Chapter IX: Act IV: Scene: Interior of Ichirō's house. Three persons kneeling in (3)

Before, and very probably since, the apparition of Man, various races of huge and wonderful creatures, now extinct, lived on this planet. They were not all exterminated by the attacks of natural enemies: many seem to have perished simply by reason of the enormous costliness of their structures at a time when the earth was forced to become less prodigal of her gifts. Even so it may be that the Western Races will perish--because of the cost of their existence. Having accomplished their uttermost, they may vanish from the face of the world,--supplanted by peoples better fitted for survival.

Just as we have exterminated feebler races by merely _overliving_ them,--by monopolizing and absorbing, almost without conscious effort, everything necessary to their happiness,--so may we ourselves be exterminated at last by races capable of underliving us, of monopolizing all our necessities; races more patient, more self-denying, more fertile, and much less expensive for Nature to support. These would doubtless inherit our wisdom, adopt our more useful inventions, continue the best of our industries,--perhaps even perpetuate what is most worthy to endure in our sciences and our arts. But they would scarcely regret our disappearance any more than we ourselves regret the extinction of the dinotherium or the ichthyosaurus.

VIII

THE RED BRIDAL

Falling in love at first sight is less common in Japan than in the West; partly because of the peculiar constitution of Eastern society, and partly because much sorrow is prevented by early marriages which parents arrange. Love suicides, on the other hand, are not infrequent; but they have the particularity of being nearly always double. Moreover, they must be considered, in the majority of instances, the results of improper relationships. Still, there are honest and brave exceptions; and these occur usually in country districts. The love in such a tragedy may have evolved suddenly out of the most innocent and natural boy-and-girl friendship, and may have a history dating back to the childhood of the victims. But even then there remains a very curious difference between a Western double suicide for love and a Japanese jōshi. The Oriental suicide is not the result of a blind, quick frenzy of pain. It is not only cool and methodical: it is sacramental. It involves a marriage of which the certificate is death. The twain pledge themselves to each other in the presence of the gods, write their farewell letters, and die. No pledge can be more profoundly sacred than this. And therefore, if it should happen that, by sudden outside interference and by medical skill, one of the pair is snatched from death, that one is bound by the most solemn obligation of love and honor to cast away life at the first possible opportunity. Of course, if both are saved, all may go well. But it were better to commit any crime of violence punishable with half a hundred years of state prison than to become known as a man who, after pledging his faith to die with a girl, had left her to travel to the Meido alone. The woman who should fail in her vow might be partially forgiven; but the man who survived a jōshi through interference, and allowed himself to live on because his purpose was once frustrated, would be regarded all his mortal days as a perjurer, a murderer, a bestial coward, a disgrace to human nature. I knew of one such case--but I would now rather try to tell the story of an humble love affair which happened at a village in one of the eastern provinces.

I

The village stands on the bank of a broad but very shallow river, the stony bed of which is completely covered with water only during the rainy season. The river traverses an immense level of rice-fields, open to the horizon north and south, but on the west walled in by a range of blue peaks, and on the east by a chain of low wooded hills. The village itself is separated from these hills only by half a mile of rice-fields; and its principal cemetery, the adjunct of a Buddhist temple dedicated to Kwannon-of-the-Eleven-Faces, is situated upon a neighboring summit. As a distributing centre, the village is not unimportant. Besides several hundred thatched dwellings of the ordinary rustic style, it contains one whole street of thriving two-story shops and inns with handsome tiled roofs. It possesses also a very picturesque ujigami, or Shintō parish temple, dedicated to the Sun-Goddess, and a pretty shrine, in a grove of mulberry-trees, dedicated to the Deity of Silkworms.

There was born in this village, in the seventh year of Meiji, in the house of one Uchida, a dyer, a boy called Tarō. His birthday happened to be an aku-nichi, or unlucky day,--the seventh of the eighth month, by the ancient Calendar of Moons. Therefore his parents, being old-fashioned folk, feared and sorrowed. But sympathizing neighbors tried to persuade them that everything was as it should be, because the calendar had been changed by the Emperor's order, and according to the new calendar the day was a kitsu-nichi, or lucky day. These representations somewhat lessened the anxiety of the parents; but when they took the child to the ujigami, they made the gods a gift of a very large paper lantern, and besought earnestly that all harm should be kept away from their boy. The kannushi, or priest, repeated the archaic formulas required, and waved the sacred gohei above the little shaven head, and prepared a small amulet to be suspended about the infant's neck; after which the parents visited the temple of Kwannon on the hill, and there also made offerings, and prayed to all the Buddhas to protect their first-born.

II

When Tarō was six years old, his parents decided to send him to the new elementary school which had been built at a short distance from the village. Tarō's grandfather bought him some writing-brushes, paper, a book, and a slate, and early one morning led him by the hand to the school. Tarō felt very happy, because the slate and the other things delighted him like so many new toys, and because everybody had told him that the school was a pleasant place, where he would have plenty of time to play. Moreover, his mother had promised to give him many cakes when he should come home.

As soon as they reached the school,--a big two-story building with glass windows,--a servant showed them into a large bare apartment, where a serious-looking man was seated at a desk. Tarō's grandfather bowed low to the serious-looking man, and addressed him as Sensei, and humbly requested him to teach the little fellow kindly. The Sensei rose up, and bowed in return, and spoke courteously to the old man. He also put his hand on Tarō's head, and said nice things. But Taro became all at once afraid. When his grandfather had bid him good-by, he grew still more afraid, and would have liked to run away home; but the master took him into a large, high, white room, full of girls and boys sitting on benches, and showed him a bench, and told him to sit down. All the boys and girls turned their heads to look at Tarō, and whispered to each other, and laughed. Tarō thought they were laughing at him, and began to feel very miserable. A big bell rang; and the master, who had taken his place on a high platform at the other end of the room, ordered silence in a tremendous way that terrified Tarō. All became quiet, and the master began to speak. Tarō thought he spoke most dreadfully. He did not say that school was a pleasant place: he told the pupils very plainly that it was not a place for play, but for hard work. He told them that study was painful, but that they must study in spite of the pain and the difficulty. He told them about the rules which they must obey, and about the punishments for disobedience or carelessness. When they all became frightened and still, he changed his voice altogether, and began to talk to them like a kind father,--promising to love them just like his own little ones. Then he told them how the school had been built by the august command of His Imperial Majesty, that the boys and girls of the country might become wise men and good women, and how dearly they should love their noble Emperor, and be happy even to give their lives for his sake. Also he told them how they should love their parents, and how hard their parents had to work for the means of sending them to school, and how wicked and ungrateful it would be to idle during study-hours. Then he began to call them each by name, asking questions about what he had said.

Tarō had heard only a part of the master's discourse. His small mind was almost entirely occupied by the fact that all the boys and girls had looked at him and laughed when he had first entered the room. And the mystery of it all was so painful to him that he could think of little else, and was therefore quite unprepared when the master called his name.

"Uchida Tarō, what do you like best in the world?"

Tarō started, stood up, and answered frankly,--

"Cake."

All the boys and girls again looked at him and laughed; and the master asked reproachfully, "Uchida Tarō, do you like cake more than you like your parents? Uchida Tarō, do you like cake better than your duty to His Majesty our Emperor?"

Then Tarō knew that he had made some great mistake; and his face became very hot, and all the children laughed, and he began to cry. This only made them laugh still more; and they kept on laughing until the master again enforced silence, and put a similar question to the next pupil. Tarō kept his sleeve to his eyes, and sobbed.

The bell rang. The master told the children they would receive their first writing-lesson during the next class-hour from another teacher, but that they could first go out and play for a while. He then left the room; and the boys and girls all ran out into the school-yard to play, taking no notice whatever of Tarō. The child felt more astonished at being thus ignored than he had felt before on finding himself an object of general attention. Nobody except the master had yet spoken one word to him; and now even the master seemed to have forgotten his existence. He sat down again on his little bench, and cried and cried; trying all the while not to make a noise, for fear the children would come back to laugh at him.

Suddenly a hand was laid upon his shoulder: a sweet voice was speaking to him; and turning his head, he found himself looking into the most caressing pair of eyes he had ever seen,--the eyes of a little girl about a year older than he.

"What is it?" she asked him tenderly.

Tarō sobbed and snuffled helplessly for a moment, before he could answer: "I am very unhappy here. I want to go home."

"Why?" questioned the girl, slipping an arm about his neck.

"They all hate me; they will not speak to me or play with _me_."

"Oh no!" said the girl. "Nobody dislikes you at all. It is only because you are a stranger. When I first went to school, last year, it was just the same with me. You must not fret."

"But all the others are playing; and I must sit in here," protested Tarō.

"Oh no, you must not. You must come and play with me. I will be your playfellow. Come!"

Taro at once began to cry out loud. Self-pity and gratitude and the delight of newfound sympathy filled his little heart so full that he really could not help it. It was so nice to be petted for crying.

But the girl only laughed, and led him out of the room quickly, because the little mother soul in her divined the whole situation. "Of course you may cry, if you wish," she said; "but you must play, too!" And oh, what a delightful play they played together!

But when school was over, and Tarō's grandfather came to take him home, Tarō began to cry again, because it was necessary that he should bid his little playmate good-by.

The grandfather laughed, and exclaimed, "Why, it is little Yoshi,--Miyahara O-Yoshi! Yoshi can come along with us, and stop at the house a while. It is on her way home."

At Tarō's house the playmates ate the promised cake together; and O-Yoshi mischievously asked, mimicking the master's severity, "Uchida Tarō, do you like cake better than me?"

III

O-Yoshi's father owned some neighboring rice-lands, and also kept a shop in the village. Her mother, a samurai, adopted into the Miyahara family at the time of the breaking up of the military caste, had borne several children, of whom O-Yoshi, the last, was the only survivor. While still a baby, O-Yoshi lost her mother. Miyahara was past middle age; but he took another wife, the daughter of one of his own farmers,--a young girl named Ito O-Tama. Though swarthy as new copper, O-Tama was a remarkably handsome peasant girl, tall, strong, and active; but the choice caused surprise, because O-Tama could neither read nor write. The surprise changed to amusement when it was discovered that almost from the time of entering the house she had assumed and maintained absolute control. But the neighbors stopped laughing at Miyahara's docility when they learned more about O-Tama. She knew her husband's interests better than he, took charge of everything, and managed his affairs with such tact that in less than two years she had doubled his income. Evidently, Miyahara had got a wife who was going to make him rich. As a step-mother she bore herself rather kindly, even after the birth of her first boy. O-Yoshi was well cared for, and regularly sent to school.

While the children were still going to school, a long-expected and wonderful event took place. Strange tall men with red hair and beards--foreigners from the West--came down into the valley with a great multitude of Japanese laborers, and constructed a railroad. It was carried along the base of the low hill range, beyond the rice-fields and mulberry groves in the rear of the village; and almost at the angle where it crossed the old road leading to the temple of Kwannon, a small station-house was built; and the name of the village was painted in Chinese characters upon a white signboard erected on a platform. Later, a line of telegraph-poles was planted, parallel with the railroad. And still later, trains came, and shrieked, and stopped, and passed,--nearly shaking the Buddhas in the old cemetery off their lotus-flowers of stone.

The children wondered at the strange, level, ash-strewn way, with its double lines of iron shining away north and south into mystery; and they were awe-struck by the trains that came roaring and screaming and smoking, like storm-breathing dragons, making the ground quake as they passed by. But this awe was succeeded by curious interest,--an interest intensified by the explanations of one of their school-teachers, who showed them, by drawings on the blackboard, how a locomotive engine was made; and who taught them, also, the still more marvelous operation of the telegraph, and told them how the new western capital and the sacred city of Kyoto were to be united by rail and wire, so that the journey between them might be accomplished in less than two days, and messages sent from the one to the other in a few seconds.

Taro and O-Yoshi became very dear friends. They studied together, played together, and visited each other's homes. But at the age of eleven O-Yoshi was taken from school to assist her step-mother in the household; and thereafter Tarō saw her but seldom. He finished his own studies at fourteen, and began to learn his father's trade. Sorrows came. After having given him a little brother, his mother died; and in the same year, the kind old grandfather who had first taken him to school followed her; and after these things the world seemed to him much less bright than before. Nothing further changed his life till he reached his seventeenth year. Occasionally he would visit the home of the Miyahara, to talk with O-Yoshi. She had grown up into a slender, pretty woman; but for him she was still only the merry playfellow of happier days.

IV

One soft spring day, Tarō found himself feeling very lonesome, and the thought came to him that it would be pleasant to see O-Yoshi. Probably there existed in his memory some constant relation between the sense of lonesomeness in general and the experience of his first schoolday in particular. At all events, something within him--perhaps that a dead mother's love had made, or perhaps something belonging to other dead people--wanted a little tenderness, and he felt sure of receiving the tenderness from O-Yoshi. So he took his way to the little shop. As he approached it, he heard her laugh, and it sounded wonderfully sweet. Then he saw her serving an old peasant, who seemed to be quite pleased, and was chatting garrulously. Tarō had to wait, and felt vexed that he could not at once get O-Yoshi's talk all for himself; but it made him a little happier even to be near her. He looked and looked at her, and suddenly began to wonder why he had never before thought how pretty she was. Yes, she was really pretty,--more pretty than any other girl in the village. He kept on looking and wondering, and always she seemed to be growing prettier. It was very strange; he could not understand it. But O-Yoshi, for the first time, seemed to feel shy under that earnest gaze, and blushed to her little ears. Then Tarō felt quite sure that she was more beautiful than anybody else in the whole world, and sweeter, and better, and that he wanted to tell her so; and all at once he found himself angry with the old peasant for talking so much to O-Yoshi, just as if she were a common person. In a few minutes the universe had been quite changed for Taro, and he did not know it. He only knew that since he last saw her O-Yoshi had become divine; and as soon as the chance came, he told her all his foolish heart, and she told him hers. And they wondered because their thoughts were so much the same; and that was the beginning of great trouble.

V

The old peasant whom Tarō had once seen talking to O-Yoshi had not visited the shop merely as a customer. In addition to his real calling he was a professional nakōdo, or match-maker, and was at that very time acting in the service of a wealthy rice dealer named Okazaki Yaïchirō. Okazaki had seen O-Yoshi, had taken a fancy to her, and had commissioned the nakōdo to find out everything possible about her, and about the circumstances of her family.

Very much detested by the peasants, and even by his more immediate neighbors in the village, was Okazaki Yaïchirō. He was an elderly man, gross, hard-featured, with a loud, insolent manner. He was said to be malignant. He was known to have speculated successfully in rice during a period of famine, which the peasant considers a crime, and never forgives. He was not a native of the ken, nor in any way related to its people, but had come to the village eighteen years before, with his wife and one child, from some western district. His wife had been dead two years, and his only son, whom he was said to have treated cruelly, had suddenly left him, and gone away, nobody knew whither. Other unpleasant stories were told about him. One was that, in his native western province, a furious mob had sacked his house and his godowns, and obliged him to fly for his life. Another was that, on his wedding night, he had been compelled to give a banquet to the god Jizō.

It is still customary in some provinces, on the occasion of the marriage of a very unpopular farmer, to make the bridegroom feast Jizō. A band of sturdy young men force their way into the house, carrying with them a stone image of the divinity, borrowed from the highway or from some neighboring cemetery. A large crowd follows them. They deposit the image in the guest-room, and they demand that ample offerings of food and of saké be made to it at once. This means, of course, a big feast for themselves, and it is more than dangerous to refuse. All the uninvited guests must be served till they can neither eat nor drink any more. The obligation to give such a feast is not only a public rebuke: it is also a lasting public disgrace.

In his old age, Okazaki wished to treat himself to the luxury of a young and pretty wife; but in spite of his wealth he found this wish less easy to gratify than he had expected. Various families had checkmated his proposals at once by stipulating impossible conditions. The Headman of the village had answered, less politely, that he would sooner give his daughter to an oni (demon). And the rice dealer would probably have found himself obliged to seek for a wife in some other district, if he had not happened, after these failures, to notice O-Yoshi. The girl much more than pleased him; and he thought he might be able to obtain her by making certain offers to her people, whom he supposed to be poor. Accordingly, he tried, through the nakōdo, to open negotiations with the Miyahara family.

O-Yoshi's peasant step-mother, though entirely uneducated, was very much the reverse of a simple woman. She had never loved her step-daughter, but was much too intelligent to be cruel to her without reason. Moreover, O-Yoshi was far from being in her way. O-Yoshi was a faithful worker, obedient, sweet-tempered, and very useful in the house. But the same cool shrewdness that discerned O-Yoshi's merits also estimated the girl's value in the marriage market. Okazaki never suspected that he was going to deal with his natural superior in cunning. O-Tama knew a great deal of his history. She knew the extent of his wealth. She was aware of his unsuccessful attempts to obtain a wife from various families, both within and without the village. She suspected that O-Yoshi's beauty might have aroused a real passion, and she knew that an old man's passion might be taken advantage of in a large number of cases. O-Yoshi was not wonderfully beautiful, but she was a really pretty and graceful girl, with very winning ways; and to get another like her, Okazaki would have to travel far. Should he refuse to pay well for the privilege of obtaining such a wife, O-Tama knew of younger men who would not hesitate to be generous. He might have O-Yoshi, but never upon easy terms. After the repulse of his first advances, his conduct would betray him. Should he prove to be really enamored, he could be forced to do more than any other resident of the district could possibly afford. It was therefore highly important to discover the real strength of his inclination, and to keep the whole matter, in the mean time, from the knowledge of O-Yoshi. As the reputation of the nakōdo depended on professional silence, there was no likelihood of his betraying the secret.

The policy of the Miyahara family was settled in a consultation between O-Yoshi's father and her step-mother. Old Miyahara would have scarcely presumed, in any event, to oppose his wife's plans; but she took the precaution of persuading him, first of all, that such a marriage ought to be in many ways to his daughter's interest. She discussed with him the possible financial advantages of the union. She represented that there were, indeed, unpleasant risks, but that these could be provided against by making Okazaki agree to certain preliminary settlements. Then she taught her husband his rôle. Pending negotiations, the visits of Tarō were to be encouraged. The liking of the pair for each other was a mere cobweb of sentiment that could be brushed out of existence at the required moment; and meantime it was to be made use of. That Okazaki should hear of a likely young rival might hasten desirable conclusions.

It was for these reasons that, when Tarō's father first proposed for O-Yoshi in his son's name, the suit was neither accepted nor discouraged. The only immediate objection offered was that O-Yoshi was one year older than Taro, and that such a marriage would be contrary to custom,--which was quite true. Still, the objection was a weak one, and had been selected because of its apparent unimportance.

Okazaki's first overtures were at the same time received in suck a manner as to convey the impression that their sincerity was suspected. The Miyahara refused to understand the nakōdo at all. They remained astonishingly obtuse even to the plainest assurances, until Okazaki found it politic to shape what he thought a tempting offer. Old Miyahara then declared that he would leave the matter in his wife's hands, and abide by her decision.

O-Tama decided by instantly rejecting the proposal, with every appearance of scornful astonishment. She said unpleasant things. There was once a man who wanted to get a beautiful wife very cheap. At last he found a beautiful woman who said she ate only two grains of rice every day. So he married her; and every day she put into her mouth only two grains of rice; and he was happy. But one night, on returning from a journey, he watched her secretly through a hole in the roof, and saw her eating monstrously,--devouring mountains of rice and fish, and putting all the food into a hole in the top of her head under her hair. Then he knew that he had married the Yama-Omba.

O-Tama waited a month for the results of her rebuff,--waited very confidently, knowing how the imagined value of something wished for can be increased by the increase of the difficulty of getting it. And, as she expected, the nakōdo at last reappeared. This time Okazaki approached the matter less condescendingly than before; adding to his first offer, and even volunteering seductive promises. Then she knew she was going to have him in her power. Her plan of campaign was not complicated, but it was founded upon a deep instinctive knowledge of the uglier side of human nature; and she felt sure of success. Promises were for fools; legal contracts involving conditions were traps for the simple. Okazaki should yield up no small portion of his property before obtaining O-Yoshi.

VI

Taro's father earnestly desired his son's marriage with O-Yoshi, and had tried to bring it about in the usual way. He was surprised at not being able to get any definite answer from the Miyahara. He was a plain, simple man; but he had the intuition of sympathetic natures, and the unusually gracious manner of O-Tama, whom he had always disliked, made him suspect that he had nothing to hope. He thought it best to tell his suspicions to Tarō, with the result that the lad fretted himself into a fever. But O-Yoshi's step-mother had no intention of reducing Taro to despair at so early a stage of her plot. She sent kindly worded messages to the house during his illness, and a letter from O-Yoshi, which had the desired effect of reviving all his hopes. After his sickness, he was graciously received by the Miyahara, and allowed to talk to O-Yoshi in the shop. Nothing, however, was said about his father's visit.

The lovers had also frequent chances to meet at the ujigami court, whither O-Yoshi often went with her step-mother's last baby. Even among the crowd of nurse-girls, children, and young mothers, they could exchange a few words without fear of gossip. Their hopes received no further serious check for a month, when O-Taina pleasantly proposed to Tarō's father an impossible pecuniary arrangement. She had lifted a corner of her mask, because Okazaki was struggling wildly in the net she had spread for him, and by the violence of the struggles she knew the end was not far off. O-Yoshi was still ignorant of what was going on; but she had reason to fear that she would never be given to Tarō. She was becoming thinner and paler.

Tarō one morning took his child-brother with him to the temple court, in the hope of an opportunity to chat with O-Yoshi. They met; and he told her that he was feeling afraid. He had found that the little wooden amulet which his mother had put about his neck when he was a child had been broken within the silken cover.

"That is not bad luck," said O-Yoshi. "It is only a sign that the august gods have been guarding you. There has been sickness in the village; and you caught the fever, but you got well. The holy charm shielded you: that is why it was broken. Tell the kannushi to-day: he will give you another."

Because they were very unhappy, and had never done harm to anybody, they began to reason about the justice of the universe.

Tarō said: "Perhaps in the former life we hated each other. Perhaps I was unkind to you, or you to me. And this is our punishment. The priests say so."

O-Yoshi made answer with something of her old playfulness: "I was a man then, and you were a woman. I loved you very, very much; but you were very unkind to me. I remember it all quite well."

"You are not a Bosatsu," returned Taro, smiling despite his sorrow; "so you cannot remember anything. It is only in the first of the ten states of Bosatsu that we begin to remember."

"How do you know I am not a Bosatsu?"

"You are a woman. A woman cannot be a Bosatsu."

"But is not Kwan-ze-on Bosatsu a woman?"

"Well, that is true. But a Bosatsu cannot love anything except the kyō."

"Did not Shaka have a wife and a son? Did he not love them?"

"Yes; but you know he had to leave them."

"That was very bad, even if Shaka did it. But I don't believe all those stories. And would you leave me, if you could get me?"

So they theorized and argued, and even laughed betimes: it was so pleasant to be together. But suddenly the girl became serious again, and said:--

"Listen! Last night I saw a dream. I saw a strange river, and the sea. I was standing, I thought, beside the river, very near to where it flowed into the sea. And I was afraid, very much afraid, and did not know why. Then I looked, and saw there was no water in the river, no water in the sea, but only the bones of the Buddhas. But they were all moving, just like water.

"Then again I thought I was at home, and that you had given me a beautiful gift-silk for a kimono, and that the kimono had been made. And I put it on. And then I wondered, because at first it had seemed of many colors, but now it was all white; and I had foolishly folded it upon me as the robes of the dead are folded, to the left. Then I went to the homes of all my kinsfolk to say good-by; and I told them I was going to the Meido. And they all asked me why; and I could not answer."

"That is good," responded Tarō; "it is very lucky to dream of the dead. Perhaps it is a sign we shall soon be husband and wife." This time the girl did not reply; neither did she smile.

Tarō was silent a minute; then he added: "If you think it was not a good dream, Yoshi, whisper it all to the nanten plant in the garden: then it will not come true."

But on the evening of the same day Taro's father was notified that Miyahara O-Yoshi was to become the wife of Okazaki Yaïchirō.

VII

O-Tama was really a very clever woman. She had never made any serious mistakes. She was one of those excellently organized beings who succeed in life by the perfect ease with which they exploit inferior natures. The full experience of her peasant ancestry in patience, in cunning, in crafty perception, in rapid foresight, in hard economy, was concentrated into a perfect machinery within her unlettered brain. That machinery worked faultlessly in the environment which had called it into existence, and upon the particular human material with which it was adapted to deal,--the nature of the peasant. But there was another nature which O-Tama understood less well, because there was nothing in her ancestral experience to elucidate it. She was a strong disbeliever in all the old ideas about character distinctions between samurai and heimin. She considered there had never been any differences between the military and the agricultural classes, except such differences of rank as laws and customs had established; and these had been bad. Laws and customs, she thought, had resulted in making all people of the former samurai class more or less helpless and foolish; and secretly she despised all shizoku. By their incapacity for hard work and their absolute ignorance of business methods, she had seen them reduced from wealth to misery. She had seen the pension bonds given them by the new government pass from their hands into the clutches of cunning speculators of the most vulgar class. She despised weakness; she despised incapacity; and she deemed the commonest vegetable seller a much superior being to the ex-Karō obliged in his old age to beg assistance from those who had formerly cast off their footgear and bowed their heads to the mud whenever he passed by. She did not consider it an advantage for O-Yoshi to have had a samurai mother: she attributed the girl's delicacy to that cause, and thought her descent a misfortune. She had clearly read in O-Yoshi's character all that could be read by one not of a superior caste; among other facts, that nothing would be gained by needless harshness to the child, and the implied quality was not one that she disliked. But there were other qualities in O-Yoshi that she had never clearly perceived,--a profound though well-controlled sensitiveness to moral wrong, an unconquerable self-respect, and a latent reserve of will power that could triumph over any physical pain. And thus it happened that the behavior of O-Yoshi, when told she would have to become the wife of Okazaki, duped her step-mother, who was prepared to encounter a revolt. She was mistaken.

At first the girl turned white as death. But in another moment she blushed, smiled, bowed down, and agreeably astonished the Miyahara by announcing, in the formal language of filial piety, her readiness to obey the will of her parents in all things. There was no further appearance even of secret dissatisfaction in her manner; and O-Tama was so pleased that she took her into confidence, and told her something of the comedy of the negotiations, and the full extent of the sacrifices which Okazaki had been compelled to make. Furthermore, in addition to such trite consolations as are always offered to a young girl betrothed without her own consent to an old man, O-Tama gave her some really priceless advice how to manage Okazaki. Tarō's name was not even once mentioned. For the advice O-Yoshi dutifully thanked her step-mother, with graceful prostrations. It was certainly admirable advice. Almost any intelligent peasant girl, fully instructed by such a teacher as O-Tama, might have been able to support existence with Okazaki. But O-Yoshi was only half a peasant girl. Her first sudden pallor and her subsequent crimson flush, after the announcement of the fate reserved for her, were caused by two emotional sensations of which O-Tama was far from suspecting the nature. Both represented much more complex and rapid thinking than O-Tama had ever done in all her calculating experience.

The first was a shock of horror accompanying the full recognition of the absolute moral insensibility of her step-mother, the utter hopelessness of any protest, the virtual sale of her person to that hideous old man for the sole motive of unnecessary gain, the cruelty and the shame of the transaction. But almost as quickly there rushed to her consciousness an equally complete sense of the need of courage and strength to face the worst, and of subtlety to cope with strong cunning. It was then she smiled. And as she smiled, her young will became steel, of the sort that severs iron without turning edge. She knew at once exactly what to do,--her samurai blood told her that; and she plotted only to gain the time and the chance. And she felt already so sure of triumph that she had to make a strong effort not to laugh aloud. The light in her eyes completely deceived O-Tama, who detected only a manifestation of satisfied feeling, and imagined the feeling due to a sudden perception of advantages to be gained by a rich marriage.

It was the fifteenth day of the ninth month; and the wedding was to be celebrated upon the sixth of the tenth month. But three days later, O-Tama, rising at dawn, found that her step-daughter had disappeared during the night. Tarō Uchida had not been seen by his father since the afternoon of the previous day. But letters from both were received a few hours afterwards.

VIII

The early morning train from Kyōto was in; the little station was full of hurry and noise,--clattering of geta, humming of converse, and fragmentary cries of village boys selling cakes and luncheons: "_Kwashi yoros--!_" "_Sushi yoros--!_" "_Bentō yoros--!_" Five minutes, and the geta clatter, and the banging of carriage doors, and the shrilling of the boys stopped, as a whistle blew and the train jolted and moved. It rumbled out, puffed away slowly northward, and the little station emptied itself. The policeman on duty at the wicket banged it to, and began to walk up and down the sanded platform, surveying the silent rice-fields.

Autumn had come,--the Period of Great Light. The sun glow had suddenly become whiter, and shadows sharper, and all outlines clear as edges of splintered glass. The mosses, long parched out of visibility by the summer heat, had revived in wonderful patches and bands of bright soft green over all shaded bare spaces of the black volcanic soil; from every group of pine-trees vibrated the shrill wheeze of the tsuku-tsuku-bōshi; and above all the little ditches and canals was a silent flickering of tiny lightnings,--zigzag soundless flashings of emerald and rose and azure-of-steel,--the shooting of dragon-flies.

Now, it may have been due to the extraordinary clearness of the morning air that the policeman was able to perceive, far up the track, looking north, something which caused him to start, to shade his eyes with his hand, and then to look at the clock. But, as a rule, the black eye of a Japanese policeman, like the eye of a poised kite, seldom fails to perceive the least unusual happening within the whole limit of its vision. I remember that once, in far-away Oki, wishing, without being myself observed, to watch a mask-dance in the street before my inn, I poked a small hole through a paper window of the second story, and peered at the performance. Down the street stalked a policeman, in snowy uniform and havelock; for it was midsummer. He did not appear even to see the dancers or the crowd through which he walked without so much as turning his head to either side. Then he suddenly halted, and fixed his gaze exactly on the hole in my shōji; for at that hole he had seen an eye which he had instantly decided, by reason of its shape, to be a foreign eye. Then he entered the inn, and asked questions about my passport, which had already been examined.

What the policeman at the village station observed, and afterwards reported, was that, more than half a mile north of the station, two persons had reached the railroad track by crossing the rice-fields, apparently after leaving a farmhouse considerably to the northwest of the village. One of them, a woman, he judged by the color of her robe and girdle to be very young. The early express train from Tōkyō was then due in a few minutes, and its advancing smoke could be perceived from the station platform. The two persons began to run quickly along the track upon which the train was coming. They ran on out of sight round a curve.

Those two persons were Tarō and O-Yoshi. They ran quickly, partly to escape the observation of that very policeman, and partly so as to meet the Tōkyō express as far from the station as possible. After passing the curve, however, they stopped running, and walked, for they could see the smoke coming. As soon as they could see the train itself, they stepped off the track, so as not to alarm the engineer, and waited, hand in hand. Another minute, and the low roar rushed to their ears, and they knew it was time. They stepped back to the track again, turned, wound their arms about each other, and lay down cheek to cheek, very softly and quickly, straight across the inside rail, already ringing like an anvil to the vibration of the hurrying pressure.

The boy smiled. The girl, tightening her arms about his neck, spoke in his ear:--

"For the time of two lives, and of three, I am your wife; you are my husband, Tarō Sama."

Tarō said nothing, because almost at the same instant, notwithstanding frantic attempts to halt a fast train without airbrakes in a distance of little more than a hundred yards, the wheels passed through both,--cutting evenly, like enormous shears.

IX

The village people now put bamboo cups full of flowers upon the single gravestone of the united pair, and burn incense-sticks, and repeat prayers. This is not orthodox at all, because Buddhism forbids jōshi, and the cemetery is a Buddhist one; but there is religion in it,--a religion worthy of profound respect.

You ask why and how the people pray to those dead. Well, all do not pray to them, but lovers do, especially unhappy ones. Other folk only decorate the tomb and repeat pious texts. But lovers pray there for supernatural sympathy and help. I was myself obliged to ask why, and I was answered simply, "_Because those dead suffered so much._"

So that the idea which prompts such prayers would seem to be at once more ancient and more modern than Buddhism,--the Idea of the eternal Religion of Suffering.

IX

A WISH FULFILLED

Then, when thou leavest the body, and comest into the free ether, thou shalt be a God undying, everlasting;--neither shall death have any more dominion over thee.--The Golden Verses.

I

The streets were full of white uniforms, and the calling of bugles, and the rumbling of artillery. The armies of Japan, for the third time in history, had subdued Korea; and the Imperial declaration of war against China had been published by the city journals, printed on crimson paper. All the military powers of the Empire were in motion. The first line of reserves had been summoned, and troops were pouring into Kumamoto. Thousands were billeted upon the citizens; for barracks and inns and temples could not shelter the passing host. And still there was no room, though special trains were carrying regiments north, as fast as possible, to the transports waiting at Shimonoseki.

Nevertheless, considering the immensity of the movement, the city was astonishingly quiet. The troops were silent and gentle as Japanese boys in school hours; there was no swaggering, no reckless gayety. Buddhist priests were addressing squadrons in the courts of the temples; and a great ceremony had already been performed in the parade-ground by the Abbot of the Shin-shū sect, who had come from Kyōto for the occasion. Thousands had been placed by him under the protection of Amida; the laying of a naked razor-blade on each young head, symbolizing voluntary renunciation of life's vanities, was the soldier's consecration. Everywhere, at the shrines of the older faith, prayers were being offered up by priests and people to the shades of heroes who fought and died for their Emperor in ancient days, and to the gods of armies. At the Shintō temple of Fujisaki sacred charms were being distributed to the men. But the most imposing rites were those at Honmyōji, the far-famed monastery of the Nichiren sect, where for three hundred years have reposed the ashes of Kato Kiyomasa, conqueror of Korea, enemy of the Jesuits, protector of the Buddhists;--Honmyōji, where the pilgrim chant of the sacred invocation, Namu-myō-hō-renge-kyō, sounds like the roar of surf;--Honmyōji, where you may buy wonderful little mamori in the shape of tiny Buddhist shrines, each holding a minuscule image of the deified warrior. In the great central temple, and in all the lesser temples that line the long approach, special services were sung, and special prayers were addressed to the spirit of the hero for ghostly aid. The armor, and helmet, and sword of Kiyomasa, preserved in the main shrine for three centuries, were no longer to be seen. Some declared that they had been sent to Korea, to stimulate the heroism of the army. But others told a story of echoing hoofs in the temple court by night, and the passing of a mighty Shadow, risen from the dust of his sleep, to lead the armies of the Son of Heaven once more to conquest. Doubtless even among the soldiers, brave, simple lads from the country, many believed,--just as the men of Athens believed in the presence of Theseus at Marathon. All the more, perhaps, because to no small number of the new recruits Kumamoto itself appeared a place of marvels hallowed by traditions of the great captain, and its castle a world's wonder, built by Kiyomasa after the plan of a stronghold stormed in Chösen.

Amid all these preparations, the people remained singularly quiet. From mere outward signs no stranger could have divined the general feeling.[1] The public calm was characteristically Japanese; the race, like the individual, becoming to all appearance the more self-contained the more profoundly its emotions are called into play. The Emperor had sent presents to his troops in Korea, and words of paternal affection; and citizens, following the august example, were shipping away by every steamer supplies of rice-wine, provisions, fruits, dainties, tobacco, and gifts of all kinds. Those who could afford nothing costlier were sending straw sandals. The entire nation was subscribing to the war fund; and Kumamoto, though by no means wealthy, was doing all that both poor and rich could help her do to prove her loyalty. The check of the merchant mingled obscurely with the paper dollar of the artisan, the laborer's dime, the coppers of the kurumaya, in the great fraternity of unbidden self-denial. Even children gave; and their pathetic little contributions were not refused, lest the universal impulse of patriotism should be in any manner discouraged. But there were special subscriptions also being collected in every street for the support of the families of the troops of the reserves,--married men, engaged mostly in humble callings, who had been obliged of a sudden to leave their wives and little ones without the means to live. That means the citizens voluntarily and solemnly pledged themselves to supply. One could not doubt that the soldiers, with all this unselfish love behind them, would perform even more than simple duty demanded.

And they did.

[1] This was written in Kumamoto during the fall of 1894. The enthusiasm of the nation was concentrated and silent; but under that exterior calm smouldered all the fierceness of the old feudal days. The Government was obliged to decline the freely proffered services of myriads of volunteers,--- chiefly swordsmen. Had a call for such volunteers been made I am sure 100,000 men would have answered it within a week. But the war spirit manifested itself in other ways not less painful than extraordinary. Many killed themselves on being refused the chance of military service; and I may cite at random a few strange facts from the local press. The gendarme at Söul, ordered to escort Minister Otori back to Japan, killed himself for chagrin at not having been allowed to proceed instead to the field of battle. An officer named Ishiyama, prevented by illness from joining his regiment on the day of its departure for Korea, rose from his sick-bed, and, after saluting a portrait of the Emperor, killed himself with his sword. A soldier named Ikeda, at Ōsaka, having been told that because of some breach of discipline he might not be permitted to go to the front, shot himself. Captain Kani, of the "Mixed Brigade," was prostrated by sickness during the attack made by his regiment on a fort near Chinchow, and carried insensible to the hospital. Recovering a week later, he went (November 28) to the spot where he had fallen, and killed himself,--leaving this letter, translated by the _Japan Daily Mail_: "It was here that illness compelled me to halt and to let my men storm the fort without me. Never can I wipe out such a disgrace in life. To clear my honor I die thus,--leaving this letter to speak for me."

A lieutenant in Tōkyō, finding none to take care of his little motherless girl after his departure, killed her, and joined his regiment before the facts were known. He afterwards sought death on the field and found it, that he might join his child on her journey to the Meido. This reminds one of the terrible spirit of feudal times. The samurai, before going into a hopeless contest, sometimes killed his wife and children the better to forget those three things no warrior should remember on the battle-field,--namely, home, the dear ones, and his own body. After that act of ferocious heroism the samurai was ready for the shini-mono-gurui,--the hour of the "death-fury,"--giving and taking no quarter.

II

Manyemon said there was a soldier at the entrance who wanted to see me.

"Oh, Manyemon, I hope they are not going to billet soldiers upon us!--the house is too small! Please ask him what he wishes."

"I did," answered Manyemon; "he says he knows you."

I went to the door and looked at a fine young fellow in uniform, who smiled and took off his cap as I came forward. I could not recognize him. The smile was familiar, notwithstanding. Where could I have seen it before?

"Teacher, have you really forgotten me?"

For another moment I stared at him, wondering: then he laughed gently, and uttered his name,--

"Kosuga Asakichi."

How my heart leaped to him as I held out both hands! "Come in, come in!" I cried.

"But how big and handsome you have grown! No wonder I did not know you."

He blushed like a girl, as he slipped off his shoes and unbuckled his sword. I remembered that he used to blush the same way in class, both when he made a mistake, and when he was praised. Evidently his heart was still as fresh as then, when he was a shy boy of sixteen in the school at Matsue. He had got permission to come to bid me good-by: the regiment was to leave in the morning for Korea.

We dined together, and talked of old times,--of Izumo, of Kitzuki, of many pleasant things. I tried in vain at first to make him drink a little wine; not knowing that he had promised his mother never to drink wine while he was in the army. Then I substituted coffee for the wine, and coaxed him to tell me all about himself. He had returned to his native place, after graduating, to help his people, wealthy farmers; and he had found that his agricultural studies at school were of great service to him. A year later, all the youths of the village who had reached the age of nineteen, himself among the number, were summoned to the Buddhist temple for examination as to bodily and educational fitness for military service. He had passed as ichiban (first-class) by the verdicts of the examining surgeon and of the recruiting-major (_shōsa_), and had been drawn at the ensuing conscription. After thirteen months' service he had been promoted to the rank of sergeant. He liked the array. At first he had been stationed at Nagoya, then at Tōkyō; but finding that his regiment was not to be sent to Korea, he had petitioned with success for transfer to the Kumamoto division. "And now I am so glad," he exclaimed, his face radiant with a soldier's joy: "we go to-morrow!" Then he blushed again, as if ashamed of having uttered his frank delight. I thought of Carlyle's deep saying, that never pleasures, but only suffering and death are the lures that draw true hearts. I thought also--what I could not say to any Japanese--that the joy in the lad's eyes was like nothing I had ever seen before, except the caress in the eyes of a lover on the morning of his bridal.