The cast-off sandals strew the slope in ever-increasing numbers.... But for the goriki I should have had ever so many bad tumbles: they cannot prevent me from slipping; but they never allow me to fall. Evidently I am not fitted to climb mountains.... Height, 8,659 feet—but the fifth station is shut up! Must keep zigzaging on to the next. Wonder how I shall ever be able to reach it!... And there are people still alive who have climbed Fuji three and four times, for pleasure!... Dare not look back. See nothing but the black stones always turning under me, and the bronzed feet of those marvellous goriki who never slip, never pant, and never perspire.... Staff begins to hurt my hand.... Goriki push and pull: it is shameful of me, I know, to give them so much trouble.... Ah! sixth station!—may all the myriads of the gods bless my goriki! Time, 2:07 p.m. Height, 9,317 feet.

Resting, I gaze through the doorway at the abyss below. The land is now dimly visible only through rents in a prodigious wilderness of white clouds; and within these rents everything looks almost black.... The horizon has risen frightfully,—has expanded monstrously.... My goriki warn me that the summit is still miles away. I have been too slow. We must hasten upward.

Certainly the zigzag is steeper than before.... With the stones now mingle angular rocks; and we sometimes have to flank queer black bulks that look like basalt.... On the right rises, out of sight, a jagged black hideous ridge,—an ancient lava-stream. The line of the left slope still shoots up, straight as a bow-string.... Wonder if the way will become any steeper;—doubt whether it can possibly become any rougher. Rocks dislodged by my feet roll down soundlessly;—I am afraid to look after them. Their noiseless vanishing gives me a sensation like the sensation of falling in dreams....

There is a white gleam overhead—the lowermost verge of an immense stretch of snow.... Now we are skirting a snow-filled gully,—the lowermost of those white patches which, at first sight of the summit this morning, seemed scarcely an inch long. It will take an hour to pass it.... A guide runs forward, while I rest upon my staff, and returns with a large ball of snow. What curious snow! Not flaky, soft, white snow, but a mass of transparent globules,—exactly like glass beads. I eat some, and find it deliciously refreshing.... The seventh station is closed. How shall I get to the eighth?... Happily, breathing has become less difficult.... The wind is upon us again, and black dust with it. The goriki keep close to me, and advance with caution.... I have to stop for rest at every turn on the path;—cannot talk for weariness.... I do not feel;—I am much too tired to feel.... How I managed it, I do not know;—but I have actually got to the eighth station! Not for a thousand millions of dollars will I go one step further to-day. Time, 4:40 p.m. Height, 10,693 feet.

V

It is much too cold here for rest without winter clothing; and now I learn the worth of the heavy robes provided by the guides. The robes are blue, with big white Chinese characters on the back, and are padded thickly as bedquilts; but they feel light; for the air is really like the frosty breath of February.... A meal is preparing;—I notice that charcoal at this elevation acts in a refractory manner, and that a fire can be maintained only by constant attention.... Cold and fatigue sharpen appetite: we consume a surprising quantity of Zo-sui,—rice boiled with eggs and a little meat. By reason of my fatigue and of the hour, it has been decided to remain here for the night.

Tired as I am, I cannot but limp to the doorway to contemplate the amazing prospect. From within a few feet of the threshold, the ghastly slope of rocks and cinders drops down into a prodigious disk of clouds miles beneath us,—clouds of countless forms, but mostly wreathings and fluffy pilings;—and the whole huddling mass, reaching almost to the horizon, is blinding white under the sun. (By the Japanese, this tremendous cloud-expanse is well named Wata-no-Umi, “the Sea of Cotton.”) The horizon itself—enormously risen, phantasmally expanded—seems halfway up above the world: a wide luminous belt ringing the hollow vision. Hollow, I call it, because extreme distances below the sky-line are sky-colored and vague,—so that the impression you receive is not of being on a point under a vault, but of being upon a point rising into a stupendous blue sphere, of which this huge horizon would represent the equatorial zone. To turn away from such a spectacle is not possible. I watch and watch until the dropping sun changes the colors,—turning the Sea of Cotton into a Fleece of Gold. Half-round the horizon a yellow glory grows and burns. Here and there beneath it, through cloudrifts, colored vaguenesses define: I now see golden water, with long purple headlands reaching into it, with ranges of violet peaks thronging behind it;—these glimpses curiously resembling portions of a tinted topographical map. Yet most of the landscape is pure delusion. Even my guides, with their long experience and their eagle-sight, can scarcely distinguish the real from the unreal;—for the blue and purple and violet clouds moving under the Golden Fleece, exactly mock the outlines and the tones of distant peaks and capes: you can detect what is vapor only by its slowly shifting shape.... Brighter and brighter glows the gold. Shadows come from the west,—shadows flung by cloud-pile over cloud-pile; and these, like evening shadows upon snow, are violaceous blue.... Then orange-tones appear in the horizon; then smouldering crimson. And now the greater part of the Fleece of Gold has changed to cotton again,—white cotton mixed with pink.... Stars thrill out. The cloud-waste uniformly whitens;—thickening and packing to the horizon. The west glooms. Night rises; and all things darken except that wondrous unbroken world-round of white,—the Sea of Cotton.

The station-keeper lights his lamps, kindles a fire of twigs, prepares our beds. Outside it is bitterly cold, and, with the fall of night, becoming colder. Still I cannot turn away from that astounding vision.... Countless stars now flicker and shiver in the blue-black sky. Nothing whatever of the material world remains visible, except the black slope of the peak before my feet. The enormous cloud-disk below continues white; but to all appearance it has become a liquidly level white, without forms,—a white flood. It is no longer the Sea of Cotton. It is a Sea of Milk, the Cosmic Sea of ancient Indian legend,—and always self-luminous, as with ghostly quickenings.

VI

Squatting by the wood fire, I listen to the goriki and the station-keeper telling of strange happenings on the mountain. One incident discussed I remember reading something about in a Tokyo paper: I now hear it retold by the lips of a man who figured in it as a hero.

A Japanese meteorologist named Nonaka, attempted last year the rash undertaking of passing the winter on the summit of Fuji for purposes of scientific study. It might not be difficult to winter upon the peak in a solid observatory furnished with a good stove, and all necessary comforts; but Nonaka could afford only a small wooden hut, in which he would be obliged to spend the cold season without fire! His young wife insisted on sharing his labors and dangers. The couple began their sojourn on the summit toward the close of September. In midwinter news was brought to Gotemba that both were dying.

Relatives and friends tried to organize a rescue-party. But the weather was frightful; the peak was covered with snow and ice; the chances of death were innumerable; and the goriki would not risk their lives. Hundreds of dollars could not tempt them. At last a desperate appeal was made to them as representatives of Japanese courage and hardihood: they were assured that to suffer a man of science to perish, without making even one plucky effort to save him, would disgrace the country;—they were told that the national honor was in their hands. This appeal brought forward two volunteers. One was a man of great strength and daring, nick-named by his fellow-guides, Oni-guma, “the Demon-Bear,” the other was the elder of my goriki. Both believed that they were going to certain destruction. They took leave of their friends and kindred, and drank with their families the farewell cup of water,—midzu-no-sakazuki,—in which those about to be separated by death pledge each other. Then, after having thickly wrapped themselves in cotton-wool, and made all possible preparation for ice climbing, they started,—taking with them a brave army-surgeon who had offered his services, without fee, for the rescue. After surmounting extraordinary difficulties, the party reached the hut; but the inmates refused to open! Nonaka protested that he would rather die than face the shame of failure in his undertaking; and his wife said that she had resolved to die with her husband. Partly by forcible, and partly by gentle means, the pair were restored to a better state of mind. The surgeon administered medicines and cordials; the patients, carefully wrapped up, were strapped to the backs of the guides; and the descent was begun. My goriki, who carried the lady, believes that the gods helped him on the ice-slopes. More than once, all thought themselves lost; but they reached the foot of the mountain without one serious mishap. After weeks of careful nursing, the rash young couple were pronounced out of danger. The wife suffered less, and recovered more quickly, than the husband.

The goriki have cautioned me not to venture outside during the night without calling them. They will not tell me why; and their warning is peculiarly uncanny. From previous experiences during Japanese travel, I surmise that the danger implied is supernatural; but I feel that it would be useless to ask questions.

The door is closed and barred. I lie down between the guides, who are asleep in a moment, as I can tell by their heavy breathing. I cannot sleep immediately;—perhaps the fatigues and the surprises of the day have made me somewhat nervous. I look up at the rafters of the black roof,—at packages of sandals, bundles of wood, bundles of many indistinguishable kinds there stowed away or suspended, and making queer shadows in the lamplight.... It is terribly cold, even under my three quilts; and the sound of the wind outside is wonderfully like the sound of great surf,—a constant succession of bursting roars, each followed by a prolonged hiss. The hut, half buried under tons of rock and drift, does not move; but the sand does, and trickles down between the rafters; and small stones also move after each fierce gust, with a rattling just like the clatter of shingle in the pull of a retreating wave.

4. a.m.—Go out alone, despite last evening’s warning, but keep close to the door. There is a great and icy blowing. The Sea of Milk is unchanged: it lies far below this wind. Over it the moon is dying.... The guides, perceiving my absence, spring up and join me. I am reproved for not having awakened them. They will not let me stay outside alone: so I turn in with them.

Dawn: a zone of pearl grows round the world. The stars vanish; the sky brightens. A wild sky, with dark wrack drifting at an enormous height. The Sea of Milk has turned again into Cotton,—and there are wide rents in it. The desolation of the black slope,—all the ugliness of slaggy rock and angled stone, again defines.... Now the cotton becomes disturbed;—it is breaking up. A yellow glow runs along the east like the glare of a wind-blown fire.... Alas! I shall not be among the fortunate mortals able to boast of viewing from Fuji the first lifting of the sun! Heavy clouds have drifted across the horizon at the point where he should rise.... Now I know that he has risen; because the upper edges of those purple rags of cloud are burning like charcoal. But I have been so disappointed!

More and more luminous the hollow world. League-wide heapings of cottony cloud roll apart. Fearfully far-away there is a light of gold upon water: the sun here remains viewless, but the ocean sees him. It is not a flicker, but a burnished glow;—at such a distance ripplings are invisible.... Further and further scattering, the clouds unveil a vast grey and blue landscape;—hundreds and hundreds of miles throng into vision at once. On the right I distinguish Tokyo bay, and Kamakura, and the holy island of Enoshima (no bigger than the dot over this letter “i”);—on the left the wilder Suruga coast, and the blue-toothed promontory of Idzu, and the place of the fishing-village where I have been summering,—the merest pin-point in that tinted dream of hill and shore. Rivers appear but as sun-gleams on spider-threads;—fishing-sails are white dust clinging to the grey-blue glass of the sea. And the picture alternately appears and vanishes while the clouds drift and shift across it, and shape themselves into spectral islands and mountains and valleys of all Elysian colors....

VII

6:40 a.m.—Start for the top.... Hardest and roughest stage of the journey, through a wilderness of lava-blocks. The path zigzags between ugly masses that project from the slope like black teeth. The trail of cast-away sandals is wider than ever.... Have to rest every few minutes.... Reach another long patch of the snow that looks like glass-beads, and eat some. The next station—a half-station—is closed; and the ninth has ceased to exist.... A sudden fear comes to me, not of the ascent, but of the prospective descent by a route which is too steep even to permit of comfortably sitting down. But the guides assure me that there will be no difficulty, and that most of the return-journey will be by another way,—over the interminable level which I wondered at yesterday,—nearly all soft sand, with very few stones. It is called the hashiri (“glissade”); and we are to descend at a run!...

All at once a family of field-mice scatter out from under my feet in panic; and the goriki behind me catches one, and gives it to me. I hold the tiny shivering life for a moment to examine it, and set it free again. These little creatures have very long pale noses. How do they live in this waterless desolation,—and at such an altitude,—especially in the season of snow? For we are now at a height of more than eleven thousand feet! The goriki say that the mice find roots growing under the stones....

Wilder and steeper;—for me, at least, the climbing is sometimes on all fours. There are barriers which we surmount with the help of ladders. There are fearful places with Buddhist names, such as the Sai-no-Kawara, or Dry Bed of the River of Souls,—a black waste strewn with heaps of rock, like those stone-piles which, in Buddhist pictures of the underworld, the ghosts of children build....

Twelve thousand feet, and something,—the top! Time, 8:20 a.m.... Stone huts; Shinto shrine with torii; icy well, called the Spring of Gold; stone tablet bearing a Chinese poem and the design of a tiger; rough walls of lava-blocks round these things,—possibly for protection against the wind. Then the huge dead crater,—probably between a quarter of a mile and half-a-mile wide, but shallowed up to within three or four hundred feet of the verge by volcanic detritus,—a cavity horrible even in the tones of its yellow crumbling walls, streaked and stained with every hue of scorching. I perceive that the trail of straw sandals ends in the crater. Some hideous over-hanging cusps of black lava—like the broken edges of a monstrous cicatrix—project on two sides several hundred feet above the opening; but I certainly shall not take the trouble to climb them. Yet these,—seen through the haze of a hundred miles,—through the soft illusion of blue spring-weather,—appear as the opening snowy petals of the bud of the Sacred Lotos!... No spot in this world can be more horrible, more atrociously dismal, than the cindered tip of the Lotos as you stand upon it.

But the view—the view for a hundred leagues,—and the light of the far faint dreamy world,—and the fairy vapors of morning,—and the marvellous wreathings of cloud: all this, and only this, consoles me for the labor and the pain.... Other pilgrims, earlier climbers,—poised upon the highest crag, with faces turned to the tremendous East,—are clapping their hands in Shinto prayer, saluting the mighty Day.... The immense poetry of the moment enters into me with a thrill. I know that the colossal vision before me has already become a memory ineffaceable,—a memory of which no luminous detail can fade till the hour when thought itself must fade, and the dust of these eyes be mingled with the dust of the myriad million eyes that also have looked, in ages forgotten before my birth, from the summit supreme of Fuji to the Rising of the Sun.

Insect-Musicians

“O insect, insect!—think you that Karma can be exhausted by song?”—Japanese poem.

I

If you ever visit Japan, be sure to go to at least one temple-festival,—en-nichi. The festival ought to be seen at night, when everything shows to the best advantage in the glow of countless lamps and lanterns. Until you have had this experience, you cannot know what Japan is,—you cannot imagine the real charm of queerness and prettiness, the wonderful blending of grotesquery and beauty, to be found in the life of the common people.

In such a night you will probably let yourself drift awhile with the stream of sight-seers through dazzling lanes of booths full of toys indescribable—dainty puerilities, fragile astonishments, laughter-making oddities;—you will observe representations of demons, gods, and goblins;—you will be startled by mando—immense lantern-transparencies, with monstrous faces painted upon them;—you will have glimpses of jugglers, acrobats, sword-dancers, fortune-tellers;—you will hear everywhere, above the tumult of voices, a ceaseless blowing of flutes and booming of drums. All this may not be worth stopping for. But presently, I am almost sure, you will pause in your promenade to look at a booth illuminated like a magic-lantern, and stocked with tiny wooden cages out of which an incomparable shrilling proceeds. The booth is the booth of a vendor of singing-insects; and the storm of noise is made by the insects. The sight is curious; and a foreigner is nearly always attracted by it.

But having satisfied his momentary curiosity, the foreigner usually goes on his way with the idea that he has been inspecting nothing more remarkable than a particular variety of toys for children. He might easily be made to understand that the insect-trade of Tokyo alone represents a yearly value of thousands of dollars; but he would certainly wonder if assured that the insects themselves are esteemed for the peculiar character of the sounds which they make. It would not be easy to convince him that in the Æsthetic life of a most refined and artistic people, these insects hold a place not less important or well-deserved than that occupied in Western civilization by our thrushes, linnets, nightingales and canaries. What stranger could suppose that a literature one thousand years old,—a literature full of curious and delicate beauty,—exists upon the subject of these short-lived insect-pets?

The object of the present paper is, by elucidating these facts, to show how superficially our travellers might unconsciously judge the most interesting details of Japanese life. But such misjudgments are as natural as they are inevitable. Even with the kindest of intentions it is impossible to estimate correctly at sight anything of the extraordinary in Japanese custom,—because the extraordinary nearly always relates to feelings, beliefs, or thoughts about which a stranger cannot know anything.

Before proceeding further, let me observe that the domestic insects of which I am going to speak, are mostly night-singers, and must not be confounded with the semi (cicadÆ), mentioned in former essays of mine. I think that the cicadÆ,—even in a country so exceptionally rich as is Japan in musical insects,—are wonderful melodists in their own way. But the Japanese find as much difference between the notes of night-insects and of cicadÆ as we find between those of larks and sparrows; and they relegate their cicadÆ to the vulgar place of chatterers. Semi are therefore never caged. The national liking for caged insects does not mean a liking for mere noise; and the note of every insect in public favor must possess either some rhythmic charm, or some mimetic quality celebrated in poetry or legend. The same fact is true of the Japanese liking for the chant of frogs. It would be a mistake to suppose that all kinds of frogs are considered musical; but there are particular species of very small frogs having sweet notes; and these are caged and petted.

Of course, in the proper meaning of the word, insects do not sing; but in the following pages I may occasionally employ the terms “singer” and “singing-insect,”—partly because of their convenience, and partly because of their correspondence with the language used by Japanese insect-dealers and poets, describing the “voices” of such creatures.

II

There are many curious references in the old Japanese classic literature to the custom of keeping musical insects. For example in the chapter entitled Nowaki[1] of the famous novel “Genji Monogatari,” written in the latter part of the tenth century by the Lady Murasaki-Shikibu, it is stated: “The maids were ordered to descend to the garden, and give some water to the insects.” But the first definite mention of cages for singing-insects would appear to be the following passage from a work entitled Chomon-Shu:—“On the twelfth day of the eighth month of the second year of Kaho [1095 A. D.], the Emperor ordered his pages and chamberlains to go to Sagano and find some insects. The Emperor gave them a cage of network of bright purple thread. All, even the head-chaplain and his attendants, taking horses from the Right and the Left Imperial Mews, then went on horseback to hunt for insects. Tokinori Ben, at that time holding the office of Kurando,[2] proposed to the party as they rode toward Sagano, a subject for poetical composition. The subject was, Looking for insects in the fields. On reaching Sagano, the party dismounted, and walked in various directions for a distance of something more than ten cho,[3] and sent their attendants to catch the insects. In the evening they returned to the palace. They put into the cage some hagi[4] and ominameshi [for the insects]. The cage was respectfully presented to the Empress. There was sakÉ-drinking in the palace that evening; and many poems were composed. The Empress and her court-ladies joined in the making of the poems.”

This would appear to be the oldest Japanese record of an insect-hunt,—though the amusement may have been invented earlier than the period of Kaho. By the seventeenth century it seems to have become a popular diversion; and night-hunts were in vogue as much as day-hunts. In the Teikoku Bunshu, or collected works of the poet Teikoku, who died during the second year of Showo (1653), there has been preserved one of the poet’s letters which contains a very interesting passage on the subject. “Let us go insect-hunting this evening,”—writes the poet to his friend. “It is true that the night will be very dark, since there is no moon; and it may seem dangerous to go out. But there are many people now going to the graveyards every night, because the Bon festival is approaching[5];—therefore the way to the fields will not be lonesome for us. I have prepared many lanterns;—so the hata-ori, matsumushi, and other insects will probably come to the lanterns in great number.”

It would also seem that the trade of insect-seller (mushiya) existed in the seventeenth century; for in a diary of that time, known as the Diary of Kikaku, the writer speaks of his disappointment at not finding any insect-dealers in Yedo,—tolerably good evidence that he had met such persons elsewhere. “On the thirteenth day of the sixth month of the fourth year of Teikyo [1687], I went out,” he writes, “to look for kirigirisu-sellers. I searched for them in Yotsuya, in Kojimachi, in Hongo, in Yushimasa, and in both divisions of Kanda-Sudamacho[6]; but I found none.”

As we shall presently see, the kirigirisu was not sold in Tokyo until about one hundred and twenty years later.

But long before it became the fashion to keep singing-insects, their music had been celebrated by poets as one of the Æsthetic pleasures of the autumn. There are charming references to singing-insects in poetical collections made during the tenth century, and doubtless containing many compositions of a yet earlier period. And just as places famous for cherry, plum, or other blossoming trees, are still regularly visited every year by thousands and tens of thousands, merely for the delight of seeing the flowers in their seasons,—so in ancient times city-dwellers made autumn excursions to country-districts simply for the pleasure of hearing the chirruping choruses of crickets and of locusts,—the night-singers especially. Centuries ago places were noted as pleasure-resorts solely because of this melodious attraction;—such were Musashino (now Tokyo), Yatano in the province of Echizen, and Mano in the province of Omi. Somewhat later, probably, people discovered that each of the principal species of singing-insects haunted by preference some particular locality, where its peculiar chanting could be heard to the best advantage; and eventually no less than eleven places became famous throughout Japan for different kinds of insect-music.

The best places to hear the matsumushi were:—

(1) Arashiyama, near Kyoto, in the province of Yamashiro;
(2) Sumiyoshi, in the province of Settsu;
(3) Miyagino, in the province of Mutsu.

The best places to hear the suzumushi were:—

(4) Kagura-ga-Oka, in Yamashiro;
(5) Ogura-yama, in Yamashiro;
(6) Suzuka-yama, in IsÉ;
(7) Narumi, in Owari.

The best places to hear the kirigirisu were:—

(8) Sagano, in Yamashiro;
(9) Takeda-no-Sato, in Yamashiro;
(10) Tatsuta-yama, in Yamato;
(11) Ono-no-Shinowara, in Omi.

Afterwards, when the breeding and sale of singing-insects became a lucrative industry, the custom of going into the country to hear them gradually went out of fashion. But even to-day city-dwellers, when giving a party, will sometimes place cages of singing-insects among the garden-shrubbery, so that the guests may enjoy not only the music of the little creatures, but also those memories or sensations of rural peace which such music evokes.

III

The regular trade in musical insects is of comparatively modern origin. In Tokyo its beginnings date back only to the Kwansei era (1789-1800),—at which period, however, the capital of the Shogunate was still called Yedo. A complete history of the business was recently placed in my hands,—a history partly compiled from old documents, and partly from traditions preserved in the families of several noted insect-merchants of the present day.

The founder of the Tokyo trade was an itinerant foodseller named Chuzo, originally from Echigo, who settled in the Kanda district of the city in the latter part of the eighteenth century. One day, while making his usual rounds, it occurred to him to capture a few of the suzumushi, or bell-insects, then very plentiful in the Negishi quarter, and to try the experiment of feeding them at home. They throve and made music in confinement; and several of Chuzo’s neighbors, charmed by their melodious chirruping, asked to be supplied with suzumushi for a consideration. From this accidental beginning, the demand for suzumushi grew rapidly to such proportions that the foodseller at last decided to give up his former calling and to become an insect-seller.

Chuzo only caught and sold insects: he never imagined that it would be more profitable to breed them. But the fact was presently discovered by one of his customers,—a man named Kirayama, then in the service of the Lord Aoyama ShimodzukÉ-no-Kami. Kiriyama had bought from Chuzo several suzumushi, which were kept and fed in a jar half-filled with moist clay. They died in the cold season; but during the following summer Kiriyama was agreeably surprised to find the jar newly peopled with a number of young ones, evidently born from eggs which the first prisoners had left in the clay. He fed them carefully, and soon had the pleasure, my chronicler says, of hearing them “begin to sing in small voices.” Then he resolved to make some experiments; and, aided by Chuzo, who furnished the males and females, he succeeded in breeding not only suzumushi, but three other kinds of singing-insects also,—kantan, matsumushi, and kutsuwamushi. He discovered, at the same time, that, by keeping his jars in a warm room, the insects could be hatched considerably in advance of the natural season. Chuzo sold for Kiriyama these home-bred singers; and both men found the new undertaking profitable beyond expectation.

The example set by Kiriyama was imitated by a tabiya, or stocking-maker named Yasubei (commonly known as Tabiya Yasubei by reason of his calling), who lived in Kanda-ku. Yasubei likewise made careful study of the habits of singing-insects, with a view to their breeding and nourishment; and he soon found himself able to carry on a small trade in them. Up to that time the insects sold in Yedo would seem to have been kept in jars or boxes: Yasubei conceived the idea of having special cages manufactured for them. A man named Kondo, vassal to the Lord Kamei of Honjo-ku, interested himself in the matter, and made a number of pretty little cages which delighted Yasubei, and secured a large order from him. The new invention found public favor at once; and Kondo soon afterwards established the first manufactory of insect-cages.

The demand for singing-insects increased from this time so rapidly, that Chuzo soon found it impossible to supply all his would-be customers directly. He therefore decided to change his business to wholesale trade, and to sell to retail dealers only. To meet orders, he purchased largely from peasants in the suburbs and elsewhere. Many persons were employed by him; and Yasubei and others paid him a fixed annual sum for sundry rights and privileges.

Some time after this Yasubei became the first itinerant-vendor of singing-insects. He walked through the streets crying his wares; but hired a number of servants to carry the cages. Tradition says that while going his rounds he used to wear a katabira[7] made of a much-esteemed silk stuff called sukiya, together with a fine Hakata-girdle; and that this elegant way of dressing proved of much service to him in his business.

Two men, whose names have been preserved, soon entered into competition with Yasubei. The first was Yasakura Yasuzo, of Honjo-ku, by previous occupation a sahainin, or property-agent. He prospered, and became widely known as Mushi-Yasu,—“Yasu-the-Insect-Man.” His success encouraged a former fellow-sahainin, Genbei of Uyeno, to go into the same trade. Genbei likewise found insect-selling a lucrative occupation, and earned for himself the sobriquet of Mushi-Gen, by which he is yet remembered. His descendants in Tokyo to-day are amÉ[8]-manufacturers; but they still carry on the hereditary insect-business during the summer and autumn months; and one of the firm was kind enough to furnish me with many of the facts recorded in this little essay.

Chuzo, the father and founder of all this curious commerce, died without children; and sometime in the period of Bunsei (1818-1829) his business was taken over by a distant relative named Yamasaki SeÏchiro. To Chuzo’s business, Yamasaki joined his own,—that of a toy-merchant. About the same time a law was passed limiting the number of insect-dealers in the municipality to thirty-six. The thirty-six then formed themselves into a guild, called the Oyama-Ko (“Oyama Society”), having for patron the divinity Sekison-Sama of the mountain Oyama in Sagami Province.[9] But in business the association was known as the Yedo-Mushi-Ko, or Yedo Insect-Company.

It is not until after this consolidation of the trade that we hear of the kirigirisu,—the same musical insect which the poet Kikaku had vainly tried to buy in the city in 1687,—being sold in Yedo. One of the guild known as Mushiya Kojiro (“Kojiro the Insect-Merchant”), who did business in Honjo-Ku, returning to the city after a short visit to his native place in Kadzusa, brought back with him a number of kirigirisu, which he sold at a good profit. Although long famous elsewhere, these insects had never before been sold in Yedo.

“When Midzu Echizen-no-Kami,” says the chronicle, “became machi-bugyo (or chief magistrate) of Yedo, the law limiting the number of insect-dealers to thirty-six, was abolished.” Whether the guild was subsequently dissolved the chronicle fails to mention.

Kiriyama, the first to breed singing-insects artificially, had, like Chuzo, built up a prosperous trade. He left a son, KamÉjiro, who was adopted into the family of one Yumoto, living in WasÉda, UshigomÉ-ku. KamÉjiro brought with him to the Yumoto family the valuable secrets of his father’s occupation; and the Yumoto family is still celebrated in the business of insect breeding.

To-day the greatest insect-merchant in Tokyo is said to be Kawasumi KanÉsaburo, of Samon-cho in Yotsuya-ku. A majority of the lesser dealers obtain their autumn stock from him. But the insects bred artificially, and sold in summer, are mostly furnished by the Yumoto house. Other noted dealers are Mushi-Sei, of Shitaya-ku, and Mushi-Toku, of Asakusa. These buy insects caught in the country, and brought to the city by the peasants. The wholesale dealers supply both insects and cages to multitudes of itinerant vendors who do business in the neighborhood of the parish-temples during the en-nichi, or religious festivals,—especially after dark. Almost every night of the year there are en-nichi in some quarter of the capital; and the insect-sellers are rarely idle during the summer and autumn months.

Perhaps the following list of current Tokyo prices[10] for singing-insects may interest the reader:—

These prices, however, rule only during the busy period of the insect trade. In May and the latter part of June the prices are high,—for only artificially bred insects are then in the market. In July kirigirisu brought from the country will sell as low as one sen. The kantan, kusa-hibari, and Yamato-suzu sell sometimes as low as two sen. In August the Emma-korogi can be bought even at the rate of ten for one sen; and in September the kuro-hibari, kanÉtataki, and umaoi sell for one or one and a half sen each. But there is little variation at any season in the prices of suzumushi and of matsumushi. These are never very dear, but never sell at less than three sen; and there is always a demand for them. The suzumushi is the most popular of all; and the greater part of the profits annually made in the insect-trade is said to be gained on the sale of this insect.

IV

As will be seen from the foregoing price-list, twelve varieties of musical insects are sold in Tokyo. Nine can be artificially bred,—namely the suzumushi, matsumushi, kirigirisu, kantan, kutsuwamushi, Emma-korogi, kin-hibari, kusa-hibari (also called Asa-suzu), and the Yamato-suzu, or Yoshino-suzu. Three varieties, I am told, are not bred for sale, but captured for the market: these are the kanÉtataki, umaoi or hataori, and kuro-hibari. But a considerable number of all the insects annually offered for sale, are caught in their native haunts.

The breeding pairs are kept in jars or other earthen vessels half-filled with moistened clay, and are supplied every day with fresh food. They do not live long: the male dies first, and the female survives only until her eggs have been laid. The young insects hatched from them, shed their skin in about forty days from birth, after which they grow more rapidly, and soon attain their full development. In their natural state these creatures are hatched a little before the Doyo, or Period of Greatest Heat by the old calendar,—that is to say, about the middle of July;—and they begin to sing in October. But when bred in a warm room, they are hatched early in April; and, with careful feeding, they can be offered for sale before the end of May. When very young, their food is triturated and spread for them upon a smooth piece of wood; but the adults are usually furnished with unprepared food,—consisting of parings of egg-plant, melon-rind, cucumber-rind, or the soft interior parts of the white onion. Some insects, however, are specially nourished;—the abura-kirigirisu, for example, being fed with sugar-water and slices of musk-melon.

V

All the insects mentioned in the Tokyo price-list are not of equal interest; and several of the names appear to refer only to different varieties of one species,—though on this point I am not positive. Some of the insects do not seem to have yet been scientifically classed; and I am no entomologist. But I can offer some general notes on the more important among the little melodists, and free translations of a few out of the countless poems about them,—beginning with the matsumushi, which was celebrated in Japanese verse a thousand years ago:

Matsumushi.[11]

As ideographically written, the name of this creature signifies “pine-insect;” but, as pronounced, it might mean also “waiting-insect,”—since the verb “matsu,” “to wait,” and the noun “matsu,” “pine,” have the same sound. It is chiefly upon this double meaning of the word as uttered that a host of Japanese poems about the matsumushi are based. Some of these are very old,—dating back to the tenth century at least.

Although by no means a rare insect, the matsumushi is much esteemed for the peculiar clearness and sweetness of its notes—(onomatopoetically rendered in Japanese by the syllables chin-chirorin, chin-chirorin),—little silvery shrillings which I can best describe as resembling the sound of an electric bell heard from a distance. The matsumushi haunts pine-woods and cryptomeria-groves, and makes its music at night. It is a very small insect, with a dark-brown back, and a yellowish belly.

Perhaps the oldest extant verses upon the matsumushi are those contained in the Kokinshu,—a famous anthology compiled in the year 905 by the court-poet Tsurayuki and several of his noble friends. Here we first find that play on the name of the insect as pronounced, which was to be repeated in a thousand different keys by a multitude of poets through the literature of more than nine hundred years:—

“In the autumn-fields I lose my way;—perhaps I might ask for lodging in the direction of the cry of the waiting-insect;”—that is to say, “might sleep to-night in the grass where the insects are waiting for me.” There is in the same work a much prettier poem on the matsumushi by Tsurayuki.

The following poems on the same insect are less ancient but not less interesting:—

Suzumushi.[12]

The name signifies “bell-insect;” but the bell of which the sound is thus referred to is a very small bell, or a bunch of little bells such as a Shinto priestess uses in the sacred dances. The suzumushi is a great favorite with insect-fanciers, and is bred in great numbers for the market. In the wild state it is found in many parts of Japan; and at night the noise made by multitudes of suzumushi in certain lonesome places might easily be mistaken,—as it has been by myself more than once,—for the sound of rapids. The Japanese description of the insect as resembling “a watermelon seed”—the black kind—is excellent. It is very small, with a black back, and a white or yellowish belly. Its tintinnabulation—ri-Ï-Ï-Ï-in, as the Japanese render the sound—might easily be mistaken for the tinkling of a suzu. Both the matsumushi and the suzumushi are mentioned in Japanese poems of the period of Engi (901-922).

Hataori-mushi.

The hataori is a beautiful bright-green grasshopper, of very graceful shape. Two reasons are given for its curious name, which signifies “the Weaver.” One is that, when held in a particular way, the struggling gestures of the creature resemble the movements of a girl weaving. The other reason is that its music seems to imitate the sound of the reed and shuttle of a hand-loom in operation,—Ji-Ï-Ï-Ï—chon-chon!—ji-Ï-Ï-Ï—chon-chon!

There is a pretty folk-story about the origin of the hataori and the kirigirisu, which used to be told to Japanese children in former times.—Long, long ago, says the tale, there were two very dutiful daughters who supported their old blind father by the labor of their hands. The elder girl used to weave, and the younger to sew. When the old blind father died at last, these good girls grieved so much that they soon died also. One beautiful morning, some creatures of a kind never seen before were found making music above the graves of the sisters. On the tomb of the elder was a pretty green insect, producing sounds like those made by a girl weaving,—ji-Ï-Ï-Ï, chon-chon! ji-Ï-Ï-Ï, chon-chon! This was the first hataori-mushi. On the tomb of the younger sister was an insect which kept crying out, “TsuzurÉ—sasÉ, sasÉ!—tsuzurÉ, tsuzurÉ—sasÉ, sasÉ, sasÉ!” (Torn clothes—patch, patch them up!—torn clothes, torn clothes—patch up, patch up, patch up!) This was the first kirigirisu. Then everybody knew that the spirits of the good sisters had taken those shapes. Still every autumn they cry to wives and daughters to work well at the loom, and warn them to repair the winter garments of the household before the coming of the cold.

Such poems as I have been able to obtain about the hataori consist of nothing more than pretty fancies. Two, of which I offer free renderings, are ancient,—the first by Tsurayuki; the second by a poetess classically known as “Akinaka’s Daughter”:—

Umaoi.

The umaoi is sometimes confounded with the hataori, which it much resembles. But the true umaoi—(called junta in Izumo)—is a shorter and thicker insect than the hataori; and has at its tail a hook-shaped protuberance, which the weaver-insect has not. Moreover, there is some difference in the sounds made by the two creatures. The music of the umaoi is not “ji-Ï-Ï-Ï,—chon-chon,” but, “zu-Ï-in-tzo!—zu-Ï-in-tzo!”—say the Japanese.

Kirigirisu.[13]

There are different varieties of this much-prized insect. The abura-kirigirisu, a day-singer, is a delicate creature, and must be carefully nourished in confinement. The tachi-kirigirisu, a night-singer, is more commonly found in the market. Captured kirigirisu sold in Tokyo are mostly from the neighborhood of Itabashi, Niiso, and Todogawa; and these, which fetch high prices, are considered the best. They are large vigorous insects, uttering very clear notes. From Kujiukuri in Kadzusa other and much cheaper kirigirisu are brought to the capital; but these have a disagreeable odor, suffer from the attacks of a peculiar parasite, and are feeble musicians.

As stated elsewhere, the sounds made by the kirigirisu are said to resemble those of the Japanese words, “TsuzurÉ—sasÉ! sasÉ!” (Torn clothes—patch up! patch up!); and a large proportion of the many poems written about the insect depend for interest upon ingenious but untranslatable allusions to those words. I offer renderings therefore of only two poems on the kirigirisu,—the first by an unknown poet in the Kokinshu; the second by Tadafusa:—

Kusa-hibari.

Kin-hibari.

The kin-hibari, or “Golden Lark” used to be found in great numbers about the neighborhood of the well-known Shino-bazu-no-ikÉ,—the great lotos-pond of Uyeno in Tokyo;—but of late years it has become scarce there. The kin-hibari now sold in the capital are brought from Todogawa and Shimura.

There are many varieties of this night-cricket,—called korogi from its music:—“kiri-kiri-kiri-kiri!—koro-koro-koro-koro!—ghi-Ï-Ï-Ï-Ï-Ï-Ï!” One variety, the ebi-korogi, or “shrimp-korogi,” does not make any sound. But the uma-korogi, or “horse-korogi;” the Oni-korogi, or “Demon-korogi;” and the Emma-korogi, or “Cricket-of-Emma[14] [King of the Dead],” are all good musicians. The color is blackish-brown, or black;—the best singing-varieties have curious wavy markings on the wings.

An interesting fact regarding the korogi is that mention of it is made in the very oldest collection of Japanese poems known, the Manyoshu, probably compiled about the middle of the eighth century. The following lines, by an unknown poet, which contain this mention, are therefore considerably more than eleven hundred years old:—

[“Showers have sprinkled the garden-grass. Hearing the sound of the crying of the korogi, I know that the autumn has come.”]

Kutsuwamushi.

There are several varieties of this extraordinary creature,—also called onomatopoetically gatcha-gatcha,—which is most provokingly described in dictionaries as “a kind of noisy cricket”! The variety commonly sold in Tokyo has a green back, and a yellowish-white abdomen; but there are also brown and reddish varieties. The kutsuwamushi is difficult to capture, but easy to breed. As the tsuku-tsuku-boshi is the most wonderful musician among the sun-loving cicadÆ or semi, so the kutsuwamushi is the most wonderful of night-crickets. It owes its name, which means “The Bridle-bit-Insect,” to its noise, which resembles the jingling and ringing of the old-fashioned Japanese bridle-bit (kutsuwa). But the sound is really much louder and much more complicated than ever was the jingling of a single kutsuwa; and the accuracy of the comparison is not easily discerned while the creature is storming beside you. Without the evidence of one’s own eyes, it were hard to believe that so small a life could make so prodigious a noise. Certainly the vibratory apparatus in this insect must be very complicated. The sound begins with a thin sharp whizzing, as of leaking steam, and slowly strengthens;—then to the whizzing is suddenly added a quick dry clatter, as of castanets;—and then, as the whole machinery rushes into operation, you hear, high above the whizzing and the clatter, a torrent of rapid ringing tones like the tapping of a gong. These, the last to begin, are also the first to cease; then the castanets stop; and finally the whizzing dies;—but the full orchestra may remain in operation for several hours at a time, without a pause. Heard from far away at night the sound is pleasant, and is really so much like the ringing of a bridle-bit, that when you first listen to it you cannot but feel how much real poetry belongs to the name of this insect,—celebrated from of old as “playing at ghostly escort in ways where no man can pass.”

The most ancient poem on the kutsuwamushi is perhaps the following, by the Lady Idzumi-Shikibu:—

—which might be thus freely rendered:

Kantan.

This insect—also called kantan-gisu, and kantan-no-kirigirisu,—is a dark-brown night-cricket. Its note—“zi-Ï-Ï-Ï-in” is peculiar: I can only compare it to the prolonged twang of a bow-string. But this comparison is not satisfactory, because there is a penetrant metallic quality in the twang, impossible to describe.

It might be thought that several of the poems above given were intended to express either a real or an affected sympathy with imagined insect-pain. But this would be a wrong interpretation. In most compositions of this class, the artistic purpose is to suggest, by indirect means, various phases of the emotion of love,—especially that melancholy which lends its own passional tone to the aspects and the voices of nature. The baroque fancy that dew might be insect-tears, is by its very exaggeration intended to indicate the extravagance of grief, as well as to suggest that human tears have been freshly shed. The verses in which a woman declares that her heart has become too affectionate, since she cannot but feel for the bell-insect during a heavy shower, really bespeak the fond anxiety felt for some absent beloved, travelling in the time of the great rains. Again, in the lines about “treading on insect-voices,” the dainty scruple is uttered only as a hint of that intensification of feminine tenderness which love creates. And a still more remarkable example of this indirect double-suggestiveness is offered by the little poem prefacing this article,—

The Western reader would probably suppose that the insect-condition, or insect-state-of-being, is here referred to; but the real thought of the speaker, presumably a woman, is that her own sorrow is the result of faults committed in former lives, and is therefore impossible to alleviate.

It will have been observed that a majority of the verses cited refer to autumn and to the sensations of autumn. Certainly Japanese poets have not been insensible to the real melancholy inspired by autumn,—that vague strange annual revival of ancestral pain: dim inherited sorrow of millions of memories associated through millions of years with the death of summer;—but in nearly every utterance of this melancholy, the veritable allusion is to grief of parting. With its color-changes, its leaf-whirlings, and the ghostly plaint of its insect-voices, autumn Buddhistically symbolizes impermanency, the certainty of bereavement, the pain that clings to all desire, and the sadness of isolation.

But even if these poems on insects were primarily intended to shadow amorous emotion, do they not reflect also for us the subtlest influences of nature,—wild pure nature,—upon imagination and memory? Does not the place accorded to insect-melody, in the home-life as well as in the literature of Japan, prove an Æsthetic sensibility developed in directions that yet remain for us almost unexplored? Does not the shrilling booth of the insect-seller at a night-festival proclaim even a popular and universal comprehension of things divined in the West only by our rarest poets:—the pleasure-pain of autumn’s beauty, the weird sweetness of the voices of the night, the magical quickening of remembrance by echoes of forest and field? Surely we have something to learn from the people in whose mind the simple chant of a cricket can awaken whole fairy-swarms of tender and delicate fancies. We may boast of being their masters in the mechanical,—their teachers of the artificial in all its varieties of ugliness;—but in the knowledge of the natural,—in the feeling of the joy and beauty of earth,—they exceed us like the Greeks of old. Yet perhaps it will be only when our blind aggressive industrialism has wasted and sterilized their paradise,—substituting everywhere for beauty the utilitarian, the conventional, the vulgar, the utterly hideous,—that we shall begin with remorseful amazement to comprehend the charm of that which we destroyed.

A Question in the Zen Texts

I

My friend opened a thin yellow volume of that marvellous text which proclaims at sight the patience of the Buddhist engraver. Movable Chinese types may be very useful; but the best of which they are capable is ugliness itself when compared with the beauty of the old block-printing.

“I have a queer story for you,” he said.

“A Japanese story?”

“No,—Chinese.”

“What is the book?”

“According to Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese characters of the title, we call it Mu-Mon-Kwan, which means ‘The Gateless Barrier.’ It is one of the books especially studied by the Zen sect, or sect of DhyÂna. A peculiarity of some of the DhyÂna texts,—this being a good example,—is that they are not explanatory. They only suggest. Questions are put; but the student must think out the answers for himself. He must think them out, but not write them. You know that DhyÂna represents human effort to reach, through meditation, zones of thought beyond the range of verbal expression; and any thought once narrowed into utterance loses all DhyÂna quality.... Well, this story is supposed to be true; but it is used only for a DhyÂna question. There are three different Chinese versions of it; and I can give you the substance of the three.”

Which he did as follows:—

II

—The story of the girl Ts’ing, which is told in the Lui-shwo-li-hwan-ki, cited by the Ching-tang-luh, and commented upon in the Wu-mu-kwan (called by the Japanese Mu-Mon-Kwan), which is a book of the Zen sect:—

There lived in Han-yang a man called Chang-Kien, whose child-daughter, Ts’ing, was of peerless beauty. He had also a nephew called Wang-Chau,—a very handsome boy. The children played together, and were fond of each other. Once Kien jestingly said to his nephew:—“Some day I will marry you to my little daughter.” Both children remembered these words; and they believed themselves thus betrothed.

When Ts’ing grew up, a man of rank asked for her in marriage; and her father decided to comply with the demand. Ts’ing was greatly troubled by this decision. As for Chau, he was so much angered and grieved that he resolved to leave home, and go to another province. The next day he got a boat ready for his journey, and after sunset, without bidding farewell to any one, he proceeded up the river. But in the middle of the night he was startled by a voice calling to him, “Wait!—it is I!”—and he saw a girl running along the bank towards the boat. It was Ts’ing. Chau was unspeakably delighted. She sprang into the boat; and the lovers found their way safely to the province of Chuh.

In the province of Chuh they lived happily for six years; and they had two children. But Ts’ing could not forget her parents, and often longed to see them again. At last she said to her husband:—“Because in former time I could not bear to break the promise made to you, I ran away with you and forsook my parents,—although knowing that I owed them all possible duty and affection. Would it not now be well to try to obtain their forgiveness?” “Do not grieve yourself about that,” said Chau;—“we shall go to see them.” He ordered a boat to be prepared; and a few days later he returned with his wife to Han-yang.

According to custom in such cases, the husband first went to the house of Kien, leaving Ts’ing alone in the boat. Kien, welcomed his nephew with every sign of joy, and said:—

“How much I have been longing to see you! I was often afraid that something had happened to you.”

Chau answered respectfully:—

“I am distressed by the undeserved kindness of your words. It is to beg your forgiveness that I have come.”

But Kien did not seem to understand. He asked:—

“To what matter do you refer?”

“I feared,” said Chau, “that you were angry with me for having run away with Ts’ing. I took her with me to the province of Chuh.”

“What Ts’ing was that?” asked Kien.

“Your daughter Ts’ing,” answered Chau, beginning to suspect his father-in-law of some malevolent design.

“What are you talking about?” cried Kien, with every appearance of astonishment. “My daughter Ts’ing has been sick in bed all these years,—ever since the time when you went away.”

“Your daughter Ts’ing,” returned Chau, becoming angry, “has not been sick. She has been my wife for six years; and we have two children; and we have both returned to this place only to seek your pardon. Therefore please do not mock us!”

For a moment the two looked at each other in silence. Then Kien arose, and motioning to his nephew to follow, led the way to an inner room where a sick girl was lying. And Chau, to his utter amazement, saw the face of Ts’ing,—beautiful, but strangely thin and pale.

“She cannot speak,” explained the old man; “but she can understand.” And Kien said to her, laughingly:—“Chau tells me that you ran away with him, and that you gave him two children.”

The sick girl looked at Chau, and smiled; but remained silent.

“Now come with me to the river,” said the bewildered visitor to his father-in-law. “For I can assure you,—in spite of what I have seen in this house,—that your daughter Ts’ing is at this moment in my boat.”

They went to the river; and there, indeed, was the young wife, waiting. And seeing her father, she bowed down before him, and besought his pardon.

Kien said to her:—

“If you really be my daughter, I have nothing but love for you. Yet though you seem to be my daughter, there is something which I cannot understand.... Come with us to the house.”

So the three proceeded toward the house. As they neared it, they saw that the sick girl,—who had not before left her bed for years,—was coming to meet them, smiling as if much delighted. And the two Ts’ings approached each other. But then—nobody could ever tell how—they suddenly melted into each other, and became one body, one person, one Ts’ing,—even more beautiful than before, and showing no sign of sickness or of sorrow.

Kien said to Chau:—

“Ever since the day of your going, my daughter was dumb, and most of the time like a person who had taken too much wine. Now I know that her spirit was absent.”

Ts’ing herself said:—

“Really I never knew that I was at home. I saw Chau going away in silent anger; and the same night I dreamed that I ran after his boat.... But now I cannot tell which was really I,—the I that went away in the boat, or the I that stayed at home.”

III

“That is the whole of the story,” my friend observed. “Now there is a note about it in the Mu-Mon-Kwan that may interest you. This note says:—‘The fifth patriarch of the Zen sect once asked a priest,—”In the case of the separation of the spirit of the girl Ts’ing, which was the true Ts’ing?”’ It was only because of this question that the story was cited in the book. But the question is not answered. The author only remarks:—‘If you can decide which was the real Ts’ing, then you will have learned that to go out of one envelope and into another is merely like putting up at an inn. But if you have not yet reached this degree of enlightenment, take heed that you do not wander aimlessly about the world. Otherwise, when Earth, Water, Fire, and Wind shall suddenly be dissipated, you will be like a crab with seven hands and eight legs, thrown into boiling water. And in that time do not say that you were never told about the Thing.’... Now the Thing—”

“I do not want to hear about the Thing,” I interrupted,—“nor about the crab with seven hands and eight legs. I want to hear about the clothes.”

“What clothes?”

“At the time of their meeting, the two Ts’ings would have been differently dressed,—very differently, perhaps; for one was a maid, and the other a wife. Did the clothes of the two also blend together? Suppose that one had a silk robe and the other a robe of cotton, would these have mixed into a texture of silk and cotton? Suppose that one was wearing a blue girdle, and the other a yellow girdle, would the result have been a green girdle?... Or did one Ts’ing simply slip out of her costume, and leave it on the ground, like the cast-off shell of a cicada?”

“None of the texts say anything about the clothes,” my friend replied: “so I cannot tell you. But the subject is quite irrelevant, from the Buddhist point of view. The doctrinal question is the question of what I suppose you would call the personality of Ts’ing.”

“And yet it is not answered,” I said.

“It is best answered,” my friend replied, “by not being answered.”

“How so?”

“Because there is no such thing as personality.”

The Literature of the Dead

I

Behind my dwelling, but hidden from view by a very lofty curtain of trees, there is a Buddhist temple, with a cemetery attached to it. The cemetery itself is in a grove of pines, many centuries old; and the temple stands in a great quaint lonesome garden. Its religious name is Ji-sho-in; but the people call it Kobudera, which means the Gnarled, or Knobby Temple, because it is built of undressed timber,—great logs of hinoki, selected for their beauty or strangeness of shape, and simply prepared for the builder by the removal of limbs and bark. But such gnarled and knobby wood is precious: it is of the hardest and most enduring, and costs far more than common building-material,—as might be divined from the fact that the beautiful alcoves and the choicest parts of Japanese interiors are finished with wood of a similar kind. To build Kobudera was an undertaking worthy of a prince; and, as a matter of history, it was a prince who erected it, for a place of family worship. There is a doubtful tradition that two designs were submitted to him by the architect, and that he chose the more fantastic one under the innocent impression that undressed timber would prove cheap. But whether it owes its existence to a mistake or not, Kobudera remains one of the most interesting temples of Japan. The public have now almost forgotten its existence;—but it was famous in the time of Iyemitsu; and its appellation, Ji-sho-in, was taken from the kaimyo of one of the great Shogun’s ladies, whose superb tomb may be seen in its cemetery. Before Meiji, the temple was isolated among woods and fields; but the city has now swallowed up most of the green spaces that once secluded it, and has pushed out the ugliest of new streets directly in front of its gate.

This gate—a structure of gnarled logs, with a tiled and tilted Chinese roof—is a fitting preface to the queer style of the temple itself. From either gable-end of the gate-roof, a demon-head, grinning under triple horns, looks down upon the visitor.[16] Within, except at the hours of prayer, all is green silence. Children do not play in the court—perhaps because the temple is a private one. The ground is everywhere hidden by a fine thick moss of so warm a color, that the brightest foliage of the varied shrubbery above it looks sombre by contrast; and the bases of walls, the pedestals of monuments, the stonework of the bell-tower, the masonry of the ancient well, are muffled with the same luminous growth. Maples and pines and cryptomerias screen the faÇade of the temple; and, if your visit be in autumn, you may find the whole court filled with the sweet heavy perfume of the mokusei[17]-blossom. After having looked at the strange temple, you would find it worth while to enter the cemetery, by the black gate on the west side of the court.

I like to wander in that cemetery,—partly because in the twilight of its great trees, and in the silence of centuries which has gathered about them, one can forget the city and its turmoil, and dream out of space and time,—but much more because it is full of beauty, and of the poetry of great faith. Indeed of such poetry it possesses riches quite exceptional. Each Buddhist sect has its own tenets, rites, and forms; and the special character of these is reflected in the iconography and epigraphy of its burial-grounds,—so that for any experienced eye a Tendai graveyard is readily distinguishable from a Shingon graveyard, or a Zen graveyard from one belonging to a Nichiren congregation. But at Kobudera the inscriptions and the sculptures peculiar to several Buddhist sects can be studied side by side. Founded for the HokkÉ, or Nichiren rite, the temple nevertheless passed, in the course of generations, under the control of other sects—the last being the Tendai;—and thus its cemetery now offers a most interesting medley of the emblems and the epitaphic formularies of various persuasions. It was here that I first learned, under the patient teaching of an Oriental friend, something about the Buddhist literature of the dead.

No one able to feel beauty could refuse to confess the charm of the old Buddhist cemeteries,—with their immemorial trees, their evergreen mazes of shrubbery trimmed into quaintest shapes, the carpet-softness of their mossed paths, the weird but unquestionable art of their monuments. And no great knowledge of Buddhism is needed to enable you, even at first sight, to understand something of this art. You would recognize the lotos chiselled upon tombs or water-tanks, and would doubtless observe that the designs of the pedestals represent a lotos of eight petals,—though you might not know that these eight petals symbolize the Eight Intelligences. You would recognize the manji, or svastika, figuring the Wheel of the Law,—though ignorant of its relation to the MahÂyÂna philosophy. You would perhaps be able to recognize also the images of certain Buddhas,—though not aware of the meaning of their attitudes or emblems in relation to mystical ecstasy or to the manifestation of the Six Supernatural Powers. And you would be touched by the simple pathos of the offerings,—the incense and the flowers before the tombs, the water poured out for the dead,—even though unable to divine the deeper pathos of the beliefs that make the cult. But unless an excellent Chinese scholar as well as a Buddhist philosopher, all book-knowledge of the great religion would still leave you helpless in a world of riddles. The marvellous texts,—the exquisite Chinese scriptures chiselled into the granite of tombs, or limned by a master-brush upon the smooth wood of the sotoba,—will yield their secrets only to an interpreter of no common powers. And the more you become familiar with their aspect, the more the mystery of them tantalizes,—especially after you have learned that a literal translation of them would mean, in the majority of cases, exactly nothing!

What strange thoughts have been thus recorded and yet concealed? Are they complex and subtle as the characters that stand for them? Are they beautiful also like those characters,—with some undreamed-of, surprising beauty, such as might inform the language of another planet?

II

As for subtlety and complexity, much of this mortuary literature is comparable to the Veil of Isis. Behind the mystery of the text—in which almost every character has two readings—there is the mystery of the phrase; and again behind this are successions of riddles belonging to a gnosticism older than all the wisdom of the Occident, and deep as the abysses of Space. Fortunately the most occult texts are also the least interesting, and bear little relation to the purpose of this essay. The majority are attached, not to the sculptured, but to the written and impermanent literature of cemeteries,—not to the stone monuments, but to the sotoba: those tall narrow laths of unpainted wood which are planted above the graves at fixed, but gradually increasing intervals, during a period of one hundred years.[18]

The uselessness of any exact translation of these inscriptions may be exemplified by a word-for-word rendering of two sentences written upon the sotoba used by the older sects. What meaning can you find in such a term as “Law-sphere-substance-nature-wisdom,” or such an invocation as “Ether, Wind, Fire, Water, Earth!”—for an invocation it really is? To understand these words one must first know that, in the doctrine of the mystical sects, the universe is composed of Five Great Elements which are identical with Five Buddhas; that each of the Five Buddhas contains the rest; and that the Five are One by essence, though varying in their phenomenal manifestations. The name of an element has thus three significations. The word Fire, for example, means flame as objective appearance; it means flame also as the manifestation of a particular Buddha; and it likewise means the special quality of wisdom or power attributed to that Buddha. Perhaps this doctrine will be more easily understood by the help of the following Shingon classification of the Five Elements in their Buddhist relations:—

Now the doctrine that each of the Five Buddhas contains the rest, and that all are essentially One, is symbolized in these texts by an extraordinary use of characters called Bon-ji,—which are recognizably Sanscrit letters. The name of each element can be written with any one of four characters,—all having for Buddhists the same meaning, though differing as to sound and form. Thus the characters standing for Fire would read, according to Japanese pronunciation, Ra, Ran, RaÄn, and Raku;—and the characters signifying Ether, Kya, Ken, KeËn, and Kyaku. By different combinations of the twenty characters making the five sets, different supernatural powers and different Buddhas are indicated; and the indication is further helped by an additional symbolic character, called Shu-ji or “seed-word,” placed immediately after the names of the elements. The reader will now comprehend the meaning of the invocatory “Ether, Wind, Fire, Water, Earth!” and of the strange names of divine wisdom written upon sotoba; but the enigmas offered by even a single sotoba may be much more complicated than the foregoing examples suggest. There are unimaginable acrostics; there are rules, varying according to sect, for the position of texts in relation to the points of the compass; and there are kabalisms based upon the multiple values of certain Chinese ideographs. The whole subject of esoteric inscriptions would require volumes to explain; and the reader will not be sorry, I fancy, to abandon it at this point in favor of texts possessing a simpler and a more humane interest.

The really attractive part of Buddhist cemetery-literature mostly consists of sentences taken from the sÛtras or the sastras; and the attraction is due not only to the intrinsic beauty of the faith which these sentences express, but also to the fact that they will be found to represent, in epitome, a complete body of Buddhist doctrine. Like the mystical inscriptions above-mentioned, they belong to the sotoba, not to the gravestones; but, while the invocations usually occupy the upper and front part of the sotoba, these sutra-texts are commonly written upon the back. In addition to scriptural and invocatory texts, each sotoba bears the name of the giver, the kaimyo of the dead, and the name of a commemorative anniversary. Sometimes a brief prayer is also inscribed, or a statement of the pious purpose inspiring the erection of the sotoba. Before considering the scripture-texts proper, in relation to their embodiment of doctrine, I submit examples of the general character and plan of sotoba inscriptions. They are written upon both sides of the wood, be it observed; but I have not thought it necessary to specify which texts belong to the front, and which to the back of the sotoba,—since the rules concerning such position differ according to sect:—

The foregoing will doubtless suffice as specimens of the ordinary forms of inscription. The Buddha praised or invoked is always the Buddha especially revered by the sect from whose sutra or sastra the quotation is chosen;—sometimes also the divine power of a Bodhisattva is extolled, as in the following Zen inscription:—

Sometimes the scripture text more definitely assumes the character of a praise-offering, as the following juxtaposition suggests:—

Sometimes we also find a verse of praise or an invocation addressed to the apotheosized spirit of the founder of the sect,—a common example being furnished by the sotoba of the Shingon rite:—

Rarely the little prayer for the salvation of the dead assumes, as in the following beautiful example, the language of unconscious poetry:—

But usually the prayers are of the simplest, and differ from each other only in the use of peculiar Buddhist terms:—

One other subject of interest belonging to the merely commemorative texts of sotoba remains to be mentioned,—the names of certain Buddhist services for the dead. There are two classes of such services: those performed within one hundred days after death, and those celebrated at fixed intervals during a term of one hundred years,—on the 1st, 2d, 7th, 13th, 17th, 24th, 33d, 50th, and 100th anniversaries of the death. In the Zen rite these commemorative services—(perhaps we might call them masses)—have singular mystical names by which they are recorded upon the sotoba of the sect,—such as Lesser Happiness, Greater Happiness, Broad Repose, The Bright Caress, and The Great Caress.

But we shall now turn to the study of the scripture-texts proper,—those citations from sÛtra or sastra which form the main portion of a sotoba-writing; expounding the highest truth of Buddhist belief, or speaking the deepest thought of Eastern philosophy.

III

At the beginning of my studies in the Kobudera cemetery, I was not less impressed by the quiet cheerfulness of the sotoba-texts, than by their poetry and their philosophy. In none did I find even a shadow of sadness: the greater number were utterances of a faith that seemed to me wider and deeper than our own,—sublime proclamations of the eternal and infinite nature of Thought, the unity of all mind, and the certainty of universal salvation. And other surprises awaited me in this strange literature. Texts or fragments of texts, that at first rendering appeared of the simplest, would yield to learned commentary profundities of significance absolutely startling. Phrases, seemingly artless, would suddenly reveal a dual suggestiveness,—a two-fold idealism,—a beauty at once exoteric and mystical. Of this latter variety of inscription the following is a good example:—

In the language of the higher Buddhism, this means that through death a spirit has been released from the darkness of illusion, even as the perfume of a blossom is set free at the breaking of the bud, and that the divine Absolute, or World of Law, is refreshed by the new presence, as a whole garden might be made fragrant by the blooming of some precious growth. But in the popular language of Buddhism, the same words signify that in the Lotos-Lake of Paradise another magical flower has opened for the Apparitional Rebirth into highest bliss of the being loved and lost on earth, and that Heaven rejoices for the advent of another Buddha.

But I desire rather to represent the general result of my studies, than to point out the special beauties of this epitaphic literature: and my purpose will be most easily attained by arranging and considering the inscriptions in a certain doctrinal order.

A great variety of sotoba-texts refer, directly or indirectly, to the Lotos-Flower Paradise of Amida,—or, as it is more often called, the Paradise of the West. The following are typical:—

But texts like these, though dear to popular faith, make no appeal to the higher Buddhism, which admits heaven as a temporary condition only, not to be desired by the wise. Indeed, the MahÂyÂna texts, describing SukhÂvatÎ, themselves suggest its essentially illusive character,—a world of jewel-lakes and perfumed airs and magical birds, but a world also in which the voices of winds and waters and singers perpetually preach the unreality of self and the impermanency of all things. And even the existence of this Western Paradise might seem to be denied in other sotoba-texts of deeper significance,—such as this:—

“Originally there is no East or West: where then can South or North be?”[34]