do they hurry themselves in the act. The



INC A RNA TIONS. 1 09

nation spends an inordinate amount of time
in the national tub ; as becomes pecuniarily
apparent when you hire a man by the day, or,
stranger yet, by the job. You are tempted
at times to suppose your toiler continuously
either tubbing or teaing. Doubtless such
totality is due to emotional exaggeration on
your part, but it is beyond prejudice that he
soaks in his tub a good working minority of
his time.

When it comes to religious matters, it
would seem as if this estimable quality were
carried to its inevitable defect. For, from a
pardonable pastime, bathing here becomes an
all-engrossing pursuit. The would-be devotee
spends his waking life at little else, and he
sleeps less than most men at that. Not only
is it his bounden duty to bathe six appointed
times in every twenty-four hours, but he
should also bathe as often as he may be-
tween. The more he bathes the better he
becomes.

Now, if he simply soaked in a hot water
tub as his profane friends do, this might be
merely the ecstatic height of dissipation.
But he does nothing of the kind. No gentle
parboiling is his portion ; perpetual goose-



no OCCULT JAPAN.

flesh is his lot. For in his case no such
amelioration of nature is allowed. Whatever
the season of the year, his ablutions must be
made in water of untempered temperature,
fresh from the spring ; in the depth of win-
ter a thing of cold comfort indeed. It then
goes by the expressive name of kmigyo, or
the cold austerity. What is more, he takes
this uncongenial application in the mode to
produce the most poignant effect — with the
shock of a shower-bath.

Esoterically there are grades in the clean-
sing capabilities of shower-baths. For him
who would reach the height of holiness the
correct thing is to walk under a waterfall
and be soused. This luxury is, of course,
only to be had in the hills. In default of
a waterfall, a douche from a dipper will do.
But on religious grounds it is not to be rec-
ommended.

Man-made methods are imperative in town
owing to the lack of natural ones, which is
one reason why the hills are the proper
habitat for novitiates into the higher life. In
the good old days such habitat was a neces-
sity, not that men were less pure then, but,
on the contrary, that they strove to become



INCARNA TIONS. 1 1 1

yet purer, so gydja aver ; pure Shint5 says it
was because they had then lapsed from or-
thodoxy. However that be, when gydja were
gydja they were anchorites pure and simple.
They dwelt as hermits among the hills, seeing
no man by the space of three years, and re-
ducing themselves as nearly as might be to a
state of nature ; of the inoffensive kind, for,
as their diet will show, they belonged rather
to the herbivorous than to the carnivorous
order of wild animal. After they had be-
come quite detached from all that distin-
guishes humanity, they returned to the world
to live hermitically in the midst of it, repair-
ing again at suitable seasons to mountaineer-
ing meditation. Such were the men who
opened, as the consecrated phrase is, On-
take, that is, who first succeeded in reaching
its sacred summit. There are still a few of
these estimable creatures at large in the hills,
I have myself met some of them, there and
elsewhere, after their return to society, and
have gazed with interest at caves pointed out
to me which they had once inhabited.

But gydja generally have deteriorated with
the world at large. They are far from being
what they were, so far that a conscientious



112 OCCULT JAPAN.

man hardly feels that he has the right to call
himself a gydja at all, as one of the class
humbly informed me. He blushed, he said,
when he thought of the austerities of the
olden time. A modern gydja was little more
austere than a shinja who made his summer
pilgrimages when he could. This was per-
haps a gloomy view to take of the situation,
for one usually finds the past not so superior
to the present as report represents. But
even at its worst, the deterioration would
seem a case only for professional sympathy.
For whatever the regimen may have been,
there is at all events enough severity left it
to satisfy any decent desire for self-martyr-
dom.

That mountains should be deemed pecul-
iarly good points for entering another world
is not unnatural. With inclines incapable of
cultivation, they do not conduce to socia-
bility, but enable the dweller there the more
effectively to meditate himself into inanity.
Unjogged by suggestion, the average mind
lapses into a comatose condition, till the man
comes eventually to exist upon the border-
land of trance. But as it is not convenient
for everybody to retire to the hills for three



INCARNA TIONS. 1 1 3

years at a time, even for this sublime pur-
pose, it has been found possible to combine
purity enough for vacuity with a tolerably
secular existence. The gyo in the two cases
differ only as a state of nature differs from
a condition of civilization.

This brings us back again to the bath,
for we are not half through with it yet. If
the neophyte be not taking the waterfall in
all simplicity on his head, he is outdoing
Diogenes by living not simply in his tub, but
tubbing. A cold water douche begins the
day, another marks its meridian, and a third
brings it to a close. But the day does not
bring the douche to a close. Just before
turning in the neophyte must take another
dip, after which it might indeed be thought
that he should sleep in peace. But such
would savor of pandering to the flesh. The
most vital ablution of all, therefore, the cnix
piirificationis, occurs at two A. m. {yatsiigyo).
At this unearthly hour the poor creature
must wake himself up, stagger half asleep
to the waterfall or bathroom, souse himself
with a dipper or be soused by the fall, while
his teeth chatter a prayer and his fingers
twist themselves into cabalistic knots, he



114 OCCULT JAPAN.

himself shivering the while from top to toe ;
then, brought up standing in this manner,
try if he may to sleep again. Even should
he succeed, his doze may not be for long,
for with the dawn he must douche again,
the sunrise austerity {/li-no-de-gyo).

Unearthly the midnight hour may ad-
visedly be called, for it is for precisely such
attribute that the time is chosen. At that
dead of night, when every sound is hushed,
and even the plants, they say, lie locked in
sleep, the gods can the better hear. And
this, oddly enough, in spite of their being
very much engaged with their own spatter-
ings and sputterings, for the gods them-
selves are then taking their baths, — the
ofods of the mountains under their water-
falls, and the gods of the plain in the riv-
ers thereof. In Japan, even the gods wash
and are clean, and, like their human poor
relations, apparently make of the bath a time
of social reunion and merriment. They hear,
nevertheless, and reward the bather accord-
ingly.

With a shinja this nocturnal exercise is
optional. It all depends upon how pure he
intends to become. Of course it is a great



INCARNATIONS. II5

deal better to be thorough, and not for the
sake of the flesh to shirk what shall ethere-
alize the soul. A little more bathing can
do no harm — unless it kill, which is beside
the point.

Extras, that is baths at odd hours, are to
be taken ad libitum by all. The rule is :
When in doubt, douche.

This extreme lavatory exercise lasts indefi-
nitely — as long as the devotee can stand
it. And in diminishing doses it is kept up
through life. To those who perform it in all
its rigor under the waterfalls in the hills,
the gods graciously show signs of accepted
favor. For round the head of the holy, as
he stands beneath the fall, the sunlight glan-
cing through the spray rims a halo which all
men may see and the reverent recognize as
proof of sanctity. The skeptic may possibly
ascribe it to a different cause, having per-
chance seen the like around the shadow of
his own head cast, as he sat in the saddle,-
upon the clipped grass of a polo field. He
will certainly do so when he perceives sim-
ilar halos about the heads of his godless
friends. Yet that abandoned character, Ben-
venuto Cellini, on suddenly remarking one



1 1 6 OCCULT JAPAN'.

day an aureole radiating from the reflection
of his head in the water, as he leaned over
the side of a boat, took it at once for sign
certain that his salvation was assured.

So much for the fresh-water cure. To sum
it up in a maxim, — adapting to its gentler
warfare with the spirits of evil Danton's
celebrated one about war in general, — we
may say that the three essentials to success
in it are : " De I'eau douce ! de I'eau douce !
at encore de I'eau douce ! "

III.

Fasting {danjiki) is the next mortification
to the flesh. The poor brute of a body un-
equally yoked to so indomitable a spirit fares
ill. For it is deprived at once both of super-
ficial gratification and of solid nourishment.
The would-be pure must abstain from meat,
from fish, from things cooked, and, compre-
hensively, from whatever has taste or smell.
In short, he should lead gastronomically an
utterly insipid existence. He may not even
indulge in the national tea, a beverage taste-
less and bodiless enough in all conscience
to escape proscription. Salt is specially to
be shunned (skhvodachi). It is worth noting



INCARNA TIONS. 1 1 7

that on the way to a higher life the appar-
ently harmless chloride of sodium should
work as banefully within a man as it works
beneficially without him.

Greater deprivation than all these, even
tobacco falls under the ban. In that earthly
paradise of smokers, the Japanese Islands,
where the use of the weed rises superior
even to sex, it seems indeed hard that only
those dedicate to deity should be debarred it.
But the road to immaterial peace of mind
knows no material narcotic by the way.
After he has attained to a holy calm without
it, the lay brother returns to moderate indul-
gence in this least gross form of gluttony.
The professed ascetic continues to abjure it
his life long.

Nuts and berries form the staple of the
gyqjds diet, if he be living a hermit among
the hills ; buckwheat flour if, though not of
the world, he be still in it. He may also eat
vegetables and dried persimmons and grapes
in their season ; but he must eat most
sparingly of whatever it be. One bowl of
buckwheat and a dish of greens at noon is
sustenance enough for the day. Breakfast
and supper are forbidden panderings to the



1 1 8 OCCULT. JAPAN.

flesh. To wash this next to nothing down
cold water is allowed him, if his external
applications have not already given him
enough of it.

Not unnaturally a diet of such subtraction
speedily reduces him to his lowest mental
terms, a state which he still further simpli-
fies by purely mental means.

To start with, the general character of his
existence conduces to that end. Whether
he be living an actual anchorite among the
mountains or only a would-be one in town,
solitude complete or partial tends by well-
known laws to convert him into either a
maniac or a simpleton. To a species of the
latter it is his ambition to attain.

To this end untold repetitions of elemen-
tary prayers admirably conduce. It would
be hard indeed to overestimate the efificacy
of such process for producing utter blank-
ness of mind. The subdued chanting by
rote over and over again of words to which
any thought has long since bade good-by
tends in a twofold manner to mental vacuity.
There is just enough mental action going
on to keep the mind from thinking of any-
thing else, and yet it is so ineffably unin-



-.ITT 1



INCARNA TIOiVS. 1 1 9

teresting that attention, do what it will,
inevitably nods. It is a mistake to sup-
pose that the soothing effects of church are
wholly due to sound sleep during the ser-
mon. Any auditory routine is competent
to compel it. Rhythmic monotone is as
potent a lullaby as more consecrated cradle-
song. The eventual end of both would be
sleep ; as we see with the latter in the case
of an infant in his crib or of middle-aged
gentlemen in their pews, and in our own
case with the former when we conquer our
insomnia by methodically counting to a
hundred an indefinite number of times.
The chanter does not attain to this supreme
nirvana because it is he himself that is
preaching the sermon ; but the soporific
power of these rites in helping to a virtuous
vacancy of mind is quite specific, and partly
accounts incidentally for the long-winded-
ness of preachers.

To this same intent, the more searching
brother practices upon himself further in-
genious devices. One of the most effective
of these is the concentrating his whole
attention upon his own breathing. Mentally,
he scrutinizes each expiration — the in-



120 OCCULT JAPAN.

spirations appear to be somewhat better
able to look after themselves — with molec-
ular minuteness. Each breath as it passes
out is thus subjected to the spirit's picket
challenge. By giving his whole mind in this
manner to the mere method of existence, he
effectually prevents any ideas from stealing
into that mind unawares. After prolonged
duty of the sort, consciousness, like all really
good sentinels, nods at her post ; in which,
unlike the good sentinels, lies the virtue of
the deed, though unsuspected of the doer.
For divine possession in Japan, like other
Japanese things, is not a science but an art.
The reason given by religion for this inspec-
tion of one's breathing is that by prayerful
concentration upon the source of spirit one's
evil spirit may be expelled and a good
afflatus drawn in. One of the truly pious
when quantitively questioned told me that
he had thus kept watch on himself for three
weeks at a time, only pausing in the pursuit
unavoidably to eat and sleep. It is sadden-
ing to think to what farther tenuities he
miofht not have attained had he not been
thus grossly shackled to the flesh.

Ablutions and abstinence are thus the two



INCARNATIONS. 121

great gyo, which endless prayers, mechan-
ical finger-charms, and careful breathing help
accentuate.

But besides the regular stock austerities,
there are several supererogatory ones. There
is, for example, the gyo called tsumadachi,
which consists in walking on the tips of one's
toes wherever one has occasion to go. A
species of pious ballet-dancing this.

Then there is the austerity of never look-
ing upon a woman's face. This martyrdom
the ascetic who had practiced it spoke of
as a very severe self-infliction indeed. But
in view of the vast subjective disturbance
wrought even unconsciously by the sex, I
should judge it to be one of the most essen-
tial austerities of all. For no man who is
a man can take that absorbing interest in
nothing at all which the rules require while
a pair of piquant eyes and a petticoat lead
his imagination their irresistible dance. To
be insensible to such charm were to have
attained to complete insensibility already.

Compared with this renunciation, the next
gyo must be a positive pleasure. It consists
in letting unlimited mosquitoes bite one to
satiety for seven consecutive nights.



122 OCCULT JAPAN.

The aptitude of all these artifices to the
end desired is more or less apparent : some
tending to slow down the whole machine ;
or by weakening the body, or by tiring the
mind, some to dull the sense perceptions
by persistent attention to what is essentially
incapable of holding it, — all to reduce the
brain to an inactive state. The road is un-
necessarily long because originally discov-
ered by chance, and then blindly followed by
succeeding ages without rational improve-
ment. An immense amount of labor is thus
in point of fact thrown away. How much
quicker a like result can be obtained by the
application of a little science, modern hyp-
notism shows.

Now there will have been noticed in the
list of austerities a steady departure from
primitive simplicity. This decrease in sim-
plicity is strictly paralleled by the decrease
in their respective use. Everybody washed,
though comparatively few poised on their
toes. The several vogue of the austerities is
further paralleled by the position occupied
by those who practiced them, in that long
chain of mixed belief which, dependent from
pure Shinto at the one end, is supported by



INCAKNA TIONS. 1 2 3

Buddhism from the other. The mosquito
ordeal, for example, is quite Buddhist, while
abnormal ablutions are not. The significance
of these two parallelisms will appear later on.
What the Japanese sensations are during
the process may be gathered from the per-
sonally narrated experience of a certain be-
liever, who sufficiently expresses the type.
The given individual was first minded to
become a practitioner in consequence of the
surprising cure, through god-possession, of
his master's sick son. He was at the time
apprenticed to a dyer, and was away on a
journey when the cure was wrought. Much
impressed by what he heard on his return,
he determined to seek out the holy man who
had effected the miraculous result, and, by
following in his footsteps, to attain to pro-
ficiency himself. The gydja received him
cordially, and kindly indulged him in his
desire by putting him to the washing {siiigyo)
and the fasting {danjiki) austerities in all
their rigor for three weeks. At the end of
that time he was so used up that he could
hardly stand. One bowl of rice and a dish
of greens a day are little enough to help one
through such a course of ablutionary train-



1 2 4 OCCUL T JAPAJSr.

ing. Nevertheless, for fifty days more he
kept on with but little addition to his mea-
gre diet, washing lavishly the while. At the
close of this second period he relaxed some-
what and ate, as he expressed it, in moder-
ation, that is, immoderately little ; which
ameliorated treatment of himself he kept up
for the next three years. He was twenty
when he went through his novitiate, and
sixty-three when he told me of it; for the
intervening forty-three years he had dieted
and douched daily.

No very definite sensation, follows, he says,
the exercise of the austerities. He simply
feels an increase in virtue, whatever that
may mean. Fortunately it would seem to
show itself in a practical form. For as he
continues in the regimen he gets to know,
he says, good and evil spontaneously. When
a bit of good luck is coming to him or his
family, or a misfortune about to befall them,
he feels it beforehand by a certain mental
light-heartedness, or a corresponding oppres-
sion of spirit. Finally he arrives at being
able to predict everything. Whether he can
always avert what he is able to foretell may
be open to doubt. For consequent upon this



INCARNATIONS. 12$

exposure of his capabilities the poor man
contracted a very bad cold, and was confined
for a couple of weeks to his house.

He was, as the mention of his family
showed, a married man. In this he made no
exception to the rule. All lay brethren marry
as a matter of course. Indeed, in Shinto
proper, the priests wed like anybody else.
Nor do such as follow the austerities commit
themselves in the least to celibacy. For
matrimony and self-consecration to the gods
do not, it appears, conflict. In spite of the
great advantage that accrues to piety from
never looking upon a woman's face, men-
tioned above, mere matrimony would seem
innocuous. Either femininity in repeated
doses loses its intoxicating effect, or acquired
sanctity renders the believer superior to it.
Perhaps, as one of my married friends sug-
gested to me, marriage is sufficient austerity
itself.

However that may be, certain it is that
nowadays even gydja wed without detriment
to their souls. I am by no means sure
that they did not in the olden time, for so
commonplace a detail of a far oriental's life
as matrimony might well have escaped



126 OCCULT JAPAN.

chronicling. Still there is no doubt that
times have changed for the worse with gydja,
as my gydja averred. Even pecuniarily so
much is evident. In the good old days they
supported themselves in peace and plenty
from the offerings of grateful patients ; now
alas, as he said pathetically, these gratuities
do not suffice, and many a worthy soul is
forced to eke out a slender subsistence by
secular work in secret. Making toothpicks
was the industry he affectingly instanced,
when pressed to be more explicit. To be
driven to such extremity must seem indeed
pitiable, even to the undevout.

Thus, then, do the pious get themselves
into a general potentiahty of possession.
Before possession becomes a fact, however,
a short renewal of extreme austerities must
be undergone ; like the slight shake that
crystallizes the solution. On notice of a
case to be cured the practitioner enters
again the rigors of the washing and the fast,
and keeps them up for a week if he be very
thorough, two or three days if that will
suffice. The amount of abstinence depends
upon the gravity of the case. There is some-
thing highly satisfactory in this dieting of



INCARNA TIONS. 1 2 7

the physician in place of the patient. From
the patient's point of view it instantly raises
divinopathy above all other pathies on earth.
Besides, it is more thoroughly logical. For
why, indeed, should not the physician, if well
paid for it, be expected to furnish all the
elements of his cure !

IV.

We have now reached the function itself.
That this is imposing in the first sense of
that word, that is, impressive, the hold it has
had on man sufficiently testifies ; that it is
imposing in the second sense, that is, a sham,
is a supposition which the first view of one
of these trances would suffice to dispel.

We will first take up the Ryobu form
which is the commonest one. The ceremony
with which Ryobu has surrounded the act is
finely in keeping with the impressiveness of
the act itself. So sense-compelling a service
you shall find it hard to match in the masses
of any other church. But more constraining
still are the energy and the sincerity with
which the whole is done. It is small won-
der that the already susceptible subject feels
its charm when even bystanders are stirred.



128 OCCULT JAPAN.

As with the gyo, purification is of its
essence. For not only must a general pu-
rification antecede the act, but a special
purification must immediately precede it.
And first the spot must be holy. Now only
one spot is holy by nature : the sacred
mountain Ontake or its affiliated peaks. All
others must be purified. These may be of
two kinds : temples, public or private, — for
most houses have what is called a gods'-shelf,
{kamidana), which does them for family
shrine, — and ordinary rooms. The first are
kept perpetually purified ; the second are
specially purified for the occasion.

If there be no permanent shrine, a tempo-
rary one is constructed. Its central motif is
2i gohei upon a wand, stood upright on a ped-
estal. By the side of the gohei are lighted
candles, and flanking these, sprigs of sakaki,
the sacred tree of Shinto. In front of the
gohei is set out a feast for the god. The
feast varies in elaborateness according to the
occasion, its principal dishes being a bowl
of rice, a saucer of salt, and a cup of sak^,
the national wine. In addition to these
indispensables, any form of uncooked human
food may be offered to the god, according to



INCARNATIONS. 1 29

the sumptuousness of the repast it is desired
to give him.

The shrine is set up in the tokonovia, or
recess of honor, of the room. At the back
is placed a hanging-scroll of the gods of
Ontake. Some five feet in front of the
tokonoma, in the centre of the sacred space,
a porous earthenware bowl is placed upon
a stand, and in the bowl is built a pyre of
incense sticks, usually beginning as a log-hut
and terminating as a wigwam.

Then the place is purified. This is done
by inclosing the room, or the part of it in
front of the shrine, by strings from which
depend at intervals small gohei. These are
usually arranged after the so-called seven-
five-three {shichi - go - saji) pattern; seven of
them being nearest the shrine, five on each
side, and three at the farther end. From the
space so inclosed all evil spirits are driven
out by prayer, by finger-charms, by sprink-
ling of salt, by striking of sparks from a flint
and steel, and by brandishing of a goJiei-
wand used as an exorcising air-broom.

After the purification of the place, the
next duty of the officiators is the purifica-
tion of their persons. For this purpose they



1 30 OCCUL T JAPAN.