Chapter VIII: Buddhist Allusions in Japanese Folk-Song

Perhaps only a Japanese representative of the older culture could fully inform us to what degree the mental soil of the race has been saturated and fertilized by Buddhist idealism. At all events, no European could do so; for to understand the whole relation of Far-Eastern religion to Far-Eastern life would require, not only such scholarship, but also such experience as no European could gain in a lifetime. Yet for even the Western stranger there are everywhere signs of what Buddhism has been to Japan in the past. All the arts and most of the industries repeat Buddhist legends to the eye trained in symbolism; and there is scarcely an object of handiwork possessing any beauty or significance of form--from the plaything of a child to the heirloom of a prince--which does not in some way proclaim the ancient debt to Buddhism of the craft that made it. One may discern Buddhist thoughts in the cheap cotton prints from an Osaka mill not less than in the figured silks of Kyoto. The reliefs upon an iron kettle, or the elephant-heads of bronze making the handles of a shopkeeper's _hibachi_ the patterns of screen-paper, or the commonest ornamental woodwork of a gateway--the etchings upon a metal pipe, or the enameling upon a costly vase,--may all relate, with equal eloquence, the traditions of faith. There are reflections or echoes of Buddhist teaching in the composition of a garden;--in the countless ideographs of the long vistas of shop-signs;--in the wonderfully expressive names given to certain fruits and flowers;--in the appellations of mountains, capes, waterfalls, villages,--even of modern railway stations. And the new civilization would not yet seem to have much affected the influence thus manifested. Trains and steamers now yearly carry to famous shrines more pilgrims than visited them ever before in a twelvemonth;--the temple bells still, in despite of clocks and watches, mark the passing of time for the millions;--the speech of the people is still poetized with Buddhist utterances;--literature and drama still teem with Buddhist expressions;--and the most ordinary voices of the street--songs of children playing, a chorus of laborers at their toil, even cries of itinerant street-venders--often recall to me some story of saints and Bodhisattvas, or the text of some sutra.

Such an experience first gave me the idea of making a collection of songs containing Buddhist expressions or allusions. But in view of the extent of the subject I could not at once decide where to begin. A bewildering variety of Japanese songs--a variety of which the mere nomenclature would occupy pages--offers material of this description. Among noteworthy kinds may be mentioned the _Utai,_ dramatic songs, mostly composed by high priests, of which probably no ten lines are without some allusion to Buddhism;--the _Naga-uta,_ songs often of extraordinary length;--and the _Jōruri,_ whole romances in verse, with which professional singers can delight their audiences for five or six hours at a time. The mere dimension of such compositions necessarily excluded them from my plan; but there remained a legion of briefer forms to choose among. I resolved at last to limit my undertaking mainly to _dodoitsu_,--little songs of twenty-six syllables only, arranged in four lines (7, 7, 7, 5). They are more regular in construction than the street-songs treated of in a former paper; but they are essentially popular, and therefore more widely representative of Buddhist influences than many superior kinds of composition could be. Out of a very large number collected for me, I have selected between forty and fifty as typical of the class.

*

Perhaps those pieces which reflect the ideas of preëxistence and of future rebirths will prove especially interesting to the Western reader,--much less because of poetical worth than because of comparative novelty. We have very little English verse of any class containing fancies of this kind; but they swarm in Japanese poetry even as commonplaces and conventionalisms. Such an exquisite thing as Rossetti's "Sudden Light,"--bewitching us chiefly through the penetrative subtlety of a thought anathematized by all our orthodoxies for eighteen hundred years,--could interest a Japanese only as the exceptional rendering, by an Occidental, of fancies and feelings familiar to the most ignorant peasant. Certainly no one will be able to find in these Japanese verses--or, rather, in my own wretchedly prosy translations of them--even a hint of anything like the ghostly delicacy of Rossetti's imagining:--

I have been here before,--
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet, keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights along the shore.

You have been mine before,--
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at that swallow's soar
Your neck turned so,
Some veil did fall,--I knew it all of yore.

Yet what a queer _living_ difference between such enigmatically delicate handling of thoughts classed as forbidden fruit in the Western Eden of Dreams and the every-day Japanese utterances that spring directly out of ancient Eastern faith!--

_Love, it is often said, has nothing to do with reason._
_The cause of ours must be some_ En _in a previous birth._[1]

[Footnote 1:

Iro wa shian no
Hoka to-wa iédo,
Koré mo saki-sho no
En de arō.

"En" is a Buddhist word signifying affinity,--relation of cause and effect from life to life.]

_Even the knot of the rope tying our boats together_
_Knotted was long ago by some love in a former birth._

_If the touching even of sleeves be through En of a former
existence,_
_Very much deeper must be the_ En _that unites us now!_[2]

[Footnote 2:

Sodé suri-ō no mo
Tashō no en yo,
Mashité futari ga
Fukai naka.

Allusion is here made to the old Buddhist proverb: _Sodé no furi-awasé mo tashō no en,--_"Even the touching of sleeves in passing is caused by some affinity operating from former lives."]

Kwahō[3] _this life must be,--this dwelling with one so tender;_
_--I am reaping now the reward of deeds in a former birth!_

[Footnote 3: The Buddhist word "Kwahō" is commonly used instead of other synonyms for Karma (such as ingwa, innen, etc.), to signify the good, rather than the bad results of action in previous lives. But it is sometimes used in both meanings. Here there seems to be an allusion to the proverbial expression, _Kwahō no yoi hito_ (lit.: a person of good Kwahō), meaning a fortunate individual.]

Many songs of this class refer to the customary vow which lovers make to belong to each other for more lives than one,--a vow perhaps originally inspired by the Buddhist aphorism,--

_Oya-ko wa, is-sé;_
_Fūfu wa, ni-sé;_
_Shujū wa, san-zé._

"The relation of parent and child is for one life; that of wife and husband, for two lives; that of master and servant, for three lives." Although the tender relation is thus limited to the time of two lives, the vow--(as Japanese dramas testify, and as the letters of those who kill themselves for love bear witness)--is often passionately made for seven. The following selections show a considerable variety of tone,--ranging from the pathetic to the satirical,--in the treatment of this topic:

_I have cut my hair for his sake; but the deeper relation between us_
_Cannot be cut in this, nor yet in another life._[4]

[Footnote 4:

Kami wa kitté mo
Ni-sé made kaketa
Fukai enishi wa
Kiru mono ka?

Literally: "Hair have-cut although, two existences until, deep relation, cut-how-can-it-be?" By the mention of the hair-cutting we know the speaker is a woman. Her husband, or possibly betrothed lover, is dead; and, according to the Buddhist custom, she signifies her desire to remain faithful to his memory by the sacrifice of her hair. For detailed information on this subject see, in my _Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan,_ the chapter, "Of Women's Hair."]

_She looks at the portrait of him to whom for two lives she is
promised:_
_Happy remembrances come, and each brings a smile to her
face._[5]

[Footnote 5:

Ni-sé to chigirishi
Shashin we nagamé
Omoi-idashité
Warai-gao.

Lit.: "Two existences that made alliance, photograph look-at, thinking bring-out smiling face." The use of the term _shashin,_ photograph, shows that the poem is not old.]

_If in this present life we never can hope for union,_
_Then we shall first keep house in the Lotos-Palace beyond._[6]

[Footnote 6:

Totémo kono yo dé
Sowaré-nu naraba
Hasu no uténa dé
Ara sėtai.

Lit.: "By-any-means, this-world-in, cannot-live-together if, Lotos-of Palace-in, new-housekeeping." It is with this thought that lovers voluntarily die together; and the song might be called a song of _jōshi._]

_Have we not spoken the vow that binds for a double existence?_
_If we must separate now, I can only wish to die._

_There!--oh, what shall we do?... Pledged for a double
existence,--_
_And now, as we sit together, the string of the samisen snaps!_[7]

[Footnote 7: Among singing-girls it is believed that the snapping of a samisen-string under such circumstances as those indicated in the above song is an omen of coming separation.]

_He woos by teaching the Law of Cause and Effect for three lives,_
_And makes a contract for two--the crafty-smiling priest!_[8]

[Footnote 8: This song is of a priest who breaks the vow of celibacy.]

Every mortal has lived and is destined to live countless lives; yet the happy moments of any single existence are not therefore less precious in themselves:--

_Not to have met one night is verily cause for sorrow;_
_Since twice in a single birth the same night never comes._

But even as a summer unusually warm is apt to herald a winter of exceptional severity, so too much happiness in this life may signify great suffering in the next:--

_Always I suffer thus!... Methinks, in my last existence._
_Too happy I must have been,--did not suffer enough._

Next in point of exotic interest to the songs expressing belief in preëxistence and rebirth, I think I should place those treating of the doctrine of _ingwa,_ or Karma. I offer some free translations from these, together with one selection from a class of compositions more elaborate and usually much longer than the _dodoitsu,_ called _hauta._ In the original, at least, my selection from the _hauta--_which contains a charming simile about the firefly--is by far the prettiest:--

_Weep not!--turn to me!... Nay, all my suspicions vanish!_
_Forgive me those words unkind: some_ ingwa _controlled my tongue!_

Evidently this is the remorseful pleading of a jealous lover. The next might be the answer of the girl whose tears he had caused to flow:

_I cannot imagine at all by what strange manner of ingwa_
_Came I to fall in love with one so unkind as you!_

Or she might exclaim:--

_Is this the turning of_ En?--_am I caught in the Wheel of Karma?_ _That, alas! is a wheel not to be moved from the rut!_[9]

[Footnote 9:

Meguru en kaya?
Kuruma no watashi
Hiku ni hikarénu
Kono ingwa.

There is a play on words in the original which I have not attempted to render. The idea is of an unhappy match--either betrothal or marriage--from which the woman wishes to withdraw when too late.]

A more remarkable reference to the Wheel of Karma is the following:--

_Father and mother forbade, and so I gave up my lover;_
_--Yet still, with the whirl of the Wheel, the thought of him comes
and goes._[10]

[Footnote 10:

Oya no iken dé
Akirameta no we
Mata mo rin-yé dé
Omoi-dasu.

The Buddhist word _Rin-yé,_ or _Rinten,_ has the meaning of "turning the Wheel,"--another expression for passing from birth to birth. The Wheel here is the great Circle of Illusion,--the whirl of Karma.]

This is a _hauta_:--

_Numberless insects there are that call from dawn to evening,_
_Crying, "I love! I love!"--but the Firefly's silent passion,_
_Making its body burn, is deeper than all their longing._
_Even such is my love ... yet I cannot think through what_ ingwa
_I opened my heart--alas!--to a being not sincere!_[11]

[Footnote 11:

Kaäi, kaäi to
Naku mushi yori mo
Nakanu hotaru ga
Mi we kogasu.
Nanno ingwa dé
Jitsu naki hito ni
Shin we akashité,--
Aa kuyashi!

Lit.: "'I-love-I-love'-saying-cry-insects than, better never-cry-firefly, body scorch! What Karma because-of, sincerity-not-is-man to, inmost-mind opened?--ah! regret!" ... It was formerly believed that the firefly's light really burned its own body.]

If the foregoing seem productions possible only to our psychological antipodes, it is quite otherwise with a group of folk-songs reflecting the doctrine of Impermanency. Concerning the instability of all material things, and the hollowness of all earthly pleasures, Christian and Buddhist thought are very much in accord. The great difference between them appears only when we compare their teaching as to things ghostly,--and especially as to the nature of the Ego. But the Oriental doctrine that the Ego itself is an impermanent compound, and that the Self is not the true Consciousness, rarely finds expression in these popular songs. For the common people the Self exists: it is a real (though multiple) personality that passes from birth to birth. Only the educated Buddhist comprehends the deeper teaching that what we imagine to be Self is wholly illusion,--a darkening veil woven by Karma; and that there is no Self but the Infinite Self, the eternal Absolute. In the following _dodoitsu_ will be found mostly thoughts or emotions according with universal experience:--

_Gathering clouds to the moon;--storm and rain to the flowers:_ _Somehow this world of woe never is just as we like._[12]

[Footnote 12:

Tsuki ni murakumo,
Hana ni wa arashi:
Tokaku uki-yo wa
Mama naranu.

This song especially refers to unhappy love, and contains the substance of two Buddhist proverbs: _Tsuki ni murakumo, hana ni kazé_ (cloud-masses to the moon; wind to flowers); and _Mama ni naranu wa uki-yo no narai_ (to be disappointed is the rule in this miserable world). "Uki-yo" (this fleeting or unhappy world) is one of the commonest Buddhist terms in use.]

_Almost as soon as they bloom, the scented flowers of the plum-tree_
_By the wind of this world of change are scattered and blown away._

_Thinking to-morrow remains, thou heart's frail flower-of-cherry?_ _How knowest whether this night the tempest will not come?_[13]

[Footnote 13:

Asu ari to
Omō kokoro no
Ada-zakura:
Yo wa ni arashi no
Fukanu monokawa?

Lit.: "To-morrow-is that think heart-of perishable-cherry flower: this-night-in-storm blow-not, is-it-certain?"]

_Shadow and shape alike melt and flow back to nothing:_
_He who knows this truth is the Daruma of snow._[14]

[Footnote 14:

Kagé mo katachi mo
Kiyuréba moto no
Midzu to satoru zo
Yuki-Daruma.

Lit.: "Shadow and shape also, if-melt-away, original-water is,--that-understands Snow-Daruma." Daruma (Dharma), the twenty-eighth patriarch of the Zen sect, is said to have lost his legs through remaining long in the posture of meditation; and many legless toy-figures, which are so balanced that they will always assume an upright position however often placed upside-down, are called by his name. The snow-men made by Japanese children have the same traditional form.--The Japanese friend who helped me to translate these verses, tells me that a ghostly meaning attaches to the word "Kagé" [shadow] in the above;--this would give a much more profound signification to the whole verse.]

_As the moon of the fifteenth night, the heart till the age fifteen:_
_Then the brightness wanes, and the darkness comes with love._[15]

[Footnote 15: According to the old calendar, there was always a full moon on the fifteenth of the month. The Buddhist allusion in the verse is to _mayoi,_ the illusion of passion, which is compared to a darkness concealing the Right Way.]

_All things change, we are told, in this world of change and sorrow;_
_But love's way never changes of promising never to change._[16]

[Footnote 16:

Kawaru uki-yo ni
Kawaranu mono wa
Kawarumai to no
Koi no michi.

Lit.: "Change changeable-world-in, does-not-change that-which, 'We-will-never-change'-saying of Love-of Way."]

_Cruel the beautiful flash,--utterly heartless that lightning!_ _Before one can look even twice it vanishes wholly away!_[17]

[Footnote 17:

Honni tsurénai
Ano inadzuma wa
Futa mé minu uchi
Kiyété yuku.

The Buddhist saying, _Inadzuma no hikari, ishi no hi_ (lightning-flash and flint-spark),--symbolizing the temporary nature of all pleasures,--is here playfully referred to. The song complains of a too brief meeting with sweet-heart or lover.]

_His very sweetness itself makes my existence a burden!_
_Truly this world of change is a world of constant woe!_[18]

[Footnote 18: Words of a loving but jealous woman, thus interpreted by my Japanese friend: "The more kind he is, the more his kindness overwhelms me with anxiety lest he be equally tender to other girls who may also fall in love with him."]

_Neither for youth nor age is fixed the life of the body;_
_--Bidding me wait for a time is the word that forever divides._[19]

[Footnote 19:

Rō-shō fujō no
Mi dé ari nagara,
Jisetsu maté to wa
Kiré-kotoba.

Lit.: "Old-young not-fixed-of body being, time-wait to-say, cutting-word." Ro-shō fujō is a Buddhist phrase. The meaning of the song is: "Since all things in this world are uncertain, asking me to wait for our marriage-day means that you do not really love me;--for either of us might die before the time you speak of."]

_Only too well I know that to meet will cause more weeping;_[20]
_Yet never to meet at all were sorrow too great to bear._

[Footnote 20: Allusion is made to the Buddhist text, _Shōja hitsu metsu, esha jōri_ ("Whosoever is born must die, and all who meet must as surely part"), and to the religious phrase, _Ai betsu ri ku_ ("Sorrow of parting and pain of separation").]

_Too joyful in union to think, we forget that the smiles of the
evening_
_Sometimes themselves become the sources of morning-tears._

Yet, notwithstanding the doctrine of impermanency, we are told in another _dodoitsu_ that--

_He who was never bewitched by the charming smile of a woman,_
_A wooden Buddha is he--a Buddha of bronze or stone!_[21]

[Footnote 21: Much more amusing in the original:--

Adana é-gao ni Mayowanu mono wa Ki-Butsu,--kana-Butsu,-- Ishi-botoké "Charming-smile-by bewildered-not, he-as-for, wood-Buddha, metal-Buddha, stone-Buddha!" The term "Ishi-botoké" especially refers to the stone images of the Buddha placed in cemeteries.--This song is sung in every part of Japan; I have heard it many times in different places.]

And why a Buddha of wood, or bronze, or stone? Because the living Buddha was not so insensible, as we are assured, with jocose irreverence, in the following:--

_"Forsake this fitful world"!_--

{_Lord Buddha's_}
_that was_ _or_ _teaching!_
{_upside-down_ }

_And Ragora,[22] son of his loins?--was he forgotten indeed?_

There is an untranslatable pun in the original, which, if written in Romaji, would run thus:--

Uki-yo we sutéyo t'a
{Shaka Sama}
Sorya yo
{saka-sama }
Ragora to iū ko we
Wasurété ka?

_Shakamuni_ is the Japanese rendering of "Sakyamuni;" "Shaka Sama" is therefore "Lord Sakya," or "Lord Buddha." But _saka-sama_ is a Japanese word meaning "topsy-turvy," "upside down;" and the difference between the pronunciation of Shaka Sama and _saka-sama_ is slight enough to have suggested the pun. Love in suspense is not usually inclined to reverence.

[Footnote 22: Râhula.]

_Even while praying together in front of the tablets ancestral,_
_Lovers find chance to murmur prayers never meant for the dead!_[23]

And as for interrupters:--

_Hateful the wind or rain that ruins the bloom of flowers:_
_Even more hateful far who obstructs the way of love._

Yet the help of the Gods is earnestly besought:--

_I make my_ hyaku-dō, _traveling Love's dark pathway._
_Ever praying to meet the owner of my heart._[24]

[Footnote 23:

Ekō suru toté
Hotoké no maé yé
Futari mukaité,
Konabé daté.

Lit.: "Repeat prayers saying, dead-of-presence-in twain facing,--small-pan cooking!" _Hotoké_ means a dead person as well as a Buddha. (See my _Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan:_ "The Household Shrine")-_Konabé-daté_ is an idiomatic expression signifying a lovers' tête-à-tête. It is derived from the phrase, _Chin-chin kamo nabé_("cooking a wild duck in a pan"),--the idea suggested being that of the pleasure experienced by an amorous couple in eating out of the same dish. _Chin-chin,_ an onomatope, expresses the sound of the gravy boiling.]

[Footnote 24: To perform the rite called "o-hyaku-dō" means to make one hundred visits to a temple, saying a prayer each time. The expression "dark way of Love" _(koi no yami_ or _yamiji)_ is a Buddhist phrase; love, being due to _mayoi,_ or illusion, is a state of spiritual darkness. The term "owner of my heart" is an attempted rendering of the Japanese word _nushi,_ signifying "master," "owner,"--often, also, "landlord,"--and, in love-matters, the lord or master of the affection inspired.]

The interest attaching to the following typical group of love-songs will be found to depend chiefly upon the Buddhist allusions:--

_In the bed of the River of Souls, or in waiting alone at evening,_
_The pain differs nothing at all: to a mountain the pebble grows._[25]

_Who furthest after illusion wanders on Love's dark pathway_
_Is ever the clearest-seeing,[26] not the simple or dull._

[Footnote 25:

Sai-no-kawara to
Nushi matsu yoi wa
Koishi, koishi ga
Yama to naru.

A more literal translation would be: "In the Sai-no-Kawara ('Dry bed of the River of Souls') and in the evening when waiting for the loved one, '_Koishi, Koishi_' becomes a mountain." There is a delicate pun here,--a play on the word _Koishi,_ which, as pronounced, though not as written, may mean either "a small stone," or "longing to see." In the bed of the phantom river, Sai-no-Kawa, the ghosts of children are obliged to pile up little stones, the weight of which increases so as to tax their strength to the utmost. There is a reference here also to a verse in the Buddhist _wasan_ of Jizō, describing the crying of the children for their parents: _"Chichi koishi! haha koishi!_" (See _Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan,_ vol. i. pp. 59-61.)]

[Footnote 26: Clearest-sighted,--that is, in worldly matters.]

_Coldly seen from without our love looks utter folly:_
_Who never has felt_ mayoi _never could understand!_

_Countless the men must be who dwell in three thousand worlds;_
_Yet among them all is none worthy to change for mine._[27]

_However fickle I seem, my heart is never unfaithful:_
_Out of the slime itself, spotless the lotos grows._[28]

_So that we stay together, even the Hell of the Blood Lake--_
_Even the Mountain of Swords--will signify nothing at all?_[29]

[Footnote 27:

San-zen sékai ni
Otoko wa arédo,
Nushi ni mi-kayeru
Hito wa nai.

"San-zen sékai," the three thousand worlds, is a common Buddhist expression. Literally translated, the above song runs: "Three-thousand-worlds-in men are, but lover-to-exchange person is not."]

[Footnote 28: The familiar Buddhist simile is used more significantly here than the Western reader might suppose from the above rendering. These are supposed to be the words either of a professional singing-girl or of a _jorō_. Her calling is derisively termed a _doro-midzu kagyō_ ("foul-water occupation"); and her citation of the famous Buddhist comparison in self-defense is particularly, and pathetically, happy.]

[Footnote 29:

Chi-no-Iké-Jigoku mo,
Tsurugi-no-Yama mo,
Futari-dzuré nara
Itoi 'a sénu.

The Hell of the Blood-Lake is a hell for women; and the Mountain of Swords is usually depicted in Buddhist prints as a place of infernal punishment for men in especial.]

_Not yet indeed is my body garbed in the ink-black habit;_
_--But as for this heart bereaved, already it is a nun._[30]

_My hair, indeed, is uncut; but my heart has become a religious;_
_A nun it shall always be till the hour I meet him again._

But even the priest or nun is not always exempt from the power of _mayoi_:--

_I am wearing the sable garb,--and yet, through illusion of longing,_
_Ever I lose my way,--knowing not whither or where!_

So far, my examples have been principally chosen from the more serious class of _dodoitsu._ But in _dodoitsu_ of a lighter class the Buddhist allusions are perhaps even more frequent. The following group of five will serve for specimens of hundreds:--

[Footnote 30: In the original much more pretty and much more simple:--

Sumi no koromo ni
Mi wa yatsusanedo,
Kokoro hitotsu wa
Ama-hōshi.

"Ink-black-_koromo_ [priest's or nun's outer robe] in, body not clad, but heart-one nun." _Hitotsu,_ "one," also means "solitary," "forlorn," "bereaved." _Ama hōshi,_ lit.: "nun-priest."]

_Never can be recalled the word too quickly spoken:_
_Therefore with Emma's face the lover receives the prayer._[31]

_Thrice did I hear that prayer with Buddha's face; but hereafter_
_My face shall be Emma's face because of too many prayers._

_Now they are merry together; but under their boat is_ Jigoku.[32]
_Blow quickly, thou river-wind,--blow a typhoon for my sake!_

_Vainly, to make him stay, I said that the crows were night crows;_[33]--
_The bell of the dawn peals doom,--the bell that cannot lie._

[Footnote 31: The implication is that he has hastily promised more than he wishes to perform. Emma, or Yemma (Sansc. Yama), is the Lord of Hell and Judge of Souls; and, as depicted in Buddhist sculpture and painting, is more than fearful to look upon. There is an evident reference in this song to the Buddhist proverb: _Karu-toki no Jizō-gao; nasu-toki no Emma-gao_ ("Borrowing-time, the face of Jizō; repaying-time, the face of Emma").]

[Footnote 32: "Jigoku" is the Buddhist name for various hells (Sansc. _narakas)._ The allusion here is to the proverb, _Funa-ita ichi-mai shita wa Jigoku:_ "Under [_the thickness of] a_ single boat-plank is hell,"--referring to the perils of the sea. This song is a satire on jealousy; and the boat spoken of is probably a roofed pleasure-boat, such as excursions are made into the sound of music.]

[Footnote 33: _Tsuki-yo-garasu,_ lit.: "moon-night crows." Crows usually announce the dawn by their cawing; but sometimes on moonlight nights they caw at all hours from sunset to sunrise. The bell referred to is the bell of some Buddhist temple: the _aké-no-kane,_ or "dawn-bell," being, in all parts of Japan, sounded from every Buddhist _tera._ There is a pun in the original;--the expression _tsukenai,_ "cannot _tell_ (a lie)," might also be interpreted phonetically as "cannot _strike_ [a bell]."]

_This my desire: To kill the crows of three thousand worlds,_
_And then to repose in peace with the owner of my heart!_[34]

[Footnote 34:

San-zen sékai no
Karasu we koroshi
Nushi to soi-né ga
Shité mitai
]

I have cited this last only as a curiosity. For it has a strange history, and is not what it seems,--although the apparent motive was certainly suggested by some song like the one immediately preceding it. It is a song of loyalty, and was composed by Kido of Chō-shū, one of the leaders in that great movement which brought about the downfall of the Shōgunate, the restoration of the Imperial power, the reconstruction of Japanese society, and the introduction and adoption of Western civilization. Kido, Saigō, and Ōkubo are rightly termed the three heroes of the restoration. While preparing his plans at Kyōto, in company with his friend Saigō, Kido composed and sang this song as an intimation of his real sentiments. By the phrase, "ravens of the three thousand worlds," he designated the Tokugawa partisans; by the word _nushi_ (lord, or heart's-master) he signified the Emperor; and by the term _soiné_ (reposing together) he referred to the hoped-for condition of direct responsibility to the Throne, without further intervention of Shōgun and daimyō. It was not the first example in Japanese history of the use of popular song as a medium for the utterance of opinions which, expressed in plainer language, would have invited assassination.

*

While I was writing the preceding note upon Kido's song, the Buddhist phrase, _San-zen sékai_ (twice occurring, as the reader will have observed, in the present collection), suggested a few reflections with which this paper may fitly conclude. I remember that when I first attempted, years ago, to learn the outlines of Buddhist philosophy, one fact which particularly impressed me was the vastness of the Buddhist concept of the universe. Buddhism, as I read it, had not offered itself to humanity as a saving creed for one inhabited world, but as the religion of "innumerable hundreds of thousands of myriads of _kôtis_[35] of worlds." And the modern scientific revelation of stellar evolution and dissolution then seemed to me, and still seems, like a prodigious confirmation of certain Buddhist theories of cosmical law.

The man of science to-day cannot ignore the enormous suggestions of the new story that the heavens are telling. He finds himself compelled to regard the development of what we call mind as a general phase or incident in the ripening of planetary life throughout the universe. He is obliged to consider the relation of our own petty sphere to the great swarming of suns and systems as no more than the relation of a single noctiluca to the phosphorescence of a sea. By its creed the Oriental intellect has been better prepared than the Occidental to accept this tremendous revelation, not as a wisdom that increaseth sorrow, but as a wisdom to quicken faith. And I cannot but think that out of the certain future union of Western knowledge with Eastern thought there must eventually proceed a Neo-Buddhism inheriting all the strength of Science, yet spiritually able to recompense the seeker after truth with the recompense foretold in the twelfth chapter of the Sutra of the Diamond-Cutter. Taking the text as it stands,--in despite of commentators,--what more could be unselfishly desired from any spiritual teaching than the reward promised in that verse,--"_They shall be endowed with the Highest Wonder"?_

[Footnote 35: 1 kôti = 10,000,000.]