Chapter EIGHT: From Hoki to Oki (3)

There is very little privacy of any sort in Japanese life. Among the people, indeed, what we term privacy in the Occident does not exist. There are only walls of paper dividing the lives of men; there are only sliding screens instead of doors; there are neither locks nor bolts to be used by day; and whenever weather permits, the fronts, and perhaps even the sides of the house are literally removed, and its interior widely opened to the air, the light, and the public gaze. Not even the rich man closes his front gate by day. Within a hotel or even a common dwelling-house, nobody knocks before entering your room: there is nothing to knock at except a shoji or fusuma, which cannot be knocked upon without being broken. And in this world of paper walls and sunshine, nobody is afraid or ashamed of fellow-men or fellow-women. Whatever is done, is done, after a fashion, in public. Your personal habits, your idiosyncrasies (if you have any), your foibles, your likes and dislikes, your loves or your hates, must be known to everybody. Neither vices nor virtues can be hidden: there is absolutely nowhere to hide them. And this condition has lasted from the most ancient time. There has never been, for the common millions at least, even the idea of living unobserved. Life can be comfortably and happily lived in Japan only upon the condition that all matters relating to it are open to the inspection of the community. Which implies exceptional moral conditions, such as have no being in the West. It is perfectly comprehensible only to those who know by experience the extraordinary charm of Japanese character, the infinite goodness of the common people, their instinctive politeness, and the absence among them of any tendencies to indulge in criticism, ridicule, irony, or sarcasm. No one endeavours to expand his own individuality by belittling his fellow; no one tries to make himself appear a superior being: any such attempt would be vain in a community where the weaknesses of each are known to all, where nothing can be concealed or disguised, and where affectation could only be regarded as a mild form of insanity.

Sec. 33

Some of the old samurai of Matsue are living in the Oki Islands. When the great military caste was disestablished, a few shrewd men decided to try their fortunes in the little archipelago, where customs remained old-fashioned and lands were cheap. Several succeeded--probably because of the whole-souled honesty and simplicity of manners in the islands; for samurai have seldom elsewhere been able to succeed in business of any sort when obliged to compete with experienced traders, Others failed, but were able to adopt various humble occupations which gave them the means to live.

Besides these aged survivors of the feudal period, I learned there were in Oki several children of once noble families--youths and maidens of illustrious extraction--bravely facing the new conditions of life in this remotest and poorest region of the empire. Daughters of men to whom the population of a town once bowed down were learning the bitter toil of the rice-fields. Youths, who might in another era have aspired to offices of State, had become the trusted servants of Oki heimin. Others, again, had entered the police, [17] and rightly deemed themselves fortunate.

No doubt that change of civilisation forced upon Japan by Christian bayonets, for the holy motive of gain, may yet save the empire from perils greater than those of the late social disintegration; but it was cruelly sudden. To imagine the consequence of depriving the English landed gentry of their revenues would not enable one to realise exactly what a similar privation signified to the Japanese samurai. For the old warrior caste knew only the arts of courtesy and the arts of war.

And hearing of these things, I could not help thinking about a strange pageant at the last great Izumo festival of Rakuzan-jinja.

Sec. 34

The hamlet of Rakuzan, known only for its bright yellow pottery and its little Shinto temple, drowses at the foot of a wooded hill about one ri from Matsue, beyond a wilderness of rice-fields. And the deity of Rakuzan-jinja is Naomasa, grandson of Iyeyasu, and father of the Daimyo of Matsue.

Some of the Matsudaira slumber in Buddhist ground, guarded by tortoises and lions of stone, in the marvellous old courts of Gesshoji. But Naomasa, the founder of their long line, is enshrined at Rakuzan; and the Izumo peasants still clap their hands in prayer before his miya, and implore his love and protection.

Now formerly upon each annual matsuri, or festival, of Rakuzan-jinja, it was customary to carry the miya of Naomasa-San from the village temple to the castle of Matsue. In solemn procession it was borne to .those strange old family temples in the heart of the fortress-grounds--Go-jo- naiInari-Daimyojin, and Kusunoki-Matauhira-Inari-Daimyojin--whose mouldering courts, peopled with lions and foxes of stone, are shadowed by enormous trees. After certain Shinto rites had been performed at both temples, the miya was carried back in procession to Rakuzan. And this annual ceremony was called the miyuki or togyo--'the August Going,' or Visit, of the ancestor to the ancestral home.

But the revolution changed all things. The daimyo passed away; the castles fell to ruin; the samurai caste was abolished and dispossessed. And the miya of Lord Naomasa made no August Visit to the home of the Mataudaira for more than thirty years.

But it came to pass a little time ago, that certain old men of Matsue bethought them to revive once more the ancient customs of the Rakuzan matauri. And there was a miyuki.

The miya of Lord Naomasa was placed within a barge, draped and decorated, and so conveyed by river and canal to the eastern end of the old Mataubara road, along whose pine-shaded way the daimyo formerly departed to Yedo on their annual visit, or returned therefrom. All those who rowed the barge were aged samurai who had been wont in their youth to row the barge of Matsudaira-Dewa-no-Kami, the last Lord of Izumo. They wore their ancient feudal costume; and they tried to sing their ancient boat-song--o-funa-uta. But more than a generation had passed since the last time they had sung it; and some of them had lost their teeth, so that they could not pronounce the words well; and all, being aged, lost breath easily in the exertion of wielding the oars. Nevertheless they rowed the barge to the place appointed.

Thence the shrine was borne to a spot by the side of the Mataubara road, where anciently stood an August Tea-House, O-Chaya, at which the daimyo, returning from the Shogun's capital, were accustomed to rest and to receive their faithful retainers, who always came in procession to meet them. No tea-house stands there now; but, in accord with old custom, the shrine and its escort waited at the place among the wild flowers and the pines. And then was seen a strange sight.

For there came to meet the ghost of the great lord a long procession of shapes that seemed ghosts also--shapes risen out of the dust of cemeteries: warriors in created helmets and masks of iron and breastplates of steel, girded with two swords; and spearmen wearing queues; and retainers in kamishimo; and bearers of hasami-bako. Yet ghosts these were not, but aged samurai of Matsue, who had borne arms in the service of the last of the daimyo. And among them appeared his surviving ministers, the venerable karo; and these, as the procession turned city-ward, took their old places of honour, and marched before the shrine valiantly, though bent with years.

How that pageant might have impressed other strangers I do not know. For me, knowing something of the history of each of those aged men, the scene had a significance apart from its story of forgotten customs, apart from its interest as a feudal procession. To-day each and all of those old samurai are unspeakably poor. Their beautiful homes vanished long ago; their gardens have been turned into rice-fields; their household treasures were cruelly bargained for, and bought for almost nothing by curio-dealers to be resold at high prices to foreigners at the open ports. And yet what they could have obtained considerable money for, and what had ceased to be of any service to them, they clung to fondly through all their poverty and humiliation. Never could they be induced to part with their armour and their swords, even when pressed by direst want, under the new and harder conditions of existence.

The river banks, the streets, the balconies, and blue-tiled roofs were thronged. There was a great quiet as the procession passed. Young people gazed in hushed wonder, feeling the rare worth of that chance to look upon what will belong in the future to picture-books only and to the quaint Japanese stage. And old men wept silently, remembering their youth.

Well spake the ancient thinker: 'Everything is only for a day, both that which remembers, and that which is remembered.'

Sec. 35

Once more, homeward bound, I sat upon the cabin-roof of the Oki-Saigo-- this time happily unencumbered by watermelons--and tried to explain to myself the feeling of melancholy with which I watched those wild island- coasts vanishing over the pale sea into the white horizon. No doubt it was inspired partly by the recollection of kindnesses received from many whom I shall never meet again; partly, also, by my familiarity with the ancient soil itself, and remembrance of shapes and places: the long blue visions down channels between islands--the faint grey fishing hamlets hiding in stony bays--the elfish oddity of narrow streets in little primitive towns--the forms and tints of peak and vale made lovable by daily intimacy--the crooked broken paths to shadowed shrines of gods with long mysterious names--the butterfly-drifting of yellow sails out of the glow of an unknown horizon. Yet I think it was due much more to a particular sensation in which every memory was steeped and toned, as a landscape is steeped in the light and toned in the colours of the morning: the sensation of conditions closer to Nature's heart, and farther from the monstrous machine-world of Western life than any into which I had ever entered north of the torrid zone. And then it seemed to me that I loved Oki--in spite of the cuttlefish--chiefly because of having felt there, as nowhere else in Japan, the full joy of escape from the far-reaching influences of high-pressure civilisation--the delight of knowing one's self, in Dozen at least, well beyond the range of everything artificial in human existence.

Chapter Nine Of Souls

Kinjuro, the ancient gardener, whose head shines like an ivory ball, sat him down a moment on the edge of the ita-no-ma outside my study to smoke his pipe at the hibachi always left there for him. And as he smoked he found occasion to reprove the boy who assists him. What the boy had been doing I did not exactly know; but I heard Kinjuro bid him try to comport himself like a creature having more than one Soul. And because those words interested me I went out and sat down by Kinjuro.

'O Kinjuro,' I said, 'whether I myself have one or more Souls I am not sure. But it would much please me to learn how many Souls have you.'

'I-the-Selfish-One have only four Souls,' made answer Kinjuro, with conviction imperturbable.

'Four? re-echoed I, feeling doubtful of having understood 'Four,' he repeated. 'But that boy I think can have only one Soul, so much is he wanting in patience.'

'And in what manner,' I asked, 'came you to learn that you have four Souls?'

'There are wise men,' made he answer, while knocking the ashes out of his little silver pipe, 'there are wise men who know these things. And there is an ancient book which discourses of them. According to the age of a man, and the time of his birth, and the stars of heaven, may the number of his Souls be divined. But this is the knowledge of old men: the young folk of these times who learn the things of the West do not believe.'

'And tell me, O Kinjuro, do there now exist people having more Souls than you?'

'Assuredly. Some have five, some six, some seven, some eight Souls. But no one is by the gods permitted to have more Souls than nine.'

[Now this, as a universal statement, I could not believe, remembering a woman upon the other side of the world who possessed many generations of Souls, and knew how to use them all. She wore her Souls just as other women wear their dresses, and changed them several times a day; and the multitude of dresses in the wardrobe of Queen Elizabeth was as nothing to the multitude of this wonderful person's Souls. For which reason she never appeared the same upon two different occasions; and she changed her thought and her voice with her Souls. Sometimes she was of the South, and her eyes were brown; and again she was of the North, and her eyes were grey. Sometimes she was of the thirteenth, and sometimes of the eighteenth century; and people doubted their own senses when they saw these things; and they tried to find out the truth by begging photographs of her, and then comparing them. Now the photographers rejoiced to photograph her because she was more than fair; but presently they also were confounded by the discovery that she was never the same subject twice. So the men who most admired her could not presume to fall in love with her because that would have been absurd. She had altogether too many Souls. And some of you who read this I have written will bear witness to the verity thereof.]

'Concerning this Country of the Gods, O Kinjuro, that which you say may be true. But there are other countries having only gods made of gold; and in those countries matters are not so well arranged; and the inhabitants thereof are plagued with a plague of Souls. For while some have but half a Soul, or no Soul at all, others have Souls in multitude thrust upon them, for which neither nutriment nor employ can be found. And Souls thus situated torment exceedingly their owners. . . . .That is to say, Western Souls. . . . But tell me, I pray you, what is the use of having more than one or two Souls?'

'Master, if all had the same number and quality of Souls, all would surely be of one mind. But that people are different from each other is apparent; and the differences among them are because of the differences in the quality and the number of their Souls.'

'And it is better to have many Souls than a few?' 'It is better.'

'And the man having but one Soul is a being imperfect?'

'Very imperfect.'

'Yet a man very imperfect might have had an ancestor perfect?'

'That is true.'

'So that a man of to-day possessing but one Soul may have had an ancestor with nine Souls?'

'Yes.'

'Then what has become of those other eight Souls which the ancestor possessed, but which the descendant is without?'

'Ah! that is the work of the gods. The gods alone fix the number of Souls for each of us. To the worthy are many given; to the unworthy few.'

'Not from the parents, then, do the Souls descend?'

'Nay! Most ancient the Souls are: innumerable, the years of them.'

'And this I desire to know: Can a man separate his Souls? Can he, for instance, have one Soul in Kyoto and one in Tokyo and one in Matsue, all at the same time?'

'He cannot; they remain always together.'

'How? One within the other--like the little lacquered boxes of an inro?'

'Nay: that none but the gods know.'

'And the Souls are never separated?'

'Sometimes they may be separated. But if the Souls of a man be separated, that man becomes mad. Mad people are those who have lost one of their Souls.'

'But after death what becomes of the Souls?'

'They remain still together. . . . When a man dies his Souls ascend to the roof of the house. And they stay upon the roof for the space of nine and forty days.'

'On what part of the roof?'

'On the yane-no-mune--upon the Ridge of the Roof they stay.'

'Can they be seen?'

'Nay: they are like the air is. To and fro upon the Ridge of the Roof they move, like a little wind.'

'Why do they not stay upon the roof for fifty days instead of forty- nine?'

'Seven weeks is the time allotted them before they must depart: seven weeks make the measure of forty-nine days. But why this should be, I cannot tell.'

I was not unaware of the ancient belief that the spirit of a dead man haunts for a time the roof of his dwelling, because it is referred to quite impressively in many Japanese dramas, among others in the play called Kagami-yama, which makes the people weep. But I had not before heard of triplex and quadruplex and other yet more highly complex Souls; and I questioned Kinjuro vainly in the hope of learning the authority for his beliefs. They were the beliefs of his fathers: that was all he knew. [1]

Like most Izumo folk, Kinjuro was a Buddhist as well as a Shintoist. As the former he belonged to the Zen-shu, as the latter to the Izumo- Taisha. Yet his ontology seemed to me not of either. Buddhism does not teach the doctrine of compound-multiple Souls. There are old Shinto books inaccessible to the multitude which speak of a doctrine very remotely akin to Kinjuro's; but Kinjuro had never seen them. Those books say that each of us has two souls--the Ara-tama or Rough Soul, which is vindictive; and the Nigi-tama, or Gentle Soul, which is all-forgiving. Furthermore, we are all possessed by the spirit of Oho-maga-tsu-hi-no- Kami, the 'Wondrous Deity of Exceeding Great Evils'; also by the spirit of Oho-naho-bi-no-Kami, the 'Wondrous Great Rectifying Deity,' a counteracting influence. These were not exactly the ideas of Kinjuro. But I remembered something Hirata wrote which reminded me of Kinjuro's words about a possible separation of souls. Hirata's teaching was that the ara-tama of a man may leave his body, assume his shape, and without his knowledge destroy a hated enemy. So I asked Kinjuro about it. He said he had never heard of a nigi-tama or an ara-tama; but he told me this:

'Master, when a man has been discovered by his wife to be secretly enamoured of another, it sometimes happens that the guilty woman is seized with a sickness that no physician can cure. For one of the Souls of the wife, moved exceedingly by anger, passes into the body of that woman to destroy her. But the wife also sickens, or loses her mind awhile, because of the absence of her Soul.

'And there is another and more wonderful thing known to us of Nippon, which you, being of the West, may never have heard. By the power of the gods, for a righteous purpose, sometimes a Soul may be withdrawn a little while from its body, and be made to utter its most secret thought. But no suffering to the body is then caused. And the wonder is wrought in this wise:

'A man loves a beautiful girl whom he is at liberty to marry; but he doubts whether he can hope to make her love him in return. He seeks the kannushi of a certain Shinto temple, [2] and tells of his doubt, and asks the aid of the gods to solve it. Then the priests demand, not his name, but his age and the year and day and hour of his birth, which they write down for the gods to know; and they bid the man return to the temple after the space of seven days.

'And during those seven days the priests offer prayer to the gods that the doubt may be solved; and one of them each morning bathes all his body in cold, pure water, and at each repast eats only food prepared with holy fire. And on the eighth day the man returns to the temple, and enters an inner chamber where the priests receive him.

'A ceremony is performed, and certain prayers are said, after which all wait in silence. And then, the priest who has performed the rites of purification suddenly begins to tremble violently in all his body, like one trembling with a great fever. And this is because, by the power of the gods, the Soul of the girl whose love is doubted has entered, all fearfully, into the body of that priest. She does not know; for at that time, wherever she may be, she is in a deep sleep from which nothing can arouse her. But her Soul, having been summoned into the body of the priest, can speak nothing save the truth; and It is made to tell all Its thought. And the priest speaks not with his own voice, but with the voice of the Soul; and he speaks in the person of the Soul, saying: "I love," or "I hate," according as the truth may be, and in the language of women. If there be hate, then the reason of the hate is spoken; but if the answer be of love, there is little to say. And then the trembling of the priest stops, for the Soul passes from him; and he falls forward upon his face like one dead, and long so--remains.

'Tell me, Kinjuro,' I asked, after all these queer things had been related to me, 'have you yourself ever known of a Soul being removed by the power of the gods, and placed in the heart of a priest?'

'Yes: I myself have known it.'

I remained silent and waited. The old man emptied his little pipe, threw it down beside the hibachi, folded his hands, and looked at the lotus- flowers for some time before he spoke again. Then he smiled and said:

'Master, I married when I was very young. For many years we had no children: then my wife at last gave me a son, and became a Buddha. But my son lived and grew up handsome and strong; and when the Revolution came, he joined the armies of the Son of Heaven; and he died the death of a man in the great war of the South, in Kyushu. I loved him; and I wept with joy when I heard that he had been able to die for our Sacred Emperor: since there is no more noble death for the son of a samurai. So they buried my boy far away from me in Kyushu, upon a hill near Kumamoto, which is a famous city with a strong garrison; and I went there to make his tomb beautiful. But his name is here also, in Ninomaru, graven on the monument to the men of Izumo who fell in the good fight for loyalty and honour in our emperor's holy cause; and when I see his name there, my heart laughs, and I speak to him, and then it seems as if he were walking beside me again, under the great pines. . . But all that is another matter.

'I sorrowed for my wife. All the years we had dwelt together no unkind word had ever been uttered between us. And when she died, I thought never to marry again. But after two more years had passed, my father and mother desired a daughter in the house, and they told me of their wish, and of a girl who was beautiful and of good family, though poor. The family were of our kindred, and the girl was their only support: she wove garments of silk and garments of cotton, and for this she received but little money. And because she was filial and comely, and our kindred not fortunate, my parents desired that I should marry her and help her people; for in those days we had a small income of rice. Then, being accustomed to obey my parents, I suffered them to do what they thought best. So the nakodo was summoned, and the arrangements for the wedding began.

'Twice I was able to see the girl in the house of her parents. And I thought myself fortunate the first time I looked upon her; for she was very comely and young. But the second time, I perceived she had been weeping, and that her eyes avoided mine. Then my heart sank; for I thought: She dislikes me; and they are forcing her to this thing. Then I resolved to question the gods; and I caused the marriage to be delayed; and I went to the temple of Yanagi-no-Inari-Sama, which is in the Street Zaimokucho.

'And when the trembling came upon him, the priest, speaking with the Soul of that maid, declared to me: "My heart hates you, and the sight of your face gives me sickness, because I love another, and because this marriage is forced upon me. Yet though my heart hates you, I must marry you because my parents are poor and old, and I alone cannot long continue to support them, for my work is killing me. But though I may strive to be a dutiful wife, there never will be gladness in your house because of me; for my heart hates you with a great and lasting hate; and the sound of your voice makes a sickness in my breast (koe kiite mo mune ga waruku naru); and only to see your face makes me wish that I were dead (kao miru to shinitaku naru)."

'Thus knowing the truth, I told it to my parents; and I wrote a letter of kind words to the maid, praying pardon for the pain I had unknowingly caused her; and I feigned long illness, that the marriage might be broken off without gossip; and we made a gift to that family; and the maid was glad. For she was enabled at a later time to marry the young man she loved. My parents never pressed me again to take a wife; and since their death I have lived alone. . . . O Master, look upon the extreme wickedness of that boy!'

Taking advantage of our conversation, Kinjuro's young assistant had improvised a rod and line with a bamboo stick and a bit of string; and had fastened to the end of the string a pellet of tobacco stolen from the old man's pouch. With this bait he had been fishing in the lotus pond; and a frog had swallowed it, and was now suspended high above the pebbles, sprawling in rotary motion, kicking in frantic spasms of disgust and despair. 'Kaji!' shouted the gardener.

The boy dropped his rod with a laugh, and ran to us unabashed; while the frog, having disgorged the tobacco, plopped back into the lotus pond. Evidently Kaji was not afraid of scoldings.

'Gosho ga waruil' declared the old man, shaking his ivory head. 'O Kaji, much I fear that your next birth will be bad! Do I buy tobacco for frogs? Master, said I not rightly this boy has but one Soul?'