festival symbols and tokens. Especially is such knowledge necessary to
the student of Japanese art: without it, not only the delicate humour
and charm of countless designs must escape him, but in many instances
the designs themselves must remain incomprehensible to him. For
hundreds of years the emblems of festivity have been utilised by the
Japanese in graceful decorative ways: they figure in metalwork, on
porcelain, on the red or black lacquer of the humblest household
utensils, on little brass pipes, on the clasps of tobacco-pouches. It
may even be said that the majority of common decorative design is
emblematical. The very figures of which the meaning seems most
obvious - those matchless studies [1] of animal or vegetable life with
which the Western curio-buyer is most familiar - have usually some
ethical signification which is not perceived at all. Or take the
commonest design dashed with a brush upon the fusuma of a cheap hotel - a
lobster, sprigs of pine, tortoises waddling in a curl of water, a pair
of storks, a spray of bamboo. It is rarely that a foreign tourist
thinks of asking why such designs are used instead of others, even
when he has seen them repeated, with slight variation, at twenty
different places along his route. They have become conventional simply
because they are emblems of which the sense is known to all Japanese,
however ignorant, but is never even remotely suspected by the stranger.
The subject is one about which a whole encyclopaedia might be written,
but about which I know very little - much too little for a special essay.
But I may venture, by way of illustration, to speak of the curious
objects exhibited during two antique festivals still observed in all
parts of Japan.
2
The first is the Festival of the New Year, which lasts for three days.
In Matsue its celebration is particularly interesting, as the old city
still preserves many matsuri customs which have either become, or are
rapidly becoming, obsolete elsewhere. The streets are then profusely
decorated, and all shops are closed. Shimenawa or shimekazari - the straw
ropes which have been sacred symbols of Shinto from the mythical age -
are festooned along the faades of the dwellings, and so inter-joined
that you see to right or left what seems but a single mile-long
shimenawa, with its straw pendents and white fluttering paper gohei,
extending along either side of the street as far as the eye can reach.
Japanese flags - bearing on a white ground the great crimson disk which
is the emblem of the Land of the Rising Sun - flutter above the gateways;
and the same national emblem glows upon countless paper lanterns strung
in rows along the eaves or across the streets and temple avenues. And
before every gate or doorway a kadomatsu ('gate pine-tree') has been
erected. So that all the ways are lined with green, and full of bright
colour.
The kadomatsu is more than its name implies. It is a young pine, or part
of a pine, conjoined with plum branches and bamboo cuttings. [2] Pine,
plum, and bamboo are growths of emblematic significance. Anciently the
pine alone was used; but from the era of O-ei, the bamboo was added; and
within more recent times the plum-tree.
The pine has many meanings. But the fortunate one most generally
accepted is that of endurance and successful energy in time of
misfortune. As the pine keeps its green leaves when other trees lose
their foliage, so the true man keeps his courage and his strength in
adversity. The pine is also, as I have said elsewhere, a symbol of
vigorous old age.
No European could possibly guess the riddle of the bamboo. It represents
a sort of pun in symbolism. There are two Chinese characters both
pronounced setsu - one signifying the node or joint of the bamboo, and
the other virtue, fidelity, constancy. Therefore is the bamboo used as a
felicitous sign. The name 'Setsu,' be it observed, is often given to
Japanese maidens - just as the names 'Faith,' 'Fidelia,' and 'Constance'
are given to English girls.
The plum-tree - of whose emblematic meaning I said something in a former
paper about Japanese gardens - is not invariably used, however; sometimes
sakaki, the sacred plant of Shinto, is substituted for it; and sometimes
only pine and bamboo form the kadomatsu.
Every decoration used upon the New Year's festival has a meaning of a
curious and unfamiliar kind; and the very cornmonest of all - the straw
rope - possesses the most complicated symbolism. In the first place it is
scarcely necessary to explain that its origin belongs to that most
ancient legend of the Sun-Goddess being tempted to issue from the cavern
into which she had retired, and being prevented from returning thereunto
by a deity who stretched a rope of straw across the entrance - all of
which is written in the Kojiki. Next observe that, although the
shimenawa may be of any thickness, it must be twisted so that the
direction of the twist is to the left; for in ancient Japanese
philosophy the left is the 'pure' or fortunate side: owing perhaps to
the old belief, common among the uneducated of Europe to this day, that
the heart lies to the left. Thirdly, note that the pendent straws, which
hang down from the rope at regular intervals, in tufts, like fringing,
must be of different numbers according to the place of the tufts,
beginning with the number three: so that the first tuft has three
straws, the second live, the third seven, the fourth again three, the
fifth five, and the sixth seven - and so on, the whole length of the
rope. The origin of the pendent paper cuttings (gohei), which alternate
with the straw tufts, is likewise to be sought in the legend of the
Sun-Goddess; but the gohei also represent offerings of cloth anciently
made to the gods according to a custom long obsolete.
But besides the gohei, there are many other things attached to the
shimenawa of which you could not imagine the signification. Among these
are fern-leaves, bitter oranges, yuzuri-leaves, and little bundles of
charcoal.
Why fern-leaves (moromoki or urajiro)? Because the fern-leaf is the
symbol of the hope of exuberant posterity: even as it branches and
branches so may the happy family increase and multiply through the
generations.
Why bitter oranges (daidai)? Because there is a Chinese word daidai
signifying 'from generation unto generation.' Wherefore the fruit called
daidai has become a fruit of good omen.
But why charcoal (sumi)? It signifies 'prosperous changelessness.' Here
the idea is decidedly curious. Even as the colour of charcoal cannot be
changed, so may the fortunes of those we love remain for ever unchanged
In all that gives happiness! The signification of the yuzuri-leaf I
explained in a former paper.
Besides the great shimenawa in front of the house, shimenawa or
shimekazari [3] are suspended above the toko, or alcoves, in each
apartment; and over the back gate, or over the entrance to the gallery
of the second story (if there be a second story), is hung a 'wajime,
which is a very small shimekazari twisted into a sort of wreath, and
decorated with fern-leaves, gohei, and yuzuri-leaves.
But the great domestic display of the festival is the decoration of the
kamidana - the shelf of the Gods. Before the household miya are placed
great double rice cakes; and the shrine is beautiful with flowers, a
tiny shimekazari, and sprays of sakaki. There also are placed a string
of cash; kabu (turnips); daikon (radishes); a tai-fish, which is the
'king of fishes,' dried slices of salt cuttlefish; jinbaso, of 'the
Seaweed of the horse of the God'; [4] also the seaweed kombu, which is a
symbol of pleasure and of joy, because its name is deemed to be a
homonym for gladness; and mochibana, artificial blossoms formed of rice
flour and straw.
The sambo is a curiously shaped little table on which offer-ings are
made to the Shinto gods; and almost every well-to-do household in hzumo
has its own sambo - such a family sambo being smaller, however, than
sambo used in the temples. At the advent of the New Year's Festival,
bitter oranges, rice, and rice-flour cakes, native sardines (iwashi),
chikara-iwai ('strength-rice-bread'), black peas, dried chestnuts, and a
fine lobster, are all tastefully arranged upon the family sambo. Before
each visitor the sambo is set; and the visitor, by saluting it with a
prostration, expresses not only his heartfelt wish that all the good-
fortune symbolised by the objects upon the sambo may come to the family,
but also his reverence for the household gods. The black peas (mame)
signify bodily strength and health, because a word similarly pronounced,
though written with a different ideograph, means 'robust.' But why a
lobster? Here we have another curious conception. The lobster's body is
bent double: the body of the man who lives to a very great old age is
also bent. Thus the Lobster stands for a symbol of extreme old age; and
in artistic design signifies the wish that our friends may live so long
that they will become bent like lobsters - under the weight of years. And
the dried chestnut (kachiguri) are emblems of success, because the first
character of their name in Japanese is the homonym of kachi, which means
'victory,' 'conquest.'
There are at least a hundred other singular customs and emblems
belonging to the New Year's Festival which would require a large volume
to describe. I have mentioned only a few which immediately appear to
even casual observation.
3
The other festival I wish, to refer to is that of the Setsubun, which,
according to the ancient Japanese calendar, corresponded with the
beginning of the natural year - the period when winter first softens into
spring. It is what we might term, according to Professor Chamberlain, 'a
sort of movable feast'; and it is chiefly famous for the curious
ceremony of the casting out of devils - Oni-yarai. On the eve of the
Setsubun, a little after dark, the Yaku-otoshi, or caster-out of devils,
wanders through the streets from house to house, rattling his shakujo,
[5] and uttering his strange professional cry: 'Oni wa soto! - fuku wa
uchi!' [Devils out! Good-fortune in!] For a trifling fee he performs his
little exorcism in any house to which he is called. This simply consists
in the recitation of certain parts of a Buddhist kyo, or sutra, and the
rattling of the shakujo Afterwards dried peas (shiro-mame) are thrown
about the house in four directions. For some mysterious reason, devils
do not like dried peas - and flee therefrom. The peas thus scattered are
afterward swept up and carefully preserved until the first clap of
spring thunder is heard, when it is the custom to cook and eat some of
them. But just why, I cannot find out; neither can I discover the origin
of the dislike of devils for dried peas. On the subject of this dislike,
however, I confess my sympathy with devils.
After the devils have been properly cast out, a small charm is placed
above all the entrances of the dwelling to keep them from coming back
again. This consists of a little stick about the length and thickness of
a skewer, a single holly-leaf, and the head of a dried iwashi - a fish
resembling a sardine. The stick is stuck through the middle of the
holly-leaf; and the fish's head is fastened into a split made in one end
of the stick; the other end being slipped into some joint of the timber-
work immediately above a door. But why the devils are afraid of the
holly-leaf and the fish's head, nobody seems to know. Among the people
the origin of all these curious customs appears to be quite forgotten;
and the families of the upper classes who still maintain such customs
believe in the superstitions relating to the festival just as little as
Englishmen to-day believe in the magical virtues of mistletoe or ivy.
This ancient and merry annual custom of casting out devils has been for
generations a source of inspiration to Japanese artists. It is only
after a fair acquaintance with popular customs and ideas that the
foreigner can learn to appreciate the delicious humour of many art-
creations which he may wish, indeed, to buy just because they are so
oddly attractive in themselves, but which must really remain enigmas to
him, so far as their inner meaning is concerned, unless he knows
Japanese life. The other day a friend gave me a little card-case of
perfumed leather. On one side was stamped in relief the face of a devil,
through the orifice of whose yawning mouth could be seen - painted upon
the silk lining of the interior - the laughing, chubby face of Otafuku,
joyful Goddess of Good Luck. In itself the thing was very curious and
pretty; but the real merit of its design was this comical symbolism of
good wishes for the New Year: 'Oni wa soto! - fuku wa uchi!'
4
Since I have spoken of the custom of eating some of the Setsubun peas at
the time of the first spring thunder, I may here take the opportunity to
say a few words about superstitions in regard to thunder which have not
yet ceased to prevail among the peasantry.
When a thunder-storm comes, the big brown mosquito curtains are
suspended, and the women and children - perhaps the whole family - squat
down under the curtains till the storm is over. From ancient days it has
been believed that lightning cannot kill anybody under a mosquito
curtain. The Raiju, or Thunder-Animal, cannot pass through a mosquito-
curtain. Only the other day, an old peasant who came to the house with
vegetables to sell told us that he and his whole family, while crouching
under their mosquito-netting during a thunderstorm, actually, saw the
Lightning rushing up and down the pillar of the balcony opposite their
apartment - furiously clawing the woodwork, but unable to enter because
of the mosquito-netting. His house had been badly damaged by a flash;
but he supposed the mischief to have been accomplished by the Claws of
the Thunder-Animal.
The Thunder-Animal springs from tree to tree during a storm, they say;
wherefore to stand under trees in time of thunder and lightning is very
dangerous: the Thunder-Animal might step on one's head or shoulders. The
Thunder-Animal is also alleged to be fond of eating the human navel; for
which reason people should be careful to keep their navels well covered
during storms, and to lie down upon their stomachs if possible. Incense
is always burned during storms, because the Thunder-Animal hates the
smell of incense. A tree stricken by lightning is thought to have been
torn and scarred by the claws of the Thunder-Animal; and fragments of
its bark and wood are carefully collected and preserved by dwellers in
the vicinity; for the wood of a blasted tree is alleged to have the
singular virtue of curing toothache.
There are many stories of the Raiju having been caught and caged. Once,
it is said, the Thunder-Animal fell into a well, and got entangled in
the ropes and buckets, and so was captured alive. And old Izumo folk say
they remember that the Thunder-Animal was once exhibited in the court of
the Temple of Tenjin in Matsue, inclosed in a cage of brass; and that
people paid one sen each to look at it. It resembled a badger. When the
weather was clear it would sleep contentedly in its, cage. But when
there was thunder in the air, it would become excited, and seem to
obtain great strength, and its eyes would flash dazzlingly.
5
There is one very evil spirit, however, who is not in the least afraid
of dried peas, and who cannot be so easily got rid of as the common
devils; and that is Bimbogami.
But in Izumo people know a certain household charm whereby Bimbogami may
sometimes be cast out.
Before any cooking is done in a Japanese kitchen, the little charcoal
fire is first blown to a bright red heat with that most useful and
simple household utensil called a hifukidake. The hifukidake ('fire-
blow-bamboo') is a bamboo tube usually about three feet long and about
two inches in diameter. At one end - the end which is to be turned toward
the fire - only a very small orifice is left; the woman who prepares the
meal places the other end to her lips, and blows through the tube upon
the kindled charcoal. Thus a quick fire may be obtained in a few
minutes.
In course of time the hifukidake becomes scorched and cracked and
useless. A new 'fire-blow-tube' is then made; and the old one is used as
a charm against Bimbogami. One little copper coin (rin) is put into it,
some magical formula is uttered, and then the old utensil, with the rin
inside of it, is either simply thrown out through the front gate into
the street, or else flung into some neighbouring stream. This - I know
not why - is deemed equivalent to pitching Bimbogami out of doors, and
rendering it impossible for him to return during a considerable period.
It may be asked how is the invisible presence of Bimbogami to be
detected.
The little insect which makes that weird ticking noise at night called
in England the Death-watch has a Japanese relative named by the people
Bimbomushi, or the 'Poverty-Insect.' It is said to be the servant of
Bimbogami, the God of Poverty; and its ticking in a house is believed to
signal the presence of that most unwelcome deity.
6
One more feature of the Setsubun festival is worthy of mention - the sale
of the hitogata ('people-shapes'). These: are little figures, made of
white paper, representing men, women, and children. They are cut out
with a few clever scissors strokes; and the difference of sex is
indicated by variations in the shape of the sleeves and the little paper
obi. They are sold in the Shinto temples. The purchaser buys one for
every member of the family - the priest writing upon each the age and sex
of the person for whom it is intended. These hitogata are then taken
home and distributed; and each person slightly rubs his body or her body
with the paper, and says a little Shinto prayer. Next day the hitogata
are returned to the kannushi, who, after having recited certain formulae
over them, burns them with holy fire. [6] By this ceremony it is hoped
that all physical misfortunes will be averted from the family during a
year.
Chapter Six By the Japanese Sea
1
IT is the fifteenth day of the seventh month - and I am in Hokii.
The blanched road winds along a coast of low cliffs - the coast of the
Japanese Sea. Always on the left, over a narrow strip of stony land, or
a heaping of dunes, its vast expanse appears, blue-wrinkling to that
pale horizon beyond which Korea lies, under the same white sun.
Sometimes, through sudden gaps in the cliff's verge, there flashes to us
the running of the surf. Always upon the right another sea - a silent sea
of green, reaching to far misty ranges of wooded hills, with huge pale
peaks behind them - a vast level of rice-fields, over whose surface
soundless waves keep chasing each other under the same great breath that
moves the blue to-day from Chosen to Japan.
Though during a week the sky has remained unclouded, the sea has for
several days been growing angrier; and now the muttering of its surf
sounds far into the land. They say that it always roughens thus during
the period of the Festival of the Dead - the three days of the Bon, which
are the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth of the seventh month by
the ancient calendar. And on the sixteenth day, after the shoryobune,
which are the Ships of Souls, have been launched, no one dares to enter
it: no boats can then be hired; all the fishermen remain at home. For on
that day the sea is the highway of the dead, who must pass back over its
waters to their mysterious home; and therefore upon that day is it
called Hotoke-umi - the Buddha-Flood - the Tide of the Returning Ghosts.
And ever upon the night of that sixteenth day - whether the sea be calm
or tumultuous - all its surface shimmers with faint lights gliding out to
the open, - the dim fires of the dead; and there is heard a murmuring of
voices, like the murmur of a city far-off, - the indistinguishable speech
of souls.
2
But it may happen that some vessel, belated in spite of desperate effort
to reach port, may find herself far out at sea upon the night of the
sixteenth day. Then will the dead rise tall about the ship, and reach
long hands and murmur: 'Tago, tago o-kure! - tago o-kure!' [1] Never may
they be refused; but, before the bucket is given, the bottom of it must
be knocked out. Woe to all on board should an entire tago be suffered to
fall even by accident into the sea! - for the dead would at once use it
to fill and sink the ship.
Nor are the dead the only powers invisible dreaded in the time of the
Hotoke-umi. Then are the Ma most powerful, and the Kappa. [2]
But in all times the swimmer fears the Kappa, the Ape of Waters, hideous
and obscene, who reaches up from the deeps to draw men down, and to
devour their entrails.
Only their entrails.
The corpse of him who has been seized by the Kappa may be cast on shore
after many days. Unless long battered against the rocks by heavy surf,
or nibbled by fishes, it will show no outward wound. But it will be
light and hollow - empty like a long-dried gourd.
3
Betimes, as we journey on, the monotony of undulating blue on the left,
or the monotony of billowing green upon the right, is broken by the grey
apparition of a cemetery - a cemetery so long that our jinricksha men, at
full run, take a full quarter of an hour to pass the huge congregation
of its perpendicular stones. Such visions always indicate the approach
of villages; but the villages prove to be as surprisingly small as the
cemeteries are surprisingly large. By hundreds of thousands do the
silent populations of the hakaba outnumber the folk of the hamlets to
which they belong - tiny thatched settlements sprinkled along the leagues
of coast, and sheltered from the wind only by ranks of sombre pines.
Legions on legions of stones - a host of sinister witnesses of the cost
of the present to the past - and old, old, old! - hundreds so long in
place that they have been worn into shapelessness merely by the blowing
of sand from the dunes, and their inscriptions utterly effaced. It is as
if one were passing through the burial-ground of all who ever lived on
this wind-blown shore since the being of the land.
And in all these hakaba - for it is the Bon - there are new lanterns
before the newer tombs - the white lanterns which are the lanterns of
graves. To-night the cemeteries will be all aglow with lights like the
fires of a city for multitude. But there are also unnumbered tombs
before which no lanterns are - elder myriads, each the token of a family
extinct, or of which the absent descendants have forgotten even the
name. Dim generations whose ghosts have none to call them back, no local
memories to love - so long ago obliterated were all things related to
their lives.
4
Now many of these villages are only fishing settlements, and in them
stand old thatched homes of men who sailed away on some eve of tempest,
and never came back. Yet each drowned sailor has his tomb in the
neighbouring hakaba, and beneath it something of him has been buried.
What?
Among these people of the west something is always preserved which in
other lands is cast away without a thought - the hozo-no-o, the flower-
stalk of a life, the navel-string of the newly-born. It is enwrapped
carefully in many wrappings; and upon its outermost covering are written
the names of the father, the mother, and the infant, together with the
date and hour of birth, - and it is kept in the family o-'mamori-bukuro.
The daughter, becoming a bride, bears it with her to her new home: for
the son it is preserved by his parents. It is buried with the dead; and
should one die in a foreign land, or perish at sea, it is entombed in
lieu of the body.
5
Concerning them that go down into the sea in ships, and stay there,
strange beliefs prevail on this far coast - beliefs more primitive,
assuredly, than the gentle faith which hangs white lanterns before the
tombs. Some hold that the drowned never journey to the Meido. They
quiver for ever in the currents; they billow in the swaying of tides;
they toil in the wake of the junks; they shout in the plunging of
breakers. 'Tis their white hands that toss in the leap of the surf;
their clutch that clatters the shingle, or seizes the swimmer's feet in
the pull of the undertow. And the seamen speak euphemistically of the
O-'bake, the honourable ghosts, and fear them with a great fear.
Wherefore cats are kept on board!
A cat, they aver, has power to keep the O-bake away. How or why, I have
not yet found any to tell me. I know only that cats are deemed to have
power over the dead. If a cat be left alone with a corpse, will not the