Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

Should there be grown-up daughters in the family, however, the visitor is less likely to see the wife. More timid, but equally silent and reserved, the young girls will make the guest welcome. In obedience to orders, they may even gratify him by a performance upon some musical instrument, by exhibiting some of their own needlework or painting, or by showing to him some precious or curious objects among the family heirlooms. But all submissive sweetness and courtesy are inseparable from the high-bred reserve belonging to the finest native culture. And the guest must not allow himself to be less reserved. Unless possessing the privilege of great age, which would entitle him to paternal freedom of speech, he must never venture upon personal compliment, or indulge in anything resembling light flattery. What would be deemed gallantry in the West may be gross rudeness in the East. On no account can the visitor compliment a young girl about her looks, her grace, her toilette, much less dare address such a compliment to the wife. But, the reader may object, there are certainly occasions upon which a compliment of some character cannot be avoided. This is true, and on such an occasion politeness requires, as a preliminary, the humblest apology for making the compliment, which will then be accepted with a phrase more graceful than our "Pray do not mention it;"--that is, the rudeness of making a compliment at all.

But here we touch the vast subject of Japanese etiquette, about which I must confess myself still profoundly ignorant. I have ventured thus much only in order to suggest how lacking: in refinement much of our Western society fiction must appear to the Oriental mind.

To speak of one's affection for wife or children, to bring into conversation anything closely related to domestic life, is totally incompatible with Japanese ideas of good breeding. Our open acknowledgment, or rather exhibition, of the domestic relation consequently appears to cultivated Japanese, if not absolutely barbarous, at least uxorious. And this sentiment may be found to explain not a little in Japanese life which has given foreigners a totally incorrect idea about the position of Japanese women. It is not the custom in Japan for the husband even to walk side by side with his wife in the street, much less to give her his arm, or to assist her in ascending or descending a flight of stairs. But this is not any proof upon his part of want of affection. It is only the result of a social sentiment totally different from our own; it is simply obedience to an etiquette founded upon the idea that public displays of the marital relation are improper. Why improper? Because they seem to Oriental judgment to indicate a confession of personal, and therefore selfish sentiment For the Oriental the law of life is duty. Affection must, in every time and place, be subordinated to duty. Any public exhibition of personal affection of a certain class is equivalent to a public confession of moral weakness. Does this mean that to love one's wife is amoral weakness? No; it is the duty of a man to love his wife; but it is moral weakness to love her more than his parents, or to show her, in public, more attention than he shows to his parents. Nay, it would be a proof of moral weakness to show her even the _same_ degree of attention. During the lifetime of the parents her position in the household is simply that of an adopted daughter, and the most affectionate of husbands must not even for a moment allow himself to forget the etiquette of the family.

Here I must touch upon one feature of Western literature never to be reconciled with Japanese ideas and customs. Let the reader reflect for a moment how large a place the subject of kisses and caresses and embraces occupies in our poetry and in our prose fiction; and then let him consider the fact that in Japanese literature these have no existence whatever. For kisses and embraces are simply unknown in Japan as tokens of affection, if we except the solitary fact that Japanese mothers, like mothers all over the world, lip and hug their little ones betimes. After babyhood there is no more hugging or kissing. Such actions, except in the case of infants, are held to be highly immodest. Never do girls kiss one another; never do parents kiss or embrace their children who have become able to walk. And this rule holds good of all classes of society, from the highest nobility to the humblest peasantry. Neither have we the least indication throughout Japanese literature of any time in the history of the race when affection was more demonstrative than it is to-day. Perhaps the Western reader will find it hard even to imagine a literature in the whole course of which no mention is made of kissing, of embracing, even of pressing a loved hand; for hand-clasping is an action as totally foreign to Japanese impulse as kissing. Yet on these topics even the naïve songs of the country folk, even the old ballads of the people about unhappy lovers, are quite as silent as the exquisite verses of the court poets. Suppose we take for an example the ancient popular ballad of Shuntokumaru, which has given origin to various proverbs and household words familiar throughout western Japan. Here we have the story of two betrothed lovers, long separated by a cruel misfortune, wandering in search of each other all over the Empire, and at last suddenly meeting before Kiomidzu Temple by the favor of the gods. Would not any Aryan poet describe such a meeting as a rushing of the two into each other's arms, with kisses and cries of love? But how does the old Japanese ballad describe it? In brief, the twain only sit down together _and stroke each other a little._ Now, even this reserved form of caress is an extremely rare indulgence of emotion. You may see again and again fathers and sons, husbands and wives, mothers and daughters, meeting after years of absence, yet you will probably never see the least approach to a caress between them. They will kneel down and salute each other, and smile, and perhaps cry a little for joy; but they will neither rush into each other's arms, nor utter extraordinary phrases of affection. Indeed, such terms of affection as "my dear," "my darling," "my sweet," "my love," "my life," do not exist in Japanese, nor any terms at all equivalent to our emotional idioms. Japanese affection is not uttered in words; it scarcely appears even in the tone of voice: it is chiefly shown in acts of exquisite courtesy and kindness. I might add that the opposite emotion is under equally perfect control; but to illustrate this remarkable fact would require a separate essay.

[1] I do not, however, refer to those extraordinary persons who make their short residence in teahouses and establishments of a much worse kind, and then go home to write books about the women of Japan.

III

He who would study impartially the life and thought of the Orient must also study those of the Occident from the Oriental point of view. And the results of such a comparative study he will find to be in no small degree retroactive. According to his character and his faculty of perception, he will be more or less affected by those Oriental influences to which he submits himself. The conditions of Western life will gradually begin to assume for him new, undreamed-of meanings, and to lose not a few of their old familiar aspects. Much that he once deemed right and true he may begin to find abnormal and false. He may begin to doubt whether the moral ideals of the West are really the highest. He may feel more than inclined to dispute the estimate placed by Western custom upon Western civilization. Whether his doubts be final is another matter: they will be at least rational enough and powerful enough to modify permanently some of his prior convictions,--among others his conviction of the moral value of the Western worship of Woman as the Unattainable, the Incomprehensible, the Divine, the ideal of "_la femme que tu ne connaîtras pas,_"[1]--the ideal of the Eternal Feminine. For in this ancient East the Eternal Feminine does not exist at all. And after having become quite accustomed to live without it, one may naturally conclude that it is not absolutely essential to intellectual health, and may even dare to question the necessity for its perpetual existence upon the other side of the world.

[1] A phrase from Baudelaire.

IV

To say that the Eternal Feminine does not exist in the Far East is to state but a part of the truth. That it could be introduced thereinto, in the remotest future, is not possible to imagine. Few, if any, of our ideas regarding it can even be rendered into the language of the country: a language in which nouns have no gender, adjectives no degrees of comparison, and verbs no persons; a language in which, says Professor Chamberlain, the absence of personification is "a characteristic so deep-seated and so all-pervading as to interfere even with the use of neuter nouns in combination with transitive verbs."[1] "In fact," he adds, "most metaphors and allegories are incapable of so much as explanation to Far-Eastern minds;" and he makes a striking citation from Wordsworth in illustration of his statement. Yet even poets much more lucid than Wordsworth are to the Japanese equally obscure. I remember the difficulty I once had in explaining to an advanced class this simple line from a well-known ballad of Tennyson,--

"She is more beautiful than day."

My students could understand the use of the adjective "beautiful" to qualify "day," and the use of the same adjective, separately, to qualify the word "maid." But that there could exist in any mortal mind the least idea of analogy between the beauty of day and the beauty of a young woman was quite beyond their understanding. In order to convey to them the poet's thought, it was necessary to analyze it psychologically,--to prove a possible nervous analogy between two modes of pleasurable feeling excited by two different impressions.

Thus, the very nature of the language tells us how ancient and how deeply rooted in racial character are those tendencies by which we must endeavor to account--if there be any need of accounting at all--for the absence in this Far East of a dominant ideal corresponding to our own. They are causes incomparably older than the existing social structure, older than the idea of the family, older than ancestor worship, enormously older than that Confucian code which is the reflection rather than the explanation of many singular facts in Oriental life. But since beliefs and practices react upon character, and character again must react upon practices and beliefs, it has not been altogether irrational to seek in Confucianism for causes as well as for explanations. Far more irrational have been the charges of hasty critics against Shintō and against Buddhism as religious influences opposed to the natural rights of woman. The ancient faith of Shintō has been at least as gentle to woman as the ancient faith of the Hebrews. Its female divinities are not less numerous than its masculine divinities, nor are they presented to the imagination of worshipers in a form much less attractive than the dreams of Greek mythology. Of some, like So-tohori-no-Iratsumé, it is said that the light of their beautiful bodies passes through their garments; and the source of all life and light, the eternal Sun, is a goddess, fair Amaterasu-oho-mi-kami. Virgins serve the ancient gods, and figure in all the pageants of the faith; and in a thousand shrines throughout the land the memory of woman as wife and mother is worshiped equally with the memory of man as hero and father. Neither can the later and alien faith of Buddhism be justly accused of relegating woman to a lower place in the spiritual world than monkish Christianity accorded her in the West. The Buddha, like the Christ, was horn of a virgin; the most lovable divinities of Buddhism, Jizo excepted, are feminine, both in Japanese art and in Japanese popular fancy; and in the Buddhist as in the Roman Catholic hagiography, the lives of holy women hold honored place. It is true that Buddhism, like early Christianity, used its utmost eloquence in preaching against the temptation of female loveliness; and it is true that in the teaching of its founder, as in the teaching of Paul, social and spiritual supremacy is accorded to the man. Yet, in our search for texts on this topic, we must not overlook the host of instances of favor shown by the Buddha to women of all classes, nor that remarkable legend of a later text, in which a dogma denying to woman the highest spiritual opportunities is sublimely rebuked.

In the eleventh chapter of the Sutra of the Lotus of the Good Law, it is written that mention was made before the Lord Buddha of a young girl who had in one instant arrived at supreme knowledge; who had in one moment acquired the merits of a thousand meditations, and the proofs of the essence of all laws. And the girl came and stood in the presence of the Lord.

But the Bodhissattva Pragnakuta doubted, saying, "I have seen the Lord Sakyamuni in the time when he was striving for supreme enlightenment, and I know that he performed good works innumerable through countless æons. In all the world there is not one spot so large as a grain of mustard-seed where he has not surrendered his body for the sake of living creatures. Only after all this did he arrive at enlightenment. Who then may believe this girl could in one moment have arrived at supreme knowledge?"

And the venerable priest Sariputra likewise doubted, saying, "It may indeed happen, O Sister, that a woman fulfill the six perfect virtues; but as yet there is no example of her having attained to Buddhaship, because a woman cannot attain to the rank of a Bodhissattva."

But the maiden called upon the Lord Buddha to be her witness. And instantly in the sight of the assembly her sex disappeared; and she manifested herself as a Bodhissattva, filling all directions of space with the radiance of the thirty-two signs. And the world shook in six different ways. And the priest Sariputra was silent.[2]

[1] _See Things Japanese_, second edition, pp. 255, 256; article "Language."

[2] See the whole wonderful passage in Kern's translation of this magnificent Sutra, _Sacred Books of the East_, vol. xxi. chap. xi.

V

But to feel the real nature of what is surely one of the greatest obstacles to intellectual sympathy between the West and the Far East, we must fully appreciate the immense effect upon Occidental life of this ideal which has no existence in the Orient. We must remember what that ideal has been to Western civilization,--to all its pleasures and refinements and luxuries; to its sculpture, painting, decoration, architecture, literature, drama, music; to the development of countless industries. We must think of its effect upon manners, customs, and the language of taste, upon conduct and ethics, upon endeavor, upon philosophy and religion, upon almost every phase of public and private life,--in short, upon national character. Nor should we forget that the many influences interfused in the shaping of it--Teutonic, Celtic, Scandinavian, classic, or mediæval, the Greek apotheosis of human beauty, the Christian worship of the mother of God, the exaltations of chivalry, the spirit of the Renascence steeping and coloring all the preëxisting idealism in a new sensuousness--must have had their nourishment, if not their birth, in a race feeling ancient as Aryan speech, and as alien the most eastern East.

Of all these various influences combined to form our ideal, the classic element remains perceptibly dominant. It is true that the Hellenic conception of human beauty, so surviving, has been wondrously informed with a conception of soul beauty never of the antique world nor of the Renascence. Also it is true that the new philosophy of evolution, forcing recognition of the incalculable and awful cost of the Present to the Past, creating a totally new comprehension of duty to the Future, enormously enhancing our conception of character values, has aided more than all preceding influences together toward the highest possible spiritualization of the ideal of woman. Yet, however further spiritualized it may become through future intellectual expansion, this ideal must in its very nature remain fundamentally artistic and sensuous.

We do not see Nature as the Oriental sees it, and as his art proves that he sees it. We see it less realistically, we know it less intimately, because, save through the lenses of the specialist, we contemplate it anthropomorphically. In one direction, indeed, our æsthetic sense has been cultivated to a degree incomparably finer than that of the Oriental; but that direction has been passional. We have learned something of the beauty of Nature through our ancient worship of the beauty of woman. Even from the beginning it is probable that the perception of human beauty has been the main source of all our æsthetic sensibility. Possibly we owe to it likewise our idea of proportion;[1] our exaggerated appreciation of regularity; our fondness for parallels, curves, and all geometrical symmetries. And in the long process of our æsthetic evolution, the ideal of woman has at last become for us an æsthetic abstraction. Through the illusion of that abstraction only do we perceive the charms of our world, even as forms might be perceived through some tropic atmosphere whose vapors are iridescent.

Nor is this all. Whatsoever has once been likened to woman by art or thought has been strangely informed and transformed by that momentary symbolism: wherefore, through all the centuries Western fancy has been making Nature more and more feminine. Whatsoever delights us imagination has feminized,--the infinite tenderness of the sky,--the mobility of waters,--the rose of dawn,--the vast caress of Day,--Night, and the lights of heaven,--even the undulations of the eternal hills. And flowers, and the flush of fruit, and all things fragrant, fair, and gracious; the genial seasons with their voices; the laughter of streams, and whisper of leaves, and ripplings of song within the shadows;--all sights, or sounds, or sensations that can touch our love of loveliness, of delicacy, of sweetness, of gentleness, make for us vague dreams of woman. Where our fancy lends masculinity to Nature, it is only in grimness and in force,--as if to enhance by rugged and mighty contrasts the witchcraft of the Eternal Feminine. Nay, even the terrible itself, if fraught with terrible beauty,--even Destruction, if only shaped with the grace of destroyers,--becomes for us feminine. And not beauty alone, of sight or sound, but well-nigh all that is mystic, sublime, or holy, now makes appeal to us through some marvelously woven intricate plexus of passional sensibility. Even the subtlest forces of our universe speak to us of woman; new sciences have taught us new names for the thrill her presence wakens in the blood, for that ghostly shock which is first love, for the eternal riddle of her fascination. Thus, out of simple human passion, through influences and transformations innumerable, we have evolved a cosmic emotion, a feminine pantheism.

[1] On the origin of the idea of bilateral symmetry, see Herbert Spencer's essay, "The Sources of Architectural Types."

VI

And now may not one venture to ask whether all the consequences of this passional influence in the æsthetic evolution of our Occident have been in the main beneficial? Underlying all those visible results of which we boast as art triumphs, may there not be lurking invisible results, some future revelation of which will cause more than a little shock to our self-esteem? Is it not quite possible that our æsthetic faculties have been developed even abnormally in one direction by the power of a single emotional idea which has left us nearly, if not totally blind to many wonderful aspects of Nature? Or rather, must not this be the inevitable effect of the extreme predominance of one particular emotion in the evolution of our æsthetic sensibility? And finally, one may surely be permitted to ask if the predominating influence itself has been the highest possible, and whether there is not a higher, known perhaps to the Oriental soul.

I may only suggest these questions, without hoping to answer them satisfactorily. But the longer I dwell in the East, the more I feel growing upon me the belief that there are exquisite artistic faculties and perceptions, developed in the Oriental, of which we can know scarcely more than we know of those unimaginable colors, invisible to the human eye, yet proven to exist by the spectroscope. I think that such a possibility is indicated by certain phases of Japanese art.

Here it becomes as difficult as dangerous to particularize. I dare hazard only some general observations. I think this marvelous art asserts that, out of the infinitely varied aspects of Nature, those which for us hold no suggestion whatever of sex character, those which cannot be looked at anthropomorphically, those which are neither masculine nor feminine, but neuter or nameless, are those most profoundly loved and comprehended by the Japanese. Nay, he sees in Nature much that for thousands of years has remained invisible to us; and we are now learning from him aspects of life and beauties of form to which we were utterly blind before. We have finally made the startling discovery that his art--notwithstanding all the dogmatic assertions of Western prejudice to the contrary, and notwithstanding the strangely weird impression of unreality which at first it produced--is never a mere creation of fantasy, but a veritable reflection of what has been and of what is: wherefore we have recognized that it is nothing less than a higher education in art simply to look at his studies of bird life, insect life, plant life, tree life. Compare, for example, our very finest drawings of insects with Japanese drawings of similar subjects. Compare Giacomelli's illustrations to Michelet's "L'Insecte" with the commonest Japanese figures of the same creatures decorating the stamped leather of a cheap tobacco pouch or the metal work of a cheap pipe. The whole minute exquisiteness of the European engraving has accomplished only an indifferent realism, while the Japanese artist, with a few dashes of his brush, has seized and reproduced, with an incomprehensible power of interpretation, not only every peculiarity of the creature's shape, but every special characteristic of its motion. Each figure flung from the Oriental painter's brush is a lesson, a revelation, to perceptions unbeclouded by prejudice, an opening of the eyes of those who can see, though it be only a spider in a wind-shaken web, a dragon-fly riding a sunbeam, a pair of crabs running through sedge, the trembling of a fish's fins in a clear current, the lilt of a flying wasp, the pitch of a flying duck, a mantis in fighting position, or a semi toddling up a cedar branch to sing. All this art is alive, intensely alive, and our corresponding art looks absolutely dead beside it.

Take, again, the subject of flowers. An English or German flower painting, the result of months of trained labor, and valued at several hundred pounds, would certainly not compare as a nature study, in the higher sense, with a Japanese flower painting executed in twenty brush strokes, and worth perhaps five sen. The former would represent at best but an ineffectual and painful effort to imitate a massing of colors. The latter would prove a perfect memory of certain flower shapes instantaneously flung upon paper, without any model to aid, and showing, not the recollection of any individual blossom, but the perfect realization of a general law of form expression, perfectly mastered, with all its moods, tenses, and inflections. The French alone, among Western art critics, seem fully to understand these features of Japanese art; and among all Western artists it is the Parisian alone who approaches the Oriental in his methods. Without lifting his brush from the paper, the French artist may sometimes, with a single wavy line, create the almost speaking figure of a particular type of man or woman. But this high development of faculty is confined chiefly to humorous sketching; it is still either masculine or feminine. To understand what I mean by the ability of the Japanese artist, my reader must imagine just such a power of almost instantaneous creation as that which characterizes certain French work, applied to almost every subject except individuality, to nearly all recognized general types, to all aspects of Japanese nature, to all forms of native landscape, to clouds and flowing water and mists, to all the life of woods and fields, to all the moods of seasons and the tones of horizons and the colors of the morning and the evening. Certainly, the deeper spirit of this magical art seldom reveals itself at first sight to unaccustomed eyes, since it appeals to so little in Western æsthetic experience. But by gentle degrees it will so enter into an appreciative and unprejudiced mind as to modify profoundly therein almost every preëxisting sentiment in relation to the beautiful. All of its meaning will indeed require many years to master, but something of its reshaping power will be felt in a much shorter time when the sight of an American illustrated magazine or of any illustrated European periodical has become almost unbearable.

Psychological differences of far deeper import are suggested by other facts, capable of exposition in words, but not capable of interpretation through Western standards of æsthetics or Western feeling of any sort. For instance, I have been watching two old men planting young trees in the garden of a neighboring temple. They sometimes spend nearly an hour in planting a single sapling. Having fixed it in the ground, they retire to a distance to study the position of all its lines, and consult together about it. As a consequence, the sapling is taken up and replanted in a slightly different position. This is done no less than eight times before the little tree can be perfectly adjusted into the plan of the garden. Those two old men are composing a mysterious thought with their little trees, changing them, transferring them, removing or replacing them, even as a poet changes and shifts his words, to give to his verse the most delicate or the most forcible expression possible.

In every large Japanese cottage there are several alcoves, or tokonoma, one in each of the principal rooms. In these alcoves the art treasures of the family are exhibited.[1] Within each toko a kakemono is hung; and upon its slightly elevated floor (usually of polished wood) are placed flower vases and one or two artistic objects. Flowers are arranged in the toko vases according to ancient rules which Mr. Conder's beautiful hook will tell you a great deal about; and the kakemono and the art objects there displayed are changed at regular intervals, according to occasion and season. Now, in a certain alcove, I have at various times seen many different things of beauty: a Chinese statuette of ivory, an incense vase of bronze,--representing a cloud-riding pair of dragons,--the wood carving of a Buddhist pilgrim resting by the wayside and mopping his bald pate, masterpieces of lacquer ware and lovely Kyōto porcelains, and a large stone placed on a pedestal of heavy, costly wood, expressly made for it. I do not know whether you could see any beauty in that stone; it is neither hewn nor polished, nor does it possess the least imaginable intrinsic value. It is simply a gray water-worn stone from the bed of a stream. Yet it cost more than one of those Kyōto vases which sometimes replace it, and which you would be glad to pay a very high price for.

In the garden of the little house I now occupy in Kumamoto, there are about fifteen rocks, or large stones, of as many shapes and sizes. They also have no real intrinsic value, not even as possible building material. And yet the proprietor of the garden paid for them something more than seven hundred and fifty Japanese dollars, or considerably more than the pretty house itself could possibly have cost. And it would be quite wrong to suppose the cost of the stones due to the expense of their transportation from the bed of the Shira-kawa. No; they are worth seven hundred and fifty dollars only because they are considered beautiful to a certain degree, and because there is a large local demand for beautiful stones. They are not even of the best class, or they would have cost a great deal more. Now, until you can perceive that a big rough stone may have more æsthetic suggestiveness than a costly steel engraving, that it is a thing of beauty and a joy forever, you cannot begin to understand how a Japanese sees Nature. "But what," you may ask, "can be beautiful in a common stone?" Many things; but I will mention only one,--irregularity.

In my little Japanese house, the fusuma, or sliding screens of opaque paper between room and room, have designs at which I am never tired of looking. The designs vary in different parts of the dwelling; I will speak only of the fusuma dividing my study from a smaller apartment. The ground color is a delicate cream-yellow; and the golden pattern is very simple,--the mystic-jewel symbols of Buddhism scattered over the surface by pairs. But no two sets of pairs are placed at exactly the same distance from each other; and the symbols themselves are curiously diversified, never appearing twice in exactly the same position or relation. Sometimes one jewel is transparent, and its fellow opaque; sometimes both are opaque or both diaphanous; sometimes the transparent one is the larger of the two; sometimes the opaque is the larger; sometimes both are precisely the same size; sometimes they overlap, and sometimes do not touch; sometimes the opaque is on the left, sometimes on the right; sometimes the transparent jewel is above, sometimes below. Vainly does the eye roam over the whole surface in search of a repetition, or of anything resembling regularity, either in distribution, juxtaposition, grouping, dimensions, or contrasts. And throughout the whole dwelling nothing resembling regularity in the various decorative designs can be found. The ingenuity by which it is avoided is amazing,--rises to the dignify of genius. Now, all this is a common characteristic of Japanese decorative art; and after having lived a few years under its influences, the sight of a regular pattern upon a wall, a carpet, a curtain, a ceiling, upon any decorated surface, pains like a horrible vulgarism. Surely, it is because we have so long been accustomed to look at Nature anthropomorphically that we can still endure mechanical ugliness in our own decorative art, and that we remain insensible to charms of Nature which are clearly perceived even by the eyes of the Japanese child, wondering over its mother's shoulder at the green and blue wonder of the world.

"_He_" saith a Buddhist text, "_who discerns that nothingness is law,--such a one hath wisdom._"

[1] The tokonoma, or toko, is said to have been first introduced into Japanese architecture about four hundred and fifty years ago, by the Buddhist priest Eisai, who had studied in China. Perhaps the alcove was originally devised and used for the exhibition of sacred objects; but to-day, among the cultivated, it would be deemed in very had taste to display either images of the gods or sacred paintings in the toko of a guest-room. The toko is still, however, a sacred place in a certain sense. No one should ever step upon it, or squat within it, or even place in it anything not pure, or anything offensive to taste. There is an elaborate code of etiquette in relation to it. The most honored among guests is always placed nearest to it; and guests take their places, according to rank, nearer to or further from it.

V

BITS OF LIFE AND DEATH

I

_July_ 25. Three extraordinary visits have been made to my house this week.

The first was that of the professional well-cleaners. For once every year all wells must be emptied and cleansed, lest the God of Wells, Suijin-Sama, be wroth. On this occasion I learned some things relating to Japanese wells and the tutelar deity of them, who has two names, being also called Mizuha-nome-no-mikoto.

Suijin-Sama protects all wells, keeping their water sweet and cool, provided that house-owners observe his laws of cleanliness, which are rigid. To those who break them sickness comes, and death. Rarely the god manifests himself, taking the form of a serpent. I have never seen any temple dedicated to him. But once each month a Shinto priest visits the homes of pious families having wells, and he repeats certain ancient prayers to the Well-God, and plants nobori, little paper flags, which are symbols, at the edge of the well. After the well has been cleaned, also, this is done. Then the first bucket of the new water must be drawn up by a man; for if a woman first draw water, the well will always thereafter remain muddy.

The god has little servants to help him in his work. These are the small fishes the Japanese call funa.[1] One or two funa are kept in every well, to clear the water of larvae. When a well is cleaned, great care is taken of the little fish. It was on the occasion of the coming of the well-cleaners that I first learned of the existence of a pair of funa in my own well. They were placed in a tub of cool water while the well was refilling, and thereafter were replunged into their solitude.

The water of my well is clear and ice-cold. But now I can never drink of it without a thought of those two small white lives circling always in darkness, and startled through untold years by the descent of plashing buckets.

The second curious visit was that of the district firemen, in full costume, with their hand-engines. According to ancient custom, they make a round of all their district once a year during the dry spell, and throw water over the hot roofs, and receive some small perquisite from each wealthy householder. There is a belief that when it has not rained for a long time roofs may be ignited by the mere heat of the sun. The firemen played with their hose upon my roofs, trees, and garden, producing considerable refreshment; and in return I bestowed on them wherewith to buy saké.

The third visit was that of a deputation of children asking for some help to celebrate fittingly the festival of Jizō, who has a shrine on the other side of the street, exactly opposite my house. I was very glad to contribute to their fund, for I love the gentle god, and I knew the festival would be delightful. Early next morning, I saw that the shrine had already been decked with flowers and votive lanterns. A new bib had been put about Jizō's neck, and a Buddhist repast set before him. Later on, carpenters constructed a dancing-platform in the temple court for the children to dance upon; and before sundown the toy-sellers had erected and stocked a small street of booths inside the precincts. After dark I went out into a great glory of lantern fires to see the children dance; and I found, perched before my gate, an enormous dragon-fly more than three feet long. It was a token of the children's gratitude for the little help I had given them,--a kazari, a decoration. I was startled for the moment by the realism of the thing; but upon close examination I discovered that the body was a pine branch wrapped with colored paper, the four wings were four fire-shovels, and the gleaming head was a little teapot. The whole was lighted by a candle so placed as to make extraordinary shadows, which formed part of the design. It was a wonderful instance of art sense working without a speck of artistic material, yet it was all the labor of a poor little child only eight years old!

[1] A sort of small silver carp.

II

_July_ 30. The next house to mine, on the south side,--a low, dingy structure,--is that of a dyer. You can always tell where a Japanese dyer is by the long pieces of silk or cotton stretched between bamboo poles before his door to dry in the sun,--broad bands of rich azure, of purple, of rose, pale blue, pearl gray. Yesterday my neighbor coaxed me to pay the family a visit; and after having been led through the front part of their little dwelling, I was surprised to find myself looking from a rear veranda at a garden worthy of some old Kyōto palace. There was a dainty landscape in miniature, and a pond of clear water peopled by goldfish having wonderfully compound tails.

When I had enjoyed this spectacle awhile, the dyer led me to a small room fitted up as a Buddhist chapel. Though everything had had to be made on a reduced scale, I did not remember to have seen a more artistic display in any temple. He told me it had cost him about fifteen hundred yen. I did not understand how even that sum could have sufficed.

There were three elaborately carven altars,-a triple blaze of gold lacquer-work; a number of charming Buddhist images; many exquisite vessels; an ebony reading-desk; a mokugyō[1]; two fine bells,--in short, all the paraphernalia of a temple in miniature. My host had studied at a Buddhist temple in his youth, and knew the sutras, of which he had all that are used by the Jōdō sect. He told me that he could celebrate any of the ordinary services. Daily, at a fixed hour, the whole family assembled in the chapel for prayers; and he generally read the Kyō for them. But on extraordinary occasions a Buddhist priest from the neighboring temple would come to officiate.

He told me a queer story about robbers. Dyers are peculiarly liable to be visited by robbers; partly by reason of the value of the silks intrusted to them, and also because the business is known to be lucrative. One evening the family were robbed. The master was out of the city; his old mother, his wife, and a female servant were the only persons in the house at the time. Three men, having their faces masked and carrying long swords, entered the door. One asked the servant whether any of the apprentices were still in the building; and she, hoping to frighten the invaders away, answered that the young men were all still at work. But the robbers were not disturbed by this assurance. One posted himself at the entrance, the other two strode into the sleeping-apartment. The women started up in alarm, and the wife asked, "Why do you wish to kill us?" He who seemed to be the leader answered, "We do not wish to kill you; we want money only. But if we do not get it, then it will be this"--striking his sword into the matting. The old mother said, "Be so kind as not to frighten my daughter-in-law, and I will give you whatever money there is in the house. But you ought to know there cannot be much, as my son has gone to Kyōto." She handed them the money-drawer and her own purse. There were, just twenty-seven yen and eighty-four sen. The head robber counted it, and said, quite gently, "We do not want to frighten you. We know you are a very devout believer in Buddhism, and we think you would not tell a lie. Is this all?" "Yes, it is all," she answered. "I am, as you say, a believer in the teaching of the Buddha, and if you come to rob me now, I believe it is only because I myself, in some former life, once robbed you. This is my punishment for that fault, and so, instead of wishing to deceive you, I feel grateful at this opportunity to atone for the wrong which I did to you in my previous state of existence." The robber laughed, and said, "You are a good old woman, and we believe you. If you were poor, we would not rob you at all. Now we only want a couple of kimono and this,"--laying his hand on a very fine silk overdress. The old woman replied, "All my son's kimono I can give you, but I beg you will not take that, for it does not belong to my son, and was confided to us only for dyeing. What is ours I can give, but I cannot give what belongs to another." "That is quite right," approved the robber, "and we shall not take it."

After receiving a few robes, the robbers said good-night, very politely, but ordered the women not to look after them. The old servant was still near the door. As the chief robber passed her, he said, "You told us a lie,--so take that!"--and struck her senseless. None of the robbers were ever caught.

[1] A hollow wooden block shaped like a dolphin's head. It is tapped in accompaniment to the chanting of the Buddhist sutras.

III

_August_ 29. When a body has been burned, according to the funeral rites of certain Buddhist sects, search is made among the ashes for a little bone called the Hotoke-San, or "Lord Buddha," popularly supposed to be a little bone of the throat. What bone it really is I do not know, never having had a chance to examine such a relic.

According to the shape of this little bone when found after the burning, the future condition of the dead may be predicted. Should the next state to which the soul is destined be one of happiness, the bone will have the form of a small image of Buddha. But if the next birth is to be unhappy, then the bone will have either an ugly shape, or no shape at all.

A little boy, the son of a neighboring tobacconist, died the night before last, and to-day the corpse was burned. The little hone left over from the burning was discovered to have the form of three Buddhas,--San-Tai,--which may have afforded some spiritual consolation to the bereaved parents.[1]

[1] At the great temple of Tennōji, at Ōsaka, all such bones are dropped into a vault; and according _to the sound each makes in falling_, further evidence about the Gōsho is said to be obtained. After a hundred years from the time of beginning this curious collection, all these bones are to be ground into a kind of paste, out of which a colossal statue of Buddha is to be made.

IV

_September_ 13. A letter from Matsue, Izumo, tells me that the old man who used to supply me with pipestems is dead. (A Japanese pipe, you must know, consists of three pieces, usually,--a metal bowl large enough to hold a pea, a metal mouthpiece, and a bamboo stem which is renewed at regular intervals.) He used to stain his pipestems very prettily: some looked like porcupine quills, and some like cylinders of snakeskin. He lived in a queer narrow little street at the verge of the city. I know the street because in it there is a famous statue of Jizō called Shiroko-ō,--"White-Child-Jizō,"--which I once went to see. They whiten its face, like the face of a dancing-girl, for some reason which I have never been able to find out.

The old man had a daughter, O-Masu, about whom a story is told. O-Masu is still alive. She has been a happy wife for many years; but she is dumb. Long ago, an angry mob sacked and destroyed the dwelling and the storehouses of a rice speculator in the city. His money, including a quantity of gold coin (_koban_), was scattered through the street. The rioters--rude, honest peasants--did not want it: they wished to destroy, not to steal. But O-Masu's father, the same evening, picked up a koban from the mud, and took it home. Later on a neighbor denounced him, and secured his arrest. The judge before whom he was summoned tried to obtain certain evidence by cross-questioning O-Masu, then a shy girl of fifteen. She felt that if she continued to answer she would be made, in spite of herself, to give testimony unfavorable to her father; that she was in the presence of a trained inquisitor, capable, without effort, of forcing her to acknowledge everything she knew. She ceased to speak, and a stream of blood gushed from her mouth. She had silenced herself forever by simply biting off her tongue. Her father was acquitted. A merchant who admired the act demanded her in marriage, and supported her father in his old age.

V

_October_ 10. There is said to be one day--only one--in the life of a child during which it can remember and speak of its former birth.

On the very day that it becomes exactly two years old, the child is taken by its mother into the most quiet part of the house, and is placed in a mi, or rice-winnowing basket. The child sits down in the mi. Then the mother says, calling the child by name, "_Omae no zensé wa, nande attakane?--iute, gōran._"[1] Then the child always answers in one word. For some mysterious reason, no more lengthy reply is ever given. Often the answer is so enigmatic that some priest or fortune-teller must be asked to interpret it. For instance, yesterday, the little son of a copper-smith living near us answered only "Umé" to the magical question. Now umé might mean a plum-flower, a plum, or a girl's name,--"Flower-of-the-Plum." Could it mean that the boy remembered having been a girl? Or that he had been a plum-tree? "Souls of men do not enter plum-trees," said a neighbor. A fortune-teller this morning declared, on being questioned about the riddle, that the boy had probably been a scholar, poet, or statesman, because the plum-tree is the symbol of Tenjin, patron of scholars, statesmen, and men of letters.

[1] "Thy previous life as for,--what was it? Honorably look [or, _please_ look] and tell."

VI

_November_ 17. An astonishing book might be written about those things in Japanese life which no foreigner can understand. Such a book should include the study of certain rare but terrible results of anger.

As a national rule, the Japanese seldom allow themselves to show anger. Even among the common classes, any serious menace is apt to take the form of a smiling assurance that your favor shall be remembered, and that its recipient is grateful. (Do not suppose, however, that this is ironical, in our sense of the word: it is only euphemistic,--ugly things not being called by their real names.) But this smiling assurance may possibly mean death. When vengeance comes, it comes unexpectedly. Neither distance nor time, within the empire, can offer any obstacles to the avenger who can walk fifty miles a day, whose whole baggage can be tied up in a very small towel, and whose patience is almost infinite. He may choose a knife, but is much more likely to use a sword,--a Japanese sword. This, in Japanese hands, is the deadliest of weapons; and the killing of ten or twelve persons by one angry man may occupy less than a minute. It does not often happen that the murderer thinks of trying to escape. Ancient custom requires that, having taken another life, he should take his own; wherefore to fall into the hands of the police would be to disgrace his name. He has made his preparations beforehand, written his letters, arranged for his funeral, perhaps--as in one appalling instance last year--even chiseled his own tombstone. Having fully accomplished his revenge, he kills himself.

There has just occurred, not far from the city, at the village called Sugikamimura, one of those tragedies which are difficult to understand. The chief actors were, Narumatsu Ichirō, a young shopkeeper; his wife, O-Noto, twenty years of age, to whom he had been married only a year; and O-Noto's maternal uncle, one Sugimoto Ivasaku, a man of violent temper, who had once been in prison. The tragedy was in four acts.