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Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan: Second Series

by Lafcadio Hearn · English · Gutenberg #8133 · 588,735 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan: Second Series

Author: Lafcadio Hearn


        
Release date: May 1, 2005 [eBook #8133]
                Most recently updated: December 26, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8133

Credits: Produced by John Orford


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GLIMPSES OF UNFAMILIAR JAPAN: SECOND SERIES ***




Produced by John Orford









Glimpses of Unfamilar Japan

Second Series


by Lafcadio Hearn



CONTENTS

1  IN A JAPANESE GARDEN

2  THE HOUSEHOLD SHRINE

3  OF WOMEN'S HAIR

4  FROM THE DIARY OF AN ENGLISH TEACHER

5  TWO STRANGE FESTIVALS

6  BY THE JAPANESE SEA

7  OF A DANCING-GIRL

8  FROM HOKI TO OKI

9  OF SOULS

10 OF GHOSTS AND GOBLINS

11 THE JAPANESE SMILE

12 SAYONARA!



Chapter One

In a Japanese Garden

Sec. 1

MY little two-story house by the Ohashigawa, although dainty as a bird-
cage, proved much too small for comfort at the approach of the hot
season--the rooms being scarcely higher than steamship cabins, and so
narrow that an ordinary mosquito-net could not be suspended in them. I
was sorry to lose the beautiful lake view, but I found it necessary to
remove to the northern quarter of the city, into a very quiet Street
behind the mouldering castle. My new home is a katchiu-yashiki, the
ancient residence of some samurai of high rank. It is shut off from the
street, or rather roadway, skirting the castle moat by a long, high wall
coped with tiles. One ascends to the gateway, which is almost as large
as that of a temple court, by a low broad flight of stone steps; and
projecting from the wall, to the right of the gate, is a look-out
window, heavily barred, like a big wooden cage. Thence, in feudal days,
armed retainers kept keen watch on all who passed by--invisible watch,
for the bars are set so closely that a face behind them cannot be seen
from the roadway. Inside the gate the approach to the dwelling is also
walled in on both sides, so that the visitor, unless privileged, could
see before him only the house entrance, always closed with white shoji.
Like all samurai homes, the residence itself is but one story high, but
there are fourteen rooms within, and these are lofty, spacious, and
beautiful. There is, alas, no lake view nor any charming prospect. Part
of the O-Shiroyama, with the castle on its summit, half concealed by a
park of pines, may be seen above the coping of the front wall, but only
a part; and scarcely a hundred yards behind the house rise densely
wooded heights, cutting off not only the horizon, but a large slice of
the sky as well. For this immurement, however, there exists fair
compensation in the shape of a very pretty garden, or rather a series of
garden spaces, which surround the dwelling on three sides. Broad
verandas overlook these, and from a certain veranda angle I can enjoy
the sight of two gardens at once. Screens of bamboos and woven rushes,
with wide gateless openings in their midst, mark the boundaries of the
three divisions of the pleasure-grounds. But these structures are not
intended to serve as true fences; they are ornamental, and only indicate
where one style of landscape gardening ends and another begins.

Sec. 2

Now a few words upon Japanese gardens in general.

After having learned--merely by seeing, for the practical knowledge of
the art requires years of study and experience, besides a natural,
instinctive sense of beauty--something about the Japanese manner of
arranging flowers, one can thereafter consider European ideas of floral
decoration only as vulgarities. This observation is not the result of
any hasty enthusiasm, but a conviction settled by long residence in the
interior. I have come to understand the unspeakable loveliness of a
solitary spray of blossoms arranged as only a Japanese expert knows how
to arrange it--not by simply poking the spray into a vase, but by
perhaps one whole hour's labour of trimming and posing and daintiest
manipulation--and therefore I cannot think now of what we Occidentals
call a 'bouquet' as anything but a vulgar murdering of flowers, an
outrage upon the colour-sense, a brutality, an abomination. Somewhat in
the same way, and for similar reasons, after having learned what an old
Japanese garden is, I can remember our costliest gardens at home only as
ignorant displays of what wealth can accomplish in the creation of
incongruities that violate nature.

Now a Japanese garden is not a flower garden; neither is it made for the
purpose of cultivating plants. In nine cases out of ten there is nothing
in it resembling a flower-bed. Some gardens may contain scarcely a sprig
of green; some have nothing green at all, and consist entirely of rocks
and pebbles and sand, although these are exceptional. [1]  As a rule, a
Japanese garden is a landscape garden, yet its existence does not depend
upon any fixed allowances of space. It may cover one acre or many acres.
It may also be only ten feet square. It may, in extreme cases, be much
less; for a certain kind of Japanese garden can be contrived small
enough to put in a tokonoma. Such a garden, in a vessel no larger than a
fruit-dish, is called koniwa or toko-niwa, and may occasionally be seen
in the tokonoma of humble little dwellings so closely squeezed between
other structures as to possess no ground in which to cultivate an
outdoor garden. (I say 'an outdoor garden,' because there are indoor
gardens, both upstairs and downstairs, in some large Japanese houses.)
The toko-niwa is usually made in some curious bowl, or shallow carved
box or quaintly shaped vessel impossible to describe by any English
word. Therein are created minuscule hills with minuscule houses upon
them, and microscopic ponds and rivulets spanned by tiny humped bridges;
and queer wee plants do duty for trees, and curiously formed pebbles
stand for rocks, and there are tiny toro perhaps a tiny torii as well--
in short, a charming and living model of a Japanese landscape.

Another fact of prime importance to remember is that, in order to
comprehend the beauty of a Japanese garden, it is necessary to
understand--or at least to learn to understand--the beauty of stones.
Not of stones quarried by the hand of man, but of stones shaped by
nature only. Until you can feel, and keenly feel, that stones have
character, that stones have tones and values, the whole artistic meaning
of a Japanese garden cannot be revealed to you. In the foreigner,
however aesthetic he may be, this feeling needs to be cultivated by
study. It is inborn in the Japanese; the soul of the race comprehends
Nature infinitely better than we do, at least in her visible forms. But
although, being an Occidental, the true sense of the beauty of stones
can be reached by you only through long familiarity with the Japanese
use and choice of them, the characters of the lessons to be acquired
exist everywhere about you, if your life be in the interior. You cannot
walk through a street without observing tasks and problems in the
aesthetics of stones for you to master. At the approaches to temples, by
the side of roads, before holy groves, and in all parks and pleasure-
grounds, as well as in all cemeteries, you will notice large, irregular,
flat slabs of natural rock--mostly from the river-beds and water-worn--
sculptured with ideographs, but unhewn. These have been set up as votive
tablets, as commemorative monuments, as tombstones, and are much more
costly than the ordinary cut-stone columns and haka chiselled with the
figures of divinities in relief. Again, you will see before most of the
shrines, nay, even in the grounds of nearly all large homesteads, great
irregular blocks of granite or other hard rock, worn by the action of
torrents, and converted into water-basins (chodzubachi) by cutting a
circular hollow in the top. Such are but common examples of the
utilisation of stones even in the poorest villages; and if you have any
natural artistic sentiment, you cannot fail to discover, sooner or
later, how much more beautiful are these natural forms than any shapes
from the hand of the stone-cutter. It is probable, too, that you will
become so habituated at last to the sight of inscriptions cut upon rock
surfaces, especially if you travel much through the country, that you
will often find yourself involuntarily looking for texts or other
chisellings where there are none, and could not possibly be, as if
ideographs belonged by natural law to rock formation. And stones will
begin, perhaps, to assume for you a certain individual or physiognomical
aspect--to suggest moods and sensations, as they do to the Japanese.
Indeed, Japan is particularly a land of suggestive shapes in stone, as
high volcanic lands are apt to be; and such shapes doubtless addressed
themselves to the imagination of the race at a time long prior to the
date of that archaic text which tells of demons in Izumo 'who made
rocks, and the roots of trees, and leaves, and the foam of the green
waters to speak.

As might be expected in a country where the suggestiveness of natural
forms is thus recognised, there are in Japan many curious beliefs and
superstitions concerning stones. In almost every province there are
famous stones supposed to be sacred or haunted, or to possess miraculous
powers, such as the Women's Stone at the temple of Hachiman at Kamakura,
and the Sessho-seki, or Death Stone of Nasu, and the Wealth-giving Stone
at Enoshima, to which pilgrims pay reverence. There are even legends of
stones having manifested sensibility, like the tradition of the Nodding
Stones which bowed down before the monk Daita when he preached unto them
the word of Buddha; or the ancient story from the Kojiki, that the
Emperor O-Jin, being augustly intoxicated, 'smote with his august staff
a great stone in the middle of the Ohosaka road, whereupon the stone ran
away!' [2]

Now stones are valued for their beauty; and large stones selected for
their shape may have an aesthetic worth of hundreds of dollars. And
large stones form the skeleton, or framework, in the design of old
Japanese gardens. Not only is every stone chosen with a view to its
particular expressiveness of form, but every stone in the garden or
about the premises has its separate and individual name, indicating its
purpose or its decorative duty. But I can tell you only a little, a very
little, of the folk-lore of a Japanese garden; and if you want to know
more about stones and their names, and about the philosophy of gardens,
read the unique essay of Mr. Conder on the Art of Landscape Gardening in
Japan, [3] and his beautiful book on the Japanese Art of Floral
Decoration; and also the brief but charming chapter on Gardens, in
Morse's Japanese Homes. [4]

Sec. 3

No effort to create an impossible or purely ideal landscape is made in
the Japanese garden. Its artistic purpose is to copy faithfully the
attractions of a veritable landscape, and to convey the real impression
that a real landscape communicates. It is therefore at once a picture
and a poem; perhaps even more a poem than a picture. For as nature's
scenery, in its varying aspects, affects us with sensations of joy or of
solemnity, of grimness or of sweetness, of force or of peace, so must
the true reflection of it in the labour of the landscape gardener create
not merely an impression of beauty, but a mood in the soul. The grand
old landscape gardeners, those Buddhist monks who first introduced the
art into Japan, and subsequently developed it into an almost occult
science, carried their theory yet farther than this. They held it
possible to express moral lessons in the design of a garden, and
abstract ideas, such as Chastity, Faith, Piety, Content, Calm, and
Connubial Bliss. Therefore were gardens contrived according to the
character of the owner, whether poet, warrior, philosopher, or priest.
In those ancient gardens (the art, alas, is passing away under the
withering influence of the utterly commonplace Western taste) there were
expressed both a mood of nature and some rare Oriental conception of a
mood of man.

I do not know what human sentiment the principal division of my garden
was intended to reflect; and there is none to tell me. Those by whom it
was made passed away long generations ago, in the eternal transmigration
of souls. But as a poem of nature it requires no interpreter. It
occupies the front portion of the grounds, facing south; and it also
extends west to the verge of the northern division of the garden, from
which it is partly separated by a curious screen-fence structure. There
are large rocks in it, heavily mossed; and divers fantastic basins of
stone for holding water; and stone lamps green with years; and a
shachihoko, such as one sees at the peaked angles of castle roofs--a
great stone fish, an idealised porpoise, with its nose in the ground and
its tail in the air. [5] There are miniature hills, with old trees upon
them; and there are long slopes of green, shadowed by flowering shrubs,
like river banks; and there are green knolls like islets. All these
verdant elevations rise from spaces of pale yellow sand, smooth as a
surface of silk and miming the curves and meanderings of a river course.
These sanded spaces are not to be trodden upon; they are much too
beautiful for that. The least speck of dirt would mar their effect; and
it requires the trained skill of an experienced native gardener--a
delightful old man he is--to keep them in perfect form. But they are
traversed in various directions by lines of flat unhewn rock slabs,
placed at slightly irregular distances from one another, exactly like
stepping-stones across a brook. The whole effect is that of the shores
of a still stream in some lovely, lonesome, drowsy place.

There is nothing to break the illusion, so secluded the garden is. High
walls and fences shut out streets and contiguous things; and the shrubs
and the trees, heightening and thickening toward the boundaries, conceal
from view even the roofs of the neighbouring katchiu-yashiki. Softly
beautiful are the tremulous shadows of leaves on the sunned sand; and
the scent of flowers comes thinly sweet with every waft of tepid air;
and there is a humming of bees.

Sec. 4

By Buddhism all existences are divided into Hijo things without desire,
such as stones and trees; and Ujo things having desire, such as men and
animals. This division does not, so far as I know, find expression in
the written philosophy of gardens; but it is a convenient one. The folk-
lore of my little domain relates both to the inanimate and the animate.
In natural order, the Hijo may be considered first, beginning with a
singular shrub near the entrance of the yashiki, and close to the gate
of the first garden.

Within the front gateway of almost every old samurai house, and usually
near the entrance of the dwelling itself, there is to be seen a small
tree with large and peculiar leaves. The name of this tree in Izumo is
tegashiwa, and there is one beside my door. What the scientific name of
it is I do not know; nor am I quite sure of the etymology of the
Japanese name. However, there is a word tegashi, meaning a bond for the
hands; and the shape of the leaves of the tegashiwa somewhat resembles
the shape of a hand.

Now, in old days, when the samurai retainer was obliged to leave his
home in order to accompany his daimyo to Yedo, it was customary, just
before his departure, to set before him a baked tai [6] served up on a
tegashiwa leaf. After this farewell repast the leaf upon which the tai
had been served was hung up above the door as a charm to bring the
departed knight safely back again. This pretty superstition about the
leaves of the tegashiwa had its origin not only in their shape but in
their movement. Stirred by a wind they seemed to beckon--not indeed
after our Occidental manner, but in the way that a Japanese signs to his
friend to come, by gently waving his hand up and down with the palm
towards the ground.

Another shrub to be found in most Japanese gardens is the nanten, [7]
about which a very curious belief exists. If you have an evil dream, a
dream which bodes ill luck, you should whisper it to the nanten early in
the morning, and then it will never come true. [8] There are two
varieties of this graceful plant: one which bears red berries, and one
which bears white. The latter is rare. Both kinds grow in my garden. The
common variety is placed close to the veranda (perhaps for the
convenience of dreamers); the other occupies a little flower-bed in the
middle of the garden, together with a small citron-tree. This most
dainty citron-tree is called 'Buddha's fingers,'  [9] because of the
wonderful shape of its fragrant fruits. Near it stands a kind of laurel,
with lanciform leaves glossy as bronze; it is called by the Japanese
yuzuri-ha, [10] and is almost as common in the gardens of old samurai
homes as the tegashiwa itself. It is held to be a tree of good omen,
because no one of its old leaves ever falls off before a new one,
growing behind it, has well developed. For thus the yuzuri-ha symbolises
hope that the father will not pass away before his son has become a
vigorous man, well able to succeed him as the head of the family.
Therefore, on every New Year's Day, the leaves of the yuzuriha, mingled
with fronds of fern, are attached to the shimenawa which is then
suspended before every Izumo home.

Sec. 5

The trees, like the shrubs, have their curious poetry and legends. Like
the stones, each tree has its special landscape name according to its
position and purpose in the composition. Just as rocks and stones form
the skeleton of the ground-plan of a garden, so pines form the framework
of its foliage design. They give body to the whole. In this garden there
are five pines,--not pines tormented into fantasticalities, but pines
made wondrously picturesque by long and tireless care and judicious
trimming. The object of the gardener has been to develop to the utmost
possible degree their natural tendency to rugged line and massings of
foliage--that spiny sombre-green foliage which Japanese art is never
weary of imitating in metal inlay or golden lacquer. The pine is a
symbolic tree in this land of symbolism. Ever green, it is at once the
emblem of unflinching purpose and of vigorous old age; and its needle-
shaped leaves are credited with the power of driving demons away.

There are two sakuranoki, [11] Japanese cherry-trees--those trees whose
blossoms, as Professor Chamberlain so justly observes, are 'beyond
comparison more lovely than anything Europe has to show.' Many varieties
are cultivated and loved; those in my garden bear blossoms of the most
ethereal pink, a flushed white. When, in spring, the trees flower, it is
as though fleeciest masses of cloud faintly tinged by sunset had floated
down from the highest sky to fold themselves about the branches. This
comparison is no poetical exaggeration; neither is it original: it is an
ancient Japanese description of the most marvellous floral exhibition
which nature is capable of making. The reader who has never seen a
cherry-tree blossoming in Japan cannot possibly imagine the delight of
the spectacle. There are no green leaves; these come later: there is
only one glorious burst of blossoms, veiling every twig and bough in
their delicate mist; and the soil beneath each tree is covered deep out
of sight by fallen petals as by a drift of pink snow.

But these are cultivated cherry-trees. There are others which put forth
their leaves before their blossoms, such as the yamazakura, or mountain
cherry. [12] This, too, however, has its poetry of beauty and of
symbolism. Sang the great Shinto writer and poet, Motowori:

  Shikishima no
  Yamato-gokoro wo
  Hito-towaba,
  Asa-hi ni niou
 Yamazakura bana.  [13]

Whether cultivated or uncultivated, the Japanese cherry-trees are
emblems. Those planted in old samurai gardens were not cherished for
their loveliness alone. Their spotless blossoms were regarded as
symbolising that delicacy of sentiment and blamelessness of life
belonging to high courtesy and true knightliness. 'As the cherry flower
is first among flowers,' says an old proverb, 'so should the warrior be
first among men'.

Shadowing the western end of this garden, and projecting its smooth dark
limbs above the awning of the veranda, is a superb umenoki, Japanese
plum-tree, very old, and originally planted here, no doubt, as in other
gardens, for the sake of the sight of its blossoming. The flowering of
the umenoki, [14] in the earliest spring, is scarcely less astonishing
than that of the cherry-tree, which does not bloom for a full month
later; and the blossoming of both is celebrated by popular holidays. Nor
are these, although the most famed, the only flowers thus loved. The
wistaria, the convolvulus, the peony, each in its season, form displays
of efflorescence lovely enough to draw whole populations out of the
cities into the country to see them.. In Izumo, the blossoming of the
peony is especially marvellous. The most famous place for this spectacle
is the little island of Daikonshima, in the grand Naka-umi lagoon, about
an hour's sail from Matsue. In May the whole island flames crimson with
peonies; and even the boys and girls of the public schools are given a
holiday, in order that they may enjoy the sight.

Though the plum flower is certainly a rival in beauty of the sakura-no-
hana, the Japanese compare woman's beauty--physical beauty--to the
cherry flower, never to the plum flower. But womanly virtue and
sweetness, on the other hand, are compared to the ume-no-hana, never to
the cherry blossom. It is a great mistake to affirm, as some writers
have done, that the Japanese never think of comparing a woman to trees
and flowers. For grace, a maiden is likened to a slender willow; [15]
for youthful charm, to the cherry-tree in flower; for sweetness of
heart, to the blossoming plum-tree. Nay, the old Japanese poets have
compared woman to all beautiful things. They have even sought similes
from flowers for her various poses, for her movements, as in the verse,

  Tateba skakuyaku; [16]
  Suwareba botan;
  Aruku sugatawa
  Himeyuri  [17] no hana. [18]

Why, even the names of the humblest country girls are often those of
beautiful trees or flowers prefixed by the honorific O: [19] O-Matsu
(Pine), O-Take (Bamboo), O-Ume (Plum), O-Hana (Blossom), O-ine (Ear-of-
Young-Rice), not to speak of the professional flower-names of dancing-
girls and of joro. It has been argued with considerable force that the
origin of certain tree-names borne by girls must be sought in the folk-
conception of the tree as an emblem of longevity, or happiness, or good
fortune, rather than in any popular idea of the beauty of the tree in
itself. But however this may be, proverb, poem, song, and popular speech
to-day yield ample proof that the Japanese comparisons of women to trees
and flowers are in no-wise inferior to our own in aesthetic sentiment.

Sec. 6

That trees, at least Japanese trees, have souls, cannot seem an
unnatural fancy to one who has seen the blossoming of the umenoki and
the sakuranoki. This is a popular belief in Izumo and elsewhere.  It is
not in accord with Buddhist philosophy, and yet in a certain sense it
strikes one as being much closer to cosmic truth than the old Western
orthodox notion of trees as 'things created for the use of man.'
Furthermore, there exist several odd superstitions about particular
trees, not unlike certain West Indian beliefs which have had a good
influence in checking the destruction of valuable timber. Japan, like
the tropical world, has its goblin trees. Of these, the enoki (Celtis
Willdenowiana) and the yanagi (drooping willow) are deemed especially
ghostly, and are rarely now to be found in old Japanese gardens. Both
are believed to have the power of haunting. 'Enoki ga bakeru,' the izumo
saying is. You will find in a Japanese dictionary the word 'bakeru'
translated by such terms as 'to be transformed,' 'to be metamorphosed,'
'to be changed,' etc.; but the belief about these trees is very
singular, and cannot be explained by any such rendering of the verb
'bakeru.' The tree itself does not change form or place, but a spectre
called Ki-no o-bake disengages itself from the tree and walks about in
various guises.' [20]  Most often the shape assumed by the phantom is
that of a beautiful woman. The tree spectre seldom speaks, and seldom
ventures to go very far away from its tree. If approached, it
immediately shrinks back into the trunk or the foliage. It is said that
if either an old yanagi or a young enoki be cut blood will flow from the
gash. When such trees are very young it is not believed that they have
supernatural habits, but they become more dangerous the older they grow.

There is a rather pretty legend--recalling the old Greek dream of
dryads--about a willow-tree which grew in the garden of a samurai of
Kyoto. Owing to its weird reputation, the tenant of the homestead
desired to cut it down; but another samurai dissuaded him, saying:
'Rather sell it to me, that I may plant it in my garden. That tree has a
soul; it were cruel to destroy its life.' Thus purchased and
transplanted, the yanagi flourished well in its new home, and its
spirit, out of gratitude, took the form of a beautiful woman, and became
the wife of the samurai who had befriended it. A charming boy was the
result of this union. A few years later, the daimyo to whom the ground
belonged gave orders that the tree should be cut down. Then the wife
wept bitterly, and for the first time revealed to her husband the whole
story. 'And now,' she added, 'I know that I must die; but our child will
live, and you will always love him. This thought is my only solace.'
Vainly the astonished and terrified husband sought to retain her.
Bidding him farewell for ever, she vanished into the tree. Needless to
say that the samurai did everything in his power to persuade the daimyo
to forgo his purpose. The prince wanted the tree for the reparation of a
great Buddhist temple, the San-jiu-san-gen-do. [21]' The tree was
felled, but, having fallen, it suddenly became so heavy that three
hundred men could not move it. Then the child, taking a branch in his
little hand, said, 'Come,' and the tree followed him, gliding along the
ground to the court of the temple.

Although said to be a bakemono-ki, the enoki sometimes receives highest
religious honours; for the spirit of the god Kojin, to whom old dolls
are dedicated, is supposed to dwell within certain very ancient enoki
trees, and before these are placed shrines whereat people make prayers.

Sec. 7

The second garden, on the north side, is my favourite, It contains no
large growths. It is paved with blue pebbles, and its centre is occupied
by a pondlet--a miniature lake fringed with rare plants, and containing
a tiny island, with tiny mountains and dwarf peach-trees and pines and
azaleas, some of which are perhaps more than a century old, though
scarcely more than a foot high. Nevertheless, this work, seen as it was
intended to be seen, does not appear to the eye in miniature at all.
From a certain angle of the guest-room looking out upon it, the
appearance is that of a real lake shore with a real island beyond it, a
stone's throw away. So cunning the art of the ancient gardener who
contrived all this, and who has been sleeping for a hundred years under
the cedars of Gesshoji, that the illusion can be detected only from the
zashiki by the presence of an ishidoro or stone lamp, upon the island.
The size of the ishidoro betrays the false perspective, and I do not
think it was placed there when the garden was made.

Here and there at the edge of the pond, and almost level with the water,
are placed large flat stones, on which one may either stand or squat, to
watch the lacustrine population or to tend the water-plants. There are
beautiful water-lilies, whose bright green leaf-disks float oilily upon
the surface (Nuphar Japonica), and many lotus plants of two kinds, those
which bear pink and those which bear pure white flowers. There are iris
plants growing along the bank, whose blossoms are prismatic violet, and
there are various ornamental grasses and ferns and mosses. But the pond
is essentially a lotus pond; the lotus plants make its greatest charm.
It is a delight to watch every phase of their marvellous growth, from
the first unrolling of the leaf to the fall of the last flower. On rainy
days, especially, the lotus plants are worth observing. Their great cup-
shaped leaves, swaying high above the pond, catch the rain and hold it a
while; but always after the water in the leaf reaches a certain level
the stem bends, and empties the leaf with a loud plash, and then
straightens again. Rain-water upon a lotus-leaf is a favourite subject
with Japanese metal-workers, and metalwork only can reproduce the
effect, for the motion and colour of water moving upon the green
oleaginous surface are exactly those of quicksilver.

Sec. 8

The third garden, which is very large, extends beyond the inclosure
containing the lotus pond to the foot of the wooded hills which form the
northern and north-eastern boundary of this old samurai quarter.
Formerly all this broad level space was occupied by a bamboo grove; but
it is now little more than a waste of grasses and wild flowers. In the
north-east corner there is a magnificent well, from which ice-cold water
is brought into the house through a most ingenious little aqueduct of
bamboo pipes; and in the north-western end, veiled by tall weeds, there
stands a very small stone shrine of Inari with two proportionately small
stone foxes sitting before it. Shrine and images are chipped and broken,
and thickly patched with dark green moss. But on the east side of the
house one little square of soil belonging to this large division of the
garden is still cultivated. It is devoted entirely to chrysanthemum
plants, which are shielded from heavy rain and strong sun by slanting
frames of light wood fashioned, like shoji with panes of white paper,
and supported like awnings upon thin posts of bamboo. I can venture to
add nothing to what has already been written about these marvellous
products of Japanese floriculture considered in themselves; but there is
a little story relating to chrysanthemums which I may presume to tell.

There is one place in Japan where it is thought unlucky to cultivate
chrysanthemums, for reasons which shall presently appear; and that place
is in the pretty little city of Himeji, in the province of Harima.
Himeji contains the ruins of a great castle of thirty turrets; and a
daimyo used to dwell therein whose revenue was one hundred and fifty-six
thousand koku of rice. Now, in the house of one of that daimyo's chief
retainers there was a maid-servant, of good family, whose name was O-
Kiku; and the name 'Kiku' signifies a chrysanthemum flower. Many
precious things were intrusted to her charge, and among others ten
costly dishes of gold. One of these was suddenly missed, and could not
be found; and the girl, being responsible therefor, and knowing not how
otherwise to prove her innocence, drowned herself in a well. But ever
thereafter her ghost, returning nightly, could be heard counting the
dishes slowly, with sobs:

      Ichi-mai,	Yo-mai,	Shichi-mai,
	Ni-mai,	Go-mai,	Hachi-mai,
	San-mai,	Roku-mai,	Ku-mai--

Then would be heard a despairing cry and a loud burst of weeping; and
again the girl's voice counting the dishes plaintively: 'One--two--
three--four--five--six--seven--eight--nine--'

Her spirit passed into the body of a strange little insect, whose head
faintly resembles that of a ghost with long dishevelled hair; and it is
called O-Kiku-mushi, or 'the fly of O-Kiku'; and it is found, they say,
nowhere save in Himeji. A famous play was written about O-Kiku, which is
still acted in all the popular theatres, entitled Banshu-O-Kiku-no-Sara-
yashiki; or, The Manor of the Dish of O-Kiku of Banshu.

Some declare that Banshu is only the corruption of the name of an
ancient quarter of Tokyo (Yedo), where the story should have been laid.
But the people of Himeji say that part of their city now called Go-Ken-
Yashiki is identical with the site of the ancient manor. What is
certainly true is that to cultivate chrysanthemum flowers in the part of
Himeji called Go-KenYashiki is deemed unlucky, because the name of O-
Kiku signifies 'Chrysanthemum.' Therefore, nobody, I am told, ever
cultivates chrysanthemums there.

Sec. 9

Now of the ujo or things having desire, which inhabit these gardens.

There are four species of frogs: three that dwell in the lotus pond, and
one that lives in the trees. The tree frog is a very pretty little
creature, exquisitely green; it has a shrill cry, almost like the note
of a semi; and it is called amagaeru, or 'the rain frog,' because, like
its kindred in other countries, its croaking is an omen of rain. The
pond frogs are called babagaeru, shinagaeru, and Tono-san-gaeru. Of
these, the first-named variety is the largest and the ugliest: its
colour is very disagreeable, and its full name ('babagaeru' being a
decent abbreviation) is quite as offensive as its hue. The shinagaeru,
or 'striped frog,' is not handsome, except by comparison with the
previously mentioned creature. But the Tono-san-gaeru, so called after a
famed daimyo who left behind him a memory of great splendour is
beautiful: its colour is a fine bronze-red.

Besides these varieties of frogs there lives in the garden a huge
uncouth goggle-eyed thing which, although called here hikigaeru, I take
to be a toad. 'Hikigaeru' is the term ordinarily used for a bullfrog.
This creature enters the house almost daily to be fed, and seems to have
no fear even of strangers. My people consider it a luck-bringing
visitor; and it is credited with the power of drawing all the mosquitoes
out of a room into its mouth by simply sucking its breath in. Much as it
is cherished by gardeners and others, there is a legend about a goblin
toad of old times, which, by thus sucking in its breath, drew into its
mouth, not insects, but men.

The pond is inhabited also by many small fish; imori, or newts, with
bright red bellies; and multitudes of little water-beetles, called
maimaimushi, which pass their whole time in gyrating upon the surface of
the water so rapidly that it is almost impossible to distinguish their
shape clearly. A man who runs about aimlessly to and fro, under the
influence of excitement, is compared to a maimaimushi. And there are
some beautiful snails, with yellow stripes on their shells. Japanese
children have a charm-song which is supposed to have power to make the
snail put out its horns:

Daidaimushi, [22] daidaimushi, tsuno chitto dashare! Ame haze fuku kara
tsuno chitto dashare!  [23]

The playground of the children of the better classes has always been the
family garden, as that of the children of the poor is the temple court.
It is in the garden that the little ones first learn something of the
wonderful life of plants and the marvels of the insect world; and there,
also, they are first taught those pretty legends and songs about birds
and flowers which form so charming a part of Japanese folk-lore. As the
home training of the child is left mostly to the mother, lessons of
kindness to animals are early inculcated; and the results are strongly
marked in after life It is true, Japanese children are not entirely free
from that unconscious tendency to cruelty characteristic of children in
all countries, as a survival of primitive instincts. But in this regard
the great moral difference between the sexes is strongly marked from the
earliest years. The tenderness of the woman-soul appears even in the
child. Little Japanese girls who play with insects or small animals
rarely hurt them, and generally set them free after they have afforded a
reasonable amount of amusement. Little boys are not nearly so good, when
out of sight of parents or guardians. But if seen doing anything cruel,
a child is made to feel ashamed of the act, and hears the Buddhist
warning, 'Thy future birth will be unhappy, if thou dost cruel things.'

Somewhere among the rocks in the pond lives a small tortoise--left in
the garden, probably, by the previous tenants of the house. It is very
pretty, but manages to remain invisible for weeks at a time. In popular
mythology, the tortoise is the servant of the divinity Kompira; [24] and
if a pious fisherman finds a tortoise, he writes upon his back
characters signifying 'Servant of the Deity Kompira,' and then gives it
a drink of sake and sets it free. It is supposed to be very fond of
sake.

Some say that the land tortoise, or 'stone tortoise,' only, is the
servant of Kompira, and the sea tortoise, or turtle, the servant of the
Dragon Empire beneath the sea. The turtle is said to have the power to
create, with its breath, a cloud, a fog, or a magnificent palace. It
figures in the beautiful old folk-tale of Urashima. [25] All tortoises
are supposed to live for a thousand years, wherefore one of the most
frequent symbols of longevity in Japanese art is a tortoise. But the
tortoise most commonly represented by native painters and metal-workers
has a peculiar tail, or rather a multitude of small tails, extending
behind it like the fringes of a straw rain-coat, mino, whence it is
called minogame Now, some of the tortoises kept in the sacred tanks of
Buddhist temples attain a prodigious age, and certain water--plants
attach themselves to the creatures' shells and stream behind them when
they walk. The myth of the minogame is supposed to have had its origin
in old artistic efforts to represent the appearance of such tortoises
with confervae fastened upon their shells.

Sec. 10

Early in summer the frogs are surprisingly numerous, and, after dark,
are noisy beyond description; but week by week their nightly clamour
grows feebler, as their numbers diminish under the attacks of many
enemies. A large family of snakes, some fully three feet long, make
occasional inroads into the colony. The victims often utter piteous
cries, which are promptly responded to, whenever possible, by some
inmate of the house, and many a frog has been saved by my servant-girl,
who, by a gentle tap with a bamboo rod, compels the snake to let its
prey go. These snakes are beautiful swimmers. They make themselves quite
free about the garden; but they come out only on hot days. None of my
people would think of injuring or killing one of them. Indeed, in Izumo
it is said that to kill a snake is unlucky. 'If you kill a snake without
provocation,' a peasant assured me, 'you will afterwards find its head
in the komebitsu [the box in which cooked rice is kept] 'when you take
off the lid.'

But the snakes devour comparatively few frogs. Impudent kites and crows
are their most implacable destroyers; and there is a very pretty weasel
which lives under the kura (godown) and which does not hesitate to take
either fish or frogs out of the pond, even when the lord of the manor is
watching. There is also a cat which poaches in my preserves, a gaunt
outlaw, a master thief, which I have made sundry vain attempts to
reclaim from vagabondage. Partly because of the immorality of this cat,
and partly because it happens to have a long tail, it has the evil
reputation of being a nekomata, or goblin cat.

It is true that in Izumo some kittens are born with long tails; but it
is very seldom that they are suffered to grow up with long tails. For
the natural tendency of cats is to become goblins; and this tendency to
metamorphosis can be checked only by cutting off their tails in
kittenhood. Cats are magicians, tails or no tails, and have the power of
making corpses dance. Cats are ungrateful 'Feed a dog for three days,'
says a Japanese proverb, 'and he will remember your kindness for three
years; feed a cat for three years and she will forget your kindness in
three days.' Cats are mischievous: they tear the mattings, and make
holes in the shoji, and sharpen their claws upon the pillars of
tokonoma. Cats are under a curse: only the cat and the venomous serpent
wept not at the death of Buddha and these shall never enter into the
bliss of the Gokuraku For all these reasons, and others too numerous to
relate, cats are not much loved in Izumo, and are compelled to pass the
greater part of their lives out of doors.

Sec. 11

Not less than eleven varieties of butterflies have visited the
neighbourhood of the lotus pond within the past few days. The most
common variety is snowy white. It is supposed to be especially attracted
by the na, or rape-seed plant; and when little girls see it, they sing:

  Cho-cho cho-cho, na no ha ni tomare;
  Na no ha ga iyenara, te ni tomare. [26]

But the most interesting insects are certainly the semi (cicadae). These
Japanese tree crickets are much more extraordinary singers than even the
wonderful cicadae of the tropics; and they are much less tiresome, for
there is a different species of semi, with a totally different song, for
almost every month during the whole warm season. There are, I believe,
seven kinds; but I have become familiar with only four. The first to be
heard in my trees is the natsuzemi, or summer semi: it makes a sound
like the Japanese monosyllable ji, beginning wheezily, slowly swelling
into a crescendo shrill as the blowing of steam, and dying away in
another wheeze. This j-i-i-iiiiiiiiii is so deafening that when two or
three natsuzemi come close to the window I am obliged to make them go
away. Happily the natsuzemi is soon succeeded by the minminzemi, a much
finer musician, whose name is derived from its wonderful note. It is
said 'to chant like a Buddhist priest reciting the kyo'; and certainly,
upon hearing it the first time, one can scarcely believe that one is
listening to a mere cicada. The minminzemi is followed, early in autumn,
by a beautiful green semi, the higurashi, which makes a singularly clear
sound, like the rapid ringing of a small bell,--kana-kana-kan a-kana-
kana. But the most astonishing visitor of all comes still later, the
tsukiu-tsukiu-boshi. [27] I fancy this creature can have no rival in the
whole world of cicadae its music is exactly like the song of a bird. Its
name, like that of the minminzemi, is onomatopoetic; but in Izumo the
sounds of its chant are given thus:

  Tsuku-tsuku uisu , [28]
  Tsuku-tsuku uisu,
  Tsuku-tsuku uisu;
  Ui-osu,
  Ui-osu,
  Ui-osu,
  Ui-os-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-su.

However, the semi are not the only musicians of the garden. Two
remarkable creatures aid their orchestra. The first is a beautiful
bright green grasshopper, known to the Japanese by the curious name of
hotoke-no-uma, or 'the horse of the dead.' This insect's head really
bears some resemblance in shape to the head of a horse--hence the fancy.
It is a queerly familiar creature, allowing itself to be taken in the
hand without struggling, and generally making itself quite at home in
the house, which it often enters. It makes a very thin sound, which the
Japanese write as a repetition of the syllables jun-ta; and the name
junta is sometimes given to the grasshopper itself. The other insect is
also a green grasshopper, somewhat larger, and much shyer: it is called
gisu, [29] on account of its chant:

  Chon, Gisu;
  Chon, Gisu;
  Chon, Gisu;
  Chon . . . (ad libitum).

Several lovely species of dragon-flies (tombo) hover about the pondlet
on hot bright days. One variety--the most beautiful creature of the kind
I ever saw, gleaming with metallic colours indescribable, and spectrally
slender--is called Tenshi-tombo, 'the Emperor's dragon-fly.' There is
another, the largest of Japanese dragon-flies, but somewhat rare, which
is much sought after by children as a plaything. Of this species it is
said that there are many more males than females; and what I can vouch
for as true is that, if you catch a female, the male can be almost
immediately attracted by exposing the captive. Boys, accordingly, try to
secure a female, and when one is captured they tie it with a thread to
some branch, and sing a curious little song, of which these are the
original words:

  Konna [30] dansho Korai o
  Adzuma no meto ni makete
  Nigeru Wa haji dewa naikai?

Which signifies, 'Thou, the male, King of Korea, dost thou not feel
shame to flee away from the Queen of the East?' (This taunt is an
allusion to the story of the conquest of Korea by the Empress Jin-go.)
And the male comes invariably, and is also caught. In Izumo the first
seven words of the original song have been corrupted into 'konna unjo
Korai abura no mito'; and the name of the male dragon-fly, unjo, and
that of the female, mito, are derived from two words of the corrupted
version.

Sec. 12

Of warm nights all sorts of unbidden guests invade the house in
multitudes. Two varieties of mosquitoes do their utmost to make life
unpleasant, and these have learned the wisdom of not approaching a lamp
too closely; but hosts of curious and harmless things cannot be
prevented from seeking their death in the flame. The most numerous
victims of all, which come thick as a shower of rain, are called
Sanemori. At least they are so called in Izumo, where they do much
damage to growing rice.

Now the name Sanemori is an illustrious one, that of a famous warrior of
old times belonging to the Genji clan. There is a legend that while he
was fighting with an enemy on horseback his own steed slipped and fell
in a rice-field, and he was consequently overpowered and slain by his
antagonist. He became a rice-devouring insect, which is still
respectfully called, by the peasantry of Izumo, Sanemori-San. They light
fires, on certain summer nights, in the rice-fields, to attract the
insect, and beat gongs and sound bamboo flutes, chanting the while, 'O-
Sanemori, augustly deign to come hither!' A kannushi performs a
religious rite, and a straw figure representing a horse and rider is
then either burned or thrown into a neighbouring river or canal. By this
ceremony it is believed that the fields are cleared of the insect.

This tiny creature is almost exactly the size and colour of a rice-husk.
The legend concerning it may have arisen from the fact that its body,
together with the wings, bears some resemblance to the helmet of a
Japanese warrior. [31]

Next in number among the victims of fire are the moths, some of which
are very strange and beautiful. The most remarkable is an enormous
creature popularly called okorichocho or the 'ague moth,' because there
is a superstitious belief that it brings intermittent fever into any
house it enters. It has a body quite as heavy and almost as powerful as
that of the largest humming-bird, and its struggles, when caught in the
hand, surprise by their force. It makes a very loud whirring sound while
flying. The wings of one which I examined measured, outspread, five
inches from tip to tip, yet seemed small in proportion to the heavy
body. They were richly mottled with dusky browns and silver greys of
various tones.

Many flying night-comers, however, avoid the lamp. Most fantastic of all
visitors is the toro or kamakiri, called in Izumo kamakake, a bright
green praying mantis, extremely feared by children for its capacity to
bite. It is very large. I have seen specimens over six inches long. The
eyes of the kamakake are a brilliant black at night, but by day they
appear grass-coloured, like the rest of the body. The mantis is very
intelligent and surprisingly aggressive. I saw one attacked by a
vigorous frog easily put its enemy to flight. It fell a prey
subsequently to other inhabitants of the pond, but, it required the
combined efforts of several frogs to vanquish the monstrous insect, and
even then the battle was decided only when the kamakake had been dragged
into the water.

Other visitors are beetles of divers colours, and a sort of small roach
called goki-kaburi, signifying 'one whose head is covered with a bowl.'
It is alleged that the goki-kaburi likes to eat human eyes, and is
therefore the abhorred enemy of Ichibata-Sama--Yakushi-Nyorai of
Ichibata,--by whom diseases of the eye are healed. To kill the goki-
kaburi is consequently thought to be a meritorious act in the sight of
this Buddha. Always welcome are the beautiful fireflies (hotaru), which
enter quite noiselessly and at once seek the darkest place in the house,
slow-glimmering, like sparks moved by a gentle wind. They are supposed
to be very fond of water; wherefore children sing to them this little
song:

  Hotaru koe midzu nomasho;
  Achi no midzu wa nigaizo;
  Kochi no midzu wa amaizo. [32]

A pretty grey lizard, quite different from some which usually haunt the
garden, also makes its appearance at night, and pursues its prey along
the ceiling. Sometimes an extraordinarily large centipede attempts the
same thing, but with less success, and has to be seized with a pair of
fire-tongs and thrown into the exterior darkness. Very rarely, an
enormous spider appears. This creature seems inoffensive. If captured,
it will feign death until certain that it is not watched, when it will
run away with surprising swiftness if it gets a chance. It is hairless,
and very different from the tarantula, or fukurogumo. It is called
miyamagumo, or mountain spider. There are four other kinds of spiders
common in this neighbourhood: tenagakumo, or 'long-armed spider;'
hiratakumo, or 'flat spider'; jikumo, or 'earth spider'; and totatekumo,
or 'doorshutting spider.' Most spiders are considered evil beings. A
spider seen anywhere at night, the people say, should be killed; for all
spiders that show themselves after dark are goblins. While people are
awake and watchful, such creatures make themselves small; but when
everybody is fast asleep, then they assume their true goblin shape, and
become monstrous.

Sec. 13

The high wood of the hill behind the garden is full of bird life. There
dwell wild uguisu, owls, wild doves, too many crows, and a queer bird
that makes weird noises at night-long deep sounds of hoo, hoo. It is
called awamakidori or the 'millet-sowing bird,' because when the farmers
hear its cry they know that it is time to plant the millet. It is quite
small and brown, extremely shy, and, so far as I can learn, altogether
nocturnal in its habits.

But rarely, very rarely, a far stranger cry is heard in those trees at
night, a voice as of one crying in pain the syllables 'ho-to-to-gi-su.'
The cry and the name of that which utters it are one and the same,
hototogisu.

It is a bird of which weird things are told; for they say it is not
really a creature of this living world, but a night wanderer from the
Land of Darkness. In the Meido its dwelling is among those sunless
mountains of Shide over which all souls must pass to reach the place of
judgment. Once in each year it comes; the time of its coming is the end
of the fifth month, by the antique counting of moons; and the peasants,
hearing its voice, say one to the other, 'Now must we sow the rice; for
the Shide-no-taosa is with us.' The word taosa signifies the head man of
a mura, or village, as villages were governed in the old days; but why
the hototogisu is called the taosa of Shide I do not know. Perhaps it is
deemed to be a soul from some shadowy hamlet of the Shide hills, whereat
the ghosts are wont to rest on their weary way to the realm of Emma, the
King of Death.

Its cry has been interpreted in various ways. Some declare that the
hototogisu does not really repeat its own name, but asks, 'Honzon
kaketaka?' (Has the honzon [33] been suspended?) Others, resting their
interpretation upon the wisdom of the Chinese, aver that the bird's
speech signifies, 'Surely it is better to return home.' This, at least
is true: that all who journey far from their native place, and hear the
voice of the hototogisu in other distant provinces, are seized with the
sickness of longing for home.

Only at night, the people say, is its voice heard, and most often upon
the nights of great moons; and it chants while hovering high out of
sight, wherefore a poet has sung of it thus:

  Hito koe wa.
  Tsuki ga naitaka
  Hototogisu!  [34]

And another has written:

  Hototogisu
  Nakitsuru kata wo
  Nagamureba,--
  Tada ariake no
  Tsuki zo nokoreru.  [35]

The dweller in cities may pass a lifetime without hearing the
hototogisu. Caged, the little creature will remain silent and die. Poets
often wait vainly in the dew, from sunset till dawn, to hear the strange
cry which has inspired so many exquisite verses. But those who have
heard found it so mournful that they have likened it to the cry of one
wounded suddenly to death.

  Hototogisu
  Chi ni naku koe wa
  Ariake no
  Tsuki yori kokani
  Kiku hito mo nashi. [36]

Concerning Izumo owls, I shall content myself with citing a composition
by one of my Japanese students:

'The Owl is a hateful bird that sees in the dark. Little children who
cry are frightened by the threat that the Owl will come to take them
away; for the Owl cries, "Ho! ho! sorotto koka! sorotto koka!" which
means, "Thou! must I enter slowly?" It also cries "Noritsuke hose! ho!
ho!" which means, "Do thou make the starch to use in washing to-morrow"

And when the women hear that cry, they know that to-morrow will be a
fine day. It also cries, "Tototo," "The man dies," and "Kotokokko," "The
boy dies." So people hate it. And crows hate it so much that it is used
to catch crows. The Farmer puts an Owl in the rice-field; and all the
crows come to kill it, and they get caught fast in the snares. This
should teach us not to give way to our dislikes for other people.'

The kites which hover over the city all day do not live in the
neighbourhood. Their nests are far away upon the blue peaks; but they
pass much of their time in catching fish, and in stealing from back-
yards. They pay the wood and the garden swift and sudden piratical
visits; and their sinister cry--pi-yoroyoro, pi-yoroyoro--sounds at
intervals over the town from dawn till sundown. Most insolent of all
feathered creatures they certainly are--more insolent than even their
fellow-robbers, the crows. A kite will drop five miles to filch a tai
out of a fish-seller's bucket, or a fried-cake out of a child's hand,
and shoot back to the clouds before the victim of the theft has time to
stoop for a stone. Hence the saying, 'to look as surprised as if one's
aburage [37] had been snatched from one's hand by a kite.' There is,
moreover, no telling what a kite may think proper to steal. For example,
my neighbour's servant-girl went to the river the other day, wearing in
her hair a string of small scarlet beads made of rice-grains prepared
and dyed in a certain ingenious way. A kite lighted upon her head, and
tore away and swallowed the string of beads. But it is great fun to feed
these birds with dead rats or mice which have been caught in traps
overnight and subsequently drowned. The instant a dead rat is exposed to
view a kite pounces from the sky to bear it away. Sometimes a crow may
get the start of the kite, but the crow must be able to get to the woods
very swiftly indeed in order to keep his prize. The children sing this
song:

  Tobi, tobi, maute mise!
  Ashita no ha ni
  Karasu ni kakushite
  Nezumi yaru.  [38]

The mention of dancing refers to the beautiful balancing motion of the
kite's wings in flight. By suggestion this motion is poetically compared
to the graceful swaying of a maiko, or dancing-girl, extending her arms
and waving the long wide sleeves of her silken robe.

Although there is a numerous sub-colony of crows in the wood behind my
house, the headquarters of the corvine army are in the pine grove of the
ancient castle grounds, visible from my front rooms. To see the crows
all flying home at the same hour every evening is an interesting
spectacle, and popular imagination has found an amusing comparison for
it in the hurry-skurry of people running to a fire. This explains the
meaning of a song which children sing to the crows returning to their
nests:

  Ato no karasu saki ine,
  Ware ga iye ga yakeru ken,
  Hayo inde midzu kake,
  Midzu ga nakya yarozo,
  Amattara ko ni yare,
  Ko ga nakya modose.  [39]

Confucianism seems to have discovered virtue in the crow. There is a
Japanese proverb, 'Karasu ni hampo no ko ari,' meaning that the crow
performs the filial duty of hampo, or, more literally, 'the filial duty
of hampo exists in the crow.' 'Hampo' means, literally, 'to return a
feeding.' The young crow is said to requite its parents' care by feeding
them when it becomes strong. Another example of filial piety has been
furnished by the dove. 'Hato ni sanshi no rei ad'--the dove sits three
branches below its parent; or, more literally, 'has the three-branch
etiquette to perform.'

The cry of the wild dove (yamabato), which I hear almost daily from the
wood, is the most sweetly plaintive sound that ever reached my ears. The
Izumo peasantry say that the bird utters these words, which it certainly
seems to do if one listen to it after having learned the alleged
syllables:

  Tete poppo,
  Kaka poppo
  Tete poppo,
  Kaka poppo,
  tete. . . (sudden pause).

'Tete' is the baby word for 'father,' and 'kaka' for 'mother'; and
'poppo' signifies, in infantile speech, 'the bosom.' [40]

Wild uguisu also frequently sweeten my summer with their song, and
sometimes come very near the house, being attracted, apparently, by the
chant of my caged pet. The uguisu is very common in this province. It
haunts all the woods and the sacred groves in the neighbourhood of the
city, and I never made a journey in Izumo during the warm season without
hearing its note from some shadowy place. But there are uguisu and
uguisu. There are uguisu to be had for one or two yen, but the finely
trained, cage-bred singer may command not less than a hundred.

It was at a little village temple that I first heard one curious belief
about this delicate creature. In Japan, the coffin in which a corpse is
borne to burial is totally unlike an Occidental coffin. It is a
surprisingly small square box, wherein the dead is placed in a sitting
posture. How any adult corpse can be put into so small a space may well
be an enigma to foreigners. In cases of pronounced rigor mortis the work
of getting the body into the coffin is difficult even for the
professional doshin-bozu. But the devout followers of Nichiren claim
that after death their bodies will remain perfectly flexible; and the
dead body of an uguisu, they affirm, likewise never stiffens, for this
little bird is of their faith, and passes its life in singing praises
unto the Sutra of the Lotus of the Good Law.

Sec. 14

I have already become a little too fond of my dwelling-place. Each day,
after returning from my college duties, and exchanging my teacher's
uniform for the infinitely more comfortable Japanese robe, I find more
than compensation for the weariness of five class-hours in the simple
pleasure of squatting on the shaded veranda overlooking the gardens.
Those antique garden walls, high-mossed below their ruined coping of
tiles, seem to shut out even the murmur of the city's life. There are no
sounds but the voices of birds, the shrilling of semi, or, at long, lazy
intervals, the solitary plash of a diving frog. Nay, those walls seclude
me from much more than city streets. Outside them hums the changed Japan
of telegraphs and newspapers and steamships; within dwell the all-
reposing peace of nature and the dreams of the sixteenth century. There
is a charm of quaintness in the very air, a faint sense of something
viewless and sweet all about one; perhaps the gentle haunting of dead
ladies who looked like the ladies of the old picture-books, and who
lived here when all this was new. Even in the summer light--touching the
grey strange shapes of stone, thrilling through the foliage of the long-
loved trees--there is the tenderness of a phantom caress. These are the
gardens of the past. The future will know them only as dreams, creations
of a forgotten art, whose charm no genius may reproduce.

Of the human tenants here no creature seems to be afraid. The little
frogs resting upon the lotus-leaves scarcely shrink from my touch; the
lizards sun themselves within easy reach of my hand; the water-snakes
glide across my shadow without fear; bands of semi establish their
deafening orchestra on a plum branch just above my head, and a praying
mantis insolently poses on my knee. Swallows and sparrows not only build
their nests on my roof, but even enter my rooms without concern--one
swallow has actually built its nest in the ceiling of the bathroom--and
the weasel purloins fish under my very eyes without any scruples of
conscience. A wild uguisu perches on a cedar by the window, and in a
burst of savage sweetness challenges my caged pet to a contest in song;
and always though the golden air, from the green twilight of the
mountain pines, there purls to me the plaintive, caressing, delicious
call of the yamabato:

  Tete poppo,
  Kaka poppo
  Tete poppo,
  Kaka poppo,
  tete.

No European dove has such a cry. He who can hear, for the first time,
the voice of the yamabato without feeling a new sensation at his heart
little deserves to dwell in this happy world.

Yet all this--the old katchiu-yashiki and its gardens--will doubtless
have vanished for ever before many years. Already a multitude of
gardens, more spacious and more beautiful than mine, have been converted
into rice-fields or bamboo groves; and the quaint Izumo city, touched at
last by some long-projected railway line--perhaps even within the
present decade--will swell, and change, and grow commonplace, and demand
these grounds for the building of factories and mills. Not from here
alone, but from all the land the ancient peace and the ancient charm
seem doomed to pass away. For impermanency is the nature of things, more
particularly in Japan; and the changes and the changers shall also be
changed until there is found no place for them--and regret is vanity.
The dead art that made the beauty of this place was the art, also, of
that faith to which belongs the all-consoling text, 'Verily, even plants
and trees, rocks and stones, all shall enter into Nirvana.'


Chapter Two The Household Shrine

Sec. 1

IN Japan there are two forms of the Religion of the Dead--that which
belongs to Shinto; and that which belongs to Buddhism. The first is the
primitive cult, commonly called ancestor-worship. But the term ancestor-
worship seems to me much too confined for the religion which pays
reverence not only to those ancient gods believed to be the fathers of
the Japanese race, but likewise to a host of deified sovereigns, heroes,
princes, and illustrious men. Within comparatively recent times, the
great Daimyo of Izumo, for example, were apotheosised; and the peasants
of Shimane still pray before the shrines of the Matsudaira. Moreover
Shinto, like the faiths of Hellas and of Rome, has its deities of the
elements and special deities who preside over all the various affairs of
life. Therefore ancestor-worship, though still a striking feature of
Shinto, does not alone constitute the State Religion: neither does the
term fully describe the Shinto cult of the dead--a cult which in Izumo
retains its primitive character more than in other parts of Japan.

And here I may presume, though no Sinologue, to say something about that
State Religion of Japan--that ancient faith of Izumo--which, although
even more deeply rooted in national life than Buddhism, is far less
known to the Western world. Except in special works by such men of
erudition as Chamberlain and Satow--works with which the Occidental
reader, unless himself a specialist, is not likely to become familiar
outside of Japan--little has been written in English about Shinto which
gives the least idea of what Shinto is. Of its ancient traditions and
rites much of rarest interest may be learned from the works of the
philologists just mentioned; but, as Mr. Satow himself acknowledges, a
definite answer to the question, 'What is the nature of Shinto?' is
still difficult to give. How define the common element in the six kinds
of Shinto which are known to exist, and some of which no foreign scholar
has yet been able to examine for lack of time or of authorities or of
opportunity? Even in its modern external forms, Shinto is sufficiently
complex to task the united powers of the historian, philologist, and
anthropologist, merely to trace out the multitudinous lines of its
evolution, and to determine the sources of its various elements:
primeval polytheisms and fetishisms, traditions of dubious origin,
philosophical concepts from China, Korea, and elsewhere--all mingled
with Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. The so-called 'Revival of Pure
Shinto'--an effort, aided by Government, to restore the cult to its
archaic simplicity, by divesting it of foreign characteristics, and
especially of every sign or token of Buddhist origin--resulted only, so
far as the avowed purpose was concerned, in the destruction of priceless
art, and in leaving the enigma of origins as complicated as before.
Shinto had been too profoundly modified in the course of fifteen
centuries of change to be thus remodelled by a fiat. For the like reason
scholarly efforts to define its relation to national ethics by mere
historical and philological analysis must fail: as well seek to define
the ultimate secret of Life by the elements of the body which it
animates. Yet when the result of such efforts shall have been closely
combined with a deep knowledge of Japanese thought and feeling--the
thought and sentiment, not of a special class, but of the people at
large--then indeed all that Shinto was and is may be fully comprehended.
And this may be accomplished, I fancy, through the united labour of
European and Japanese scholars.

Yet something of what Shinto signifies--in the simple poetry of its
beliefs--in the home training of the child--in the worship of filial
piety before the tablets of the ancestors--may be learned during a
residence of some years among the people, by one who lives their life
and adopts their manners and customs. With such experience he can at
least claim the right to express his own conception of Shinto.

Sec. 2

Those far-seeing rulers of the Meiji era, who disestablished Buddhism to
strengthen Shinto, doubtless knew they were giving new force not only to
a faith in perfect harmony with their own state policy, but likewise to
one possessing in itself a far more profound vitality than the alien
creed, which although omnipotent as an art-influence, had never found
deep root in the intellectual soil of Japan. Buddhism was already in
decrepitude, though transplanted from China scarcely more than thirteen
centuries before; while Shinto, though doubtless older by many a
thousand years, seems rather to have gained than to have lost force
through all the periods of change. Eclectic like the genius of the race,
it had appropriated and assimilated all forms of foreign thought which
could aid its material manifestation or fortify its ethics. Buddhism had
attempted to absorb its gods, even as it had adopted previously the
ancient deities of Brahmanism; but Shinto, while seeming to yield, was
really only borrowing strength from its rival. And this marvellous
vitality of Shinto is due to the fact that in the course of its long
development out of unrecorded beginnings, it became at a very ancient
epoch, and below the surface still remains, a religion of the heart.
Whatever be the origin of its rites and traditions, its ethical spirit
has become identified with all the deepest and best emotions of the
race. Hence, in Izumo especially, the attempt to create a Buddhist
Shintoism resulted only in the formation of a Shinto-Buddhism.

And the secret living force of Shinto to-day--that force which repels
missionary efforts at proselytising--means something much more profound
than tradition or worship or ceremonialism. Shinto may yet, without loss
of real power, survive all these. Certainly the expansion of the popular
mind through education, the influences of modern science, must compel
modification or abandonment of many ancient Shinto conceptions; but the
ethics of Shinto will surely endure. For Shinto signifies character in
the higher sense--courage, courtesy, honour, and above all things,
loyalty. The spirit of Shinto is the spirit of filial piety, the zest of
duty, the readiness to surrender life for a principle without a thought
of wherefore. It is the docility of the child; it is the sweetness of
the Japanese woman. It is conservatism likewise; the wholesome check
upon the national tendency to cast away the worth of the entire past in
rash eagerness to assimilate too much of the foreign present. It is
religion--but religion transformed into hereditary moral impulse--
religion transmuted into ethical instinct. It is the whole emotional
life of the race--the Soul of Japan.

The child is born Shinto. Home teaching and school training only give
expression to what is innate: they do not plant new seed; they do but
quicken the ethical sense transmitted as a trait ancestral. Even as a
Japanese infant inherits such ability to handle a writing-brush as never
can be acquired by Western fingers, so does it inherit ethical
sympathies totally different from our own. Ask a class of Japanese
students--young students of fourteen to sixteen--to tell their dearest
wishes; and if they have confidence in the questioner, perhaps nine out
of ten will answer: 'To die for His Majesty Our Emperor.' And the wish
soars from the heart pure as any wish for martyrdom ever born. How much
this sense of loyalty may or may not have been weakened in such great
centres as Tokyo by the new agnosticism and by the rapid growth of other
nineteenth-century ideas among the student class, I do not know; but in
the country it remains as natural to boyhood as joy. Unreasoning it also
is--unlike those loyal sentiments with us, the results of maturer
knowledge and settled conviction. Never does the Japanese youth ask
himself why; the beauty of self-sacrifice alone is the all-sufficing
motive. Such ecstatic loyalty is a part of the national life; it is in
the blood--inherent as the impulse of the ant to perish for its little
republic--unconscious as the loyalty of bees to their queen. It is
Shinto.

That readiness to sacrifice one's own life for loyalty's sake, for the
sake of a superior, for the sake of honour, which has distinguished the
race in modern times, would seem also to have been a national
characteristic from the earliest period of its independent existence.
Long before the epoch of established feudalism, when honourable suicide
became a matter of rigid etiquette, not for warriors only, but even for
women and little children, the giving one's life for one's prince, even
when the sacrifice could avail nothing, was held a sacred duty. Among
various instances which might be cited from the ancient Kojiki, the
following is not the least impressive:

Prince Mayowa, at the age of only seven years, having killed his
father's slayer, fled into the house of the Grandee (Omi) Tsubura. 'Then
Prince Oho-hatsuse raised an army, and besieged that house. And the
arrows that were shot were for multitude like the ears of the reeds. And
the Grandee Tsubura came forth himself, and having taken off the weapons
with which he was girded, did obeisance eight times, and said: "The
maiden-princess Kara, my daughter whom thou deignedst anon to woo, is at
thy service. Again I will present to thee five granaries. Though a vile
slave of a Grandee exerting his utmost strength in the fight can
scarcely hope to conquer, yet must he die rather than desert a prince
who, trusting in him, has entered into his house."  Having thus spoken,
he again took his weapons, and went in once more to fight. Then, their
strength being exhausted, and their arrows finished, he said to the
Prince: "My hands are wounded, and our arrows are finished. We cannot
now fight: what shall be done?"  The Prince replied, saying: "There is
nothing more to do. Do thou now slay me." So the Grandee Tsubura thrust
the Prince to death with his sword, and forthwith killed himself by
cutting off his own head.'

Thousands of equally strong examples could easily be quoted from later
Japanese history, including many which occurred even within the memory
of the living. Nor was it for persons alone that to die might become a
sacred duty: in certain contingencies conscience held it scarcely less a
duty to die for a purely personal conviction; and he who held any
opinion which he believed of paramount importance would, when other
means failed, write his views in a letter of farewell, and then take his
own life, in order to call attention to his beliefs and to prove their
sincerity. Such an instance occurred only last year in Tokyo, [1] when
the young lieutenant of militia, Ohara Takeyoshi, killed himself by
harakiri in the cemetery of Saitokuji, leaving a letter stating as the
reason for his act, his hope to force public recognition of the danger
to Japanese independence from the growth of Russian power in the North
Pacific. But a much more touching sacrifice in May of the same year--a
sacrifice conceived in the purest and most innocent spirit of loyalty--
was that of the young girl Yoko Hatakeyama, who, after the attempt to
assassinate the Czarevitch, travelled from Tokyo to Kyoto and there
killed herself before the gate of the Kencho, merely as a vicarious
atonement for the incident which had caused shame to Japan and grief to
the Father of the people--His Sacred Majesty the Emperor.

Sec. 3

As to its exterior forms, modern Shinto is indeed difficult to analyse;
but through all the intricate texture of extraneous beliefs so thickly
interwoven about it, indications of its earliest character are still
easily discerned. In certain of its primitive rites, in its archaic
prayers and texts and symbols, in the history of its shrines, and even
in many of the artless ideas of its poorest worshippers, it is plainly
revealed as the most ancient of all forms of worship--that which Herbert
Spencer terms 'the root of all religions'--devotion to the dead. Indeed,
it has been frequently so expounded by its own greatest scholars and
theologians. Its divinities are ghosts; all the dead become deities. In
the Tama-no-mihashira the great commentator Hirata says 'the spirits of
the dead continue to exist in the unseen world which is everywhere about
us, and they all become gods of varying character and degrees of
influence. Some reside in temples built in their honour; others hover
near their tombs; and they continue to render services to their prince,
parents, wife, and children, as when in the body.' And they do more than
this, for they control the lives and the doings of men. 'Every human
action,' says Hirata, 'is the work of a god.' [3] And Motowori, scarcely
less famous an exponent of pure Shinto doctrine, writes: 'All the moral
ideas which a man requires are implanted in his bosom by the gods, and
are of the same nature with those instincts which impel him to eat when
he is hungry or to drink when he is thirsty.'  [4] With this doctrine of
Intuition no Decalogue is required, no fixed code of ethics; and the
human conscience is declared to be the only necessary guide. Though
every action be 'the work of a Kami.' yet each man has within him the
power to discern the righteous impulse from the unrighteous, the
influence of the good deity from that of the evil. No moral teacher is
so infallible as one's own heart. 'To have learned that there is no way
(michi),'[5] says Motowori, 'to be learned and practiced, is really to
have learned the Way of the Gods.' [6] And Hirata writes: 'If you desire
to practise true virtue, learn to stand in awe of the Unseen; and that
will prevent you from doing wrong. Make a vow to the Gods who rule over
the Unseen, and cultivate the conscience (ma-gokoro) implanted in you;
and then you will never wander from the way.' How this spiritual self-
culture may best be obtained, the same great expounder has stated with
almost equal brevity: 'Devotion to the memory of ancestors is the
mainspring of all virtues. No one who discharges his duty to them will
ever be disrespectful to the Gods or to his living parents. Such a man
will be faithful to his prince, loyal to his friends, and kind and
gentle with his wife and children.' [7]

How far are these antique beliefs removed from the ideas of the
nineteenth century? Certainly not so far that we can afford to smile at
them. The faith of the primitive man and the knowledge of the most
profound psychologist may meet in strange harmony upon the threshold of
the same ultimate truth, and the thought of a child may repeat the
conclusions of a Spencer or a Schopenhauer. Are not our ancestors in
very truth our Kami? Is not every action indeed the work of the Dead who
dwell within us? Have not our impulses and tendencies, our capacities
and weaknesses, our heroisms and timidities, been created by those
vanished myriads from whom we received the all-mysterious bequest of
Life? Do we still think of that infinitely complex Something which is
each one of us, and which we call EGO, as 'I' or as 'They'? What is our
pride or shame but the pride or shame of the Unseen in that which They
have made?--and what our Conscience but the inherited sum of countless
dead experiences with varying good and evil? Nor can we hastily reject
the Shinto thought that all the dead become gods, while we respect the
convictions of those strong souls of to-day who proclaim the divinity of
man.

Sec. 4

Shino ancestor-worship, no doubt, like all ancestor-worship, was
developed out of funeral rites, according to that general law of
religious evolution traced so fully by Herbert Spencer. And there is
reason to believe that the early forms of Shinto public worship may have
been evolved out of a yet older family worship--much after the manner in
which M. Fustel de Coulanges, in his wonderful book, La Cite Antique,
has shown the religious public institutions among the Greeks and Romans
to have been developed from the religion of the hearth. Indeed, the word
ujigami, now used to signify a Shinto parish temple, and also its deity,
means 'family God,' and in its present form is a corruption or
contraction of uchi-no-Kami, meaning the 'god of the interior' or 'the
god of the house.' Shinto expounders have, it is true, attempted to
interpret the term otherwise; and Hirata, as quoted by Mr. Ernest Satow,
declared the name should be applied only to the common ancestor, or
ancestors, or to one so entitled to the gratitude of a community as to
merit equal honours. Such, undoubtedly, was the just use of the term in
his time, and long before it; but the etymology of the word would
certainly seem to indicate its origin in family worship, and to confirm
modern scientific beliefs in regard to the evolution of religious
institutions.

Now just as among the Greeks and Latins the family cult always continued
to exist through all the development and expansion of the public
religion, so the Shinto family worship has continued concomitantly with
the communal worship at the countless ujigami, with popular worship at
the famed Ohoya-shiro of various provinces or districts, and with
national worship at the great shrines of Ise and Kitzuki. Many objects
connected with the family cult are certainly of alien or modern origin;
but its simple rites and its unconscious poetry retain their archaic
charm. And, to the student of Japanese life, by far the most interesting
aspect of Shinto is offered in this home worship, which, like the home
worship of the antique Occident, exists in a dual form.

Sec. 5

In nearly all Izumo dwellings there is a kamidana, [8] or 'Shelf of the
Gods.' On this is usually placed a small Shinto shrine (miya) containing
tablets bearing the names of gods (one at least of which tablets is
furnished by the neighbouring Shinto parish temple), and various ofuda,
holy texts or charms which most often are written promises in the name
of some Kami to protect his worshipper. If there be no miya, the tablets
or ofuda are simply placed upon the shelf in a certain order, the most
sacred having the middle place. Very rarely are images to be seen upon a
kamidana: for primitive Shintoism excluded images rigidly as Jewish or
Mohammedan law; and all Shinto iconography belongs to a comparatively
modern era--especially to the period of Ryobu-Shinto--and must be
considered of Buddhist origin. If there be any images, they will
probably be such as have been made only within recent years at Kitauki:
those small twin figures of Oho-kuni-nushi-no-Kami and of Koto-shiro-
nushi-no-Kami, described in a former paper upon the Kitzuki-no-oho-
yashiro. Shinto kakemono, which are also of latter-day origin,
representing incidents from the Kojiki, are much more common than Shinto
icons: these usually occupy the toko, or alcove, in the same room in
which the kamidana is placed; but they will not be seen in the houses of
the more cultivated classes. Ordinarily there will be found upon the
kamidana nothing but the simple miya containing some ofuda: very, very
seldom will a mirror [9] be seen, or gohei--except the gohei attached to
the small shimenawa either hung just above the kamidana or suspended to
the box-like frame in which the miya sometimes is placed. The shimenawa
and the paper gohei are the true emblems of Shinto: even the ofuda and
the mamori are quite modern. Not only before the household shrine, but
also above the house-door of almost every home in Izumo, the shimenawa
is suspended. It is ordinarily a thin rope of rice straw; but before the
dwellings of high Shinto officials, such as the Taisha-Guji of Kitzuki,
its size and weight are enormous. One of the first curious facts that
the traveller in Izumo cannot fail to be impressed by is the universal
presence of this symbolic rope of straw, which may sometimes even be
seen round a rice-field. But the grand displays of the sacred symbol are
upon the great festivals of the new year, the accession of Jimmu Tenno
to the throne of Japan, and the Emperor's birthday. Then all the miles
of streets are festooned with shimenawa thick as ship-cables.

Sec. 6

A particular feature of Matsue are the miya-shops--establishments not,
indeed, peculiar to the old Izumo town, but much more interesting than
those to be found in larger cities of other provinces. There are miya of
a hundred varieties and sizes, from the child's toy miya which sells for
less than one sen, to the large shrine destined for some rich home, and
costing perhaps ten yen or more. Besides these, the household shrines of
Shinto, may occasionally be seen massive shrines of precious wood,
lacquered and gilded, worth from three hundred even to fifteen hundred
yen. These are not household shrines; but festival shrines, and are made
only for rich merchants. They are displayed on Shinto holidays, and
twice a year are borne through the streets in procession, to shouts of
'Chosaya! chosaya!' [10] Each temple parish also possesses a large
portable miya which is paraded on these occasions with much chanting and
beating of drums. The majority of household miya are cheap
constructions. A very fine one can be purchased for about two yen; but
those little shrines one sees in the houses of the common people cost,
as a rule, considerably less than half a yen. And elaborate or costly
household shrines are contrary to the spirit of pure Shinto The true
miya should be made of spotless white hinoki  [11] wood, and be put
together without nails. Most of those I have seen in the shops had their
several parts joined only with rice-paste; but the skill of the maker
rendered this sufficient. Pure Shinto requires that a miya should be
without gilding or ornamentation. The beautiful miniature temples in
some rich homes may justly excite admiration by their artistic structure
and decoration; but the ten or thirteen cent miya, in the house of a
labourer or a kurumaya, of plain white wood, truly represents that
spirit of simplicity characterising the primitive religion.

Sec. 7

The kamidana or 'God-shelf,' upon which are placed the miya and other
sacred objects of Shinto worship, is usually fastened at a height of
about six or seven feet above the floor. As a rule it should not be
placed higher than the hand can reach with ease; but in houses having
lofty rooms the miya is sometimes put up at such a height that the
sacred offerings cannot be made without the aid of a box or other object
to stand upon. It is not commonly a part of the house structure, but a
plain shelf attached with brackets either to the wall itself, at some
angle of the apartment, or, as is much more usual, to the kamoi, or
horizontal grooved beam, in which the screens of opaque paper (fusuma),
which divide room from room, slide to and fro. Occasionally it is
painted or lacquered. But the ordinary kamidana is of white wood, and is
made larger or smaller in proportion to the size of the miya, or the
number of the ofuda and other sacred objects to be placed upon it. In
some houses, notably those of innkeepers and small merchants, the
kamidana is made long enough to support a number of small shrines
dedicated to different Shinto deities, particularly those believed to
preside over wealth and commercial prosperity. In the houses of the poor
it is nearly always placed in the room facing the street; and Matsue
shopkeepers usually erect it in their shops--so that the passer-by or
the customer can tell at a glance in what deities the occupant puts his
trust. There are many regulations concerning it. It may be placed to
face south or east, but should not face west, and under no possible
circumstances should it be suffered to face north or north-west. One
explanation of this is the influence upon Shinto of Chinese philosophy,
according to which there is some fancied relation between South or East
and the Male Principle, and between West or North and the Female
Principle. But the popular notion on the subject is that because a dead
person is buried with the head turned north, it would be very wrong to
place a miya so as to face north--since everything relating to death is
impure; and the regulation about the west is not strictly observed. Most
kamidana in Izumo, however, face south or east. In the houses of the
poorest--often consisting of but one apartment--there can be little
choice as to rooms; but it is a rule, observed in the dwellings of the
middle classes, that the kamidana must not be placed either in the guest
room (zashiki) nor in the kitchen; and in shizoku houses its place is
usually in one of the smaller family apartments. Respect must be shown
it. One must not sleep, for example, or even lie down to rest, with his
feet turned towards it. One must not pray before it, or even stand
before it, while in a state of religious impurity--such as that entailed
by having touched a corpse, or attended a Buddhist funeral, or even
during the period of mourning for kindred buried according to the
Buddhist rite. Should any member of the family be thus buried, then
during fifty days [12] the kamidana must be entirely screened from view
with pure white paper, and even the Shinto ofuda, or pious invocations
fastened upon the house-door, must have white paper pasted over them.
During the same mourning period the fire in the house is considered
unclean; and at the close of the term all the ashes of the braziers and
of the kitchen must be cast away, and new fire kindled with a flint and
steel. Nor are funerals the only source of legal uncleanliness. Shinto,
as the religion of purity and purification, has a Deuteronomy of quite
an extensive kind. During certain periods women must not even pray
before the miya, much less make offerings or touch the sacred vessels,
or kindle the lights of the Kami.

Sec. 8

Before the miya, or whatever holy object of Shinto worship be placed
upon the kamidana, are set two quaintly shaped jars for the offerings of
sake; two small vases, to contain sprays of the sacred plant sakaki, or
offerings of flowers; and a small lamp, shaped like a tiny saucer, where
a wick of rush-pith floats in rape-seed oil. Strictly speaking, all
these utensils, except the flower-vases, should be made of unglazed red
earthenware, such as we find described in the early chapters of the
Kojiki: and still at Shinto festivals in Izumo, when sake is drunk in
honour of the gods, it is drunk out of cups of red baked unglazed clay
shaped like shallow round dishes. But of late years it has become the
fashion to make all the utensils of a fine kamidana of brass or bronze--
even the hanaike, or flower-vases. Among the poor, the most archaic
utensils are still used to a great extent, especially in the remoter
country districts; the lamp being a simple saucer or kawarake of red
clay; and the flower-vases most often bamboo cups, made by simply
cutting a section of bamboo immediately below a joint and about five
inches above it.

The brazen lamp is a much more complicated object than the kawarake,
which costs but one rin. The brass lamp costs about twenty-five sen, at
least. It consists of two parts. The lower part, shaped like a very
shallow, broad wineglass, with a very thick stem, has an interior as
well as an exterior rim; and the bottom of a correspondingly broad and
shallow brass cup, which is the upper part and contains the oil, fits
exactly into this inner rim. This kind of lamp is always furnished with
a small brass object in the shape of a flat ring, with a stem set at
right angles to the surface of the ring. It is used for moving the
floating wick and keeping it at any position required; and the little
perpendicular stem is long enough to prevent the fingers from touching
the oil.

The most curious objects to be seen on any ordinary kamidana are the
stoppers of the sake-vessels or o-mikidokkuri ('honourable sake-jars').
These stoppers--o-mikidokkuri-nokuchisashi--may be made of brass, or of
fine thin slips of wood jointed and bent into the singular form
required. Properly speaking, the thing is not a real stopper, in spite
of its name; its lower part does not fill the mouth of the jar at all:
it simply hangs in the orifice like a leaf put there stem downwards. I
find it difficult to learn its history; but, though there are many
designs of it--the finer ones being of brass--the shape of all seems to
hint at a Buddhist origin. Possibly the shape was borrowed from a
Buddhist symbol--the Hoshi-notama, that mystic gem whose lambent glow
(iconographically suggested as a playing of flame) is the emblem of Pure
Essence; and thus the object would be typical at once of the purity of
the wine-offering and the purity of the heart of the giver.

The little lamp may not be lighted every evening in all homes, since
there are families too poor to afford even this infinitesimal nightly
expenditure of oil. But upon the first, fifteenth, and twenty-eighth of
each month the light is always kindled; for these are Shinto holidays of
obligation, when offerings must be made to the gods, and when all uji-
ko, or parishioners of a Shinto temple, are supposed to visit their
ujigami. In every home on these days sake is poured as an offering into
the o-mikidokkuri, and in the vases of the kamidana are placed sprays of
the holy sakaki, or sprigs of pine, or fresh flowers. On the first day
of the new year the kamidana is always decked with sakaki, moromoki
(ferns), and pine-sprigs, and also with a shimenawa; and large double
rice cakes are placed upon it as offerings to the gods.

Sec. 9

But only the ancient gods of Shinto are worshipped before the kamidana.
The family ancestors or family dead are worshipped either in a separate
room (called the mitamaya or 'Spirit Chamber'), or, if worshipped
according to the Buddhist rites, before the butsuma or butsudan.


The Buddhist family worship coexists in the vast majority of Izumo homes
with the Shinto family worship; and whether the dead be honoured in the
mitamaya or before the butsudan altogether depends upon the religious
traditions of the household. Moreover, there are families in Izumo--
particularly in Kitzuki--whose members do not profess Buddhism in any
form, and a very few, belonging to the Shin-shu or Nichirenshu, [13]
whose members do not practise Shinto. But the domestic cult of the dead
is maintained, whether the family be Shinto or Buddhist. The ihai or
tablets of the Buddhist family dead (Hotoke) are never placed in a
special room or shrine, but in the Buddhist household shrine [14]  along
with the images or pictures of Buddhist divinities usually there
inclosed--or, at least, this is always the case when the honours paid
them are given according to the Buddhist instead of the Shinto rite. The
form of the butsudan or butsuma, the character of its holy images, its
ofuda, or its pictures, and even the prayers said before it, differ
according to the fifteen different shu, or sects; and a very large
volume would have to be written in order to treat the subject of the
butsuma exhaustively. Therefore I must content myself with stating that
there are Buddhist household shrines of all dimensions, prices, and
degrees of magnificence; and that the butsudan of the Shin-shu, although
to me the least interesting of all, is popularly considered to be the
most beautiful in design and finish. The butsudan of a very poor
household may be worth a few cents, but the rich devotee might purchase
in Kyoto a shrine worth as many thousands of yen as he could pay.

Though the forms of the butsuma and the character of its contents may
greatly vary, the form of the ancestral or mortuary tablet is generally
that represented in Fig. 4 of the illustrations of ihai given in this
book. [15] There are some much more elaborate shapes, costly and rare,
and simpler shapes of the cheapest and plainest descriptions; but the
form thus illustrated is the common one in Izumo and the whole San-indo
country. There are differences, however, of size; and the ihai of a man
is larger than that of a woman, and has a headpiece also, which the
tablet of a female has not; while a child's ihai is always very small.
The average height of the ihai made for a male adult is a little more
than a foot, and its thickness about an inch. It has a top, or
headpiece, surmounted by the symbol I of the Hoshi-no-tama or Mystic
Gem, and ordinarily decorated with a cloud-design of some kind, and the
pedestal is a lotus-flower rising out of clouds. As a general rule all
this is richly lacquered and gilded; the tablet itself being lacquered
in black, and bearing the posthumous name, or kaimyo, in letters of
gold--ken-mu-ji-sho-shin-ji, or other syllables indicating the supposed
virtues of the departed. The poorest people, unable to afford such
handsome tablets, have ihai made of plain wood; and the kaimyo is
sometimes simply written on these in black characters; but more commonly
it is written upon a strip of white paper, which is then pasted upon the
ihai with rice-paste. The living name is perhaps inscribed upon the back
of the tablet. Such tablets accumulate, of course, with the passing of
generations; and in certain homes great numbers are preserved.

A beautiful and touching custom still exists in Izumo, and perhaps
throughout Japan, although much less common than it used to be. So far
as I can learn, however, it was always confined to the cultivated
classes. When a husband dies, two ihai are made, in case the wife
resolves never to marry again. On one of these the kaimyo of the dead
man is painted in characters of gold, and on the other that of the
living widow; but, in the latter case, the first character of the kaimyo
is painted in red, and the other characters in gold. These two tablets
are then placed in the household butsuma. Two larger ones similarly
inscribed, are placed in the parish temple; but no cup is set before
that of the wife. The solitary crimson ideograph signifies a solemn
pledge to remain faithful to the memory of the dead. Furthermore, the
wife loses her living name among all her friends and relatives, and is
thereafter addressed only by a fragment of her kaimyo--as, for example,
'Shin-toku-in-San,' an abbreviation of the much longer and more sonorous
posthumous name, Shin-toku-in-den-joyo-teiso-daishi. [16] Thus to be
called by one's kaimyo is at once an honour to the memory of the husband
and the constancy of the bereaved wife. A precisely similar pledge is
taken by a man after the loss of a wife to whom he was passionately
attached; and one crimson letter upon his ihai registers the vow not
only in the home but also in the place of public worship. But the
widower is never called by his kaimyo, as is the widow.

The first religious duty of the morning in a Buddhist household is to
set before the tablets of the dead a little cup of tea, made with the
first hot water prepared--O-Hotoke-San-nio-cha-to-ageru. [17] Daily
offerings of boiled rice are also made; and fresh flowers are put in the
shrine vases; and incense--although not allowed by Shinto--is burned
before the tablets.  At night, and also during the day upon certain
festivals, both candles and a small oil-lamp are lighted in the butsuma--a
lamp somewhat differently shaped from the lamp of the miya and called
rinto On the day of each month corresponding to the date of death a
little repast is served before the tablets, consisting of shojin-ryori
only, the vegetarian food of the. Buddhists. But as Shinto family
worship has its special annual festival, which endures from the first to
the third day of the new year, so Buddhist ancestor-worship has its
yearly Bonku, or Bommatsuri, lasting from the thirteenth to the
sixteenth day of the seventh month. This is the Buddhist Feast of Souls.
Then the butsuma is decorated to the utmost, special offerings of food
and of flowers are made, and all the house is made beautiful to welcome
the coming of the ghostly visitors.

Now Shinto, like Buddhism, has its ihai; but these are of the simplest
possible shape and material--mere slips of plain white wood. The average
height is only about eight inches. These tablets are either placed in a
special miya kept in a different room from that in which the shrine of
the Kami is erected, or else simply arranged on a small shelf called by
the people Mitama-San-no-tana,--'the Shelf of the August Spirits.' The
shelf or the shrine of the ancestors and household dead is placed always
at a considerable height in the mitamaya or soreisha (as the Spirit
Chamber is sometimes called), just as is the miya of the Kami in the
other apartment. Sometimes no tablets are used, the name being simply
painted upon the woodwork of the Spirit Shrine. But Shinto has no
kaimyo: the living name of the dead is written upon the ihai, with the
sole addition of the word 'Mitama' (Spirit). And monthly upon the day
corresponding to the menstrual date of death, offerings of fish, wine,
and other food are made to the spirits, accompanied by special prayer.
[18]  The Mitama-San have also their particular lamps and flower-vases,
and, though in lesser degree, are honoured with rites like those of the
Kami.

The prayers uttered before the ihai of either faith begin with the
respective religious formulas of Shinto or of Buddhism. The Shintoist,
clapping his hands thrice or four times, [19] first utters the
sacramental Harai-tamai. The Buddhist, according to his sect, murmurs
Namu-myo-ho-ren-ge-kyo, or Namu Amida Butsu, or some other holy words of
prayer or of praise to the Buddha, ere commencing his prayer to the
ancestors. The words said to them are seldom spoken aloud, either by
Shintoist or Buddhist: they are either whispered very low under the
breath, or shaped only within the heart.

Sec. 10

At nightfall in Izumo homes the lamps of the gods and of the ancestors
are kindled, either by a trusted servant or by some member of the
family. Shinto orthodox regulations require that the lamps should be
filled with pure vegetable oil only--tomoshiabura--and oil of rape-seed
is customarily used. However, there is an evident inclination among the
poorer classes to substitute a microscopic kerosene lamp for the ancient
form of utensil. But by the strictly orthodox this is held to be very
wrong, and even to light the lamps with a match is somewhat heretical.
For it is not supposed that matches are always made with pure
substances, and the lights of the Kami should be kindled only with
purest fire--that holy natural fire which lies hidden within all things.
Therefore in some little closet in the home of any strictly orthodox
Shinto family there is always a small box containing the ancient
instruments used for the lighting of' holy fire. These consist of the
hi-uchi-ishi, or 'fire-strike-stone'; the hi-uchi-gane, or steel; the
hokuchi, or tinder, made of dried moss; and the tsukegi, fine slivers of
resinous pine. A little tinder is laid upon the flint and set
smouldering with a few strokes of the steel, and blown upon until it
flames. A slip of pine is then ignited at this flame, and with it the
lamps of the ancestors and the gods are lighted. If several great
deities are represented in the miya or upon the kamidana by several
ofuda, then a separate lamp is sometimes lighted for each; and if there
be a butsuma in the dwelling, its tapers or lamp are lighted at the same
time.


Although the use of the flint and steel for lighting the lamps of the
gods will probably have become obsolete within another generation, it
still prevails largely in Izumo, especially in the country districts.
Even where the safety-match has entirely supplanted the orthodox
utensils, the orthodox sentiment shows itself in the matter of the
choice of matches to be used. Foreign matches are inadmissible: the
native matchmaker quite successfully represented that foreign matches
contained phosphorus 'made from the bones of dead animals,' and that to
kindle the lights of the Kami with such unholy fire would be sacrilege.
In other parts of Japan the matchmakers stamped upon their boxes the
words: 'Saikyo go honzon yo' (Fit for the use of the August High Temple
of Saikyo). [20] But Shinto sentiment in Izumo was too strong to be
affected much by any such declaration: indeed, the recommendation of the
matches as suitable for use in a Shin-shu temple was of itself
sufficient to prejudice Shintoists against them. Accordingly special
precautions had to be taken before safety-matches could be
satisfactorily introduced into the Province of the Gods. Izumo match-
boxes now bear the inscription: 'Pure, and fit to use for kindling the
lamps of the Kami, or of the Hotoke!'

The inevitable danger to all things in Japan is fire. It is the
traditional rule that when a house takes fire, the first objects to be
saved, if possible, are the household gods and the tablets of the
ancestors. It is even said that if these are saved, most of the family
valuables are certain to be saved, and that if these are lost, all is
lost.

Sec. 11

The terms soreisha and mitamaya, as used in Izumo, may, I am told,
signify either the small miya in which the Shinto ihai (usually made of
cherry-wood) is kept, or that part of the dwelling in which it is
placed, and where the offerings are made. These, by all who can afford
it, are served upon tables of plain white wood, and of the same high
narrow form as the tables upon which offerings are made in the temples
and at public funeral ceremonies.

The most ordinary form of prayer addressed to the ancient ancestors in
the household cult of Shinto is not uttered aloud. After pronouncing the
initial formula of all popular Shinto prayer, 'Harai-tamai,' etc., the
worshipper says, with his heart only--'Spirits august of our far-off
ancestors, ye forefathers of the generations, and of our families and of
our kindred, unto you, the founders of our homes, we this day utter the
gladness of our thanks.'

In the family cult of the Buddhists a distinction is made between the
household Hotoke--the souls of those long dead--and the souls of those
but recently deceased. These last are called Shin-botoke, 'new Buddhas,'
or more strictly, 'the newly dead.' No direct request for any
supernatural favour is made to a Shin-botoke; for, though respectfully
called Hotoke, the freshly departed soul is not really deemed to have
reached Buddhahood: it is only on the long road thither, and is in need
itself, perhaps, of aid, rather than capable of giving aid. Indeed,
among the deeply pious its condition is a matter of affectionate
concern. And especially is this the case when a little child dies; for
it is thought that the soul of an infant is feeble and exposed to many
dangers. Wherefore a mother, speaking to the departed soul of her child,
will advise it, admonish it, command it tenderly, as if addressing a
living son or daughter. The ordinary words said in Izumo homes to any
Shin-botoke take rather the form of adjuration or counsel than of
prayer, such as these:--

'Jobutsu seyo,' or 'Jobutsu shimasare.' [Do thou become a Buddha.]

'Mayo na yo.' [Go not astray; or, Be never deluded.]

'Miren-wo nokorazu.' [Suffer no regret (for this world) to linger with
thee.]

These prayers are never uttered aloud. Much more in accordance with the
Occidental idea of prayer is the following, uttered by Shin-shu
believers on behalf of a Shin-botoke:

'O-mukai kudasare Amida-Sama.' [Vouchsafe, O Lord Amida, augustly to
welcome (this soul).]

Needless to say that ancestor-worship, although adopted in China and
Japan into Buddhism, is not of Buddhist origin. Needless also to say
that Buddhism discountenances suicide.  Yet in Japan, anxiety about the
condition of the soul of the departed often caused suicide--or at least
justified it on the part of those who, though accepting Buddhist dogma,
might adhere to primitive custom. Retainers killed themselves in the
belief that by dying they might give to the soul of their lord or lady,
counsel, aid, and service. Thus in the novel Hogen-nomono-gatari, a
retainer is made to say after the death of his young master:--'Over the
mountain of Shide, over the ghostly River of Sanzu, who will conduct
him? If he be afraid, will he not call my name, as he was wont to do?
Surely better that, by slaying myself, I go to serve him as of old, than
to linger here, and mourn for him in vain.'

In Buddhist household worship, the prayers addressed to the family
Hotoke proper, the souls of those long dead, are very different from the
addresses made to the Shin-botoke. The following are a few examples:
they are always said under the breath:

'Kanai anzen.' [(Vouchsafe) that our family may be preserved.]

'Enmei sakusai.' [That we may enjoy long life without sorrow.]

'Shobai hanjo.' [That our business may prosper.] [Said only by merchants
and tradesmen.]

'Shison chokin.' [That the perpetuity of our descent may be assured.]

'Onteki taisan.' [That our enemies be scattered.]

'Yakubyo shometsu.' [That pestilence may not come nigh us.]

Some of the above are used also by Shinto worshippers. The old samurai
still repeat the special prayers of their caste:--

'Tenka taihei.' [That long peace may prevail throughout the world.]

'Bu-un chokyu.' [That we may have eternal good-fortune in war.]


'Ka-ei-manzoku.' [That our house (family) may for ever remain
fortunate.]

But besides these silent formulae, any prayers prompted by the heart,
whether of supplication or of gratitude, may, of course, be repeated.
Such prayers are said, or rather thought, in the speech of daily life.
The following little prayer uttered by an Izumo mother to the ancestral
spirit, besought on behalf of a sick child, is an example:--

'O-kage ni kodomo no byoki mo zenkwai itashimashite, arigato-
gozarimasu!' [By thine august influence the illness of my child has
passed away;--I thank thee.]

'O-kage ni' literally signifies 'in the august shadow of.' There is a
ghostly beauty in the original phrase that neither a free nor yet a
precise translation can preserve.

Sec. 12

Thus, in this home-worship of the Far East, by love the dead are made
divine; and the foreknowledge of this tender apotheosis must temper with
consolation the natural melancholy of age. Never in Japan are the dead
so quickly forgotten as with us: by simple faith they are deemed still
to dwell among their beloved; and their place within the home remains
ever holy. And the aged patriarch about to pass away knows that loving
lips will nightly murmur to the memory of him before the household
shrine; that faithful hearts will beseech him in their pain and bless
him in their joy; that gentle hands will place before his ihai pure
offerings of fruits and flowers, and dainty repasts of the things which
he was wont to like; and will pour out for him, into the little cup of
ghosts and gods, the fragrant tea of guests or the amber rice-wine.
Strange changes are coming upon the land: old customs are vanishing; old
beliefs are weakening; the thoughts of today will not be the thoughts of
another age--but of all this he knows happily nothing in his own quaint,
simple, beautiful Izumo. He dreams that for him, as for his fathers, the
little lamp will burn on through the generations; he sees, in softest
fancy, the yet unborn--the children of his children's children--clapping
their tiny hands in Shinto prayer, and making filial obeisance before
the little dusty tablet that bears his unforgotten name.



Chapter Three Of Women's Hair

Sec. 1 THE hair of the younger daughter of the family is very long; and it
is a spectacle of no small interest to see it dressed. It is dressed
once in every three days; and the operation, which costs four sen, is
acknowledged to require one hour. As a matter of fact it requires nearly
two. The hairdresser (kamiyui) first sends her maiden apprentice, who
cleans the hair, washes it, perfumes it, and combs it with extraordinary
combs of at least five different kinds. So thoroughly is the hair
cleansed that it remains for three days, or even four, immaculate beyond
our Occidental conception of things. In the morning, during the dusting
time, it is carefully covered with a handkerchief or a little blue
towel; and the curious Japanese wooden pillow, which supports the neck,
not the head, renders it possible to sleep at ease without disarranging
the marvellous structure. [1]

After the apprentice has finished her part of the work, the hairdresser
herself appears, and begins to build the coiffure. For this task she
uses, besides the extraordinary variety of combs, fine loops of gilt
thread or coloured paper twine, dainty bits of deliciously tinted crape-
silk, delicate steel springs, and curious little basket-shaped things
over which the hair is moulded into the required forms before being
fixed in place.

The kamiyui also brings razors with her; for the Japanese girl is
shaved--cheeks, ears, brows, chin, even nose! What is here to shave?
Only that peachy floss which is the velvet of the finest human skin, but
which Japanese taste removes. There is, however, another use for the
razor. All maidens bear the signs of their maidenhood in the form of a
little round spot, about an inch in diameter, shaven clean upon the very
top of the head. This is only partially concealed by a band of hair
brought back from the forehead across it, and fastened to the back hair.
The girl-baby's head is totally shaved. When a few years old the little
creature's hair is allowed to grow except at the top of the head, where
a large tonsure is maintained. But the size of the tonsure diminishes
year by year, until it shrinks after childhood to the small spot above
described; and this, too, vanishes after marriage, when a still more
complicated fashion of wearing the hair is adopted.

Sec. 2

Such absolutely straight dark hair as that of most Japanese women might
seem, to Occidental ideas at least, ill-suited to the highest
possibilities of the art of the coiffeuse. [2] But the skill of the
kamiyui has made it tractable to every aesthetic whim. Ringlets, indeed,
are unknown, and curling irons. But what wonderful and beautiful shapes
the hair of the girl is made to assume: volutes, jets, whirls, eddyings,
foliations, each passing into the other blandly as a linking of brush-
strokes in the writing of a Chinese master! Far beyond the skill of the
Parisian coiffeuse is the art of the kamiyui. From the mythical era [3]
of the race, Japanese ingenuity has exhausted itself in the invention
and the improvement of pretty devices for the dressing of woman's hair;
and probably there have never been so many beautiful fashions of wearing
it in any other country as there have been in Japan. These have changed
through the centuries; sometimes becoming wondrously intricate of
design, sometimes exquisitely simple--as in that gracious custom,
recorded for us in so many quaint drawings, of allowing the long black
tresses to flow unconfined below the waist. [4] But every mode of which
we have any pictorial record had its own striking charm. Indian,
Chinese, Malayan, Korean ideas of beauty found their way to the Land of
the Gods, and were appropriated and transfigured by the finer native
conceptions of comeliness. Buddhism, too, which so profoundly influenced
all Japanese art and thought, may possibly have influenced fashions of
wearing the hair; for its female divinities appear with the most
beautiful coiffures. Notice the hair of a Kwannon or a Benten, and the
tresses of the Tennin--those angel-maidens who float in azure upon the
ceilings of the great temples.

Sec. 3

The particular attractiveness of the modern styles is the way in which
the hair is made to serve as an elaborate nimbus for the features,
giving delightful relief to whatever of fairness or sweetness the young
face may possess. Then behind this charming black aureole is a riddle of
graceful loopings and weavings whereof neither the beginning nor the
ending can possibly be discerned. Only the kantiyui knows the key to
that riddle. And the whole is held in place with curious ornamental
combs, and shot through with long fine pins of gold, silver, nacre,
transparent tortoise-shell, or lacquered wood, with cunningly carven
heads. [5]

Sec. 4

Not less than fourteen different ways of dressing the hair are practised
by the coiffeuses of Izumo; but doubtless in the capital, and in some of
the larger cities of eastern Japan, the art is much more elaborately
developed. The hairdressers (kamiyui) go from house to house to exercise
their calling, visiting their clients upon fixed days at certain regular
hours. The hair of little girls from seven to eight years old is in
Matsue dressed usually after the style called O-tabako-bon, unless it be
simply 'banged.' In the O-tabako-bon ('honourable smoking-box' style)
the hair is cut to the length of about four inches all round except
above the forehead, where it is clipped a little shorter; and on the
summit of the head it is allowed to grow longer and is gathered up into
a peculiarly shaped knot, which justifies the curious name of the
coiffure. As soon as the girl becomes old enough to go to a female
public day-school, her hair is dressed in the pretty, simple style
called katsurashita, or perhaps in the new, ugly, semi-foreign 'bundle-
style' called sokuhatsu, which has become the regulation fashion in
boarding-schools. For the daughters of the poor, and even for most of
those of the middle classes, the public-school period is rather brief;
their studies usually cease a few years before they are marriageable,
and girls marry very early in Japan. The maiden's first elaborate
coiffure is arranged for her when she reaches the age of fourteen or
fifteen, at earliest. From twelve to fourteen her hair is dressed in the
fashion called Omoyedzuki; then the style is changed to the beautiful
coiffure called jorowage. There are various forms of this style, more or
less complex. A couple of years later, the jorowage yields in the turn
to the shinjocho [6] '('new-butterfly' style), or the shimada, also
called takawage. The shimjocho style is common, is worn by women of
various ages, and is not considered very genteel. The shimada,
exquisitely elaborate, is; but the more respectable the family, the
smaller the form of this coiffure; geisha and joro wear a larger and
loftier variety of it, which properly answers to the name takawage, or
'high coiffure.' Between eighteen and twenty years of age the maiden
again exchanges this style for another termed Tenjin-gaeshi; between
twenty and twenty-four years of age she adopts the fashion called
mitsuwage, or the 'triple coiffure' of three loops; and a somewhat
similar but still more complicated coiffure, called mitsuwakudzushi, is
worn by young women of from twenty-five to twenty-eight. Up to that age
every change in the fashion of wearing the hair has been in the
direction of elaborateness and complexity.  But after twenty-eight a
Japanese woman is no longer considered young, and there is only one more
coiffure for her--the mochiriwage or bobai, tine simple and rather ugly
style adopted by old women.

But the girl who marries wears her hair in a fashion quite different
from any of the preceding. The most beautiful, the most elaborate, and
the most costly of all modes is the bride's coiffure, called hanayome; a
word literally signifying 'flower-wife.' The structure is dainty as its
name, and must be seen to be artistically appreciated. Afterwards the
wife wears her hair in the styles called kumesa or maruwage, another
name for which is katsuyama. The kumesa style is not genteel, and is the
coiffure of the poor; the maruwage or katsuyama is refined. In former
times the samurai women wore their hair in two particular styles: the
maiden's coiffure was ichogaeshi, and that of the married folk
katahajishi. It is still possible to see in Matsue a few katahajishi
coiffures.

Sec. 5

The family kamiyui, O-Koto-San, the most skilful of her craft in Izumo,
is a little woman of about thirty, still quite attractive. About her
neck there are three soft pretty lines, forming what connoisseurs of
beauty term 'the necklace of Venus.' This is a rare charm; but it once
nearly proved the ruin of Koto. The story is a curious one.

Koto had a rival at the beginning of her professional career--a woman of
considerable skill as a coiffeuse, but of malignant disposition, named
Jin. Jin gradually lost all her respectable custom, and little Koto
became the fashionable hairdresser. But her old rival, filled with
jealous hate, invented a wicked story about Koto, and the story found
root in the rich soil of old Izumo superstition, and grew fantastically.
The idea of it had been suggested to Jin's cunning mind by those three
soft lines about Koto's neck. She declared that Koto had a NUKE-KUBI.

What is a nuke-kubi? 'Kubi' signifies either the neck or head. 'Nukeru'
means to creep, to skulk, to prowl, to slip away stealthily. To have a
nuke-kubi is to have a head that detaches itself from the body, and
prowls about at night--by itself.

Koto has been twice married, and her second match was a happy one. But
her first husband caused her much trouble, and ran away from her at
last, in company with some worthless woman. Nothing was ever heard of
him afterward--so that Jin thought it quite safe to invent a nightmare-
story to account for his disappearance. She said that he abandoned Koto
because, on awaking one night, he saw his young wife's head rise from
the pillow, and her neck lengthen like a great white serpent, while the
rest of her body remained motionless. He saw the head, supported by the
ever-lengthening neck, enter the farther apartment and drink all the oil
in the lamps, and then return to the pillow slowly--the neck
simultaneously contracting. 'Then he rose up and fled away from the
house in great fear,' said Jin.

As one story begets another, all sorts of queer rumours soon began to
circulate about poor Koto. There was a tale that some police-officer,
late at night, saw a woman's head without a body, nibbling fruit from a
tree overhanging some garden-wall; and that, knowing it to be a nuke-
kubi, he struck it with the flat of his sword. It shrank away as swiftly
as a bat flies, but not before he had been able to recognize the face of
the kamiyui. 'Oh! it is quite true!' declared Jin, the morning after the
alleged occurrence; 'and if you don't believe it, send word to Koto that
you want to see her. She can't go out: her face is all swelled up.' Now
the last statement was fact--for Koto had a very severe toothache at
that time--and the fact helped the falsehood. And the story found its
way to the local newspaper, which published it--only as a strange
example of popular credulity; and Jin said, 'Am I a teller of the truth?
See, the paper has printed it!'

Wherefore crowds of curious people gathered before Koto's little house,
and made her life such a burden to her that her husband had to watch her
constantly to keep her from killing herself. Fortunately she had good
friends in the family of the Governor, where she had been employed for
years as coiffeuse; and the Governor, hearing of the wickedness, wrote a
public denunciation of it, and set his name to it, and printed it. Now
the people of Matsue reverenced their old samurai Governor as if he were
a god, and believed his least word; and seeing what he had written, they
became ashamed, and also denounced the lie and the liar; and the little
hairdresser soon became more prosperous than before through popular
sympathy.

Some of the most extraordinary beliefs of old days are kept alive in
Izumo and elsewhere by what are called in America travelling side-
shows'; and the inexperienced foreigner could never imagine the
possibilities of a Japanese side-show. On certain great holidays the
showmen make their appearance, put up their ephemeral theatres of rush-
matting and bamboos in some temple court, surfeit expectation by the
most incredible surprises, and then vanish as suddenly as they came. The
Skeleton of a Devil, the Claws of a Goblin, and 'a Rat as large as a
sheep,' were some of the least extraordinary displays which I saw. The
Goblin's Claws were remarkably fine shark's teeth; the Devil's Skeleton
had belonged to an orang-outang--all except the horns ingeniously
attached to the skull; and the wondrous Rat I discovered to be a tame
kangaroo. What I could not fully understand was the exhibition of a
nuke-kubi, in which a young woman stretched her neck, apparently, to a
length of about two feet, making ghastly faces during the performance.

Sec. 6

There are also some strange old superstitions about women's hair.

The myth of Medusa has many a counterpart in Japanese folk-lore: the
subject of such tales being always some wondrously beautiful girl, whose
hair turns to snakes only at night; and who is discovered at last to be
either a dragon or a dragon's daughter. But in ancient times it was
believed that the hair of any young woman might, under certain trying
circumstances, change into serpents. For instance: under the influence
of long-repressed jealousy.

There were many men of wealth who, in the days of Old Japan, kept their
concubines (mekake or aisho) under the same roof with their legitimate
wives (okusama). And it is told that, although the severest patriarchal
discipline might compel the mekake and the okusama to live together in
perfect seeming harmony by day, their secret hate would reveal itself by
night in the transformation of their hair. The long black tresses of
each would uncoil and hiss and strive to devour those of the other--and
even the mirrors of the sleepers would dash themselves together--for,
saith an ancient proverb, kagami onna-no tamashii--'a Mirror is the Soul
of a Woman.'  [7] And there is a famous tradition of one Kato Sayemon
Shigenji, who beheld in the night the hair of his wife and the hair of
his concubine, changed into vipers, writhing together and hissing and
biting. Then Kato Sayemon grieved much for that secret bitterness of
hatred which thus existed through his fault; and he shaved his head and
became a priest in the great Buddhist monastery of Koya-San, where he
dwelt until the day of his death under the name of Karukaya.

Sec. 7

The hair of dead women is arranged in the manner called tabanegami,
somewhat resembling the shimada extremely simplified, and without
ornaments of any kind. The name tabanegami signifies hair tied into a
bunch, like a sheaf of rice. This style must also be worn by women
during the period of mourning.

Ghosts, nevertheless, are represented with hair loose and long, falling
weirdly over the face. And no doubt because of the melancholy
suggestiveness of its drooping branches, the willow is believed to be
the favourite tree of ghosts. Thereunder, 'tis said, they mourn in the
night, mingling their shadowy hair with the long dishevelled tresses of
the tree.

Tradition says that Okyo Maruyama was the first Japanese artist who drew
a ghost. The Shogun, having invited him to his palace, said: 'Make a
picture of a ghost for me.' Okyo promised to do so; but he was puzzled
how to execute the order satisfactorily. A few days later, hearing that
one of his aunts was very ill, he visited her. She was so emaciated that
she looked like one already long dead. As he watched by her bedside, a
ghastly inspiration came to him: he drew the fleshless face and long
dishevelled hair, and created from that hasty sketch a ghost that
surpassed all the Shogun's expectations. Afterwards Okyo became very
famous as a painter of ghosts.

Japanese ghosts are always represented as diaphanous, and
preternaturally tall--only the upper part of the figure being distinctly
outlined, and the lower part fading utterly away. As the Japanese say,
'a ghost has no feet': its appearance is like an exhalation, which
becomes visible only at a certain distance above the ground; and it
wavers arid lengthens and undulates in the conceptions of artists, like
a vapour moved by wind. Occasionally phantom women figure in picture.-
books in the likeness of living women; but these are riot true ghosts.
They are fox-women or other goblins; and their supernatural character is
suggested by a peculiar expression of the eyes arid a certain impossible
elfish grace.

Little children in Japan, like little children in all countries keenly
enjoy the pleasure of fear; and they have many games in which such
pleasure forms the chief attraction. Among these is 0-bake-goto, or
Ghost-play. Some nurse-girl or elder sister loosens her hair in front,
so as to let it fall over her face, and pursues the little folk with
moans and weird gestures, miming all the attitudes of the ghosts of the
picture-books.

Sec. 8

As the hair of the Japanese woman is her richest ornament, it is of all
her possessions that which she would most suffer to lose; and in other
days the man too manly to kill an erring wife deemed it vengeance enough
to turn her away with all her hair shorn off. Only the greatest faith or
the deepest love can prompt a woman to the voluntary sacrifice of her
entire chevelure, though partial sacrifices, offerings of one or two
long thick cuttings, may be seen suspended before many an Izumo shrine.

What faith can do in the way of such sacrifice, he best knows who has
seen the great cables, woven of women's hair, that hang in the vast
Hongwanji temple at Kyoto. And love is stronger than faith, though much
less demonstrative. According to ancient custom a wife bereaved
sacrifices a portion of her hair to be placed in the coffin of her
husband, and buried with him. The quantity is not fixed: in the majority
of cases it is very small, so that the appearance of the coiffure is
thereby nowise affected. But she who resolves to remain for ever loyal
to the memory of the lost yields up all. With her own hand she cuts off
her hair, and lays the whole glossy sacrifice--emblem of her youth and
beauty--upon the knees of the dead.

It is never suffered to grow again.



Chapter Four From the Diary of an English Teacher

Sec. 1

MATSUE, September 2, 1890.

I AM under contract to serve as English teacher in the Jinjo Chugakko,
or Ordinary Middle School, and also in the ShihanGakko, or Normal
School, of Matsue, Izumo, for the term of one year.

The Jinjo Chugakko is an immense two-story wooden building in European
style, painted a dark grey-blue. It has accommodations for nearly three
hundred day scholars. It is situated in one corner of a great square of
ground, bounded on two sides by canals, and on the other two by very
quiet streets. This site is very near the ancient castle.

The Normal School is a much larger building occupying the opposite angle
of the square. It is also much handsomer, is painted snowy white, and
has a little cupola upon its summit. There are only about one hundred
and fifty students in the Shihan-Gakko, but they are boarders.

Between these two schools are other educational buildings, which I shall
learn more about later.

It is my first day at the schools. Nishida Sentaro, the Japanese teacher
of English, has taken me through the buildings, introduced me to the
Directors, and to all my future colleagues, given me all necessary
instructions about hours and about textbooks, and furnished my desk with
all things necessary. Before teaching begins, however, I must be
introduced to the Governor of the Province, Koteda Yasusada, with whom
my contract has been made, through the medium of his secretary. So
Nishida leads the way to the Kencho, or Prefectural office, situated in
another foreign-looking edifice across the street.

We enter it, ascend a wide stairway, and enter a spacious .room carpeted
in European fashion--a room with bay windows and cushioned chairs. One
person is seated at a small round table, and about him are standing half
a dozen others: all are in full Japanese costume, ceremonial costume--
splendid silken hakama, or Chinese trousers, silken robes, silken haori
or overdress, marked with their mon or family crests: rich and dignified
attire which makes me ashamed of my commonplace Western garb. These are
officials of the Kencho, and teachers: the person seated is the
Governor. He rises to greet me, gives me the hand-grasp of a giant: and
as I look into his eyes, I feel I shall love that man to the day of my
death. A face fresh and frank as a boy's, expressing much placid force
and large-hearted kindness--all the calm of a Buddha. Beside him, the
other officials look very small: indeed the first impression of him is
that of a man of another race. While I am wondering whether the old
Japanese heroes were cast in a similar mould, he signs to me to take a
seat, and questions my guide in a mellow basso. There is a charm in the
fluent depth of the voice pleasantly confirming the idea suggested by
the face. An attendant brings tea.

'The Governor asks,' interprets Nishida, 'if you know the old history of
Izumo.'

I reply that I have read the Kojiki, translated by Professor
Chamberlain, and have therefore some knowledge of the story of Japan's
most ancient province. Some converse in Japanese follows. Nishida tells
the Governor that I came to Japan to study the ancient religion and
customs, and that I am particularly interested in Shinto and the
traditions of Izumo. The Governor suggests that I make visits to the
celebrated shrines of Kitzuki, Yaegaki, and Kumano, and then asks:

'Does he know the tradition of the origin of the clapping of hands
before a Shinto shrine?'

I reply in the negative; and the Governor says the tradition is given in
a commentary upon the Kojiki.

'It is in the thirty-second section of the fourteenth volume, where it
is written that Ya-he-Koto-Shiro-nushi-no-Kami clapped his hands.'

I thank the Governor for his kind suggestions and his citation. After a
brief silence I am graciously dismissed with another genuine hand-grasp;
and we return to the school.

Sec. 2

I have been teaching for three hours in the Middle School, and teaching
Japanese boys turns out to be a much more agreeable task than I had
imagined. Each class has been so well prepared for me beforehand by
Nishida that my utter ignorance of Japanese makes no difficulty in
regard to teaching: moreover, although the lads cannot understand my
words always when I speak, they can understand whatever I write upon the
blackboard with chalk. Most of them have already been studying English
from childhood, with Japanese teachers. All are wonderfully docile' and
patient. According to old custom, when the teacher enters, the whole
class rises and bows to him. He returns the bow, and calls the roll.

Nishida is only too kind. He helps me in every way he possibly can, and
is constantly regretting that he cannot help me more. There are, of
course, some difficulties to overcome. For instance, it will take me a
very, very long time to learn the names of the boys--most of which names
I cannot even pronounce, with the class-roll before me. And although the
names of the different classes have been painted upon the doors of their
respective rooms in English letters, for the benefit of the foreign
teacher, it will take me some weeks at least to become quite familiar
with them. For the time being Nishida always guides me to the rooms. He
also shows me the way, through long corridors, to the Normal School, and
introduces me to the teacher Nakayama who is to act there as my guide.

I have been engaged to teach only four times a week at the Normal
School; but I am furnished there also with a handsome desk in the
teachers' apartment, and am made to feel at home almost immediately.
Nakayama shows me everything of interest in the building before
introducing me to my future pupils. The introduction is pleasant and
novel as a school experience. I am conducted along a corridor, and
ushered into a large luminous whitewashed room full of young men in dark
blue military uniform. Each sits at a very small desk, sup-ported by a
single leg, with three feet. At the end of the room is a platform with a
high desk and a chair for the teacher. As I take my place at the desk, a
voice rings out in English: 'Stand up!' And all rise with a springy
movement as if moved by machinery. 'Bow down!' the same voice again
commands--the voice of a young student wearing a captain's stripes upon
his sleeve; and all salute me. I bow in return; we take our seats; and
the lesson begins.

All teachers at the Normal School are saluted in the same military
fashion before each class-hour--only the command is given in Japanese.
For my sake only, it is given in English.

Sec. 3

September 22, 1890.

The Normal School is a State institution. Students are admitted upon
examination and production of testimony as to good character; but the
number is, of course, limited. The young men pay no fees, no boarding
money, nothing even for books, college-outfits, or wearing apparel. They
are lodged, clothed, fed, and educated by the State; but they are
required in return, after their graduation, to serve the State as
teachers for the space of five years. Admission, however, by no means
assures graduation. There are three or four examinations each year; and
the students who fail to obtain a certain high average of examination
marks must leave the school, however exemplary their conduct or earnest
their study. No leniency can be shown where the educational needs of the
State are concerned, and these call for natural ability and a high
standard of its proof.

The discipline is military and severe. Indeed, it is so thorough that
the graduate of a Normal School is exempted by military law from more
than a year's service in the army: he leaves college a trained soldier.
Deportment is also a requisite: special marks are given for it; and
however gawky a freshman may prove at the time of his admission, he
cannot remain so. A spirit of manliness is cultivated, which excludes
roughness but develops self-reliance and self-control. The student is
required, when speaking, to look his teacher in the face, and to utter
his words not only distinctly, but sonorously. Demeanour in class is
partly enforced by the class-room fittings themselves. The tiny tables
are too narrow to allow of being used as supports for the elbows; the
seats have no backs against which to lean, and the student must hold
himself rigidly erect as he studies. He must also keep himself
faultlessly neat and clean. Whenever and wherever he encounters one of
his teachers he must halt, bring his feet together, draw himself erect,
and give the military salute. And this is done with a swift grace
difficult to describe.

The demeanour of a class during study hours is if anything too
faultless. Never a whisper is heard; never is a head raised from the
book without permission. But when the teacher addresses a student by
name, the youth rises instantly, and replies in a tone of such vigour as
would seem to unaccustomed ears almost startling by contrast with the
stillness and self-repression of the others.

The female department of the Normal School, where about fifty young
women are being trained as teachers, is a separate two-story quadrangle
of buildings, large, airy, and so situated, together with its gardens,
as to be totally isolated from all other buildings and invisible from
the street. The girls are not only taught European science by the most
advanced methods, but are trained as well in Japanese arts--the arts of
embroidery, of decoration, of painting, and of arranging flowers.
European drawing is also taught, and beautifully taught, not only here,
but in all the schools. It is taught, however, in combination with
Japanese methods; and the results of this blending may certainly be
expected to have some charming influence upon future art-production. The
average capacity of the Japanese student in drawing is, I think, at
least fifty per cent, higher than that of European students. The soul of
the race is essentially artistic; and the extremely difficult art of
learning to write the Chinese characters, in which all are trained from
early childhood, has already disciplined the hand and the eye to a
marvellous degree--a degree undreamed of in the Occident--long before
the drawing-master begins his lessons of perspective.

Attached to the great Normal School, and connected by a corridor with
the Jinjo Chugakko likewise, is a large elementary school for little
boys and girls: its teachers are male and female students of the
graduating classes, who are thus practically trained for their
profession before entering the service of the State. Nothing could be
more interesting as an educational spectacle to any sympathetic
foreigner than some of this elementary teaching. In the first room which
I visit a class of very little girls and boys--some as quaintly pretty
as their own dolls--are bending at their desks over sheets of coal-black
paper which you would think they were trying to make still blacker by
energetic use of writing-brushes and what we call Indian-ink. They are
really learning to write Chinese and Japanese characters, stroke by
stroke. Until one stroke has been well learned, they are not suffered to
attempt another--much less a combination. Long before the first lesson
is thoroughly mastered, the white paper has become all evenly black
under the multitude of tyro brush-strokes. But the same sheet is still
used; for the wet ink makes a yet blacker mark upon the dry, so that it
can easily be seen.

In a room adjoining, I see another child-class learning to use scissors
--Japanese scissors, which, being formed in one piece, shaped something
like the letter U, are much less easy to manage than ours. The little
folk are being taught to cut out patterns, and shapes of special objects
or symbols to be studied. Flower-forms are the most ordinary patterns;
sometimes certain ideographs are given as subjects.

And in another room a third small class is learning to sing; the teacher
writing the music notes (do, re, mi) with chalk upon a blackboard, and
accompanying the song with an accordion. The little ones have learned
the Japanese national anthem (Kimi ga yo wa) and two native songs set to
Scotch airs--one of which calls back to me, even in this remote corner
of the Orient, many a charming memory: Auld Lang Syne.

No uniform is worn in this elementary school: all are in Japanese dress
--the boys in dark blue kimono, the little girls in robes of all tints,
radiant as butterflies. But in addition to their robes, the girls wear
hakama, [1] and these are of a vivid, warm sky-blue.

Between the hours of teaching, ten minutes are allowed for play or
rest. The little boys play at Demon-Shadows or at blind-man's-buff or at
some other funny game: they laugh, leap, shout, race, and wrestle, but,
unlike European children, never quarrel or fight. As for the little
girls, they get by themselves, and either play at hand-ball, or form
into circles to play at some round game, accompanied by song.
Indescribably soft and sweet the chorus of those little voices in the
round:

  Kango-kango sho-ya,
  Naka yoni sho-ya,
  Don-don to kunde
  Jizo-San no midzu wo
  Matsuba no midzu irete,
  Makkuri kadso. [2]

I notice that the young men, as well as the young women, who teach these
little folk, are extremely tender to their charges. A child whose kimono
is out of order, or dirtied by play, is taken aside and brushed and
arranged as carefully as by an elder brother.

Besides being trained for their future profession by teaching the
children of the elementary school, the girl students of the Shihan-Gakko
are also trained to teach in the neighbouring kindergarten. A delightful
kindergarten it is, with big cheerful sunny rooms, where stocks of the
most ingenious educational toys are piled upon shelves for daily use.

Since the above was written I have had two years' experience as a
teacher in various large Japanese schools; and I have never had personal
knowledge of any serious quarrel between students, and have never even
heard of a fight among my pupils. And I have taught some eight hundred
boys and young men.

Sec. 4

October 1 1890. Nevertheless I am destined to see little of the Normal
School. Strictly speaking, I do not belong to its staff: my services
being only lent by the Middle School, to which I give most of my time. I
see the Normal School students in their class-rooms only, for they are
not allowed to go out to visit their teachers' homes in the town. So I
can never hope to become as familiar with them as with the students of
the Chugakko, who are beginning to call me 'Teacher' instead of 'Sir,'
and to treat me as a sort of elder brother. (I objected to the word
'master,' for in Japan the teacher has no need of being masterful.) And
I feel less at home in the large, bright, comfortable apartments of the
Normal School teachers than in our dingy, chilly teachers' room at the
Chugakko, where my desk is next to that of Nishida.

On the walls there are maps, crowded with Japanese ideographs; a few
large charts representing zoological facts in the light of evolutional
science; and an immense frame filled with little black lacquered wooden
tablets, so neatly fitted together that the entire surface is uniform as
that of a blackboard. On these are written, or rather painted, in white,
names of teachers, subjects, classes, and order of teaching hours; and
by the ingenious tablet arrangement any change of hours can be
represented by simply changing the places of the tablets. As all this is
written in Chinese and Japanese characters, it remains to me a mystery,
except in so far as the general plan and purpose are concerned. I have
learned only to recognize the letters of my own name, and the simpler
form of numerals.

On every teacher's desk there is a small hibachi of glazed blue-and-
white ware, containing a few lumps of glowing charcoal in a bed of
ashes. During the brief intervals between classes each teacher smokes
his tiny Japanese pipe of brass, iron, or silver. The hibachi and a cup
of hot tea are our consolations for the fatigues of the class-room.

Nishida and one or two other teachers know a good deal of English, and
we chat together sometimes between classes. But more often no one
speaks. All are tired after the teaching hour, and prefer to smoke in
silence. At such times the only sounds within the room are the ticking
of the clock, and the sharp clang of the little pipes being rapped upon
the edges of the hibachi to empty out the ashes.

Sec. 5

October 15, 1890. To-day I witnessed the annual athletic contests (undo-
kwai) of all the schools in Shimane Ken. These games were celebrated in
the broad castle grounds of Ninomaru. Yesterday a circular race-track
had been staked off, hurdles erected for leaping, thousands of wooden
seats prepared for invited or privileged spectators, and a grand lodge
built for the Governor, all before sunset. The place looked like a vast
circus, with its tiers of plank seats rising one above the other, and
the Governor's lodge magnificent with wreaths and flags. School children
from all the villages and towns within twenty-five miles had arrived in
surprising multitude. Nearly six thousand boys and girls were entered to
take part in the contests. Their parents and relatives and teachers made
an imposing assembly upon the benches and within the gates. And on the
ramparts overlooking the huge inclosure a much larger crowd had
gathered, representing perhaps one-third of the population of the city.

The signal to begin or to end a contest was a pistol-shot. Four
different kinds of games were performed in different parts of the
grounds at the same time, as there was room enough for an army; and
prizes were awarded to the winners of each contest by the hand of the
Governor himself.

There were races between the best runners in each class of the different
schools; and the best runner of all proved to be Sakane, of our own
fifth class, who came in first by nearly forty yards without seeming
even to make an effort. He is our champion athlete, and as good as he is
strong--so that it made me very happy to see him with his arms full of
prize books. He won also a fencing contest decided by the breaking of a
little earthenware saucer tied to the left arm of each combatant. And he
also won a leaping match between our older boys.

But many hundreds of other winners there were too, and many hundreds of
prizes were given away. There were races in which the runners were tied
together in pairs, the left leg of one to the right leg of the other.
There were equally funny races, the winning of which depended on the
runner's ability not only to run, but to crawl, to climb, to vault, and
to jump alternately. There were races also for the little girls--pretty
as butterflies they seemed in their sky-blue hakama and many coloured
robes--races in which the contestants had each to pick up as they ran
three balls of three different colours out of a number scattered over
the turf. Besides this, the little girls had what is called a flag-race,
and a contest with battledores and shuttlecocks.

Then came the tug-of-war. A magnificent tug-of-war, too--one hundred
students at one end of a rope, and another hundred at the other. But the
most wonderful spectacles of the day were the dumb-bell exercises. Six
thousand boys and girls, massed in ranks about five hundred deep; six
thousand pairs of arms rising and falling exactly together; six thousand
pairs of sandalled feet advancing or retreating together, at the signal
of the masters of gymnastics, directing all from the tops of various
little wooden towers; six thousand voices chanting at once the 'one,
two, three,' of the dumb-bell drill: 'Ichi, ni,--san, shi,--go, roku,--
shichi, hachi.'

Last came the curious game called 'Taking the Castle.' Two models of
Japanese towers, about fifteen feet high, made with paper stretched over
a framework of bamboo, were set up, one at each end of the field. Inside
the castles an inflammable liquid had been placed in open vessels, so
that if the vessels were overturned the whole fabric would take fire.
The boys, divided into two parties, bombarded the castles with wooden
balls, which passed easily through the paper walls; and in a short time
both models were making a glorious blaze. Of course the party whose
castle was the first to blaze lost the game.

The games began at eight o'clock in the morning, and at five in the
evening came to an end. Then at a signal fully ten thousand voices
pealed out the superb national anthem, 'Kimi ga yo, and concluded it
with three cheers for their Imperial Majesties, the Emperor and Empress
of Japan.

The Japanese do not shout or roar as we do when we cheer. They chant.
Each long cry is like the opening tone of an immense musical chorus:
A-a-a-a-a-a-a-a..a!

Sec. 6

It is no small surprise to observe how botany, geology, and other
sciences are daily taught even in this remotest part of Old Japan. Plant
physiology and the nature of vegetable tissues are studied under
excellent microscopes, and in their relations to chemistry; and at
regular intervals the instructor leads his classes into the country to
illustrate the lessons of the term by examples taken from the flora of
their native place. Agriculture, taught by a graduate of the famous
Agricultural School at Sapporo, is practically illustrated upon farms
purchased and maintained by the schools for purely educational ends.
Each series of lessons in geology is supplemented by visits to the
mountains about the lake, or to the tremendous cliffs of the coast,
where the students are taught to familiarize themselves with forms of
stratification and the visible history of rocks. The basin of the lake,
and the country about Matsue, is physiographically studied, after the
plans of instruction laid down in Huxley's excellent manual. Natural
History, too, is taught according to the latest and best methods, and
with the help of the microscope. The results of such teaching are
sometimes surprising. I know of one student, a lad of only sixteen, who
voluntarily collected and classified more than two hundred varieties of
marine plants for a Tokyo professor. Another, a youth of seventeen,
wrote down for me in my notebook, without a work of reference at hand,
and, as I afterwards discovered, almost without an omission or error, a
scientific list of all the butterflies to be found in the neighbourhood
of the city.

Sec. 7

Through the Minister of Public Instruction, His Imperial Majesty has
sent to all the great public schools of the Empire a letter bearing date
of the thirteenth day of the tenth month of the twenty-third year of
Meiji. And the students and teachers of the various schools assemble to
hear the reading of the Imperial Words on Education.

At eight o'clock we of the Middle School are all waiting in our own
assembly hall for the coming of the Governor, who will read the
Emperor's letter in the various schools.

We wait but a little while. Then the Governor comes with all the
officers of the Kencho and the chief men of the city. We rise to salute
him: then the national anthem is sung.

Then the Governor, ascending the platform, produces the Imperial
Missive--a scroll of Chinese manuscript sheathed in silk. He withdraws
it slowly from its woven envelope, lifts it reverentially to his
forehead, unrolls it, lifts it again to his forehead, and after a
moment's dignified pause begins in that clear deep voice of his to read
the melodious syllables after the ancient way, which is like a chant:

'CHO-KU-G U. Chin omommiru ni waga koso koso kuni wo....

'We consider that the Founder of Our Empire and the ancestors of Our
Imperial House placed the foundation of the country on a grand and
permanent basis, and established their authority on the principles of
profound humanity and benevolence.

'That Our subjects have throughout ages deserved well of the State by
their loyalty and piety and by their harmonious co-operation is in
accordance with the essential character of Our nation; and on these very
same principles Our education has been founded.

'You, Our subjects, be therefore filial to your parents; be affectionate
to your brothers; be harmonious as husbands and wives; and be faithful
to your friends; conduct yourselves with propriety and carefulness;
extend generosity and benevolence towards your neighbours; attend to
your studies and follow your pursuits; cultivate your intellects and
elevate your morals; advance public benefits and promote social
interests; be always found in the good observance of the laws and
constitution of the land; display your personal courage and public
spirit for the sake of the country whenever required; and thus support
the Imperial prerogative, which is coexistent with the Heavens and the
Earth.

'Such conduct on your part will not only strengthen the character of Our
good and loyal subjects, but conduce also to the maintenance of the fame
of your worthy forefathers.

'This is the instruction bequeathed by Our ancestors and to be followed
by Our subjects; for it is the truth which has guided and guides them in
their own affairs and in their dealings towards aliens.

'We hope, therefore, We and Our subjects will regard these sacred
precepts with one and the same heart in order to attain the same ends.'
[3]

Then the Governor and the Head-master speak a few words--dwelling upon
the full significance of His Imperial Majesty's august commands, and
exhorting all to remember and to obey them to the uttermost.

After which the students have a holiday, to enable them the better to
recollect what they have heard.

Sec. 8

All teaching in the modern Japanese system of education is conducted
with the utmost kindness and gentleness. The teacher is a teacher only:
he is not, in the English sense of mastery, a master. He stands to his
pupils in the relation of an elder brother. He never tries to impose his
will upon them: he never scolds, he seldom criticizes, he scarcely ever
punishes. No Japanese teacher ever strikes a pupil: such an act would
cost him his post at once. He never loses his temper: to do so would
disgrace him in the eyes of his boys and in the judgment of his
colleagues. Practically speaking, there is no punishment in Japanese
schools. Sometimes very mischievous lads are kept in the schoolhouse
during recreation time; yet even this light penalty is not inflicted
directly by the teacher, but by the director of the school on complaint
of the teacher. The purpose in such cases is not to inflict pain by
deprivation of enjoyment, but to give public illustration of a fault;
and in the great majority of instances, consciousness of the fault thus
brought home to a lad before his comrades is quite enough to prevent its
repetition. No such cruel punition as that of forcing a dull pupil to
learn an additional task, or of sentencing him to strain his eyes
copying four or five hundred lines, is ever dreamed of. Nor would such
forms of punishment, in the present state of things, be long tolerated
by the pupils themselves. The general policy of the educational
authorities everywhere throughout the empire is to get rid of students
who cannot be perfectly well managed without punishment; and expulsions,
nevertheless, are rare.

I often see a pretty spectacle on my way home from the school, when I
take the short cut through the castle grounds. A class of about thirty
little boys, in kimono and sandals, bareheaded, being taught to march
and to sing by a handsome young teacher, also in Japanese dress. While
they sing, they are drawn up in line; and keep time with their little
bare feet. The teacher has a pleasant high clear tenor: he stands at one
end of the rank and sings a single line of the song. Then all the
children sing it after him. Then he sings a second line, and they repeat
it. If any mistakes are made, they have to sing the verse again.

It is the Song of Kusunoki Masashige, noblest of Japanese heroes and
patriots.

Sec. 9

I have said that severity on the part of teachers would scarcely be
tolerated by the students themselves--a fact which may sound strange to
English or American ears. Tom Brown's school does not exist in Japan;
the ordinary public school much more resembles the ideal Italian
institution so charmingly painted for us in the Cuore of De Amicis.
Japanese students furthermore claim and enjoy an independence contrary
to all Occidental ideas of disciplinary necessity. In the Occident the
master expels the pupil. In Japan it happens quite as often that the
pupil expels the master. Each public school is an earnest, spirited
little republic, to which director and teachers stand only in the
relation of president and cabinet. They are indeed appointed by the
prefectural government upon recommendation by the Educational Bureau at
the capital; but in actual practice they maintain their positions by
virtue of their capacity and personal character as estimated by their
students, and are likely to be deposed by a revolutionary movement
whenever found wanting. It has been alleged that the students frequently
abuse their power. But this allegation has been made by European
residents, strongly prejudiced in favour of masterful English ways of
discipline. (I recollect that an English Yokohama paper, in this
connection, advocated the introduction of the birch.) My own
observations have convinced me, as larger experience has convinced some
others, that in most instances of pupils rebelling against a teacher,
reason is upon their side. They will rarely insult a teacher whom they
dislike, or cause any disturbance in his class: they will simply refuse
to attend school until he be removed. Personal feeling may often be a
secondary, but it is seldom, so far as I have been able to learn, the
primary cause for such a demand. A teacher whose manners are
unsympathetic, or even positively disagreeable, will be nevertheless
obeyed and revered while his students remain persuaded of his capacity
as a teacher, and his sense of justice; and they are as keen to discern
ability as they are to detect partiality. And, on the other hand, an
amiable disposition alone will never atone with them either for want of
knowledge or for want of skill to impart it. I knew one case, in a
neighbouring public school, of a demand by the students for the removal
of their professor of chemistry. In making their complaint, they frankly
declared: 'We like him. He is kind to all of us; he does the best he
can. But he does not know enough to teach us as we wish to be taught.
lie cannot answer our questions. He cannot explain the experiments which
he shows us. Our former teacher could do all these things. We must have
another teacher.' Investigation proved that the lads were quite right.
The young teacher had graduated at the university; he had come well
recommended: but he had no thorough knowledge of the science which he
undertook to impart, and no experience as a teacher. The instructor's
success in Japan is not guaranteed by a degree, but by his practical
knowledge and his capacity to communicate it simply and thoroughly.

Sec. 10

November 3, 1890 To-day is the birthday of His Majesty the Emperor. It
is a public holiday throughout Japan; and there will be no teaching this
morning. But at eight o'clock all the students and instructors enter the
great assembly hall of the Jinjo Chugakko to honour the anniversary of
His Majesty's august birth.

On the platform of the assembly hall a table, covered with dark silk,
has been placed; and upon this table the portraits of Their Imperial
Majesties, the Emperor and the Empress of Japan, stand side by side
upright, framed in gold. The alcove above the platform has been
decorated with flags and wreaths.

Presently the Governor enters, looking like a French general in his
gold-embroidered uniform of office, and followed by the Mayor of the
city, the Chief Military Officer, the Chief of Police, and all the
officials of the provincial government. These take their places in
silence to left and right of the plat form. Then the school organ
suddenly rolls out the slow, solemn, beautiful national anthem; and all
present chant those ancient syllables, made sacred by the reverential
love of a century of generations:

  Ki-mi ga-a yo-o wa
  Chi-yo ni-i-i ya-chi-yo ni sa-za-red
  I-shi-no
  I-wa o to na-ri-te
  Ko-ke no
  Mu-u su-u ma-a-a-de [4]


The anthem ceases. The Governor advances with a slow dignified step from
the right side of the apartment to the centre of the open space before
the platform and the portraits of Their Majesties, turns his face to
them, and bows profoundly. Then he takes three steps forward toward the
platform, and halts, and bows again. Then he takes three more steps
forward, and bows still more profoundly. Then he retires, walking
backward six steps, and bows once more. Then he returns to his place.

After this the teachers, by parties of six, perform the same beautiful
ceremony. When all have saluted the portrait of His Imperial Majesty,
the Governor ascends the platform and makes a few eloquent remarks to
the students about their duty to their Emperor, to their country, and to
their teachers. Then the anthem is sung again; and all disperse to amuse
themselves for the rest of the day.

Sec. 11

March 1 1891. The majority of the students of the Jinjo Chugakko are
day-scholars only (externes, as we would say in France): they go to
school in the morning, take their noon meal at home, and return at one
o'clock to attend the brief afternoon classes. All the city students
live with their own families; but there are many boys from remote
country districts who have no city relatives, and for such the school
furnishes boarding-houses, where a wholesome moral discipline is
maintained by special masters. They are free, however, if they have
sufficient means, to choose another boarding-house (provided it be a
respectable one), or to find quarters in some good family; but few adopt
either course.

I doubt whether in any other country the cost of education--education of
the most excellent and advanced kind--is so little as in Japan. The
Izumo student is able to live at a figure so far below the Occidental
idea of necessary expenditure that the mere statement of it can scarcely
fail to surprise the reader. A sum equal in American money to about
twenty dollars supplies him with board and lodging for one year. The
whole of his expenses, including school fees, are about seven dollars a
month. For his room and three ample meals a day he pays every four weeks
only one yen eighty-five sen--not much more than a dollar and a half in
American currency. If very, very poor, he will not be obliged to wear a
uniform; but nearly all students of the higher classes do wear uniforms,
as the cost of a complete uniform, including cap and shoes of leather,
is only about three and a half yen for the cheaper quality. Those who do
not wear leather shoes, however, are required, while in the school, to
exchange their noisy wooden geta for zori or light straw sandals.

Sec. 12

But the mental education so admirably imparted in an ordinary middle
school is not, after all, so cheaply acquired by the student as might be
imagined from the cost of living and the low rate of school fees. For
Nature exacts a heavier school fee, and rigidly collects her debt--in
human life.

To understand why, one should remember that the modern knowledge which
the modern Izumo student must acquire upon a diet of boiled rice and
bean-curd was discovered, developed, and synthetised by minds
strengthened upon a costly diet of flesh. National underfeeding offers
the most cruel problem which the educators of Japan must solve in order
that she may become fully able to assimilate the civilization we have
thrust upon her. As Herbert Spencer has pointed out, the degree of human
energy, physical or intellectual, must depend upon the nutritiveness of
food; and history shows that the well-fed races have been the energetic
and the dominant. Perhaps mind will rule in the future of nations; but
mind is a mode of force, and must be fed--through the stomach. The
thoughts that have shaken the world were never framed upon bread and
water: they were created by beefsteak and mutton-chops, by ham and eggs,
by pork and puddings, and were stimulated by generous wines, strong
ales, and strong coffee. And science also teaches us that the growing
child or youth requires an even more nutritious diet than the adult; and
that the student especially needs strong nourishment to repair the
physical waste involved by brain-exertion.

And what is the waste entailed upon the Japanese schoolboy's system by
study? It is certainly greater than that which the system of the
European or American student must suffer at the same period of life.
Seven years of study are required to give the Japanese youth merely the
necessary knowledge of his own triple system of ideographs--or, in less
accurate but plainer speech, the enormous alphabet of his native
literature. That literature, also, he must study, and the art of two
forms of his language--the written and the spoken: likewise, of course,
he must learn native history and native morals. Besides these Oriental
studies, his course includes foreign history, geography, arithmetic,
astronomy, physics, geometry, natural history, agriculture, chemistry,
drawing, and mathematics. Worst of all, he must learn English--a
language of which the difficulty to the Japanese cannot be even faintly
imagined by anyone unfamiliar with the construction of the native
tongue--a language so different from his own that the very simplest
Japanese phrase cannot be intelligibly rendered into English by a
literal translation of the words or even the form of the thought. And he
must learn all this upon a diet no English boy could live on; and always
thinly clad in his poor cotton dress without even a fire in his
schoolroom during the terrible winter, only a hibachi containing a few
lumps of glowing charcoal in a bed of ashes. [5] Is it to be wondered at
that even those Japanese students who pass successfully 'through all the
educational courses the Empire can open to them can only in rare
instances show results of their long training as large as those
manifested by students of the West? Better conditions are coming; but at
present, under the new strain, young bodies and young minds too often
give way. And those who break down are not the dullards, but the pride
of schools, the captains of classes.

Sec. 13

Yet, so far as the finances of the schools allow, everything possible is
done to make the students both healthy and happy--to furnish them with
ample opportunities both for physical exercise and for mental enjoyment.
Though the course of study is severe, the hours are not long: and one of
the daily five is devoted to military drill--made more interesting to
the lads by the use of real rifles and bayonets, furnished by
Government. There is a fine gymnastic ground near the school, furnished
with trapezes, parallel bars, vaulting horses, etc.; and there are two
masters of gymnastics attached to the Middle School alone. There are
row-boats, in which the boys can take their pleasure on the beautiful
lake whenever the weather permits. There is an excellent fencing-school
conducted by the Governor himself, who, although so heavy a man, is
reckoned one of the best fencers of his own generation. The style taught
is the old one, requiring the use of both hands to wield the sword;
thrusting is little attempted, it is nearly all heavy slashing. The
foils are made of long splinters of bamboo tied together so as to form
something resembling elongated fasces: masks and wadded coats protect
the head and body, for the blows given are heavy. This sort of fencing
requires considerable agility, and gives more active exercise than our
severer Western styles. Yet another form of healthy exercise consists of
long journeys on foot to famous places. Special holidays are allowed for
these. The students march out of town in military order, accompanied by
some of their favourite teachers, and perhaps a servant to cook for
them. Thus they may travel for a hundred, or even a hundred and fifty
miles and back; but if the journey is to be a very long one, only the
strong lads are allowed to go. They walk in waraji, the true straw
sandal, closely tied to the naked foot, which it leaves perfectly supple
and free, without blistering or producing corns. They sleep at night in
Buddhist temples; and their cooking is done in the open fields, like
that of soldiers in camp.

For those little inclined to such sturdy exercise there is a school
library which is growing every year. There is also a monthly school
magazine, edited and published by the boys. And there is a Students'
Society, at whose regular meetings debates are held upon all conceivable
subjects of interest to students.

Sec. 14

April 4, 1891. The students of the third, fourth, and fifth year classes
write for me once a week brief English compositions upon easy themes
which I select for them. As a rule the themes are Japanese. Considering
the immense difficulty of the English language to Japanese students, the
ability of some of my boys to express their thoughts in it is
astonishing. Their compositions have also another interest for me as
revelations, not of individual character, but of national sentiment, or
of aggregate sentiment of some sort or other. What seems to me most
surprising in the compositions of the average Japanese student is that
they have no personal cachet at all. Even the handwriting of twenty
English compositions will be found to have a curious family resemblance;
and striking exceptions are too few to affect the rule. Here is one of
the best compositions on my table, by a student at the head of his
class. Only a few idiomatic errors have been corrected:

THE MOON 'The Moon appears melancholy to those who are sad, and joyous
to those who are happy. The Moon makes memories of home come to those
who travel, and creates homesickness. So when the Emperor Godaigo,
having been banished to Oki by the traitor Hojo, beheld the moonlight
upon the seashore, he cried out, "The Moon is heartless!"

'The sight of the Moon makes an immeasurable feeling in our hearts when
we look up at it through the clear air of a beauteous night.

'Our hearts ought to be pure and calm like the light of the Moon.

'Poets often compare the Moon to a Japanese [metal] mirror (kagami); and
indeed its shape is the same when it is full.

'The refined man amuses himself with the Moon. He seeks some house
looking out upon water, to watch the Moon, and to make verses about it.

'The best places from which to see the Moon are Tsukigashi, and the
mountain Obasute.

'The light of the Moon shines alike upon foul and pure, upon high and
low. That beautiful Lamp is neither yours nor mine, but everybody's.

'When we look at the Moon we should remember that its waxing and its
waning are the signs of the truth that the culmination of all things is
likewise the beginning of their decline.'

Any person totally unfamiliar with Japanese educational methods might
presume that the foregoing composition shows some original power of
thought and imagination. But this is not the case. I found the same
thoughts and comparisons in thirty other compositions upon the same
subject. Indeed, the compositions of any number of middle-school
students upon the same subject are certain to be very much alike in idea
and sentiment--though they are none the less charming for that. As a
rule the Japanese student shows little originality in the line of
imagination. His imagination was made for him long centuries ago--partly
in China, partly in his native land. From his childhood he is trained to
see and to feel Nature exactly in the manner of those wondrous artists
who, with a few swift brushstrokes, fling down upon a sheet of paper the
colour-sensation of a chilly dawn, a fervid noon, an autumn evening.
Through all his boyhood he is taught to commit to memory the most
beautiful thoughts and comparisons to be found in his ancient native
literature. Every boy has thus learned that the vision of Fuji against
the blue resembles a white half-opened fan, hanging inverted in the sky.
Every boy knows that cherry-trees in full blossom look as if the most
delicate of flushed summer clouds were caught in their branches. Every
boy knows the comparison between the falling of certain leaves on snow
and the casting down of texts upon a sheet of white paper with a brush.
Every boy and girl knows the verses comparing the print of cat's-feet on
snow to plum-flowers, [6] and that comparing the impression of bokkuri
on snow to the Japanese character for the number 'two.' These were
thoughts of old, old poets; and it would be very hard to invent prettier
ones. Artistic power in composition is chiefly shown by the correct
memorising and clever combination of these old thoughts.

And the students have been equally well trained to discover a moral in
almost everything, animate or inanimate. I have tried them with a
hundred subjects--Japanese subjects--for composition; I have never found
them to fail in discovering a moral when the theme was a native one. If
I suggested 'Fire-flies,' they at once approved the topic, and wrote for
me the story of that Chinese student who, being too poor to pay for a
lamp, imprisoned many fireflies in a paper lantern, and thus was able to
obtain light enough to study after dark, and to become eventually a
great scholar. If I said 'Frogs,' they wrote for me the legend of Ono-
no-Tofu, who was persuaded to become a learned celebrity by witnessing
the tireless perseverance of a frog trying to leap up to a willow-
branch. I subjoin a few specimens of the moral ideas which I thus
evoked. I have corrected some common mistakes in the originals, but have
suffered a few singularities to stand:

THE BOTAN 'The botan [Japanese peony] is large and beautiful to see; but
it has a disagreeable smell. This should make us remember that what is
only outwardly beautiful in human society should not attract us. To be
attracted by beauty only may lead us into fearful and fatal misfortune.
The best place to see the botan is the island of Daikonshima in the lake
Nakaumi. There in the season of its flowering all the island is red with
its blossoms. [7]

THE DRAGON 'When the Dragon tries to ride the clouds and come into
heaven there happens immediately a furious storm. When the Dragon dwells
on the ground it is supposed to take the form of a stone or other
object; but when it wants to rise it calls a cloud. Its body is composed
of parts of many animals. It has the eyes of a tiger and the horns of a
deer and the body of a crocodile and the claws of an eagle and two
trunks like the trunk of an elephant. It has a moral. We should try to
be like the dragon, and find out and adopt all the good qualities of
others.'

At the close of this essay on the dragon is a note to the teacher,
saying: 'I believe not there is any Dragon. But there are many stories
and curious pictures about Dragon.'

MOSQUITOES 'On summer nights we hear the sound of faint voices; and
little things come and sting our bodies very violently. We call .them
ka--in English "mosquitoes." I think the sting is useful for us, because
if we begin to sleep, the ka shall come and sting us, uttering a small
voice;  then we shall be bringed back to study by the sting.'

The following, by a lad of sixteen, is submitted only as a
characteristic expression of half-formed ideas about a less familiar
subject:

EUROPEAN AND JAPANESE CUSTOMS 'Europeans wear very narrow clothes and
they wear shoes always in the house. Japanese wear clothes which are
very lenient and they do not shoe except when they walk out-of-the-door.

'What we think very strange is that in Europe every wife loves her
husband more than her parents. In Nippon there is no wife who more loves
not her parents than her husband.

'And Europeans walk out in the road with their wives, which we utterly
refuse to, except on the festival of Hachiman.

'The Japanese woman is treated by man as a servant, while the European
woman is respected as a master. I think these customs are both bad.

'We think it is very much trouble to treat European ladies; and we do
not know why ladies are so much respected by Europeans.'

Conversation in the class-room about foreign subjects is often equally
amusing and suggestive:

'Teacher, I have been told that if a European and his father and his
wife were all to fall into the sea together, and that he only could
swim, he would try to save his wife first. Would he really?'

'Probably,' I reply.

'But why?'

'One reason is that Europeans consider it a man's duty to help the
weaker first--especially women and children.'

'And does a European love his wife more than his father and mother?'

'Not always--but generally, perhaps, he does.'

'Why, Teacher, according to our ideas that is very immoral.'

'Teacher, how do European women carry their babies?'

'In their arms.'

'Very tiring! And how far can a woman walk carrying a baby in her arms?'

'A strong woman can walk many miles with a child in her arms.'

'But she cannot use her hands while she is carrying a baby that way, can
she?'

'Not very well.'

'Then it is a very bad way to carry babies,' etc.

Sec. 15

May 1, 1891. My favourite students often visit me of afternoons. They
first send me their cards, to announce their presence. On being told to
come in they leave their footgear on the doorstep, enter my little
study, prostrate themselves; and we all squat down together on the
floor, which is in all Japanese houses like a soft mattress. The servant
brings zabuton or small cushions to kneel upon, and cakes, and tea.

To sit as the Japanese do requires practice; and some Europeans can
never acquire the habit. To acquire it, indeed, one must become
accustomed to wearing Japanese costume. But once the habit of thus
sitting has been formed, one finds it the most natural and easy of
positions, and assumes it by preference for eating, reading, smoking, or
chatting. It is not to be recommended, perhaps, for writing with a
European pen--as the motion in our Occidental style of writing is from
the supported wrist; but it is the best posture for writing with the
Japanese fude, in using which the whole arm is unsupported, and the
motion from the elbow. After having become habituated to Japanese habits
for more than a year, I must confess that I find it now somewhat irksome
to use a chair.

When we have all greeted each other, and taken our places upon the
kneeling cushions, a little polite silence ensues, which I am the first
to break. Some of the lads speak a good deal of English. They understand
me well when I pronounce every word slowly and distinctly--using simple
phrases, and avoiding idioms. When a word with which they are not
familiar must be used, we refer to a good English-Japanese dictionary,
which gives each vernacular meaning both in the kana and in the Chinese
characters.

Usually my young visitors stay a long time, and their stay is rarely
tiresome. Their conversation and their thoughts are of the simplest and
frankest. They do not come to learn: they know that to ask their teacher
to teach out of school would be unjust. They speak chiefly of things
which they think have some particular interest for me. Sometimes they
scarcely speak at all, but appear to sink into a sort of happy reverie.
What they come really for is the quiet pleasure of sympathy. Not an
intellectual sympathy, but the sympathy of pure goodwill: the simple
pleasure of being quite comfortable with a friend. They peep at my books
and pictures; and sometimes they bring books and pictures to show me--
delightfully queer things--family heirlooms which I regret much that I
cannot buy. They also like to look at my garden, and enjoy all that is
in it even more than I. Often they bring me gifts of flowers. Never by
any possible chance are they troublesome, impolite, curious, or even
talkative. Courtesy in its utmost possible exquisiteness--an
exquisiteness of which even the French have no conception--seems natural
to the Izumo boy as the colour of his hair or the tint of his skin. Nor
is he less kind than courteous. To contrive pleasurable surprises for me
is one of the particular delights of my boys; and they either bring or
cause to be brought to the house all sorts of strange things.

Of all the strange or beautiful things which I am thus privileged to
examine, none gives me so much pleasure as a certain wonderful kakemono
of Amida Nyorai. It is rather large picture, and has been borrowed from
a priest that I may see it. The Buddha stands in the attitude of
exhortation, with one, hand uplifted. Behind his head a huge moon makes
an aureole and across the face of that moon stream winding lines of
thinnest cloud. Beneath his feet, like a rolling of smoke, curl heavier
and darker clouds. Merely as a work of colour and design, the thing is a
marvel. But the real wonder of it is not in colour or design at all.
Minute examination reveals the astonishing fact that every shadow and
clouding is formed by a fairy text of Chinese characters so minute that
only a keen eye can discern them; and this text is the entire text of
two famed sutras--the Kwammu-ryjo-kyo and the Amida-kyo--'text no larger
than the limbs of fleas.' And all the strong dark lines of the figure,
such as the seams of the Buddha's robe, are formed by the characters of
the holy invocation of the Shin-shu sect, repeated thousands of times:
'Namu Amida Butsu!' Infinite patience, tireless silent labour of loving
faith, in some dim temple, long ago.

Another day one of my boys persuades his father to let him bring to my
house a wonderful statue of Koshi (Confucius), made, I am told, in
China, toward the close of the period of the Ming dynasty. I am also
assured it is the first time the statue has ever been removed from the
family residence to be shown to anyone. Previously, whoever desired to
pay it reverence had to visit the house. It is truly a beautiful bronze.
The figure of a smiling, bearded old man, with fingers uplifted and lips
apart as if discoursing. He wears quaint Chinese shoes, and his flowing
robes are adorned with the figure of the mystic phoenix. The microscopic
finish of detail seems indeed to reveal the wonderful cunning of a
Chinese hand: each tooth, each hair, looks as though it had been made
the subject of a special study.

Another student conducts me to the home of one of his relatives, that I
may see a cat made of wood, said to have been chiselled by the famed
Hidari Jingoro--a cat crouching and watching, and so life-like that real
cats 'have been known to put up their backs and spit at it.'

Sec. 16

Nevertheless I have a private conviction that some old artists even now
living in Matsue could make a still more wonderful cat. Among these is
the venerable Arakawa Junosuke, who wrought many rare things for the
Daimyo of Izumo in the Tempo era, and whose acquaintance I have been
enabled to make through my school-friends. One evening he brings to my
house something very odd to show me, concealed in his sleeve. It is a
doll: just a small carven and painted head without a body,--the body
being represented by a tiny robe only, attached to the neck. Yet as
Arakawa Junosuke manipulates it, it seems to become alive. The back of
its head is like the back of a very old man's head; but its face is the
face of an amused child, and there is scarcely any forehead nor any
evidence of a thinking disposition. And whatever way the head is turned,
it looks so funny that one cannot help laughing at it. It represents a
kirakubo--what we might call in English 'a jolly old boy,'--one who is
naturally too hearty and too innocent to feel trouble of any sort. It is
not an original, but a model of a very famous original--whose history is
recorded in a faded scroll which Arakawa takes out of his other sleeve,
and which a friend translates for me. This little history throws a
curious light upon the simple-hearted ways of Japanese life and thought
in other centuries:

'Two hundred and sixty years ago this doll was made by a famous maker of
No-masks in the city of Kyoto, for the Emperor Go-midzu-no-O. The
Emperor used to have it placed beside his pillow each night before he
slept, and was very fond of it. And he composed the following poem
concerning it:

  Yo no naka wo
  Kiraku ni kurase
  Nani goto mo
  Omoeba omou
  Omowaneba koso. [8]'

'On the death of the Emperor this doll became the property of Prince
Konoye, in whose family it is said to be still preserved.

'About one hundred and seven years ago, the then Ex-Empress, whose
posthumous name is Sei-Kwa-Mon-Yin, borrowed the doll from Prince
Konoye, and ordered a copy of it to be made. This copy she kept always
beside her, and was very fond of it.

'After the death of the good Empress this doll was given to a lady of
the court, whose family name is not recorded. Afterwards this lady, for
reasons which are not known, cut off her hair and became a Buddhist nun
--taking the name of Shingyo-in.

'And one who knew the Nun Shingyo-in--a man whose name was Kondo-ju-
haku-in-Hokyo--had the honour of receiving the doll as a gift.

'Now I, who write this document, at one time fell sick; and my sickness
was caused by despondency. And my friend Kondo-ju-haku-in-Hokyo, coming
to see me, said: "I have in my house something which will make you
well." And he went home and, presently returning, brought to me this
doll, and lent it to me--putting it by my pillow that I might see it and
laugh at it.

'Afterward, I myself, having called upon the Nun Shingyo-in, whom I now
also have the honour to know, wrote down the history of the doll, and
make a poem thereupon.'

(Dated about ninety years ago: no signature.)

Sec. 17

June 1, 1891 I find among the students a healthy tone of scepticism in
regard to certain forms of popular belief. Scientific education is
rapidly destroying credulity in old superstitions yet current among the
unlettered, and especially among the peasantry--as, for instance, faith
in mamori and ofuda. The outward forms of Buddhism--its images, its
relics, its commoner practices--affect the average student very little.
He is not, as a foreigner may be, interested in iconography, or
religious folklore, or the comparative study of religions; and in nine
cases out of ten he is rather ashamed of the signs and tokens of popular
faith all around him. But the deeper religious sense, which underlies
all symbolism, remains with him; and the Monistic Idea in Buddhism is
being strengthened and expanded, rather than weakened, by the new
education. What is true of the effect of the public schools upon the
lower Buddhism is equally true of its effect upon the lower Shinto.
Shinto the students all sincerely are, or very nearly all; yet not as
fervent worshippers of certain Kami, but as rigid observers of what the
higher Shinto signifies--loyalty, filial piety, obedience to parents,
teachers, and superiors, and respect to ancestors. For Shinto means more
than faith.

When, for the first time, I stood before the shrine of the Great Deity
of Kitzuki, as the first Occidental to whom that privilege had been
accorded, not without a sense of awe there came to me the Sec.  'This is the
Shrine of the Father of a Race; this is the symbolic centre of a
nation's reverence for its past.' And I, too, paid reverence to the
memory of the progenitor of this people.

As I then felt, so feels the intelligent student of the Meiji era whom
education has lifted above the common plane of popular creeds. And
Shinto also means for him--whether he reasons upon the question or not--
all the ethics of the family, and all that spirit of loyalty which has
become so innate that, at the call of duty, life itself ceases to have
value save as an instrument for duty's accomplishment. As yet, this
Orient little needs to reason about the origin of its loftier ethics.
Imagine the musical sense in our own race so developed that a child
could play a complicated instrument so soon as the little fingers gained
sufficient force and flexibility to strike the notes. By some such
comparison only can one obtain a just idea of what inherent religion and
instinctive duty signify in Izumo.

Of the rude and aggressive form of scepticism so common in the Occident,
which is the natural reaction after sudden emancipation from
superstitious belief, I find no trace among my students. But such
sentiment may be found elsewhere--especially in Tokyo--among the
university students, one of whom, upon hearing the tones of a
magnificent temple bell, exclaimed to a friend of mine: 'Is it not a
shame that in this nineteenth century we must still hear such a sound?'

For the benefit of curious travellers, however, I may here take occasion
to observe that to talk Buddhism to Japanese gentlemen of the new school
is in just as bad taste as to talk Christianity at home to men of that
class whom knowledge has placed above creeds and forms. There are, of
course, Japanese scholars willing to aid researches of foreign scholars
in religion or in folk-lore; but these specialists do not undertake to
gratify idle curiosity of the 'globe-trotting' description. I may also
say that the foreigner desirous to learn the religious ideas or
superstitions of the common people must obtain them from the people
themselves--not from the educated classes.

Sec.  18

Among all my favourite students--two or three from each class--I cannot
decide whom I like the best. Each has a particular merit of his own. But
I think the names and faces of those of whom I am about to speak will
longest remain vivid in my remembrance--Ishihara, Otani-Masanobu,
Adzukizawa, Yokogi, Shida.

Ishihara is a samurai a very influential lad in his class because of his
uncommon force of character. Compared with others, he has a somewhat
brusque, independent manner, pleasing, however, by its honest manliness.
He says everything he thinks, and precisely in the tone that he thinks
it, even to the degree of being a little embarrassing sometimes. He does
not hesitate, for example, to find fault with a teacher's method of
explanation, and to insist upon a more lucid one. He has criticized me
more than once; but I never found that he was wrong. We like each other
very much. He often brings me flowers.

One day that he had brought two beautiful sprays of plum-blossoms, he
said to me:

'I saw you bow before our Emperor's picture at the ceremony on the
birthday of His Majesty. You are not like a former English teacher we
had.'

'How?'

'He said we were savages.'

'Why?'

'He said there is nothing respectable except God--his God--and that only
vulgar and ignorant people respect anything else.'

'Where did he come from?'

'He was a Christian clergyman, and said he was an English subject.'

'But if he was an English subject, he was bound to respect Her Majesty
the Queen. He could not even enter the office of a British consul
without removing his hat.'

'I don't know what he did in the country he came from. But that was what
he said. Now we think we should love and honour our Emperor. We think it
is a duty. We think it is a joy. We think it is happiness to be able to
give our lives for our Emperor.  [9] But he said we were only savages--
ignorant savages. What do you think of that?'

'I think, my dear lad, that he himself was a savage--a vulgar, ignorant,
savage bigot. I think it is your highest social duty to honour your
Emperor, to obey his laws, and to be ready to give your blood whenever
he may require it of you for the sake of Japan. I think it is your duty
to respect the gods of your fathers, the religion of your country--even
if you yourself cannot believe all that others believe. And I think,
also, that it is your duty, for your Emperor's sake and for your
country's sake, to resent any such wicked and vulgar language as that
you have told me of, no matter by whom uttered.'

Masanobu visits me seldom and always comes alone. A  slender, handsome
lad, with rather feminine features, reserved and perfectly self-
possessed in manner, refined. He is somewhat serious, does not often
smile; and I never heard him laugh. He has risen to the head of his
class, and appears to remain there without any extraordinary effort.
Much of his leisure time he devotes to botany--collecting and
classifying plants. He is a musician, like all the male members of his
family. He plays a variety of instruments never seen or heard of in the
West, including flutes of marble, flutes of ivory, flutes of bamboo of
wonderful shapes and tones, and that shrill Chinese instrument called
sho--a sort of mouth-organ consisting of seventeen tubes of different
lengths fixed in a silver frame. He first explained to me the uses in
temple music of the taiko and shoko, which are drums; of the flutes
called fei or teki; of the flageolet termed hichiriki; and of the kakko,
which is a little drum shaped like a spool with very narrow waist, On
great Buddhist festivals, Masanobu and his father and his brothers are
the musicians in the temple services, and they play the strange music
called Ojo and Batto--music which at first no Western ear can feel
pleasure in, but which, when often heard, becomes comprehensible, and is
found to possess a weird charm of its own. When Masanobu comes to the
house, it is usually in order to invite me to attend some Buddhist or
Shinto festival (matsuri) which he knows will interest me.

Adzukizawa bears so little resemblance to Masanobu that one might
suppose the two belonged to totally different races. Adzukizawa is
large, raw-boned, heavy-looking, with a face singularly like that of a
North American Indian. His people are not rich; he can afford few
pleasures which cost money, except one--buying books. Even to be able to
do this he works in his leisure hours to earn money. He is a perfect
bookworm, a natural-born researcher, a collector of curious documents, a
haunter of all the queer second-hand stores in Teramachi and other
streets where old manuscripts or prints are on sale as waste paper. He
is an omnivorous reader, and a perpetual borrower of volumes, which he
always returns in perfect condition after having copied what he deemed
of most value to him. But his special delight is philosophy and the
history of philosophers in all countries. He has read various epitomes
of the history of philosophy in the Occident, and everything of modern
philosophy which has been translated into Japanese--including Spencer's
First Principles. I have been able to introduce him to Lewes and John
Fiske--both of which he appreciates,--although the strain of studying
philosophy in English is no small one. Happily he is so strong that no
amount of study is likely to injure his health, and his nerves are tough
as wire. He is quite an ascetic withal. As it is the Japanese custom to
set cakes and tea before visitors, I always have both in readiness, and
an especially fine quality of kwashi, made at Kitzuki, of which the
students are very fond. Adzukizawa alone refuses to taste cakes or
confectionery of any kind, saying: 'As I am the youngest brother, I must
begin to earn my own living soon. I shall have to endure much hardship.
And if I allow myself to like dainties now, I shall only suffer more
later on.' Adzukizawa has seen much of human life and character. He is
naturally observant; and he has managed in some extraordinary way to
learn the history of everybody in Matsue. He has brought me old tattered
prints to prove that the opinions now held by our director are
diametrically opposed to the opinions he advocated fourteen years ago in
a public address. I asked the director about it. He laughed and said,
'Of course that is Adzukizawa!  But he is right: I was very young then.'
And I wonder if Adzukizawa was ever young.

Yokogi, Adzukizawa's dearest friend, is a very rare visitor; for he is
always studying at home. He is always first in his class--the third year
class--while Adzukizawa is fourth. Adzukizawa's account of the beginning
of their acquaintance is this: 'I watched him when he came and saw that
he spoke very little, walked very quickly, and looked straight into
everybody's eyes. So I knew he had a particular character. I like to
know people with a particular character.' Adzukizawa was perfectly
right: under a very gentle exterior, Yokogi has an extremely strong
character. He is the son of a carpenter; and his parents could not
afford to send him to the Middle School. But he had shown such
exceptional qualities while in the Elementary School that a wealthy man
became interested in him, and offered to pay for his education. [10] He
is now the pride of the school. He has a remarkably placid face, with
peculiarly long eyes, and a delicious smile. In class he is always
asking intelligent questions--questions so original that I am sometimes
extremely puzzled how to answer them; and he never ceases to ask until
the explanation is quite satisfactory to himself. He never cares about
the opinion of his comrades if he thinks he is right. On one occasion
when the whole class refused to attend the lectures of a new teacher of
physics, Yokogi alone refused to act with them--arguing that although
the teacher was not all that could be desired, there was no immediate
possibility of his removal, and no just reason for making unhappy a man
who, though unskilled, was sincerely doing his best. Adzukizawa finally
stood by him. These two alone attended the lectures until the remainder
of the students, two weeks later, found that Yokogi's views were
rational. On another occasion when some vulgar proselytism was attempted
by a Christian missionary, Yokogi went boldly to the proselytiser's
house, argued with him on the morality of his effort, and reduced him to
silence. Some of his comrades praised his cleverness in the argument. 'I
am not clever,' he made answer: 'it does not require cleverness to argue
against what is morally wrong; it requires only the knowledge that one
is morally right.' At least such is about the translation of what he
said as told me by Adzukizawa.

Shida, another visitor, is a very delicate, sensitive boy, whose soul is
full of art. He is very skilful at drawing and painting; and he has a
wonderful set of picture-books by the Old Japanese masters. The last
time he came he brought some prints to show me--rare ones--fairy maidens
and ghosts. As I looked at his beautiful pale face and weirdly frail
fingers, I could not help fearing for him,--fearing that he might soon
become a little ghost.

I have not seen him now for more than two months. He has been very, very
ill; and his lungs are so weak that the doctor has forbidden him to
converse. But Adzukizawa has been to visit him, and brings me this
translation of a Japanese letter which the sick boy wrote and pasted
upon the wall above his bed:

'Thou, my Lord-Soul, dost govern me. Thou knowest that I cannot now
govern myself. Deign, I pray thee, to let me be cured speedily. Do not
suffer me to speak much. Make me to obey in all things the command of
the physician.

'This ninth day of the eleventh month of the twenty-fourth year of
Meiji.

'From the sick body of Shida to his Soul.'

Sec. 19

September 4, 1891. The long summer vacation is over; a new school year
begins. There have been many changes. Some of the boys I taught are
dead. Others have graduated and gone away from Matsue for ever. Some
teachers, too, have left the school, and their places have b

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