A Temple Court in Japan

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXV, Issue 10018, 8 December 1908, Page 4

A Temple Court in Japan

(By F. Caird Hogg.)

Near my house there is a famous Buddhist temple—not a large one—small indeed in comparison with the extensive grounds it stands in, but a very beautiful contrast, with its curved roof and tinted seasoned woodwork, to the plain new buildings which surround it. In front are a, few steps on the topmost of which rests the end of a great thick bell rope attached to a bell, small out of all proportion to the rope, and this worshippers ring be"fore thej' pray. Inside there is only one image—tliat of the Buddha, beautifully cast in bronze. The face has a sweet, passionless expression. On either side of the steps are great stone lions—impossible dragony lions —on high pedestals. One has its mouth open as if to roar. The other has its mouth shut. Tin's is to show the male and female, for in this country the man is supposed to do the speaking and the woman the listening. The lions are comparatively new, only three or four decades old, but they have. witnessed, greater changes than their predecessors that stood for centuries—the new strange, ugly buildings of the treaty port replacing the beautiful picturesque Japanese houses; the trains that pass one corner of the court; the great steamers in the harbor, which is visible over the house tops, for the town is partly on a hill; good changes and bad changes, for terrible plagues and pests are now stamped out as if by magic, and the hospital near by alleviates much pain, but they have seen the descendants of the brave old warriors that came to worship turn into merchants—too many of them dishonest merchants, very, very dishonest merchants. There are some cheap railway trips on just now. It is the anniversary of Jimmu Tenno, the first Emperor of Japan, and many country people are in town. Dear old grandfathers and grandmothers wrapt up in, blankets, for the weather is still chilly —red, gray, brown, blue blankets, all colors, but red is the favorite, and the kind old folk, for none are kinder than the country folk, have laughing little children on their backs—beady-eyed, roundfaced little creatures. Whole families stretch across the street. alas! have spoilt the beautiful national costume by topping it with a foreign hat of most atrocious shape, and some have tortured their feet with ill-fitting and worse looking boots, but they feel very "swell" and all look very happy. Many of them have not seen a foreigner before and stare with open-mouthed wonder. The great buildings astonish them, and they finger tiie cliiselled granite in amazement, for their own little houses are light and of wood. .Yet there are some Japanese cast'les which have stood for centuries, and their magnificent masonry will endure for many more unless destroyed by all too common earthquakes. The temple court is filled with booths, and on holidays the court is crowded. In the booths all things are sold —beautiful things made from sugar and rice paste, sweety flowers and dolls and toys, but the plain ones taste the best, which is the way of the world. The toy booths are marvels of cheapness and ingenuity, and a few sen can buy most wonderful things, but the old-fashioned clever toys are getting out of date, and guns and swords are taking their places, though there is no change in the girls' toys; dolls and kitchens as of old still cliarm them. For one sen can the cinematograph be seen—a stand cinematograph worked by a handle, and the next stall' is selling diabolo. All the little boys in the streets are playing at it now—in laughing goodnatured" little crowds. There are no gamins nor street arabs here, thank 1 leaven! The neighboring booth is a contrast. The ancient and the modem is everywhere cheek by jowl, though it seems in no way incongruous. This stall sells little Shinto shrines—beautiful little cabinets of uncolored wood put together with wooden pegs. In all Japanese houses there is one of these, and prayers are made daily before it. In and around it are supposed to be the spirits of the departed ones. .Often have I heard women praying before them. I remember once in a country inn, early in the morning : hearing the mistress of the house, a dear, little hospitable woman, praying for a son who had done well in his studies at Tokio and to the spirit of her other son, who was further off than Tokio, tc.o far off ever to come back again, but to her simple faith his spirt came to the little shrine and took the essence of the offerings placed before it. Was she so very different, from Western mothers, who putwreaths and flowers upon the railed-in space and treasure up little odds and ends that were once bulging out little pockets? I did not tell her she was wrong —our prayers will get no precedence. Up in the western corner is a waxwork show, and though the posters outside are lurid, the scenes inside are more lurid still —fiery Samurai standing on their enemies' necks," while the vanquished one's eyes stand out four inches from their sockets, something like the horns of a snail, only gory and very ghastly. This scene is the least sanguinary, for the audience likes realism, and is well catered to. Vet they are an artistic nation, and even these sights are rendered artistically, and compare" favorably with our "Chamber of Horrors." In the eastern corner is a menagerie, and here for a few sen are to be seen the wonders of the animal world—a tiger with which the raw Japanese winter nas dealt hardly. Assiduous poking elicits an angry .grow], which the keeper tries to pass off as untamable ferocity; an immense python sitting on-a heap of white leathery eggs: a crocodile, wolves, a panther, a'dear little chimpanzee, cuddlesome but for the fleas, and specimens of the feathered world. AH 'are in cages much too small for them, for the lower orders are unkind to animals, some merely unthinkmslv. others devilishly cruel. There are dead* plucked fowls that one can buy to feed the carnivora. The black panther tore his as if possessed by the eight devils, but the tiger lingered over his share'with the jaded air of a patient over the thousandth water biscuit. The panther gets the most, for ferocity is always interesting, unless wedded to. A gar-

rulous old' man goes around the cages and telii; fairv tales. From Mm I learned for the first time that the crocodile's sole diet was negroes, varied by an occasional lion or buffalo. 'The python was gifted with swallowing anything short of houses, and every beast was.similarly treated to make it interesting, though. I know that the hairless horse was shaved, because I had seen it in transit two days previously. Of all the booths the most interesting to me is that which sells old prints, sketches and kakemonos, and there I often <ret many treasures —little sketch books containing the dainty_ pencilings of hands long since dead, of little incidents in the sketcher's life and scenes that had appealed to his artistic instinct—wayside shrines with offerings: of flowers and humble fare, of which, the spirit is supposed to take the essence, great eaved temples, temple bells whose boom is like the deep vibration of an organ, weird hillside "hakabas," with innumerable old gray headstones and wooden wands with the spirit names of the dead inscribed thereon, and stone carved statutes of the sweet-faced Buddlia. All done with marvellously few strokes, yet all most realistic, conveying the feeling of the scene in a way that our more practical Western hand can never hope to do. In one of these booths I came across a view that I knew well —a little statue of the children's god Jizo, carved out of living rock, half-way up a cliff, for I had climbed the cliff and seen it, nearly a hundred miles from here, at Ikeguchi. When nearly at the image my foot slipped, and I came clutching down the cliff in great jumping stages, lucky not. to break my neck, but with a sprain that caused me pain enough. Not many worshippers climb there, and the offerings were old and wilted. As I lay resting in the little inn, old Shimidzu San, the landlord, told me of the little image and how it had come there. From the inn I could not see it; only the cliff and rocky ledge on which it stood. It was spring, and the view was beautiful. In front there was a little garden of dainty trees and little paths and mounds and pools with gray stone lamps, green with age, and queer-shaped stones; beyond that were the rice fields and further off a hill. Xear the top were pines and maples, but from the base to half-way up was covered with a glorious sea of pink—cherry blossoms—called by the poets the spirit of Japan. In the alcove of my room they had put a little spray, daintily arranged. Truly it was very beautiful. Toward the west there was a rushing, rocky river, and on one bank a cliff and half-way up a little bank of sward whereon some bushes grew; behind they say there is a cave; the bushes hide it and the Jizo. For long there lived a hermit there—not one who voluntarily lived alone, but one whom the hand of all was hard asainst. Many generations back lived a youth called Iketa; truly an evil youth, with a spirit like a gaki—a goblin, one of those in torment—who showed his parents no reverence, laughed at the priests and at the aged—very terrible in a country where filial piety is. so deeply ingrained, and for a punishment grew very old and could not die. Children were bom and lived to gray old age and died, and their children's children tilled their land:, yet he lived on. His house at one time was a hovel up the river's bank, but some one passing by that spot at night walked through the place where the house stood : only the cold chill' that came upon him made him stop and look—no house was there ; so they watched. The house was there by day; at night all trace of it was gone, so they burned that hovel. Then he lived in the cave.

Often lie tried to kill himself, but could not. Those who have seen him bathing in the pool where the sak'eya was drowned (and many people not long since dead have seen him), told that upon his body were "Teat wounds and scars where he had tried to commit hara-kiri, but that is an honorable death, and however deep he struck the wounds healed up. He tried to drown himself, but the water sank. Then he flung himself down the cliff side and landed on his face among the stones. That made him look more horrible, and children when they saw him shrieked and ran. He consorted with the kitsune and tanuke—the foxes and badgers —for these beasts are uncanny and can take on human shape, cast spells and lead, souls to ,torment. Often he took on these shapes, for it was a relief to find his old limbs grow young and full of vigor, though in bestial form. I know many educated Japanese who firmly believe these things possible, and all have a father or some relation who has seen them, thougn no one himself has seen them personally. In the period Ansei, about fifty years ago, Kaoru San lost her husband, and her family was too young to help her. They were'very poor. She had 6ome fields, but not enough rice to plant them. With what she had she worked day and night so that she could plant it by herself alone. She could not afford help ; others did not know of her poverty till afterward. At length the night came when she had no more seed to plant. What she had done could not support them. As she looked on the little planted patch in sorrow an old countryman in a deep straw rain-cloak approached her; behind him ran to and fro his dogs, but were they dogs, for in the dim moonlight their eyes glowed like fire and their tails were bushy'' His face was hidden by a great straw hat. "Kaoru San," he said, "I know you are in difficulty. The coming year will be a hard one, even for those whose crops are plentiful, and you will all die —you and your three little ones. To die by starvation is hard, very hard, and soon there will be no one left to place the ' ihai' of yourself, your little Ito, Tamanosuke and the blossom 0 Haru. She will die first, because she is not strong. Give me but one year of your soul and I will save you all this misery." Then thought Kaoru: "This is some devil from gigoku (which is hell), and in his word one can place no trust, and in one year what fearful harm can come." "2say," she answered. "If it is their karma that my little ones should die then will the good Jizo wait for them kindly in the Land of Souls that devils do not get them, and though since the great illness past through the village, taking my husband and many others, my arms are weak to weave, mother love gives strength. Now get thee gone. "Xamn Amida Butsu.'" At these holy words, which is a greeting to the Buddha, the old man fled. Then Kaoru heard fierce howls and shrieks as if the devils in the nether world were loose. Once more the countryman came back, and he bore baskets full of seed. "Help me to plant," he said. "I wish no soul." So they planted all the fields, leaving room for planting out. Very quickly they did it; ere the morning they had finished. Then he disappeared. iS'ext day the villagers were surprised to see an image of the god Jizo carved in the living rock above the river, and climbing up they saw offerings had been newly placed before it. Some more venturesome peered in the cave, and there they saw scattered human bones, the flesh not long stripped off, and round about the signs of a great struggle—the hermit's last fight with the devil-foxes, hungry for his soul. And now the spot once haunted by the erstwhile doomed Iketa is hallowed by the image of the good Jizo, carved by no human hands. For his one good deed the hermit had obtained forgiveness. Truly this stall is interesting. Doubtless each sketch has such a little story.