MORE QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 8375, 22 July 1905, Page 2

MORE QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN.

(By DOUGLAS SLADEN.)

[All Rights Reserved.]

Just as the Pope canonises saints, the Mikado defies the Kami, or spirits of those who have deserved well of their country, from the inventor of the alphabet to a conquering general. There are more than eight million of these gods by royal warrant in the Pantheon of Shinto, and besides these everyone who believes in Shinto has his own private Kami, a sort of Lares and Penates, the spirit* of dead relations who were a credit to the family. According to the Shintoists, spirits never leave the earth. Bodies die and are buried, but the souls remain and take an active interest and often a part in the affairs of the family or the country. It is the fear of outraging the Kami of his ancestors which prevents the Japanese from being cruel to his children, by not sending a boy to school or not finding a lord and master' for a girl. The Japanese belief in Kami goes to extraordinary lengths. Take the case of the heroic captain, Hirose, of theJapanese navy. After the great admirals, like Togo, he was the most useful man in the service. He spoke Russian so fluently and knew Russia so well that he had no equal in getting information and anticipating Russian moves. If a spy was wanted of his rank and abilities he would have been the ideal man. He was, besides, a most brilliant and heroic sailor. It was he who headed the forlorn hope which cut the booms at Wei-hai-wei to enable the Japanese to get at the Chinese fleet, and it was he who headed the most successful attempt to Dottle up port Arthur. When he had accomplished this, although the Russian tire was terrific, he refused to retreat because he could not find his bloodbrother. His own and other valuable lives were sacrificed. To us the loss of such a man would seem as great as th© loss of a battleship. He was simply irreplaceable. To us the on© thing useful about such a death was the glorious example of heroism he set to the Japanese navy. To the Shintoist there was no loss about it. To him tne Kami or spirit of Captain Hirose is still fighting for Japan, able to divert a torpedo from a Japanese ship, or into a Russian ship. Kami are a Shinto idea. Gaki are a Buddhist idea. But this does not signify, as most. Japanese who are not Christians belong to both the national religions. The Gaki are the denizens of the world of Hungry Spirits. ' The Japanese, who aro extremely precise, recognise thirtysix principal classes of them, which, according to Mr Lafcadio Hearn in the brilliant chapter on the- subject which comes into his " Kotto," form two great orders — Gaki- world-dwellers, i.e., the hungry spirits who remain in the Gakido or world of spirits, and are, therefore, never seen by mankind ;• th© other order are called the DvvelleriS-among-Men, who always remain on tne earth, and sometima? ar& seen. According to the Buddhist ©reed, what we think or do is never for the moment only, but for measureless time. Our behaviour decides whether we shall be re-born as gods or men, or animals, or Gaki, or in hell. Mr Hearn's classifications of Gaki aro very amusing. They all suffer hunger and thirst, but they a.re divided into three degrees: the Muzia-Gaki, who hunger and thirst uninterruptedly without obtaining any nourishment whatever ; the Shozai-Gaki, who are able to feed occasionally, but upon impure substances; and the Usai-Gaki, who can eat remains of food thrown away "by men, and the offerings of food seb before the gods or ancestors, which suggests an invidious comparison. The last two classes are mora interesting because they meddle with human affairs. Before the advent of modern ecionce the Gaki did duty as microbes, causing fevers and other zymotic disorders. Among the thirty-six classes wore- the Blood-Suckers, the PoisonEaters, tlie Smell-Eaters, the ShikkoGaki who discovered corpses and caused pestilence; and the -Cauldron-Bodied. But there were more special kinds, such as the Jiki-man-gaki, who can live only by eating the wigs of fate© hair with which the statues of certain divinities are decorated, which will be the future condition of persons who steal objects of value from Buddhist temples; the Fujc-ko-hyaku-gaki, who can eat only street filth" and refuse, which condition is the consequence- of having given putrid or unwholesome food to priests or nuns, or pilgrims in need of alms; and the Cho-ken-ju-jiki-neteu-gaki, who are the eaters of the refuse of funeral pyres and of the clay of graves, and are the spirits of men who despoiled Buddhist temples for the sake of gain.

The practisers of Nazaraeru must run th© risk of becoming Gaid unless the gods smile at their innocent deceits. Nazaraeru amounts, in effect, to asking the gods to take the will for the deed. A man wishes to found a temple, ♦but not having any money he pretends that a flat stone is the temple, tfnd 1 duly offers that to the simple deity. If he is less ambitious he promises a roll of cloth of gold. Not having any by him he cuts a number of strips of paper and hangs them from a wand—the Go-hex which we so often see is temples. Every Buddhist is expected to. "read his Bible — but the Buddhist xiible contains nearly seven thousand books. If you read one every day it would take you . twenty years to get through it. Some people have not time for this. To meet their, case a firstclass Buddhist temple contains a rorolring library, consisting of an enormous bookcase on $ie top of a kind of capstan, like those which used to be used for hauling in lifeboats. Anyone who breasts the capstan and makes tho bookcase reyolve three times is^ considj ered to hate read, as far as his salva- ! tion is concerned, the 6671 books contained in it. If the bookcase turns round three times without stopping the merit is great. The Buddhist heaven, j like our hell, seems to be paved wicft i good intentions, a muqh more reason--1 able arrangement. It is hard to hafe good intentions imputed to one for evil. In his last book Mr Hearn gave a splendid example, of Nazaraeru. The priests were making a gigantic bell or ; the choice kind of bronze which is used ; for making mirrors. They went round the town working on the feelings of the ; women to give them their mirrors. i One woman who was wheedled into it afterwards regretted her weakness because her mirror had reflected so many of her mother's and grandmother s smiles. She looked hard for an opportunity to steal the mirror back, but

was not successful. Because she grudged tho mirror it -would not melt properly, and she was so overwhelmed with shams that she killed herself. But before she died sho promised that whoever rang the bell till it cracked should receive a large sum of money from her spirit. Everybody in the place rang "the bell so hard that the life of the priests was not worth living. The priests threw the bell into a swamp, where it sank and could not he got at. But a woman who needed some money very much hit upon a device to obtain it. She took her bronze basin and made the gods believe that that was the bell, and hammered it till it cracked. At the same time she asked them for three hundred pieces of gold. A man who was staying at the same hotel, hearing the noise and learning her necessity, gave her the three hundred pieces of gold

It will be observed that in Nazaraeru a certain degree of plausibility is necessary to deceive the good gods. The bronze basin acted as a bell, the Go-hel strips of paper represent strips of gold cloth. The ihan who turns the capstan of the Buddhist library runs through the books in a way. This is the principle of European witchcraft. " A girl who is crossed in love in modern Sicily sticks pins into a cushion, which she declares to be the body of her rival, or melts the wax doll which does duty for that unfortunate creature. As the cushion is effectually punctured, or the image disappears, the rival wastes away now as she did in the pages of Theocritus. This is flat Nazaraeru.

The Japanese have one branch of the supernatural all to themselves, that of fox-possession, kitsune-tsuki, which is something like the demoniacal seiaures of the Bible. The fox generally enters through the space between the fingernails and the "flesh, and he has a penchant for the women of the lower classes, especially if they have a weak intellect er have been debilitated by a fever. The fox lives his own life, and constantly disputes with the person he inhabits. He speaks ma dry, hard falsetto sort of voice, quite different from the voice of the person. It is a form of hysteria, and can be cured by people of strong hypnotic powers. The demon foxes are not always satisfied »vith possessing imbeciles. Sometimes they attack a whole community, like the phantom fox of tho railway line between Tokio and Yokohama when we were there. He turned himself into a phantom train, which seemed to be running towards you on the same line of rails, and soared all th© engine-drivers out of their wits, till one of "them instead of stopping put on an extra head of steam to save his traiu. Ec felt a slight shock, and a squashed fox was found on the line.