In Ghostly Japan by Lafcadio Hearn
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Lafcadio Hearn >> In Ghostly Japan
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9 Produced by Liz Warren
In Ghostly Japan
Fragment
And it was at the hour of sunset that they came to the foot of
the mountain. There was in that place no sign of life,--neither
token of water, nor trace of plant, nor shadow of flying bird,--
nothing but desolation rising to desolation. And the summit was
lost in heaven.
Then the Bodhisattva said to his young companion:--"What you have
asked to see will be shown to you. But the place of the Vision is
far; and the way is rude. Follow after me, and do not fear:
strength will be given you."
Twilight gloomed about them as they climbed. There was no beaten
path, nor any mark of former human visitation; and the way was
over an endless heaping of tumbled fragments that rolled or
turned beneath the foot. Sometimes a mass dislodged would clatter
down with hollow echoings;--sometimes the substance trodden would
burst like an empty shell....Stars pointed and thrilled; and the
darkness deepened.
"Do not fear, my son," said the Bodhisattva, guiding: "danger
there is none, though the way be grim."
Under the stars they climbed,--fast, fast,--mounting by help of
power superhuman. High zones of mist they passed; and they saw
below them, ever widening as they climbed, a soundless flood of
cloud, like the tide of a milky sea.
Hour after hour they climbed;--and forms invisible yielded to
their tread with dull soft crashings;--and faint cold fires
lighted and died at every breaking.
And once the pilgrim-youth laid hand on a something smooth that
was not stone,--and lifted it,--and dimly saw the cheekless gibe
of death.
"Linger not thus, my son!" urged the voice of the teacher;--"the
summit that we must gain is very far away!"
On through the dark they climbed,--and felt continually beneath
them the soft strange breakings,--and saw the icy fires worm and
die,--till the rim of the night turned grey, and the stars began
to fail, and the east began to bloom.
Yet still they climbed,--fast, fast,--mounting by help of power
superhuman. About them now was frigidness of death,--and silence
tremendous....A gold flame kindled in the east.
Then first to the pilgrim's gaze the steeps revealed their
nakedness;--and a trembling seized him,--and a ghastly fear. For
there was not any ground,--neither beneath him nor about him nor
above him,--but a heaping only, monstrous and measureless, of
skulls and fragments of skulls and dust of bone,--with a shimmer
of shed teeth strown through the drift of it, like the shimmer of
scrags of shell in the wrack of a tide.
"Do not fear, my son!" cried the voice of the Bodhisattva;--"only
the strong of heart can win to the place of the Vision!"
Behind them the world had vanished. Nothing remained but the
clouds beneath, and the sky above, and the heaping of skulls
between,--up-slanting out of sight.
Then the sun climbed with the climbers; and there was no warmth
in the light of him, but coldness sharp as a sword. And the
horror of stupendous height, and the nightmare of stupendous
depth, and the terror of silence, ever grew and grew, and weighed
upon the pilgrim, and held his feet,--so that suddenly all power
departed from him, and he moaned like a sleeper in dreams.
"Hasten, hasten, my son!" cried the Bodhisattva: "the day is
brief, and the summit is very far away."
But the pilgrim shrieked,--"I fear! I fear unspeakably!--and the
power has departed from me!"
"The power will return, my son," made answer the Bodhisattva....
"Look now below you and above you and about you, and tell me what
you see."
"I cannot," cried the pilgrim, trembling and clinging; "I dare
not look beneath! Before me and about me there is nothing but
skulls of men."
"And yet, my son," said the Bodhisattva, laughing softly,--"and
yet you do not know of what this mountain is made."
The other, shuddering, repeated:--"I fear!--unutterably I
fear!...there is nothing but skulls of men!"
"A mountain of skulls it is," responded the Bodhisattva. "But
know, my son, that all of them ARE YOUR OWN! Each has at some
time been the nest of your dreams and delusions and desires. Not
even one of them is the skull of any other being. All,--all
without exception,--have been yours, in the billions of your
former lives."
FURISODE
Recently, while passing through a little street tenanted chiefly
by dealers in old wares, I noticed a furisode, or long-sleeved
robe, of the rich purple tint called murasaki, hanging before one
of the shops. It was a robe such as might have been worn by a
lady of rank in the time of the Tokugawa. I stopped to look at
the five crests upon it; and in the same moment there came to my
recollection this legend of a similar robe said to have once
caused the destruction of Yedo.
Nearly two hundred and fifty years ago, the daughter of a rich
merchant of the city of the Shoguns, while attending some temple-
festival, perceived in the crowd a young samurai of remarkable
beauty, and immediately fell in love with him. Unhappily for her, he
disappeared in the press before she could learn through her
attendants who he was or whence he had come. But his image remained
vivid in her memory,--even to the least detail of his costume. The
holiday attire then worn by samurai youths was scarcely less
brilliant than that of young girls; and the upper dress of this
handsome stranger had seemed wonderfully beautiful to the enamoured
maiden. She fancied that by wearing a robe of like quality and
color, bearing the same crest, she might be able to attract his
notice on some future occasion.
Accordingly she had such a robe made, with very long sleeves,
according to the fashion of the period; and she prized it
greatly. She wore it whenever she went out; and when at home she
would suspend it in her room, and try to imagine the form of her
unknown beloved within it. Sometimes she would pass hours before
it,--dreaming and weeping by turns. And she would pray to the
gods and the Buddhas that she might win the young man's
affection,--often repeating the invocation of the Nichiren sect:
Namu myo ho renge kyo!
But she never saw the youth again; and she pined with longing for
him, and sickened, and died, and was buried. After her burial,
the long-sleeved robe that she had so much prized was given to
the Buddhist temple of which her family were parishioners. It is
an old custom to thus dispose of the garments of the dead.
The priest was able to sell the robe at a good price; for it was
a costly silk, and bore no trace of the tears that had fallen
upon it. It was bought by a girl of about the same age as the
dead lady. She wore it only one day. Then she fell sick, and
began to act strangely,--crying out that she was haunted by the
vision of a beautiful young man, and that for love of him she was
going to die. And within a little while she died; and the long-
sleeved robe was a second time presented to the temple.
Again the priest sold it; and again it became the property of a
young girl, who wore it only once. Then she also sickened, and
talked of a beautiful shadow, and died, and was buried. And the
robe was given a third time to the temple; and the priest
wondered and doubted.
Nevertheless he ventured to sell the luckless garment once more.
Once more it was purchased by a girl and once more worn; and the
wearer pined and died. And the robe was given a fourth time to
the temple.
Then the priest felt sure that there was some evil influence at
work; and he told his acolytes to make a fire in the temple-
court, and to burn the robe.
So they made a fire, into which the robe was thrown. But as the
silk began to burn, there suddenly appeared upon it dazzling
characters of flame,--the characters of the invocation, Namu myo
ho renge kyo;--and these, one by one, leaped like great sparks to
the temple roof; and the temple took fire.
Embers from the burning temple presently dropped upon
neighbouring roofs; and the whole street was soon ablaze. Then a
sea-wind, rising, blew destruction into further streets; and the
conflagration spread from street to street, and from district
into district, till nearly the whole of the city was consumed.
And this calamity, which occurred upon the eighteenth day of the
first month of the first year of Meireki (1655), is still
remembered in Tokyo as the Furisode-Kwaji,--the Great Fire of the
Long-sleeved Robe.
According to a story-book called Kibun-Daijin, the name of the girl
who caused the robe to be made was O-Same; and she was the daughter
of Hikoyemon, a wine-merchant of Hyakusho-machi, in the district of
Azabu. Because of her beauty she was also called Azabu-Komachi, or
the Komachi of Azabu.(1) The same book says that the temple of the
tradition was a Nichiren temple called Hon-myoji, in the district of
Hongo; and that the crest upon the robe was a kikyo-flower. But
there are many different versions of the story; and I distrust the
Kibun-Daijin because it asserts that the beautiful samurai was not
really a man, but a transformed dragon, or water-serpent, that used
to inhabit the lake at Uyeno,--Shinobazu-no-Ike.
1 After more than a thousand years, the name of Komachi, or Ono-no-
Komachi, is still celebrated in Japan. She was the most beautiful
woman of her time, and so great a poet that she could move heaven by
her verses, and cause rain to fall in time of drought. Many men
loved her in vain; and many are said to have died for love of her.
But misfortunes visited her when her youth had passed; and, after
having been reduced to the uttermost want, she became a beggar, and
died at last upon the public highway, near Kyoto. As it was thought
shameful to bury her in the foul rags found upon her, some poor
person gave a wornout summer-robe (katabira) to wrap her body in;
and she was interred near Arashiyama at a spot still pointed out to
travellers as the "Place of the Katabira" (Katabira-no-Tsuchi).
Incense
I see, rising out of darkness, a lotos in a vase. Most of the vase
is invisible, but I know that it is of bronze, and that its
glimpsing handles are bodies of dragons. Only the lotos is fully
illuminated: three pure white flowers, and five great leaves of gold
and green,--gold above, green on the upcurling under-surface,--an
artificial lotos. It is bathed by a slanting stream of sunshine,--
the darkness beneath and beyond is the dusk of a temple-chamber. I
do not see the opening through which the radiance pours, but I am
aware that it is a small window shaped in the outline-form of a
temple-bell.
The reason that I see the lotos--one memory of my first visit to
a Buddhist sanctuary--is that there has come to me an odor of
incense. Often when I smell incense, this vision defines; and
usually thereafter other sensations of my first day in Japan
revive in swift succession with almost painful acuteness.
It is almost ubiquitous,--this perfume of incense. It makes one
element of the faint but complex and never-to-be-forgotten odor
of the Far East. It haunts the dwelling-house not less than the
temple,--the home of the peasant not less than the yashiki of the
prince. Shinto shrines, indeed, are free from it;--incense being
an abomination to the elder gods. But wherever Buddhism lives
there is incense. In every house containing a Buddhist shrine or
Buddhist tablets, incense is burned at certain times; and in even
the rudest country solitudes you will find incense smouldering
before wayside images,--little stone figures of Fudo, Jizo, or
Kwannon. Many experiences of travel,--strange impressions of
sound as well as of sight,--remain associated in my own memory
with that fragrance:--vast silent shadowed avenues leading to
weird old shrines;--mossed flights of worn steps ascending to
temples that moulder above the clouds;--joyous tumult of festival
nights;--sheeted funeral-trains gliding by in glimmer of
lanterns; murmur of household prayer in fishermen's huts on far
wild coasts;--and visions of desolate little graves marked only
by threads of blue smoke ascending,--graves of pet animals or
birds remembered by simple hearts in the hour of prayer to Amida,
the Lord of Immeasurable Light.
But the odor of which I speak is that of cheap incense only,--the
incense in general use. There are many other kinds of incense;
and the range of quality is amazing. A bundle of common incense-
rods--(they are about as thick as an ordinary pencil-lead, and
somewhat longer)--can be bought for a few sen; while a bundle of
better quality, presenting to inexperienced eyes only some
difference in color, may cost several yen, and be cheap at the
price. Still costlier sorts of incense,--veritable luxuries,--
take the form of lozenges, wafers, pastilles; and a small
envelope of such material may be worth four or five pounds-
sterling. But the commercial and industrial questions relating to
Japanese incense represent the least interesting part of a
remarkably curious subject.
II
Curious indeed, but enormous by reason of it infinity of
tradition and detail. I am afraid even to think of the size of
the volume that would be needed to cover it.... Such a work would
properly begin with some brief account of the earliest knowledge
and use of aromatics in Japan. I would next treat of the records
and legends of the first introduction of Buddhist incense fron
Korea,--when King Shomyo of Kudara, in 551 A. D., sent to the
island-empire a collection of sutras, an image of the Buddha, and
one complete set of furniture for a temple. Then something would
have to be said about those classifications of incense which were
made during the tenth century, in the periods of Engi and of
Tenryaku,--and about the report of the ancient state-councillor,
Kimitaka-Sangi, who visited China in the latter part of the
thirteenth century, and transmitted to the Emperor Yomei the
wisdom of the Chinese concerning incense. Then mention should be
made of the ancient incenses still preserved in various Japanese
temples, and of the famous fragments of ranjatai (publicly
exhibited at Nara in the tenth year of Meiji) which furnished
supplies to the three great captains, Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and
Iyeyasu. After this should fol-low an outline of the history of
mixed incenses made in Japan,--with notes on the classifications
devised by the luxurious Takauji, and on the nomenclature
established later by Ashikaga Yoshimasa, who collected one
hundred and thirty varieties of incense, and invented for the
more precious of them names recognized even to this day,--such as
"Blossom-Showering," "Smoke-of-Fuji," and "Flower-of-the-Pure-
Law." Examples ought to be given likewise of traditions attaching
to historical incenses preserved in several princely families,
together with specimens of those hereditary recipes for incense-
making which have been transmitted from generation to generation
through hundreds of years, and are still called after their
august inventors,--as "the Method of Hina-Dainagon," "the Method
of Sento-In," etc. Recipes also should be given of those strange
incenses made "to imitate the perfume of the lotos, the smell of
the summer breeze, and the odor of the autumn wind." Some legends
of the great period of incense-luxury should be cited,--such as
the story of Sue Owari-no-Kami, who built for himself a palace of
incense-woods, and set fire to it on the night of his revolt,
when the smoke of its burning perfumed the land to a distance of
twelve miles.... Of course the mere compilation of materials for
a history of mixed-incenses would entail the study of a host of
documents, treatises, and books,--particularly of such strange
works as the Kun-Shu-Rui-Sho, or "Incense-Collector's
Classifying-Manual";--containing the teachings of the Ten Schools
of the Art of Mixing Incense; directions as to the best seasons
for incense-making; and instructions about the "different kinds
of fire" to be used for burning incense--(one kind is called
"literary fire," and another "military fire"); together with
rules for pressing the ashes of a censer into various artistic
designs corresponding to season and occasion.... A special
chapter should certainly be given to the incense-bags (kusadama)
hung up in houses to drive away goblins,--and to the smaller
incense-bags formerly carried about the person as a protection
against evil spirits. Then a very large part of the work would
have to be devoted to the religious uses and legends of incense,
--a huge subject in itself. There would also have to be
considered the curious history of the old "incense-assemblies,"
whose elaborate ceremonial could be explained only by help of
numerous diagrams. One chapter at least would be required for the
subject of the ancient importation of incense-materials from
India, China, Annam, Siam, Cambodia, Ceylon, Sumatra, Java,
Borneo, and various islands of the Malay archipelago,--places all
named in rare books about incense. And a final chapter should
treat of the romantic literature of incense,--the poems, stories,
and dramas in which incense-rites are mentioned; and especially
those love-songs comparing the body to incense, and passion to
the eating flame:--
Even as burns the perfume lending thy robe its fragance,
Smoulders my life away, consumed by the pain of longing!
....The merest outline of the subject is terrifying! I shall
attempt nothing more than a few notes about the religious, the
luxurious, and the ghostly uses of incense.
III
The common incense everywhere burned by poor people before
Buddhist icons is called an-soku-ko. This is very cheap. Great
quantities of it are burned by pilgrims in the bronze censers set
before the entrances of famous temples; and in front of roadside
images you may often see bundles of it. These are for the use of
pious wayfarers, who pause before every Buddhist image on their
path to repeat a brief prayer and, when possible, to set a few
rods smouldering at the feet of the statue. But in rich temples,
and during great religious ceremonies, much more expensive
incense is used. Altogether three classes of perfumes are
employed in Buddhist rites: ko, or incense-proper, in many
varieties--(the word literally means only "fragrant substance");
--dzuko, an odorous ointment; and makko, a fragrant powder. Ko is
burned; dzuko is rubbed upon the hands of the priest as an
ointment of purification; and makko is sprinkled about the
sanctuary. This makko is said to be identical with the
sandalwood-powder so frequently mentioned in Buddhist texts. But
it is only the true incense which can be said to bear an
important relation to the religious service.
"Incense," declares the Soshi-Ryaku,(1) "is the Messenger of
Earnest Desire. When the rich Sudatta wished to invite the Buddha
to a repast, he made use of incense. He was wont to ascend to the
roof of his house on the eve of the day of the entertainment, and
to remain standing there all night, holding a censer of precious
incense. And as often as he did thus, the Buddha never failed to
come on the following day at the exact time desired."
This text plainly implies that incense, as a burnt-offering,
symbolizes the pious desires of the faithful. But it symbolizes
other things also; and it has furnished many remarkable similes
to Buddhist literature. Some of these, and not the least
interesting, occur in prayers, of which the following, from the
book called Hoji-san (2) is a striking example:--
--"Let my body remain pure like a censer!--let my thought be ever
as a fire of wisdom, purely consuming the incense of sila and of
dhyana, (3) that so may I do homage to all the Buddhas in the Ten
Directions of the Past, the Present, and the Future!"
Sometimes in Buddhist sermons the destruction of Karma by
virtuous effort is likened to the burning of incense by a pure
flame,--sometimes, again, the life of man is compared to the
smoke of incense. In his "Hundred Writings "(Hyaku-tsu-kiri-
kami), the Shinshu priest Myoden says, quoting from the Buddhist
work Kujikkajo, or "Ninety Articles ":--
"In the burning of incense we see that so long as any incense
remains, so long does the burning continue, and the smoke mount
skyward. Now the breath of this body of ours,--this impermanent
combination of Earth, Water, Air, and Fire,--is like that smoke.
And the changing of the incense into cold ashes when the flame
expires is an emblem of the changing of our bodies into ashes
when our funeral pyres have burnt themselves out."
He also tells us about that Incense-Paradise of which every
believer ought to be reminded by the perfume of earthly incense:
--"In the Thirty- Second Vow for the Attainment of the Paradise
of Wondrous Incense," he says, "it is written: 'That Paradise is
formed of hundreds of thousands of different kinds of incense,
and of substances incalculably precious;--the beauty of it
incomparably exceeds anything in the heavens or in the sphere of
man;--the fragrance of it perfumes all the worlds of the Ten
Directions of Space; and all who perceive that odor practise
Buddha-deeds.' In ancient times there were men of superior wisdom
and virtue who, by reason of their vow, obtained perception of
the odor; but we, who are born with inferior wisdom and virtue in
these later days, cannot obtain such perception. Nevertheless it
will be well for us, when we smell the incense kindled before the
image of Amida, to imagine that its odor is the wonderful
fragrance of Paradise, and to repeat the Nembutsu in gratitude
for the mercy of the Buddha."
1 "Short [or Epitomized] History of Priests."
2 "The Praise of Pious Observances."
3 By sila is meant the observance of the rules of purity
in act and thought. Dhyana (called by Japanese Buddhists Zenjo)
is one of the higher forms of meditation.
IV
But the use of incense in Japan is not confined to religious
rites and ceremonies: indeed the costlier kinds of incense are
manufactured chiefly for social entertainments. Incense-burning
has been an amusement of the aristocracy ever since the
thirteenth century. Probably you have heard of the Japanese tea-
ceremonies, and their curious Buddhist history; and I suppose
that every foreign collector of Japanese bric-a'-brac knows
something about the luxury to which these ceremonies at one
period attained,--a luxury well attested by the quality of the
beautiful utensils formerly employed in them. But there were, and
still are, incense-ceremonies much more elaborate and costly than
the tea-ceremonies,--and also much more interesting. Besides
music, embroidery, poetical composition and other branches of the
old-fashioned female education, the young lady of pre-Meiji days
was expected to acquire three especially polite accomplishments,
--the art of arranging flowers, (ikebana), the art of ceremonial
tea-making (cha-no-yu or cha-no-e),(1) and the etiquette of
incense-parties (ko-kwai or ko-e). Incense-parties were invented
before the time of the Ashikaga shoguns, and were most in vogue
during the peaceful period of the Tokugawa rule. With the fall of
the shogunate they went out of fashion; but recently they have
been to some extent revived. It is not likely, however, that they
will again become really fashionable in the old sense,--partly
because they represented rare forms of social refinement that
never can be revived, and partly because of their costliness.
In translating ko-kwai as "incense-party," I use the word "party"
in the meaning that it takes in such compounds as "card-party,"
"whist-party," "chess-party";--for a ko-kwai is a meeting held
only with the object of playing a game,--a very curious game.
There are several kinds of incense-games; but in all of them the
contest depends upon the ability to remember and to name
different kinds of incense by the perfume alone. That variety of
ko-kwai called Jitchu-ko ("ten-burning-incense") is generally
conceded to be the most amusing; and I shall try to tell you how
it is played.
The numeral "ten," in the Japanese, or rather Chinese name of
this diversion, does not refer to ten kinds, but only to ten
packages of incense; for Jitchu-ko, besides being the most
amusing, is the very simplest of incense-games, and is played
with only four kinds of incense. One kind must be supplied by the
guests invited to the party; and three are furnished by the
person who gives the entertainment. Each of the latter three
supplies of incense--usually prepared in packages containing one
hundred wafers is divided into four parts; and each part is put
into a separate paper numbered or marked so as to indicate the
quality. Thus four packages are prepared of the incense classed
as No. 1, four of incense No. 2, and four of incense No. 3,--or
twelve in all. But the incense given by the guests,--always
called "guest-incense"--is not divided: it is only put into a
wrapper marked with an abbreviation of the Chinese character
signifying "guest." Accordingly we have a total of thirteen
packages to start with; but three are to be used in the
preliminary sampling, or "experimenting"--as the Japanese term
it,--after the following manner.
We shall suppose the game to be arranged for a party of six,--
though there is no rule limiting the number of players. The six
take their places in line, or in a half-circle--if the room be
small; but they do not sit close together, for reasons which will
presently appear. Then the host, or the person appointed to act
as incense-burner, prepares a package of the incense classed as
No 1, kindles it in a censer, and passes the censer to the guest
occupying the first seat, (2) with the announcement--"This is
incense No 1" The guest receives the censer according to the
graceful etiquette required in the ko-kwai, inhales the perfume,
and passes on the vessel to his neighbor, who receives it in like
manner and passes it to the third guest, who presents it to the
fourth,--and so on. When the censer has gone the round of the
party, it is returned to the incense-burner. One package of
incense No. 2, and one of No. 3, are similarly prepared,
announced, and tested. But with the "guest-incense" no experiment
is made. The player should be able to remember the different
odors of the incenses tested; and he is expected to identify the
guest-incense at the proper time merely by the unfamiliar quality
of its fragrance.
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