In Ghostly Japan by Lafcadio Hearn

L >> Lafcadio Hearn >> In Ghostly Japan

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9

Western faiths especially teach that our life on earth is a
larval state of greedy helplessness, and that death is a pupa-
sleep out of which we should soar into everlasting light. They
tell us that during its sentient existence, the outer body should
be thought of only as a kind of caterpillar, and thereafter as a
chrysalis;--and they aver that we lose or gain, according to our
behavior as larvae, the power to develop wings under the mortal
wrapping. Also they tell us not to trouble ourselves about the
fact that we see no Psyche-imago detach itself from the broken
cocoon: this lack of visual evidence signifies nothing, because
we have only the purblind vision of grubs. Our eyes are but half-
evolved. Do not whole scales of colors invisibly exist above and
below the limits of our retinal sensibility? Even so the
butterfly-man exists,--although, as a matter of course, we cannot
see him.

But what would become of this human imago in a state of perfect
bliss? From the evolutional point of view the question has
interest; and its obvious answer was suggested to me by the
history of those silkworms,--which have been domesticated for
only a few thousand years. Consider the result of our celestial
domestication for--let us say--several millions of years: I mean
the final consequence, to the wishers, of being able to gratify
every wish at will.

Those silkworms have all that they wish for,--even considerably
more. Their wants, though very simple, are fundamentally
identical with the necessities of mankind,--food, shelter,
warmth, safety, and comfort. Our endless social struggle is
mainly for these things. Our dream of heaven is the dream of
obtaining them free of cost in pain; and the condition of those
silkworms is the realization, in a small way, of our imagined
Paradise. (I am not considering the fact that a vast majority of
the worms are predestined to torment and the second death; for my
theme is of heaven, not of lost souls. I am speaking of the
elect--those worms preordained to salvation and rebirth.)
Probably they can feel only very weak sensations: they are
certainly incapable of prayer. But if they were able to pray,
they could not ask for anything more than they already receive
from the youth who feeds and tends them. He is their providence,
--a god of whose existence they can be aware in only the vaguest
possible way, but just such a god as they require. And we should
foolishly deem ourselves fortunate to be equally well cared-for
in proportion to our more complex wants. Do not our common forms
of prayer prove our desire for like attention? Is not the
assertion of our "need of divine love" an involuntary confession
that we wish to be treated like silkworms,--to live without pain
by the help of gods? Yet if the gods were to treat us as we want,
we should presently afford fresh evidence,--in the way of what is
called "the evidence from degeneration,"--that the great
evolutional law is far above the gods.

An early stage of that degeneration would be represented by total
incapacity to help ourselves;--then we should begin to lose the
use of our higher sense-organs;--later on, the brain would shrink
to a vanishing pin-point of matter;--still later we should
dwindle into mere amorphous sacs, mere blind stomachs. Such would
be the physical consequence of that kind of divine love which we
so lazily wish for. The longing for perpetual bliss in perpetual
peace might well seem a malevolent inspiration from the Lords of
Death and Darkness. All life that feels and thinks has been, and
can continue to be, only as the product of struggle and pain,--
only as the outcome of endless battle with the Powers of the
Universe. And cosmic law is uncompromising. Whatever organ ceases
to know pain,--whatever faculty ceases to be used under the
stimulus of pain,--must also cease to exist. Let pain and its
effort be suspended, and life must shrink back, first into
protoplasmic shapelessness, thereafter into dust.

Buddhism--which, in its own grand way, is a doctrine of
evolution--rationally proclaims its heaven but a higher stage of
development through pain, and teaches that even in paradise the
cessation of effort produces degradation. With equal
reasonableness it declares that the capacity for pain in the
superhuman world increases always in proportion to the capacity
for pleasure. (There is little fault to be found with this
teaching from a scientific standpoint,--since we know that higher
evolution must involve an increase of sensitivity to pain.) In
the Heavens of Desire, says the Shobo-nen-jo-kyo, the pain of
death is so great that all the agonies of all the hells united
could equal but one-sixteenth part of such pain.(1)

The foregoing comparison is unnecessarily strong; but the
Buddhist teaching about heaven is in substance eminently logical.
The suppression of pain--mental or physical,--in any conceivable
state of sentient existence, would necessarily involve the
suppression also of pleasure;--and certainly all progress,
whether moral or material, depends upon the power to meet and to
master pain. In a silkworm-paradise such as our mundane instincts
lead us to desire, the seraph freed from the necessity of toil,
and able to satisfy his every want at will, would lose his wings
at last, and sink back to the condition of a grub....

(1) This statement refers only to the Heavens of Sensuous
Pleasure,--not to the Paradise of Amida, nor to those heavens
into which one enters by the Apparitional Birth. But even in the
highest and most immaterial zones of being,--in the Heavens of
Formlessness,--the cessation of effort and of the pain of effort,
involves the penalty of rebirth in a lower state of existence.

III

I told the substance of my revery to Niimi. He used to be a great
reader of Buddhist books.

"Well," he said, "I was reminded of a queer Buddhist story by the
proverb that you asked me to explain,--The silkworm-moth eyebrow
of a woman is the axe that cuts down the wisdom of man. According
to our doctrine, the saying would be as true of life in heaven as
of life upon earth.... This is the story:--"When Shaka (1) dwelt
in this world, one of his disciples, called Nanda, was bewitched
by the beauty of a woman; and Shaka desired to save him from the
results of this illusion. So he took Nanda to a wild place in the
mountains where there were apes, and showed him a very ugly
female ape, and asked him: 'Which is the more beautiful, Nanda,
--the woman that you love, or this female ape?' 'Oh, Master!'
exclaimed Nanda, 'how can a lovely woman be compared with an ugly
ape?' 'Perhaps you will presently find reason to make the
comparison yourself,' answered the Buddha;--and instantly by
supernatural power he ascended with Nanda to the San-Jusan-Ten,
which is the Second of the Six Heavens of Desire. There, within a
palace of jewels, Nanda saw a multitude of heavenly maidens
celebrating some festival with music and dance; and the beauty of
the least among them incomparably exceeded that of the fairest
woman of earth. 'O Master,' cried Nanda, `what wonderful festival
is this?' 'Ask some of those people,' responded Shaka. So Nanda
questioned one of the celestial maidens; and she said to him:--
'This festival is to celebrate the good tidings that have been
brought to us. There is now in the human world, among the
disciples of Shaka, a most excellent youth called Nanda, who is
soon to be reborn into this heaven, and to become our bridegroom,
because of his holy life. We wait for him with rejoicing.' This
reply filled the heart of Nanda with delight. Then the Buddha
asked him: 'Is there any one among these maidens, Nanda, equal in
beauty to the woman with whom you have been in love?' 'Nay,
Master!' answered Nanda; 'even as that woman surpassed in beauty
the female ape that we saw on the mountain, so is she herself
surpassed by even the least among these.'

"Then the Buddha immediately descended with Nanda to the depths
of the hells, and took him into a torture-chamber where myriads
of men and women were being boiled alive in great caldrons, and
otherwise horribly tormented by devils. Then Nanda found himself
standing before a huge vessel which was filled with molten
metal;--and he feared and wondered because this vessel had as yet
no occupant. An idle devil sat beside it, yawning. 'Master,'
Nanda inquired of the Buddha, 'for whom has this vessel been
prepared?' 'Ask the devil,' answered Shaka. Nanda did so; and the
devil said to him: 'There is a man called Nanda,--now one of
Shaka's disciples,--about to be reborn into one of the heavens,
on account of his former good actions. But after having there
indulged himself, he is to be reborn in this hell; and his place
will be in that pot. I am waiting for him.'" (2)

(1) Sakyamuni.

(2) I give the story substantially as it was told to me; but I
have not been able to compare it with any published text. My
friend says that he has seen two Chinese versions,--one in the
Hongyo-kyo (?), the other in the Zoichi-agon-kyo (Ekottaragamas).
In Mr. Henry Clarke Warren's Buddhism in Translations (the most
interesting and valuable single volume of its kind that I have
ever seen), there is a Pali version of the legend, which differs
considerably from the above.--This Nanda, according to Mr.
Warren's work, was a prince, and the younger half-brother of
Sakyamuni.

A Passional Karma

One of the never-failing attractions of the Tokyo stage is the
performance, by the famous Kikugoro and his company, of the
Botan-Doro, or "Peony-Lantern." This weird play, of which the
scenes are laid in the middle of the last century, is the
dramatization of a romance by the novelist Encho, written in
colloquial Japanese, and purely Japanese in local color, though
inspired by a Chinese tale. I went to see the play; and Kikugoro
made me familiar with a new variety of the pleasure of fear.
"Why not give English readers the ghostly part of the story?"--
asked a friend who guides me betimes through the mazes of Eastern
philosophy. "It would serve to explain some popular ideas of the
supernatural which Western people know very little about. And I
could help you with the translation."

I gladly accepted the suggestion; and we composed the following
summary of the more extraordinary portion of Encho's romance.
Here and there we found it necessary to condense the original
narrative; and we tried to keep close to the text only in the
conversational passages,--some of which happen to possess a
particular quality of psychological interest.

***

--This is the story of the Ghosts in the Romance of the Peony-
Lantern:--

I

There once lived in the district of Ushigome, in Yedo, a hatamoto
(1) called Iijima Heizayemon, whose only daughter, Tsuyu, was
beautiful as her name, which signifies "Morning Dew." Iijima took
a second wife when his daughter was about sixteen; and, finding
that O-Tsuyu could not be happy with her mother-in-law, he had a
pretty villa built for the girl at Yanagijima, as a separate
residence, and gave her an excellent maidservant, called O-Yone,
to wait upon her.

O-Tsuyu lived happily enough in her new home until one day when
the family physician, Yamamoto Shijo, paid her a visit in company
with a young samurai named Hagiwara Shinzaburo, who resided in
the Nedzu quarter. Shinzaburo was an unusually handsome lad, and
very gentle; and the two young people fell in love with each
other at sight. Even before the brief visit was over, they
contrived,--unheard by the old doctor,--to pledge themselves to
each other for life. And, at parting, O-Tsuyu whispered to the
youth,--"Remember! If you do not come to see me again, I shall
certainly die!"

Shinzaburo never forgot those words; and he was only too eager to
see more of O-Tsuyu. But etiquette forbade him to make the visit
alone: he was obliged to wait for some other chance to accompany
the doctor, who had promised to take him to the villa a second
time. Unfortunately the old man did not keep this promise. He had
perceived the sudden affection of O-Tsuyu; and he feared that her
father would hold him responsible for any serious results. Iijima
Heizayemon had a reputation for cutting off heads. And the more
Shijo thought about the possible consequences of his introduction
of Shinzaburo at the Iijima villa, the more he became afraid.
Therefore he purposely abstained from calling upon his young
friend.

Months passed; and O-Tsuyu, little imagining the true cause of
Shinzaburo's neglect, believed that her love had been scorned.
Then she pined away, and died. Soon afterwards, the faithful
servant O-Yone also died, through grief at the loss of her
mistress; and the two were buried side by side in the cemetery of
Shin-Banzui-In,--a temple which still stands in the neighborhood
of Dango-Zaka, where the famous chrysanthemum-shows are yearly
held.

(1) The hatamoto were samurai forming the special military force
of the Shogun. The name literally signifies "Banner-Supporters."
These were the highest class of samurai,--not only as the
immediate vassals of the Shogun, but as a military aristocracy.

II

Shinzaburo knew nothing of what had happened; but his
disappointment and his anxiety had resulted in a prolonged
illness. He was slowly recovering, but still very weak, when he
unexpectedly received another visit from Yamamoto Shijo. The old
man made a number of plausible excuses for his apparent neglect.
Shinzaburo said to him:--"I have been sick ever since the
beginning of spring;--even now I cannot eat anything.... Was it
not rather unkind of you never to call? I thought that we were to
make another visit together to the house of the Lady Iijima; and
I wanted to take to her some little present as a return for our
kind reception. Of course I could not go by myself."

Shijo gravely responded,--"I am very sorry to tell you that the
young lady is dead!"

"Dead!" repeated Shinzaburo, turning white,--"did you say that
she is dead?"

The doctor remained silent for a moment, as if collecting
himself: then he resumed, in the quick light tone of a man
resolved not to take trouble seriously:--

"My great mistake was in having introduced you to her; for it
seems that she fell in love with you at once. I am afraid that
you must have said something to encourage this affection--when
you were in that little room together. At all events, I saw how
she felt towards you; and then I became uneasy,--fearing that her
father might come to hear of the matter, and lay the whole blame
upon me. So--to be quite frank with you,--I decided that it would
be better not to call upon you; and I purposely stayed away for a
long time. But, only a few days ago, happening to visit Iijima's
house, I heard, to my great surprise, that his daughter had died,
and that her servant O-Yone had also died. Then, remembering all
that had taken place, I knew that the young lady must have died
of love for you.... [Laughing] Ah, you are really a sinful
fellow! Yes, you are! [Laughing] Isn't it a sin to have been born
so handsome that the girls die for love of you? (1) [Seriously]
Well, we must leave the dead to the dead. It is no use to talk
further about the matter;--all that you now can do for her is to
repeat the Nembutsu (2).... Good-bye."

And the old man retired hastily,--anxious to avoid further
converse about the painful event for which he felt himself to
have been unwittingly responsible.

(1) Perhaps this conversation may seem strange to the Western
reader; but it is true to life. The whole of the scene is
characteristically Japanese.
(2) The invocation Namu Amida Butsu! ("Hail to the Buddha
Amitabha!"),--repeated, as a prayer, for the sake of the dead.

III

Shinzaburo long remained stupefied with grief by the news of O-
Tsuyu's death. But as soon as he found himself again able to
think clearly, he inscribed the dead girl's name upon a mortuary
tablet, and placed the tablet in the Buddhist shrine of his
house, and set offerings before it, and recited prayers. Every
day thereafter he presented offerings, and repeated the Nembutsu;
and the memory of O-Tsuyu was never absent from his thought.

Nothing occurred to change the monotony of his solitude before
the time of the Bon,--the great Festival of the Dead,--which
begins upon the thirteenth day of the seventh month. Then he
decorated his house, and prepared everything for the festival;--
hanging out the lanterns that guide the returning spirits, and
setting the food of ghosts on the shoryodana, or Shelf of Souls.
And on the first evening of the Ban, after sun-down, he kindled a
small lamp before the tablet of O-Tsuyu, and lighted the
lanterns.

The night was clear, with a great moon,--and windless, and very
warm. Shinzaburo sought the coolness of his veranda. Clad only in
a light summer-robe, he sat there thinking, dreaming, sorrowing;
--sometimes fanning himself; sometimes making a little smoke to
drive the mosquitoes away. Everything was quiet. It was a
lonesome neighborhood, and there were few passers-by. He could
hear only the soft rushing of a neighboring stream, and the
shrilling of night-insects.

But all at once this stillness was broken by a sound of women's
geta (1) approaching--kara-kon, kara-kon;--and the sound drew
nearer and nearer, quickly, till it reached the live-hedge
surrounding the garden. Then Shinzaburoe, feeling curious, stood
on tiptoe, so as to look Over the hedge; and he saw two women
passing. One, who was carrying a beautiful lantern decorated with
peony-flowers,(2) appeared to be a servant;--the other was a
slender girl of about seventeen, wearing a long-sleeved robe
embroidered with designs of autumn-blossoms. Almost at the same
instant both women turned their faces toward Shinzaburo;--and to
his utter astonishment, he recognized O-Tsuyu and her servant O-
Yone.

They stopped immediately; and the girl cried out,--"Oh, how
strange!... Hagiwara Sama!"

Shinzaburo simultaneously called to the maid:--"O-Yone! Ah, you
are O-Yone!--I remember you very well."

"Hagiwara Sama!" exclaimed O-Yone in a tone of supreme amazement.
"Never could I have believed it possible!... Sir, we were told
that you had died."

"How extraordinary!" cried Shinzaburo. "Why, I was told that both
of you were dead!"

"Ah, what a hateful story!" returned O-Yone. "Why repeat such
unlucky words?... Who told you?"

"Please to come in," said Shinzaburo;--"here we can talk better.
The garden-gate is open."

So they entered, and exchanged greeting; and when Shinzaburo had
made them comfortable, he said:--

"I trust that you will pardon my discourtesy in not having called
upon you for so long a time. But Shijo, the doctor, about a month
ago, told me that you had both died."

"So it was he who told you?" exclaimed O-Yone. "It was very
wicked of him to say such a thing. Well, it was also Shijo who
told us that you were dead. I think that he wanted to deceive
you,--which was not a difficult thing to do, because you are so
confiding and trustful. Possibly my mistress betrayed her liking
for you in some words which found their way to her father's ears;
and, in that case, O-Kuni--the new wife--might have planned to
make the doctor tell you that we were dead, so as to bring about
a separation. Anyhow, when my mistress heard that you had died,
she wanted to cut off her hair immediately, and to become a nun.
But I was able to prevent her from cutting off her hair; and I
persuaded her at last to become a nun only in her heart.
Afterwards her father wished her to marry a certain young man;
and she refused. Then there was a great deal of trouble,--chiefly
caused by O-Kuni;--and we went away from the villa, and found a
very small house in Yanaka-no-Sasaki. There we are now just
barely able to live, by doing a little private work.... My
mistress has been constantly repeating the Nembutsu for your
sake. To-day, being the first day of the Bon, we went to visit
the temples; and we were on our way home--thus late--when this
strange meeting happened."

"Oh, how extraordinary!" cried Shinzaburo. "Can it be true?-or is
it only a dream? Here I, too, have been constantly reciting the
Nembutsu before a tablet with her name upon it! Look!" And he
showed them O-Tsuyu's tablet in its place upon the Shelf of
Souls.

"We are more than grateful for your kind remembrance," returned
O-Yone, smiling.... "Now as for my mistress,"--she continued,
turning towards O-Tsuyu, who had all the while remained demure
and silent, half-hiding her face with her sleeve,--"as for my
mistress, she actually says that she would not mind being
disowned by her father for the time of seven existences,(3) or
even being killed by him, for your sake! Come! will you not allow
her to stay here to-night?"

Shinzaburo turned pale for joy. He answered in a voice trembling
with emotion:--"Please remain; but do not speak loud--because
there is a troublesome fellow living close by,--a ninsomi (4)
called Hakuodo Yusai, who tells peoples fortunes by looking at
their faces. He is inclined to be curious; and it is better that
he should not know."

The two women remained that night in the house of the young
samurai, and returned to their own home a little before daybreak.
And after that night they came every nighht for seven nights,--
whether the weather were foul or fair,--always at the same hour.
And Shinzaburo became more and more attached to the girl; and the
twain were fettered, each to each, by that bond of illusion which
is stronger than bands of iron.

1 Komageta in the original. The geta is a wooden sandal, or clog,
of which there are many varieties,--some decidedly elegant. The
komageta, or "pony-geta" is so-called because of the sonorous
hoof-like echo which it makes on hard ground.

2 The sort of lantern here referred to is no longer made; and its
shape can best be understood by a glance at the picture
accompanying this story. It was totally unlike the modern
domestic band-lantern, painted with the owner's crest; but it was
not altogether unlike some forms of lanterns still manufactured
for the Festival of the Dead, and called Bon-doro. The flowers
ornamenting it were not painted: they were artificial flowers of
crepe-silk, and were attached to the top of the lantern.

3 "For the time of seven existences,"--that is to say, for the
time of seven successive lives. In Japanese drama and romance it
is not uncommon to represent a father as disowning his child "for
the time of seven lives." Such a disowning is called shichi-sho
made no mando, a disinheritance for seven lives,--signifying that
in six future lives after the present the erring son or daughter
will continue to feel the parental displeasure.

4 The profession is not yet extinct. The ninsomi uses a kind of
magnifying glass (or magnifying-mirror sometimes), called
tengankyo or ninsomegane.

IV

Now there was a man called Tomozo, who lived in a small cottage
adjoining Shinzaburo's residence, Tomozo and his wife O-Mine were
both employed by Shinzaburo as servants. Both seemed to be
devoted to their young master; and by his help they were able to
live in comparative comfort.

One night, at a very late hour, Tomozo heard the voice of a woman
in his master's apartment; and this made him uneasy. He feared
that Shinzaburo, being very gentle and affectionate, might be
made the dupe of some cunning wanton,--in which event the
domestics would be the first to suffer. He therefore resolved to
watch; and on the following night he stole on tiptoe to
Shinzaburo's dwelling, and looked through a chink in one of the
sliding shutters. By the glow of a night-lantern within the
sleeping-room, he was able to perceive that his master and a
strange woman were talking together under the mosquito-net. At
first he could not see the woman distinctly. Her back was turned
to him;--he only observed that she was very slim, and that she
appeared to be very young,--judging from the fashion of her dress
and hair.(1) Putting his ear to the chink, he could hear the
conversation plainly. The woman said:--

"And if I should be disowned by my father, would you then let me
come and live with you?"

Shinzaburo answered:--

"Most assuredly I would--nay, I should be
glad of the chance. But there is no reason to fear that you will
ever be disowned by your father; for you are his only daughter,
and he loves you very much. What I do fear is that some day we
shall be cruelly separated."

She responded softly:--

"Never, never could I even think of accepting any other man for
my husband. Even if our secret were to become known, and my
father were to kill me for what I have done, still--after death
itself--I could never cease to think of you. And I am now quite
sure that you yourself would not be able to live very long
without me."... Then clinging closely to him, with her lips at
his neck, she caressed him; and he returned her caresses.

Tomozo wondered as he listened,--because the language of the
woman was not the language of a common woman, but the language of
a lady of rank.(2) Then he determined at all hazards to get one
glimpse of her face; and he crept round the house, backwards and
forwards, peering through every crack and chink. And at last he
was able to see;--but therewith an icy trembling seized him; and
the hair of his head stood up.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9