THE FAITH OF JAPAN

“In my Father’s house are many mansions.”

John xiv.

Tenshi ni kuchi nashi hito o motte iwashimu.

“Heaven has no mouth, it makes men speak for it.”

Japanese Proverb.

I DAI BUTSU (GREAT BUDDHA)

The great God Buddha sits peaceful and still, a line of dark bronze against the blue sky, and the length of the garden is flooded with light. Two tall pink cherry-trees drop blushing snowflakes on to his broad shoulders, and the sound of running water is a liquid prayer. Under his heavy-lidded eyes he looks as one who saw not, or saw too well, and his slow smile is inscrutable and still. The mystery of it draws one nearer.

What is thy secret, Great Lord Buddha?

But the heavy-lidded eyes droop lower, and the slow smile is still. Only the cherry-trees send their pale pink petals floating downward into the bronzed lap. And the murmuring water runs more swiftly.

Immutable he sits, and still; enduring, unchanging, though the sea destroy his temples and the earthquakes rock about his feet. Buddha on his lotus-leaf is still.

And the generations of men rise up, and pass away, fretted with life’s fitful fever, and searching for his secret. Buddha is still, his slow smile unchanging, his heavy eyelids drooped.

Is that thy secret, Great Lord Buddha? The mystery we passion-swept, ever-changing mortals can never penetrate?

“God is the same, for ever. The same, and for ever.”

And the murmuring water runs, the cherry-trees bloom and fade, the centuries pass away. Still the heavy-lidded eyes are drooped, the slow smile is inscrutable and still. Lord Buddha keeps his secret.

Or is it only we who cannot read.

II THE SHRINES OF ISÉ

On every side the circle of the hills shuts out all sounds, and the vast forest stretches solemn, sombre.

The long two miles of white road from the village are forgotten, the crude sunshine of the public gardens fades away, the giant fir-trees stand as they stood two thousand years ago when the shrine of the great Sun-Goddess first was born.

The broad grey path of unhewn stone, unshadowed in the darkness of the trees, bends downward to the river’s brink, where a grey still pool lies silent on the edge of the rushing stream. It is the Pool of Purification where all who go up to the temple stay and wash. Even the kurumaya who daily draws the pilgrim or the stranger to the shrine, stoops to plunge his hands and feet into the still grey waters. And as he does so a great shaft of sunshine hits the weltering circle of the hills beyond the stream, and they quiver, blue as a distant mirage in the blue sky; while the forest is the darker for that light.

The grey stone path is long and wide, the forest vast, unfathomable; primæval, untamed, and yet kept with a care that leaves no trace behind; the forest of a dream where Death is not, nor decay, nor any sign of man. From time to time the dark stern stems of the cryptomerias are broken with the glossy deep-green leaves of a camphor-tree; and each time my kurumaya stays to pray, for camphor-trees are sacred, and their bark thrown into the sea has power to calm the waves.

And the forest stretches on and on.

In the distance the grey stone path broadens into a flight of shallow steps, and passes beneath an open gateway out of sight. A wooden wall, like the sloughed bark of forest trees, stretches right and left; and against it, rigid in his discipline, the white uniform of a modern soldier, bayonet fixed.

I stand on the threshold of the most sacred spot in all Japan.

Beyond the gateway is another gate, where a pure white curtain falls, fold on fold. It is the veil of the great Sun-Goddess. All through the ages since first the nation was, the shrine of the Sun-Goddess has stood behind that veil. Every twenty years night comes, her temple dies, and again is born, unchanged, unaltered to the last least detail. And her priests are the carpenters. So through all the ages, the body of the great Sun-Goddess glows, in youth eternal, and none save her far-off offspring, Tenshisama, the Son of Heaven, may pass behind the veil.

The Japanese soldier stays to guard, for did the stranger, sacrilegious in his foolish pride, so much as touch those long white folds, evil might befall him. Viscount Mori died beneath the sword of a samurai for lifting but the edge of the curtain with his stick.

My kurumaya is on his knees before these fluttering, mysterious folds, two claps, a bow, a little murmured prayer; another bow, two claps, and he rises.

Then he leads us along inside the wooden wall, and another grey-green wooden wall, built as it were of flattened tree-trunks, rises on the other side, leads us a few yards, and then he stops. The outer wooden wall runs round a huge imperfect square, then comes a broad band of space where we are standing, and then the inner wall rails out the world. Inside and opposite the curtained gateway, but with the whole distance of the sacred square between, stands the shrine itself, a grey-brown wooden building, unpainted, unadorned; a grey-brown roof of thatch, with the cross-beams of its roof-tree rising up through the thatch in two rough wooden anchors bound with gold. A building that is simple, with a simplicity more strange to modern man than the strangest complexity, archaic, primæval, a ghost from man’s dim past.

The silent sombre trees stand thickly round. Beyond the circle of blue hills shuts out all sounds. The folds of the white curtain fall straight and close.

My kurumaya prays again.

And there behind her veil the great Sun-Goddess dwells, untouched by time, of an age with the hills, more primitive than the forest trees—and sacred still.

III THE TEMPLE OF NIKKŌ

In all the pomp of splendour and of power they buried Iyeyasu at Nikkō, and the greatest artists of Old Japan came and built in his memory a temple more beautiful than any in all the length and breadth of the land. For more than forty years they worked, and brains and money and labour were poured out like mountain water, until the temple stood complete, the mausoleum of Iyeyasu and the eternal monument of this artistic race.

With Buddhist rites was the great Shōgun buried, and for many hundred years daily remembered in a ritual as solemn as it is effective, but Buddha himself has not anywhere a temple so splendid.

They buried Iyeyasu at Nikkō, not in the town of his birth or of his death, not in the city over which he ruled, but four days’ journey from Yedo in the midst of the mountains; and they did it that Japan’s greatest ruler might lie amid the nation’s best in nature as in art, that to the splendour of the temple the Land herself might add the glories of her mountains and her trees.

At Nikkō is the great Shōgun buried, and for twenty miles before his shrine a stately avenue of trees leads up to the temple, and up this avenue prince and pilgrim yearly come; prince and pilgrim, priest and peasant they still come, up the great avenue of dark thick-set cryptomerias, the giant pine-trees of Japan.

At the temple’s foot a mountain stream rushes in a deep green gorge, and two bridges cross the stream: one bright red, the bridge of the Son of Heaven, one painted green, for the rest of this world’s humankind.

And the reason is that when the Buddhist saint Shōdō Shōnin pursued the vision that had been sent to him, he journeyed into the mountains many days until the grey torrent of Nikkō rushing tumultuously across his path barred the way; but the vision abode with him, and Shōdō Shōnin knew that he must cross the stream, yet was there neither bridge, nor boat, nor crossing-place. So the saint kneeled down and prayed. Then there appeared to him an angel, clothed in black robes and blue, wearing a string of skulls around his neck, and holding in his hand two serpents, these he threw across the stream, and they became a bridge firm and strong. So Shōdō Shōnin passed over the torrent in safety, but when he looked back, snakes, bridge, and angel had vanished and only the rushing river remained. Then for a memory the two bridges were built in the very place of the crossing.

Of all the marriages of Art and Nature the Sacred Red Bridge of Nikkō is the most beautiful. Scattered among hills and trees and river, beauty lay; but this people coming through the mountains saw the one bond that had power to bind the pale blue hills, the dark green gorge, the stone-grey stream together in an ordered whole of deep-thought artistic loveliness, planned, perfect, yet supremely natural.

Then the avenue goes on, up the foot of the hill, till it widens and broadens into a great gravel circle before the entrance-gate of the temple. Here the great trees of the mountains spread out and up on either hand, with the temple in their midst surrounded but not overwhelmed by the grace of the wood. Under the granite torī, the first gateway is guarded by two figures, the mythical lions gilded and lacquered; while above, the mysterious baku, with his four ears and his nine tails, who has power to eat all bad dreams that pass before sleeping eyes, crouches alert.

A flight of granite steps leads to the first courtyard, set at right angles to the gateway, and paved with rounded grey pebbles from the stream. Here are all the minor buildings of the temple, the stable for the sacred white horse, the library for the two thousand sutra of the Buddhist scriptures, the tank-house for the purification, the store-houses for the temple furniture; and stable and library, tank-house and store-houses are jewelled gems of carving and design, so rich, so splendid in the ordered magnificence of their colouring that western senses stand amazed. A blood-red lacquered fence aglow with coloured carvings divides the temple from the sombre majesty of the giant cryptomerias.

Then the pebbled space contracts into a flight of granite stairs, and mounts between stone walls that end in painted friezes of carved wood to a second courtyard. This is almost square, and standing on the wide grey sweep of rounded pebbles are three bronze lanterns from the three tributary kingdoms of Old Japan—from Korea, Luchu, and Holland; and there in serried rows and ranged against the blood-red lacquered fence aglow with gilded carvings, stand multitudes of bronze lanterns, which the dead daimyō of Old Japan sent as offerings to the temple. Beyond the lacquered fence the dark still stems of the pine-trees range out of sight.

Then the pebbled space contracts again, and a flight of granite steps leads between granite walls set with coloured friezes of carved wood to the third courtyard; and the colourless pause of the second court, with its bronze lanterns on grey stones, gains a new meaning as one mounts, for in the third courtyard, between the blood-red friezes with their riotous coloured carvings, is the pure perfection of the Yōmei-mon, a double gateway, of white lacquer, cream-white and supported by four pillars of carved wood. And when they put the fourth pillar in its place they planted it upside down fearing if the beauty of the temple were all-perfect, evil might befall the house of Tokugawa through the jealousy of high heaven.

And the stranger as he draws near pauses in sheer amazement; the wild untamable beauty of the mighty temple set in its giant framework of dark green trees is strange beyond believing.

On either hand stretches the tropical splendour of the blood-red lacquered fence, set with coloured carvings as with shining jewels. Behind is the pale glory of the Yōmei-mon. All around the darkness of the forest lies like a still quiet tomb. And in front, rising in lines of sheer perfection, is the white beauty of the Chinese gate, cream-white, adorned with glittering yellow brass, brass in rounded sunken medallions on the lintel and the gate-posts, brass in quaint designs and shining points of yellow light, which break about the whiteness as sunshine through a mist.

The carvings and the pattern, the picture-panels, the decorated eaves, the chiselled heads and sculptured birds and beasts, the growing, glowing flowers, the hanging lotus-bells that tinkle at the corners of the tent-curved roof, and all perfect, are more than a man’s mind can perceive though he look for many years. Brains and money and labour were poured out here like mountain water, and like the rushing stream of Nikkō the drops go unperceived in the beauty of the whole.

In the short space of forty years were the temple and its fences, the gateways and the carvings, completed and set up; but forty short years from first to last, and the carving of one gateway is more than a lifetime’s work.

Then the splendour culminates. Beyond the Chinese gateway is the actual shrine itself, its cream-white gateway studded too with brass, while superb in the utter beauty of their carving, two writhing dragons stretch on either hand between the door-post and the pillar. Inside is the temple of the memorial tablets, where with daily rites the Buddhist priests prayed for the soul of Iyeyasu. To-day the Buddhist emblems are all gone, the shrine is bare. A shintō rope of rice-straw stretches from post to post, the mirror of the Sun-Goddess shines above the altar for her son, the “Son of Heaven” Tenshi, the Mikado, has come back to his own.

All the magnificence of the temple now is in its walls, walls of panel carvings where the springing phœnix and the crouching lion rise like pale shadows from the pale unstained wood, so little are they raised above the surface. And yet the artist’s hand that carved them was without a rival in the world. They are real and living, delicate and true, and so entirely beautiful that the heart cries out with joy as at a long-lost good. Here is no colour, the sweep of pale yellow matting, the panelled walls of pale dust-coloured wood, are more light than colour. Here the rich joy of sense is laid aside: the temple stands a beauty immaterial.

Through three hundred years they prayed for Iyeyasu daily with long rites, but his tomb is not here.

It lies beyond the temple and above it. One climbs to it by a long, steep stair of grey-green granite, set in the sombre hill. A stairway built of granite in long slabs, so broad and thick that the balustrade with its coping, base, and sculptured columns is all cut from one solid block, with each block fourteen feet long. And the stairway took thirteen years to quarry and set up.

The hillside is steep, the stairs are many, and the tall dark pines, the flame-red maples gather, gather till the temple’s roof, the sound of praying bell or chanted hymn is lost. The little space which Art stole from Nature is completely hidden, even the forest has forgotten.

And the grey stair climbs, climbs among the dark-green trees, then stops.

On the top of the hill is a rounded curve of stately pines. Alone, solitary between sky and trees, stands the tomb of Iyeyasu, a domed pillar-box of bronze glinting golden through the trees. A low stone wall surrounds the tomb, a bronze door solid but uncarved is its gateway, and that is all. Here among the quiet trees, in the stillness of the forest, above the splendour of the temple, lie the ashes of the great Iyeyasu.

All the days of his rule he dwelt among men, but his soul climbed the steep stair of Life, casting off its splendours and its glories, climbed above them, climbed back into the eternal simplicity of Nature, and there he laid him down to rest.

IV KANNON, LADY OF MERCY

It was the fête of Kannon of Asak’sa, whose votaries are many. They thronged the narrow paved pathway set between the two long rows of red brick stalls, and overflowed into the temple grounds behind, where the juggler and the wax-works, the two-headed porpoise, and the headless man, and all the long scale of attractions in between shouted and drummed. All the fun of the fair was here, with the advantage of a petit bout de messe, to save the soul, over the way.

Kannon of Asak’sa is a popular lady, and her doors stand wide open. You may go in with your boots on. It is true that the goddess herself, on her gilded altar, is railed off from public touch by a wire netting—like the animals in the menagerie outside. But that is all the privacy she enjoys, and the rest of her temple is as public as a railway station, and just about as sacred. The people pour in up the steps on all sides, the scraping of their gheta on the dirty wooden floor adding its quota of noise to the chink of money and the buzz of voices, the ringing of bells, and the hurry and bustle of a surging railway crowd. There is the same wide-open, doorless feel, the same discomforting, amphibious sensation of neither open air nor closed house. A large bookstall in the corner, selling the latest illustrated numbers of the goddess, and the whole stock of Kannon literature adds to the illusion. Between two pillars a temple clerk issues tickets at a substantial booking-office. A shaven official appears and rings a bell at intervals, reciting a prayer in the voice of a railway porter proclaiming stations. There is the same reasonless flux and reflux of the crowd, the same rush and bustle, with its inseparable accompaniment of underlying roar that rises and falls, sometimes absorbing all the other sounds into itself, sometimes leaving them distinct and clear, but never for a moment ceasing.

A huge lacquered case like a square coffin, its lid replaced by thick metal bars, stands between the bookstall and the booking-office, right against the wire netting. Into this each comer throws his coin before reciting his prayer, and the chinking of the money as it falls is as unceasing as the roar of the crowd.

Away in a corner behind the booking-office a worn-out black statue sits huddled in rags. Around it, bands of invalids await their turn to rub the featureless figure with their hands, and transfer the charm by rubbing themselves in the corresponding spot. As a method of propagating disease, this treatment for curing it can have few equals. But the coffers of the temple profit greatly.

Business, indeed, is brisk to-day. The shaven-headed booking-clerk is issuing tickets at a bank-holiday rate, and the bookstall is besieged. Up from all sides comes the tumult of the fair. Kannon must be a paying investment.

As I stand on the steps with the din of the temple behind me, a man in the crowd below buys a cage of little birds at a stall, and, opening the door, throws them up into the air. The startled flutter of their wings as they soar up over the heads of the crowd into the blue carries me back to Ober-Ammergau, to the memory of the overturned tables of the money-changers, and the overthrown cages of those who sold doves.

“My house shall be called the house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves.”

Is human nature the same all the world over? Are priests? Or is the fate of all religions alike?

O Kannon of Asak’sa! Kannon, Lady of Mercy! how long must thou wait for thy deliverer? O Lord Buddha, how long?

V RINZAKI’S ALTAR

On the edge of the dark hills is the temple of Rinzaki, and the green sea of the rice-fields washes up to its open doors. Overhead the grey sky of a sunless summer’s evening dims all the colours in the land, and leaves them shadows. It is fresh and still, and the wide, green bay sweeps in smooth curves to the foot of the dark hills. On the pathway the hosts of little green frogs hop like hailstones, and the startled splash as they fall back into the rice-fields is sharp and clear.

Rinzaki stands alone, its shōji walls pushed back, and the slender, square pillars at each corner are dark against the greyness. The open matted spaces of the temple are deserted, and the stillness is pure and clear as freshly running water. In the sunless evening light the sombre colours of the temple are but light and shadow, a sweep of pale matting under a dark roof framed in grey. And the stillness grows purer, clearer, and more still.

Beyond the open spaces of the matting, between altar wall and altar wall, the garden of the temple hangs, a living picture on the wall. Two kneeling-cushions on the matting mark the purpose of the garden, and I stay to look.

A faintly running stream, stone-grey, a shaven slope of green, and on it three clipped azalea-bushes pink with blossom. So still, so clear, I stretch my hand to feel.

It is a garden—a garden painted by an artist who worked in earth and flowers. And the dim greyness of the temple, the pale spaces of the matting, frame the garden as a shell its pearl. I could but look. The pale pink of the azalea-bushes, the soft curve of the slope, the stone-grey of the running stream, were painted with the loving care, the certain touch of a master’s hand. There was no fault. Between altar wall and altar wall the living picture hung—perfect.

Like David’s harping to Saul distraught, the stillness of the garden, the dim greyness of the temple, washed pure the heart. The sin-freed soul floated out unfettered, and thought was not.

Alone the garden lay, an earthly Nirvana in the stillness.

Rinzaki’s true altar stood here.

VI TWO CREEDS

Above the white cloud of the plum-blossoms, through the dark wood of the cryptomerias, on the top of the hill lies the temple of Ikkégami. The broad spaces of its courtyards and its gardens are sunny and still, and the blue sky above is a bed of celestial forget-me-nots. Down each side the big, dark trunks of the giant fir-trees stand straight and tall—two rows of sombre pillars, shutting in a sunny aisle.

In front, at the end of the wandering white path of rounded stones sunk into the bare earth, is the Hondō or main building with the tent curves of its roof, and the polished floor of its veranda shining like a sword in the sun. Behind is the big wooden gateway, and the hundred stone steps which lead from the hilltop to the village beneath. And scattered down the wide earth courtyard, and half hidden under the dark arches of the trees, are the innumerable little buildings which form the complete whole of a Buddhist temple; the belfry, with its bronze bell hung from the big wooden beam of the ceiling to within three feet of the ground, and the polished wooden spar with which it is beaten; the quaint revolving library—like a dwarf windmill without sails—where the hundred volumes of the Buddhist Scripture can be dimly seen through the thick wooden lattice; the wide granite tank under its tiled roof, all hung with lengths of brown temple towels, where the faithful pour water over their hands from bamboo dippers as a symbol of purification; the side chapels with their drums and offerings. All are quiet to-day and deserted, only by the side of the tank, in front of a worn-out stone statue, a peasant mother is standing, her baby tucked in the back of her kimono—fast asleep. She claps her hands three times to call the attention of the gods, and then she prays, and the baby’s shaven head nods heavily over her shoulder. Then she takes the bamboo dipper and pours water over the head of the stone statue, carefully, that not a dry spot may remain, and prays again.

Between the dark pillars of the tree-trunks and the stamped earth of the courtyard, a line of narrow, pointed laths runs like a wooden fencing round the temple precincts. I wonder what they are and leave the stepping-stones of the pathway to see.

Tombstones? Yes. Set close together, and sometimes three or four deep, the long line of thin pointed laths closes in the temple and its courtyard with a fence of graves. Not a rich man’s graveyard this, but the last home of the peasants from the rice-fields and the fishermen from the sea. I look at the rows of Chinese characters running lengthwise down the narrow tombstones, and stop in wonder, for on one the Roman letters with their familiar outlines stand out plainly.

“To the Men of the Warship Onega.”

That is all.

To the men of the Warship Onega! It was true then the story. The story of the loss of the Onega in the bay below, and the sale of the sunken wreck with all its contents to fishermen along the coast. The story of the finding of the corpses of the drowned sailors, all entangled among the wreckage, and of how the Japanese fishermen collected them reverently, saying, with the faith of the ancient Greeks, that their souls would wander restless and distressed unless they were laid in their graves and the funeral prayers sung over them. So they sent a petition to the great Ijin San in Tokyo praying him to come to the temple of Ikkégami, that his dead brothers might have some one of their own race, if not of their own family, to perform the last solemn rites. And the Ambassador came to Ikkégami, and the long line of weather-beaten Japanese fishermen bore the western sailors up the hill to the temple, and buried them in the courtyard, under the silent trees, with all the rites of the Buddhist church. And they set up the wooden lath as over the grave of a brother, among the long lines of the tombstones of their fathers; but they wrote on it in the tongue of the stranger so that God and their countrymen might know their own again.

And all this they did out of their own hearts, and with the money of their own earning.

So the men of Onega lie buried with Buddhist rites in a Buddhist churchyard, and the wooden lath above their graves is but another rail in the holy fence of the Japanese dead which encloses the temple.

The long arches of the sombre trees are dark and still. The blue sky above is without fleck or stain, and the peace of God which passeth all understanding is spread as a hand above the tree-tops.

The men of the Onega sleep well.

VII THE LEGEND OF THE NOSELESS JIZŌ

It was a great many years ago, but the stone Jizō stands there yet, just on the edge of the woods beyond the rice-fields. The blue cotton bib around his neck is new, the odd little piles of stones that balance on his shoulders, cuddle in his arms, or lie around his feet are larger, for kindly hearts have passed by since then, to pick up a stone and carry it to Jizō, who helps the souls of the little dead children crying naked on the banks of the Sai-no-Kawara, because the old hag Shozuka-no-Baba has taken their clothes away, and will not let them pass over into the happy land beyond, but keeps them piling stones on the banks of the Buddhist Styx, and crying bitterly.

And Jizō sits there by the roadside still, the same benevolent smile on his shaven face, still holding the pilgrim’s staff with its metal rings in one hand, and the jewel which brings all wisdom in the other. Only he has no nose. He lost it thirty years ago, the day little Dicky James came running up the road, his new hatchet clutched in his hand.

Now Dicky was the son of a missionary, and he had been brought up on good books and Sunday schools, and the night before he had been taken to hear the wonderful experiences of a “brother” from China, who had filled his little head full of “glorious martyrdom,” “sinful heathen,” “the overthrowing of idols,” and “the abomination of desolation,” which Dicky didn’t understand but thought meant the long stretch of muddy rice-fields down beyond Negishi. And that put Jizō into his head. And besides, there was the new hatchet.

All the morning he had played Red Indians, until, in an access of realism, he had almost brained the baby. The threatened loss of his hatchet and the great idea that was working in his head made him quiet and subdued all through dinner.

He was sorry about baby, “poor little martyr,” as his mother called her; and the idea grew and grew. Why shouldn’t he be a martyr too, and return to his family covered with glory? Then the thought of Jizō jumped into his head. He would go out, like the “brother” from China, into the “abomination of desolation,” and “overturn the idol” of the “sinful heathen.” Or, at least, if he couldn’t overturn it, the new hatchet would cut off its head, and Dicky’s fingers itched to try. He had no idea martyrdom was so interesting.

So, dinner over, Dicky seized his hatchet, and started off, away from the settlement, across the canal, up by the racecourse, and down the hill towards Negishi. Here he took to the shore, to avoid complications in the village; for Dicky was used to showing his Christian superiority by cuffing the heads of the heathen, and the boys of Negishi were his particular enemies. So the tide being out he kept to the shore until he was past the village, and the long stretch of rice-fields, nothing but solid ponds of black mud, each surrounded by a little, low, mud bank, came into sight.

“The abomination of desolation,” said Dicky.

And it did look like it. He went on along the narrow path towards the hills, with the wide stretch of muddy ponds on each side of him. They dwindled away gradually as Dicky went up the valley, dwindled away until they only looked like a kind of mud river running between the green hills. And there beyond the last one, on the edge of the hill, was Jizō. Jizō, with his broad smile and his funny little bib.

Dicky looked about him nervously; the great moment had come. No, there was no one in the rice-fields, and no one coming after him from the village; and Jizō’s smile was tempting. Up went the little hatchet and smash down with all Dicky’s strength. But Jizō’s head did not roll in the dust, as it ought to have done, so Dicky tried again. He was getting excited now. It was so beautiful to feel his dear hatchet coming down smash, smash, smash, and to know he was doing the “good work” at the same time.

Smash, smash! This time something had smashed, and Jizō’s stone nose lay at his feet. Dicky stooped to pick it up, exultant, and in the momentary pause heard angry voices among the fields, and feet coming swiftly up the road behind him. Then Dicky forgot all about “martyrdom” and ran as fast as he could go, across the bank of the rice-field in front of him, up the hill beyond, his hatchet clutched in one hand, and Jizō’s stone nose in the other.

It was the rice-field that saved him, because the men had to go round, but their shouts brought out the village, and the sight of Jizō, noseless, sent all the angry “heathen” up the hill in chase. I do not think they would have hurt him if they had caught him, for the Japanese are not fanatical, and they are very kind to children.

It was just this feeling that made them so angry now. To think that any one could injure Jizō; Jizō the friend of those in trouble, the comforter of women in travail, and the keeper of the baby souls crying naked on the dark banks of the Sai-no-Kawara. I do not think they would have hurt Dicky, but the whole village came out to see, and the men and boys ran up the hills around shouting:

“Nan des ka? Nan des ka? What is it? What is it?”

And Dicky in his terror ran until his little legs gave way under him, and panting he threw himself on the ground under the trees.

The shouts had died away a long while, and it was growing dark in the wood before Dicky stirred. It was darker still when at last he crept cautiously down the hill and over the rice-fields towards the stone statue of Jizō. He was very tired now, and very hungry, but the memory of the angry voices calling after him in the hills made him afraid to go back through the village, and by this time the tide was up. So Dicky sat down by the side of Jizō in the growing darkness and waited. And all his nurse’s stories of Jizō and the little children came into his mind. He looked up at Jizō, smiling still his large benevolent smile, and crept nearer.

It was quite dark that evening when they found Dicky, his head peacefully laid to sleep on Jizō’s feet, utterly worn out with the pangs and the excitement of his martyrdom, his little hatchet fallen on the ground, but one grubby fist fast clutching something that even in his sleep he held tight.

But Dicky’s taste for martyrdom had gone, and once, to his father’s horror, he was heard to declare that he “wished he was a heathen because he would like to say his prayers to Jizō.”

In the deepest depths of his pocket, next to his clasp-knife and his favourite ally taw, there lived for many years a small stone object that he sometimes took out and looked at when he was quite alone. And Dicky had serious doubts at times about the goodness of the martyrs, and the sinfulness of the heathen, while his ideas on idols underwent a radical change.

It is thirty years ago now. But the legend of the noseless Jizō and his fight with the Onigo (the devil in the shape of a child) is still told in the villages around Negishi.

The other day Richard heard it himself.

VIII THE TEMPLES OF SHIBA

A matchless blue sky overarches the world, pale, clear, intense, and the twisted green boughs of the Japanese pine throw their gaunt, black arms up into the blue, in the vain endeavour of a hundred years to reach it. The hush of cloistered calm in which the trees grew up is still here, although the Tokyo citizen walks and rides where once none but Buddhist priests might linger. The Red Gateway, with the tent curves of its roof petrified into grey tiles, still claims for all within Buddha as its master.

And the hush of cloistered calm grows stiller.

Through a wide space open to the sky, a space paved with rounded pebbles, water-washed for many years ere they floored the courtyard of the House of God, believing and unbelieving feet have beaten smooth a wide, brown pathway. All around, and arranged in serried rows, stand a myriad grey-stone lanterns, the pious gifts of dead daimyō. Between these tall stone emblems of the five elements the pathway runs; cupola, crescent, pyramid, sphere, cube—ether, air, fire, water, earth—and the crude shapes of the primitive elements, touched and altered by generations of artists, are turned to curves of quaintest beauty. Diagonally across the space goes the black pathway, the standing rows of tall lanterns thickly set on either side, until beneath another gate it makes a pause. A gate of red lacquer this, with carvings of gilded wood on ceiling and wall. Carvings full of that oriental luxuriance of colour and line which half shocks our sober northern senses; so shocks them sometimes that we call it scornfully “barbaric,” until we grow wiser with much looking and learn to see the truth and beauty of this exuberant splendour.

Beyond the gateway, the black path leads out under the blue sky, a pebbled square on either hand, set round with stately rows of bronze lanterns, the pious gifts of yet greater daimyō. Another gate stands waiting at the end of the pebbled square, a gateway with rounded wooden columns of red lacquer, like its fellow, and carvings of gold. But the beams of its ceiling have been smoothed away, and in the centre a much twisted and curled dragon, which, like Joseph’s coat, is of many colours, writhes across the ceiling. A carved and gilded gallery stretches away on either side past the gateway. Another yet more beautiful, with its slender square pillars of red lacquer bound at base and crown with beaten brass, leads a rainbow shadow through the sunny court to the cool dark door of the temple itself. In the shade of the gilded galleries, suspended from the red-lacquered cross-beams, hangs a row of still bronze lanterns. Dimly in their exquisite shapes can one trace the symbolised elements.

Behind a wooden barrier five steps lead straight to the temple’s front, closed now with dark blinds of split bamboo bound together with a silken thread. The tiled eaves of the curving roof overhang the steps, and between door and lacquered pillar writhes in many wriggles of green and golden carving two royal dragons, the Ascending and the Descending—the going-up and the coming-down.

Leaning on the barrier, the glory of those golden dragons, of those red columns, of the carved beams and inlaid porch rushed riotously into the soul. And now one understood the preparation of those successive gateways, set each between a sunny space of pebbled court; for the first had shown but red and gold, up in the ceiling of the second lingered lines of azure blue, the third added green to the other three, the gallery gave glances of mauve and violet, while here, under the eaves of the temple roof, the rainbow itself is glorious in carved wood.

A culminating point of colour and splendour, what can the temple hold within?

Cool spaces of matted floor set round with black boxes on black stools, each box holding its portion of Buddhist Scripture; sombre pennants of dark blue and green brocade upon the walls; a sober light clear but colourless; and which is more beautiful, the rainbow porch of many colours riotous in carving and scrolls, or the sober quiet of the temple, a beauty of spaces and restraint?

The colourless matted room is wide and low. In front between the sombre pennants is the inner sanctuary. Gods on either side on lacquered tables set against the walls; at the end, beyond more lacquered tables, two brocaded masses rise like square coffins on a raised daïs; between stand figures of the gods, white-faced Benten and Kannon, Lady of Mercy. The red tables bear many-coloured sweets and biscuits heaped high on metal plates, in metal cups; offerings to the spirits of the dead Shōgun whose tablets lie enshrined behind those masses of brocade. A bronze bowl on the floor filled with grey ash sends forth filmy clouds of incense. There is no sound.

Behind the temple, through two open spaces of pebbled squares, each reached by a score of granite steps, is the tomb; a smooth, round mass of stone encircled with a breast-high parapet of bronze; all around a sweep of grey pebbles.

That is all.

And yet standing here I wonder whether the dead Shōgun have not rightly chosen? Whether their resting-place is not more truly beautiful than the beauty of sombre ornament in the temple, than the riotous carving of the gateways.

The porch was Beauty’s body, arrayed, adorned; here lies Beauty’s soul, naked and eternal.

IX AMIDA BUTSU

Buddhism is not one but many; the same faith and the same nation which produces the squalor, dirt and commercial profanity of Asak’sa can create the peace and purity of Rinzaki, while Shiba’s riot of impossible colouring is born of the same religion and the same people as the stern beauty of the Hongwanji; for the temples of the Shin sect are severe as a Protestant cathedral, as a Presbyterian church, only they are built by a race of artists.

Kannon of Asak’sa is popular, but the beautiful Hongwanji at Kyoto, finished a few years ago, at a cost of eight million yen, was built mainly by the peasants, who contributed not only in money but in kind, sending their most beautiful trees to be cut into beams, offering themselves to hew and to build, giving always of their best. And each beam was raised to its place by long hawsers made of women’s hair, the soft black hair of youth or womanhood, with here and there the shrivelled grey hairs of age. And the hawsers are suspended in the temple for men and missionaries to ponder on.

Buddhism is not dead but living. The old, the weary, and the poorest poor creep into the Hongwanji in Japan, and the pale matting of these temples is covered with the square-holed copper coins worth a quarter of a farthing, which they roll over the matting towards the altar from the corners where they kneel and pray.

Nagoya’s Hongwanji is the glory of the town. It stands in the thick of the city, in a great wide courtyard of stamped earth set round with trees. Its sculptured gates of bronze are always open, and once inside them the busy town with its factories and its workshops, its quarter of a million of inhabitants, is gone, for the wide courtyard sets a lavish space of stillness between the city and the shrine. A space so wide and ample that the temple’s curves stand out clear and sharp as a solitary tower on an empty plain.

Built all of wood, unpainted, unstained; and so faded by the sunshine, so worn with age, and weather beaten with the wind and rain, that in the glow of the summer’s sun the temple stands against the brilliant light faded and grey, a beauty of pathos, not of joy.

Under the eaves the saints and sacred animals are carved in tender lines of love. Age has touched and left them colourless, and the infinite pity of the Buddha which enwraps creation, enfolding man and his brother the beast, looks from their eyes.

Inside there is peace and sober quiet. A wide low space suggestively divided into three with slender square pillars of wood, and behind, along the whole width of the temple a blaze of gold, sombre and rich. No riot of impossible colouring here, no profusion of design and decoration; sober, almost stern in its beauty, the centre and the two side altars shine in the dim light.

A bronze figure of Buddha, dead black against the gold, stands on his lotus-leaf with uplifted hands. It is Buddha as the God of Mercy, the living, loving god, Amida Butsu—Eternal Buddha.

Dull gold and black, alive in the altar, shadowly repeated in the pale yellow matting and in the grey age-stained wood, are all the decoration of the temple, save perfect purity and peace, and an atmosphere of quiet, enduring charity. For the Shin sect teaches that the law cannot be altered, that the eternal chain of cause and effect goes always and for ever on, that the wages and more than the wages of sin is death, that an act and its consequences roll ever onward through the world, and neither man nor time can stay them; it teaches that a man’s sorrows are made by his sins, but that Buddha is merciful and just, that he who is love gives love; love knows no sin, nor sin’s child, sorrow; without sin and sorrow is the world at rest.

Outside, the city labours, toils. Within, the workers kneel on the pure pale matting, and praying, roll their square-holed coins towards the image of Eternal Buddha, whose hand is raised to bless.

X SAINT NICHIREN

Up a hundred steep stone steps lies the temple of the Lord Buddha, for Nichiren, his servant, whose head the executioner’s sword refused to cut off, died here.

Now Nichiren was a man of faith. And his faith was the faith of the average man—he knew he was right. But Nichiren did more, for he had the courage of his opinions; and he said, “I alone am right; the rest are all wrong, unfaithful servants of the Lord—kill them.”

And the people believed Nichiren, for is not such faith in one’s own opinion a sign of divine inspiration? And did not the Lord Buddha send lightning from Heaven to turn the edge of the executioner’s sword and save his pious servant?

So they followed after Nichiren and despised the rest of the church, and built temples of the true faith throughout the length and breadth of the land. And the priests of Nichiren walked in the steps of their master, and are—for the tolerant Japanese—almost bigoted and fanatical.

Now the Nichiren priests delight in noise. Perhaps they think—like many a politician—that it takes the place of argument. And so their temples for ever re-echo with the banging of big drums, the clapping of wooden clappers, the booming of big bells, and the eternal chanting of the Namu-myōho-rengekyō, the formula of the faith of Nichiren.

In the little side temple to the left, wreathed with paper flowers and cheap ornaments—for Nichiren has even strength to blur the national sense of art—they are busy now.

A priest in the middle crouches on the ground; on either side, before a big drum like a yellow barrel lying horizontally on the ground, sit two believers. Behind are grouped three more, all provided with clappers or bells. The drumming is incessant, the clapping nearly so, while all, priests and people, keep up one never-ending drone of

“Namu-myōho-rengekyō, Namu-myōho-rengekyō, Namu-myōho-rengekyō.”

I can only see the backs of the group, and the arms of the two drummers as they raise them up above their heads to beat the big barrels in front of them. Suddenly, from round the corner of the drum, an old face peers—priest by its costume and its cunning. An unshaven, unkempt face that blinks—dirty, ignorant, bigoted. It crouches there on the matting, the old cunning eyes opening and shutting with each repetition of the never-ending formula,

“Namu-myōho-rengekyō, Namu-myōho-rengekyō, Namu-myōho-rengekyō,” until sense and meaning are lost in a wave of wild, brute fanaticism.

The drums bang louder, the clappers clap shriller, the bells boom quicker and quicker, and I stand there convinced.

Namu-myōho-rengekyō, Namu-myōho-rengekyō, Namu-myōho-rengekyō.

I too am of the faith of Nichiren, for I know that I am right. All these are wrong, unfaithful servants of the Lord—kill them.

XI BETWEEN EARTH AND HEAVEN

Five hundred feet of wall, and the temple’s courtyard hangs a balcony above the world.

The thousand steps by which I climbed are hidden, and the chaya, in the width of the brown road that touches cliff and sea, is so beneath my feet that its roof seems resting on the ground. My kurumaya, in his white hat, is a growing mushroom on a dark blue stalk. The man is but a human atom crushed between two immensities.

From cliff to distant sky the wide sea spreads out, a vast still plain of shimmering blue. This ball of earth is rolled out flat before my eyes, and its mysterious ends are a far-off rim, dark blue and clear. Overhead the burnished sky shuts down a domed cover on the flattened earth. The very sea seems hot. My kurumaya, sitting on the slender shafts of his jinriksha, fans himself with his hat, and I am startled to see how perfectly the three-inch figure works.

The world lies all spread out below me, here is nothing but the temple and the sun.

Across the burning courtyard where the sun smites the rounded pebbles with hard shafts of light, and through the open doorway in the temple’s wall, I go, and then the silent shadows of the trees fall all around. The sky above their tops is bluer, the very sunlight brighter for the shade.

The temple’s shrine is built upon a polished raft of wood, moored three feet above the ground. Its walls are dark with matted blind. Only the square door-posts stand clear against the light, and through them I see the bareness of the shrine—a sweep of pale matting on the floor, and then dim space. Alone, the burnished mirror of the great Sun-Goddess hangs above the altar.

On the threshold of his temple stands the high priest, attended by two acolytes. He wears a head-dress of black lacquer like a perforated meat-cover, but the face beneath is old and very calm. He bows as I mount the shallow polished steps which lead up from the ground, takes from the black-robed acolyte a slender silver vase, and a shallow terra-cotta bowl. Standing shoeless on the threshold of the naked shrine he slowly pours the sacred saké from the silver vase into the terra-cotta bowl, and gives me to drink. The bowl is black with age, the saké thick, like distilled honey; and I notice, as I drink, the carved figures running round the rim, and the faint scent of plum-blossom.

Without a word the white-robed priest takes back the cup, and offers me a thin rice-wafer which I break and eat. I wonder what the rite may mean that I, a stranger, may partake, and look up to see the calm old eyes looking down at me, at my outlandish clothes and foreign face; but he does not speak. Then with a gesture which is almost a blessing, the white-robed priest is gone, and the acolytes follow after.

The temple’s shrine stands bare and bare, only the burnished mirror of the great Sun-Goddess glitters.

Was it a Passover that we have eaten together? Or a Eucharist? Or merely the symbol of our human brotherhood?

We are all children of the Sun; and Faith is One.

Yet it needed a Shintō priest in far Japan to show me a religion above nation, beyond race, above sect. But his shrine is bare. The Mirror of Truth hangs solitary above his altar, and his temple’s doors are open to the Sun.

XII INARI, THE FOX-GOD

The green tongue of the rice-fields thrusts itself deep into the blue sea, and its tip is lacquered red.

Haneda-no-Inari is a temple whose gateways have swallowed up its shrine, and on the low, flat, headland its many thousand torī in rows of scarlet dolmens walk inland from the sea. The green point lies a henna-stained finger in the lap of the ocean.

Beyond the red tip, a ridge of pearl-grey sky rests on the water, while overhead the clouds, like piled-up snowflakes, melt into the blue.

It is the end of September, and wide through the land the rustle of ripening rice-ears comes and goes. Haneda-no-Inari, the Rice-God, is calling the peasants to his shrine. And they come; broad-shouldered, bullet-headed men, in short, blue tunics and dark blue hose, with brown weather-beaten faces, seamed and lined; and always their hard hands, half shut, half open, as though still holding hoe or plough. Old most of them, and with that half-deaf look which years of fieldwork brings. Intelligences half shut too, shutting fast on the primary ideas of life, on the traditions of their fathers; for a thought, like the hoe or plough, is too precious a thing to be lightly laid aside; it is bequeathed from generation to generation as are the rice-fields beneath their feet.

Inari calls, and the peasants come. Not only for the sake of the Rice-God, though the rustle of the ripening rice-ears is a music in the land, but because the image of the fox has dwelt so long in the Rice-God’s temple that to the peasant Inari is both Fox-and Rice-God. And the fear of the Kitsuné is a power in Japan. The Kitsuné, who can take a woman’s shape and bewitch you; the Kitsuné, who can beguile a man that he follow to the fox’s very hole and stay there living on snails and worms. The Kitsuné, who, entering a man’s body under his finger-nails, will possess it, so that he howls like a fox, slowly changes into one, and dies. And so they come to the temple, up from the rice-fields, up under the scarlet tunnels of the torī, for the passing through each tunnel means a wish fulfilled.

The gateways indeed have swallowed up this shrine. There is no temple, only a low matted booth; at the back two white china images of the Fox-God, his tail curled high above his head, and a priest on the matting, as a shopman at his stall, selling charms, multitudes of miniature china foxes, words on rice-paper, and mounds of earth, a whole shopful of charms and amulets.

Opposite is a row of rabbit burrows, each roofed with a shelving stone; just a hole in the ground, but full of meaning to the peasant, for it is the home of the Kitsuné, and he crouches on the ground in front of it, his head between his knees, or thrust far into the big burrow in the eagerness of his prayer. And his face works; the priest behind him watches. Kitsuné is a reality to him, a force strong as Nature’s laws, but capricious; so he prays. Then half in fear, half in reverence, he thrusts one arm as far as it will go into the hole, and scraping softly brings back a handful of brown earth. His face lights up, and the priest behind leans forward.

Still on his knees the peasant wraps the magic earth in layers of clean rice-paper and puts it carefully away in the breast of his patched tunic. Then he gets up. He has his charm, a remedy against sickness and disaster, a charm for his rice-fields and himself. The priest behind reaches out his hand. He makes a keen shopkeeper, and his celestial wares are never stolen. The temple terms are “cash down, and prayers not taken in exchange.”

Through the long scarlet tunnels of the torī, back to the ripening rice-fields the peasants go. The green point lies a henna-stained finger in the lap of the ocean. Haneda-no-Inari, the temple of the superstitious, glows a living tip of red.

For its sins are as scarlet.

XIII THE ALTAR OF FIRE

It all happened in a suburban temple in the town of Tokyo, at the time of the blossoming cherry-trees; and the prosaic din of a modern city full of trains and tramcars hemmed us round. We had been conscious of it dimly throughout the long ceremonial within the temple, where Shintō priests in brocaded robes chanted in twos and threes, in solo and in chorus; where the old High Priest had blessed with long strange rites the four elements, earth, which is the mother of all things, fire, water, air; had blessed the rice by which the people live, salt, and saké; but now that we were all assembled in the outer courtyard the noise of a busy city came distinctly to the ear. Tokyo was working hard this April afternoon, and the cries of the newspaper boys pierced up shrilly from the street below.

In the courtyard the ancient vestments of the priests showed strangely beside the modern frocks of American visitors, the tweed suits of a party of Cook’s tourists, even beside the kimono of the Japanese crowd, so markedly Tokyo and Meiji (age of enlightenment), in their felt hats, cloth caps, and “bowlers.”

The courtyard was big, the native crowd railed in at one end left a large space bare, and here in the centre of the stamped brown earth a great pile of burning charcoal was heaped. Twenty feet long, and nearly as many broad, it glowed a solid mass of quivering heat, while priests at each corner stood fanning the sullen red to an ever fiercer flame. It was not hot enough yet, and in the sunshine of that April afternoon we waited.

At the further end of the courtyard a broad band of salt lay on the brown earth like a white step to the altar. The great fans of the fanning priests sent puffs of heat across the court that made the distinguished guests shrink back. And yet the glowing charcoal pyre was not hot enough.

Behind us, in a corner of the courtyard, stood a bamboo ladder, whose every rung was made of the razor-blade of a Japanese sword, set edge upwards. As we all stood waiting, watching the solid altar of red flame grow redder, a young man came out of the temple and crossed the court. He was dressed in the short white tunic of religious festivals, and his legs and feet were bare. He bowed to the party of distinguished guests, to the priests, to the old High Priest, and from his manner I judged him not a priest, but a temple attendant.

Among the crowd there was a murmur, a sway of intense excitement, and then a dead stillness. In the stillness the young man put his bare foot upon the lowest rung of the ladder, and an involuntary shudder went through us all. A large-checked tourist, pushing every one aside, rushed up to the ladder, and felt a sword-rung with his hand. Then he came back, and across his open palm a ruled red line of blood rose up swiftly.

There was a whispering among the priests, a commotion in the crowd, but the polite expressions of regret from the old High Priest were courtly with honorifics. The large-checked tourist tied his hand up clumsily in his own pocket-handkerchief, and looked annoyed. The fanning priests, with rhythmic movements of their hands and bodies, chased the living heat across the court, and did not pause.

Again there was a murmur in the crowd, a stretching of necks to see, and a dead silence.

The white-tuniced attendant, who had stood quite still beside the ladder, placed his bare foot upon the lowest rung, and I saw the large-checked tourist wince as though his injured hand were there instead. Lightly as a sailor climbs, the young man ran up the ladder rung by rung, and neither hands nor feet grew red. On the top he stayed, looking down, and a shudder like a cry of pain went through the courtyard. Then he turned, hanging for one brief moment by his knees on the topmost rung—turned, and came down again.

In the April sunshine the sword-blades, from top to bottom of the ladder, glittered spotless.

Firmly on his bare, brown feet the young man walked across the court, bowed to the party of distinguished visitors, to the priests, to the old High Priest, and disappeared within the temple.

The crowd behind the railings exclaimed in admiration, but the distinguished visitors were above surprise. The party of Cook’s tourists who had just “done” India were full of explanations. It was “mere jugglery,” they said, though each man differed in his theory. One was eloquent on hypnotic suggestion, and though the damaged tourist, his hand still bound up, “couldn’t go so far as that, sir,” was not to be persuaded. The injured tourist had apparently only been hypnotised a little more effectually than the rest of us. The American guests favoured “acrobatic training from infancy,” which “made the bones just like jelly.” Somebody said he had heard it was “done with oil,” but was quite vague as to the how, and all the more insistent in consequence. And so we explained and argued while the level rays of sunshine fell on the spotless sword-rungs of the ladder, and on the vestments of the Shintō priests. They had watched and were impassive. The climbing of the ladder was not a sacred ceremony, not a rite, rather an amusement allowed the multitude, as the Catholic Church offered jongleries in the Middle Ages.

But as the sun fell lower and lower in the April sky, a hush came among the little group of priests, and growing, travelled slowly over the courtyard. Even the damaged tourist stopped his explanations. The great red altar of heat that lay a fallen pillar of fire across the courtyard was glowing now white-hot with life. The fanning priests at each corner had moved further back to escape the scorch of the flames, but still they fanned. In waves and gusts the heat was borne across the court, to flicker, as it were, upon the air, steady itself and then drive solidly forward. The Cook’s tourists who had seized upon the front row of seats, twisted uneasily on their chairs, unwilling to give up their “best places,” unable to endure the burning. But the fierce scorch of the heat came steadily onwards, and before it the tourists ran, dragging their chairs after them.

Still the fanning priests fanned on, chasing the quivering flames on the red altar of heat, till it pulsed with a white-hot breath like a thing alive.

In the pale April sky the swift sun was dropping golden through the last arcs of heaven to a grey band of clouds upon the horizon. In half an hour it would be night.

There was a stir in the crowd beyond the barriers; the fanning priests beat out their rhythm slowly, and with the shadows the gathering sense of awe deepened. Only the altar of heat burned brighter, gathering to itself all the colour from the world.

Apart from the crowd the High Priest stood, the gold on his vestment gleaming, and he watched the sun. The peace upon his face was like an unsaid prayer. Did his soul go out to Amaterasu, the great Sun-Goddess?

Swiftly the sun dropped through the bank of clouds leaving them golden, showed a red circle on the horizon, and passed beneath. The faintest flicker of emotion stirred for a moment the grave reverence of the old man’s face. Then he turned. The rhythmic beating of the fanning priests died into silence. The red altar stood a burning fiery furnace in the courtyard, where already twilight was. He spoke no word, but the religious calm of a perfect trust was in all his being. It touched the straining multitude behind the barriers, even the tourists in their chairs. Breathless we stayed gripped by the powers of an awed suspense, of a great belief, as he came on. There was no hurry, no tremor in his movements, on through the hot scorched air he came, on, over the threshold of strewn salt, and on, over the altar of heat. With naked feet he trod from end to end the white-hot pathway, and the burning charcoal snapped beneath his tread. With naked feet he walked, unscathed, over that fiery furnace; and the breath of a passionate prayer passed like a sob through the courtyard.

Then one by one the priests in their embroidered vestments stepped from the threshold of salt on to the fire. From end to end of the altar they too trod that white-hot pathway slowly, unhurt, and the living charcoal glowed like a thousand suns in the twilight.

Slowly behind their distant barriers the crowd stirred irresolute. An old man whose face showed rapt in the circle of firelight approached the priests. Hesitating he was led up to the altar, over the white salt step, and faltering, he too trod the white-hot pathway. Then a coolie came through the shadows, he too stepped up to the altar, passed over the threshold of salt on to the living charcoal.

In twos and threes the crowd was coming now. Some of them hesitated on the white salt step, some hurried along the fiery pathway. A few, a very few, walked away as though their feet were singed. But all came, even the children. The big children who went resolutely alone, the little children whom the priests led.

And the twilight in the courtyard deepened into night. The broad altar of heat glowed ruddy, a deep sun-red as its life pulsed slower. The tourists were all quiet on their chairs, not one of them would venture, though the little children went before. The Faith was not in them, nor the power of that great Belief. But those behind the barriers, this Tokyo crowd in kimono and “bowler,” they believed. With the sounds of a modern city humming in their ears, fresh from the western education of their Board Schools, they, as their forefathers for two thousand years, passed over the fire. This burning symbol of a spiritual purification had meaning for them. They had faith and were not afraid.

Unto such is the Dominion of the Earth; unto such is the Kingdom of Heaven.

XIV FORGOTTEN GODS

Neglected by the river side the Buddhas sit, in one long silent row. The rain is beating on their unprotected heads, and down their granite faces little rills of water trickle. The river at their feet runs swift and strong, grey among the boulders, as it rushes down to Nikkō. And they sit forsaken.

The moss is thick upon their shoulders, the granite faces are all scarred and battered, blotched with pallid growths, spotted with dusty accumulations. But the Buddhas smile. Beneath their heavy-lidded eyes they smile, a slow, still, changeless smile.

On the green bank above the tumultuous river there is no shrine, no priest; the forgotten gods sit still, in one long silent row, and the rain beats down relentless. Over their battered heads it runs, and down their moss-grown shoulders; the soiled stone laps are full of it, and it stands in ever widening pools about the lotus-leaves of each pedestal. For in Nikkō the rain, tropical in vehemence, is persistent, as in the Outer Hebrides. It lies to-day in slanting lines, thick as willow-switches, across the dull grey sky.

I could not well be wetter, so I stop to look, and the whole long silent row of Gods Forgotten smiles gently back at me.

Remindful of the legend which calls them numberless, I try to count. Once, twice, several times; but the legend is right. Each time my total varies. Perhaps the rain confuses me; the willow-switches lie so thick across the sky. So I give it up and look at the long desolate row of the numberless Buddhas. I wonder if they envy the Buddha who fell from his pedestal into the stream and was carried down to Imaichi, where the villagers, finding him uninjured, reverently set him up with his face towards Nikkō. Now the country-side adores him, and he wears a large pink bib.

Across the madly rushing river, churned grey between the boulders, the Buddhas smile.... It is a smile of understanding. Yes, the slow, still smile of One Who Understands, who understands All Things, and understanding, is content.

And who should understand, and understanding rest content, if not the Eternal Buddha? Is not the Godhead wise? Does it not see the meaning and the path of All Things? And seeing, were it not then content the Devil triumphs?

“God’s in His Heaven,

All’s right with the world.”

If God be in His Heaven, and God be God, then must the Godhead understanding smile.

Through the thick-falling rain the long still row of granite Buddhas smile back at me. I have thought so long upon that smile, which strikes on western senses oddly, almost irreverently. Do we ever conceive of a smiling God? In all the long picture galleries of Europe I have never seen a Christ who smiled. With sword-pierced side and thorn-crowned head He hangs before us—suffering, always sad. The Man of Sorrows; yet He redeemed the world; He saved mankind. For pure joy a soul could smile at such a thought. Yet with us the Redeemer suffers; He never smiles.

The peasant Sōgorō, from his cross where he had watched the killing of his children, laughed gaily as he bade his dying wife farewell; for he had saved three hundred villages from unjust taxation. In his intensest suffering a Japanese is taught to smile. He comes to tell you that his child is dying, and he smiles. Perhaps his eyes are red, but he smiles, that the sight of his suffering may not pain another. It is the sublimest unselfishness and self-control. Sōgorō dying on the cross bade his crucified wife farewell, laughing gaily, and no Japanese would praise or wonder at the fact. Sōgorō died as a martyr. Yes, I have seen a smile on the faces of our martyrs, rarely, it is true. Sodoma’s St. Sebastian smiles; it is a smile of the eyes. He sees a vision—the Lamb of God and all the choirs of the angels. But Christ never smiles. I cannot think of one picture, one conception of a smiling God. Sad, weighed down with the sins of mankind; pitiful, pleading; or stern, implacable, the Just Judge, the Ruler of the Universe, immovable Omnipotence, scales in hand. Can either Godhead smile?

Buddha suffered much and endured much, but still he smiles. He too is merciful and full of pity. He too suffers with each sin man sins. Here too the Just Judge judgeth the World. And the patient Buddha suffers till the wicked are redeemed. There is no end to his suffering till all are saved. Only when the wicked cease from troubling, cease because they are the good, is mortal life completed, till then the complex worlds spin on and on. Yet Buddha smiles. For man’s birthright is not sin, not sorrow, but Joy. The Godhead smiles.

This long silent row of granite gods, fashioned by the hands and the hearts of this nation, smile. And all the bronze and granite statues, all the gilded images, all the Buddhas of this island smile too, for the people who made them and conceived them believe in Joy, in the innate as in the ultimate goodness of man; in the innate as in the ultimate Joy of the Godhead. Verily these are forgotten Gods in western lands.

Across the raging mountain river, through the fast-falling rain, on the desolate green bank the numberless Buddhas battered and forsaken smile, that slow still smile of One Who Understands, who understands All Things, and understanding is content.

Great Buddha, Dai Nippon, teach us.