Out of the East (18 page)

"Did not Shaka have a wife and a son? Did he not love them?"

"Yes; but you know he had to leave them."

"That was very bad, even if Shaka did it. But I don't believe all those stories. And would you leave me, if you could get me? "

So they theorized and argued, and even laughed betimes: it was so pleasant to be together. But suddenly the girl became serious again, and said:—

Listen! Last night I saw a dream. I saw a strange river, and the sea. I was standing, I thought, beside the river, very near to where it flowed into the sea. And I was afraid, very much afraid, and did not know why. Then I looked, and saw there was no water in the river, no water in the sea, but only the bones of the Buddhas. But they were all moving, just like water.

"Then again I thought I was at home, and that you had given me a beautiful gift-silk for a kimono, and that the kimono had been made. And I put it on. And then I wondered, because at first it had seemed of many colors, but now it was all white; and I had foolishly folded it upon me as the robes of the dead are folded, to the left. Then I went to the homes of all my kinsfolk to say good-by; and I told them I was going to the Meido. And they all asked me why; and I could not answer."

"That is good," responded Tar
ō
; "it is very lucky to dream of the dead. Perhaps it is a sign we shall soon be husband and wife."

This time the girl did not reply; neither did she smile.

Tar
ō
was silent a minute ; then he added: "If you think it was not a good dream, Yoshi, whisper it all to the nanten plant in the garden: then it will not come true."

But on the evening of the same day Tar
ō
's father was notified that Miyahara O-Yoshi was to become the wife of Okazaki YaIchir
ō
.

O-Tama was really a very clever woman. She had never made any serious mistakes. She was one of those excellently organized beings who succeed in life by the perfect ease with which they exploit inferior natures. The full experience of her peasant ancestry in patience, in cunning, in crafty perception, in rapid foresight, in hard economy, was concentrated into a perfect machinery within her unlettered brain. That machinery worked faultlessly in the environment which had called it into existence, and upon the particular human material with which it was adapted to deal,—the nature of the peasant. But there was another nature which O-Tama understood less well, because there was nothing in her ancestral experience to elucidate it. She was a strong disbeliever in all the old ideas about character distinctions between samurai and heimin. She considered there had never been any differences between the military and the agricultural classes, except such differences of rank as laws and customs had established; and these had been bad. Laws and customs, she thought, had resulted in making all people of the former samurai class more or less helpless and foolish; and secretly she despised all shizoku. By their incapacity for hard work and their absolute ignorance of business methods, she had seen them reduced from wealth to misery. She had seen the pension bonds given them by the new government pass from their hands into the clutches of cunning speculators of the most vulgar class. She despised weakness; she despised incapacity; and she deemed the commonest vegetable seller a much superior being to the ex-Karo obliged in his old age to beg assistance from those who had formerly cast off their footgear and bowed their heads to the mud whenever he passed by. She did not consider it an advantage for O-Yoshi to have had a samurai mother: she attributed the girl's delicacy to that cause, and thought her descent a misfortune. She had clearly read in O-Yoshi's character all that could be read by one not of a superior caste; among other facts, that nothing would be gained by needless harshness to the child, and the implied quality was not one that she disliked. But there were other qualities in O-Yoshi that she had never clearly perceived,—a profound though well-controlled sensitiveness to moral wrong, an unconquerable self-respect, and a latent reserve of will power that could triumph over any physical pain. And thus it happened that the behavior of O-Yoshi, when told she would have to become the wife of Okazaki, duped her step-mother, who was prepared to encounter a revolt. She was mistaken.

At first the girl turned white as death. But in another moment she blushed, smiled, bowed down, and agreeably astonished the Miyahara by announcing, in the formal language of filial piety, her readiness to obey the will of her parents in all things. There was no further appearance even of secret dissatisfaction in her manner; and O-Tama was so pleased that she took her into confidence, and told her something of the comedy of the negotiations, and the full extent of the sacrifices which Okazaki had been compelled to make. Furthermore, in addition to such trite consolations as are always offered to a young girl betrothed without her own consent to an old man, O-Tama gave her some really priceless advice how to manage Okazaki. Tar
ō
's name was not even once mentioned. For the advice O-Yoshi dutifully thanked her step-mother, with graceful prostrations. It was certainly admirable advice. Almost any intelligent peasant girl, fully instructed by such a teacher as O-Tama, might have been able to support existence with Okazaki. But O-Yoshi was only half a peasant girl. Her first sudden pallor and her subsequent crimson flush, after the announcement of the fate reserved for her, were caused by two emotional sensations of which O-Tama was far from suspecting the nature. Both represented much more complex and rapid thinking than O-Tama had ever done in all her calculating experience.

The first was a shock of horror accompanying the full recognition of the absolute moral insensibility of her step-mother, the utter hopelessness of any protest, the virtual sale of her person to that hideous old man for the sole motive of unnecessary gain, the cruelty and the shame of the transaction. But almost as quickly there rushed to her consciousness an equally complete sense of the need of courage and strength to face the worst, and of subtlety to cope with strong cunning. It was then she smiled. And as she smiled, her young will became steel, of the sort that severs iron without turning edge. She knew at once exactly what to do,—her samurai blood told her that; and she plotted only to gain the time and the chance. And she Felt already so sure of triumph that she had to make a strong effort not to laugh aloud. The light in her eyes completely deceived O-Tama, who detected only a manifestation of satisfied Feeling, and imagined the Feeling due to a sudden perception of advantages to be gained by a rich marriage.

It was the fifteenth day of the ninth month; and the wedding was to be celebrated upon the sixth of the tenth month. But three days later, O-Tama, rising at dawn, found that her step-daughter had disappeared during the night. Tar
ō
Uchida had not been seen by his father since the afternoon of the previous day. But letters from both were received a Few hours afterwards.

The early morning train from Ky
ō
to was in; the little station was full of hurry and noise,—clattering of geta, humming of converse, and fragmentary cries of village boys selling cakes and luncheons: "
Kwashi yoros—!" "Sushi yoros—!" "Bento yoros
—!" Five minutes, and the geta clatter, and the banging of carriage doors, and the shrilling of the boys stopped, as a whistle blew and the train jolted and moved. It rumbled out, puffed away slowly northward, and the little station emptied itself. The policeman on duty at the wicket banged it to, and began to walk up and down the sanded platform, surveying the silent rice-fields.

Autumn had come,—the Period of Great Light. The sun glow had suddenly become whiter, and shadows sharper, and all outlines clear as edges of splintered glass. The mosses, long parched out of visibility by the summer heat, had revived in wonderful patches and bands of bright soft green over all shaded bare spaces of the black volcanic soil; from every group of pine-trees vibrated the shrill wheeze of the tsuku-tsuku-boshi; and above all the little ditches and canals was a silent flickering of tiny lightnings,—zigzag soundless flashings of emerald and rose and azure-of-steel,—the shooting of dragon-flies.

Now, it may have been due to the extraordinary clearness of the morning air that the policeman was able to perceive, far up the track, looking north, something which caused him to start, to shade his eyes with his hand, and then to look at the clock. But, as a rule, the black eye of a Japanese policeman, like the eye of a poised kite, seldom fails to perceive the least unusual happening within the whole limit of its vision. I remember that once, in far-away Oki, wishing, without being myself observed, to watch a mask-dance in the street before my inn, I poked a small hole through a paper window of the second story, and peered at the performance. Down the street stalked a policeman, in snowy uniform and havelock; for it was midsummer. He did not appear even to see the dancers or the crowd through which he walked without so much as turning his head to either side. Then he suddenly halted, and fixed his gaze exactly on the hole in my shoji; for at that hole he had seen an eye which he had instantly decided, by reason of its shape, to be a foreign eye. Then he entered the inn, and asked questions about my passport, which had already been examined.

What the policeman at the village station observed, and afterwards reported, was that, more than half a mile north of the station, two persons had reached the railroad track by crossing the rice-fields, apparently after leaving a farmhouse considerably to the northwest of the village. One of them, a woman, he judged by the color of her robe and girdle to be very young. The early express train from Tokyo was then due in a few minutes, and its advancing smoke could be perceived from the station platform. The two persons began to run quickly along the track upon which the train was coming. They ran on out of sight round a curve.

Those two persons were Tar
ō
and O-Yoshi. They ran quickly, partly to escape the observation of that very policeman, and partly so as to meet the Tokyo express as far from the station as possible. After passing the curve, however, they stopped running, and walked, for they could see the smoke coming. As soon as they could see the train itself, they stepped off the track, so as not to alarm the engineer, and waited, hand in hand. Another minute, and the low roar rushed to their ears, and they knew it was time. They stepped back to the track again, turned, wound their arms about each other, and lay down cheek to cheek, very softly and quickly, straight across the inside rail, already ringing like an anvil to the vibration of the hurrying pressure.

The boy smiled. The girl, tightening her arms about his neck, spoke in his ear:—

"For the time of two lives, and of three, I am your wife; you are my husband, Tar
ō
Sama."

Tar
ō
said nothing, because almost at the same instant, notwithstanding frantic attempts to halt a fast train without airbrakes in a distance of little more than a hundred yards, the wheels passed through both,—cutting evenly, like enormous shears.

The village people now put bamboo cups full of flowers upon the single gravestone of the united pair, and burn incense-sticks, and repeat prayers. This is not orthodox at all, because Buddhism forbids J
ō
shi, and the cemetery is a Buddhist one; but there is religion in it,—a religion worthy of profound respect.

You ask why and how the people pray to those dead. Well, all do not pray
to
them, but lovers do, especially unhappy ones. Other folk only decorate the tomb and repeat pious texts. But lovers pray there for supernatural sympathy and help. I was myself obliged to ask why, and I was answered simply, "
Because those dead suffered so much"

So that the idea which prompts such prayers would seem to be at once more ancient and more modern than Buddhism,—the Idea of the eternal Religion of Suffering.

Then, when thou leanest the body, and comest into the tree ether, thou shalt be a God undying, everlasting;—neither shall death have any more dominion over thee.—T
HE
G
OLDEN
V
ERSES
.

T
HE
streets were full of white uniforms, and the calling of bugles, and the rumbling of artillery. The armies of Japan, for the third time in history, had subdued Korea; and the Imperial declaration of war against China had been published by the city journals, printed on crimson paper. All the military powers of the Empire were in motion. The first line of reserves had been summoned, and troops were pouring into Kumamoto. Thousands were billeted upon the citizens; for barracks and inns and temples could not shelter the passing host. And still there was no room, though special trains were carrying regiments north, as fast as possible, to the transports waiting at Shimonoseki.

Nevertheless, considering the immensity of the movement, the city was astonishingly quiet. The troops were silent and gentle as Japanese boys in school hours; there was no swaggering, no reckless gayety. Buddhist priests were addressing squadrons in the courts of the temples; and a great ceremony had already been performed in the parade-ground by the Abbot of the Shinshu sect, who had come from Ky
ō
to for the occasion. Thousands had been placed by him under the protection of Amida; the laying of a naked razor-blade on each young head, symbolizing voluntary renunciation of life's vanities, was the soldier's consecration. Everywhere, at the shrines of the older faith, prayers were being offered up by priests and people to the shades of heroes who fought and died for their Emperor in ancient days, and to the gods of armies. At the Shint
ō
temple of Fujisaki sacred charms were being distributed to the men. But the most imposing rites were those at HonMy
ō
ji, the far-famed monastery of the Nichiren sect, where for three hundred years have reposed the ashes of Kato Kiyomasa, conqueror of Korea, enemy of the Jesuits, protector of the Buddhists;—HonMy
ō
ji, where the pilgrim chant of the sacred invocation, Namu-My
ō
-ho-renge-Ky
ō
, sounds like the roar of surf;—HonMy
ō
ji, where you may buy wonderful little mamori in the shape of tiny Buddhist shrines, each holding a minuscule image of the deified warrior. In the great central temple, and in all the lesser temples that line the long approach, special services were sung, and special prayers were addressed to the spirit of the hero for ghostly aid. The armor, and helmet, and sword of Kiyomasa, preserved in the main shrine for three centuries, were no longer to be seen. Some declared that they had been sent to Korea, to stimulate the heroism of the army. But others told a story of echoing hoofs in the temple court by night, and the passing of a mighty Shadow, risen from the dust of his sleep, to lead the armies of the Son of Heaven once more to conquest. Doubtless even among the soldiers, brave, simple lads from the country, many believed,—just as the men of Athens believed in the presence of Theseus at Marathon. All the more, perhaps, because to no small number of the new recruits Kumamoto itself appeared a place of marvels hallowed by traditions of the great captain, and its castle a world's wonder, built by Kiyomasa after the plan of a stronghold stormed in Chosen.

Amid all these preparations, the people remained singularly quiet. From mere outward signs no stranger could have divined the general feeling.
¹
The public calm was characteristically Japanese; the race, like the individual, becoming to all appearance the more self-contained the more profoundly its emotions are called into play. The Emperor had sent presents to his troops in Korea, and words of paternal affection; and citizens, following the august example, were shipping away by every steamer supplies of rice-wine, provisions, fruits, dainties, tobacco, and gifts of all kinds. Those who could afford nothing costlier were sending straw sandals. The entire nation was subscribing to the war fund; and Kumamoto, though by no means wealthy, was doing all that both poor and rich could help her do to prove her loyalty. The check of the merchant mingled obscurely with the paper dollar of the artisan, the laborer's dime, the coppers of the kurumaya, in the great fraternity of unbidden self-denial. Even children gave; and their pathetic little contributions were not refused, lest the universal impulse of patriotism should be in any manner discouraged. But there were special subscriptions also being collected in every street for the support of the families of the troops of the reserves,—married men, engaged mostly in humble callings, who had been obliged of a sudden to leave their wives and little ones without the means to live. That means the citizens voluntarily and solemnly pledged themselves to supply. One could not doubt that the soldiers, with all this unselfish love behind them, would perform even more than simple duty demanded.

And they did.

Manyemon said there was a soldier at the entrance who wanted to see me.

"Oh, Manyemon, I hope they are not going to billet soldiers upon us!—the house is too small! Please ask him what he wishes."

"I did," answered Manyemon; "he says he knows you."

I went to the door and looked at a fine young fellow in uniform, who smiled and took off his cap as I came forward. I could not recognize him. The smile was familiar, notwithstanding. Where could I have seen it before?

"Teacher, have you really forgotten me?"

For another moment I stared at him, wondering; then he laughed gently, and uttered his name,—

"Kosuga Asakichi."

How my heart leaped to him as I held out both hands! "Come in, come in!" I cried. "But how big and handsome you have grown! No wonder I did not know you."

He blushed like a girl, as he slipped off his shoes and unbuckled his sword. I remembered that he used to blush the same way in class, both when he made a mistake, and when he was praised. Evidently his heart was still as fresh as then, when he was a shy boy of sixteen in the school at Matsue. He had got permission to come to bid me good-by: the regiment was to leave in the morning for Korea.

We dined together, and talked of old times,—of Izumo, of Kitzuki, of many pleasant things. I tried in vain at first to make him drink a little wine; not knowing that he had promised his mother never to drink wine while he was in the army. Then I substituted coffee for the wine, and coaxed him to tell me all about himself. He had returned to his native place, after graduating, to help his people, wealthy farmers; and he had found that his agricultural studies at school were of great service to him. A year later, all the youths of the village who had reached the age of nineteen, himself among the number, were summoned to the Buddhist temple for examination as to bodily and educational fitness for military service. He had passed as ichiban (first-class) by the verdicts of the examining surgeon and of the recruiting-major (Sh
ō
sa), and had been drawn at the ensuing conscription. After thirteen months' service he had been promoted to the rank of sergeant. He liked the army. At first he had been stationed at Nagoya, then at Tokyo; but finding that his regiment was not to be sent to Korea, he had petitioned with success for transfer to the Kumamoto division. "And now I am so glad," he exclaimed, his face radiant with a soldier's joy: "we go tomorrow! "Then he blushed again, as if ashamed of having uttered his frank delight. I thought of Carlyle's deep saying, that never pleasures, but only suffering and death are the lures that draw true hearts. I thought also—what I could not say to any Japanese—that the joy in the lad's eyes was like nothing I had ever seen before, except the caress in the eyes of a lover on the morning of his bridal.

"Do you remember," I asked, "when you declared in the schoolroom that you wished to die for His Majesty the Emperor?"

"Yes," he answered, laughing. "And the chance has come,—not for me only, but for several of my class."

"Where are they?"I asked. "With you?"

"No; they were all in the Hiroshima division, and they are already in Korea. Imaoka (you remember him, teacher : he was very tall), and Nagasaki, and Ishihara,—they were all in the fight at Song-Hwan. And our drill-master, the lieutenant,—you remember him?"

"Lieutenant fujii, yes. He had retired from the army."

"But he belonged to the reserves. He has also gone to Korea. He has had another son born since you left Izumo."

"He had two little girls and one boy," I said, "when I was in Matsue."

"Yes : now he has two boys."

"Then his family must feel very anxious about him?"

"He
is not anxious," replied the lad. "To die in battle is very honorable ; and the Government will care for the families of those who are killed. So our officers have no fear. Only—it is very sad to die if one has no son."

"I cannot see why."

"Is it not so in the West?"

"On the contrary, we think it is very sad for the man to die who has children," "But why?"

"Every good father must he anxious about the future of his children. If he be taken suddenly away from them, they may have to suffer many sorrows."

"It is not so in the families of our officers. The relations care well for the child, and the Government gives a pension. So the father need not be afraid. But to die is sorrowful for one who has no child."

"Do you mean sorrowful for the wife and the rest of the family? "

"No; I mean for the man himself, the husband."

"And how? Of what use can a son be to a dead man?"

"The son inherits. The son maintains the family name. The son makes the offerings."

"The offerings to the dead?"

"Yes. Do you now understand?"

"I understand the fact, not the feeling. Do military men still hold these beliefs?"

"Certainly. Are there no such beliefs in the West?"

"Not now. The ancient Greeks and Romans had such beliefs. They thought that the ancestral spirits dwelt in the home, received the offerings, watched over the family. Why they thought so, we partly know; but we cannot know exactly how they felt, because we cannot understand feelings which we have never experienced, or which we have not inherited. For the same reason, I cannot know the real feeling of a Japanese in relation to the dead."

"Then you think that death is the end of everything?"

"That is not the explanation of my difficulty. Some feelings are inherited,—perhaps also some ideas. Your feelings and your thoughts about the dead, and the duty of the living to the dead, are totally different from those of an Occidental. To us the idea of death is that of a total separation, not only from the living, but from the world. Does not Buddhism also tell of a long dark journey that the dead must make?"

"The journey to the Meido,—yes. All must make that journey. But we do not think of death as a total separation. We think of the dead as still with us. We speak to them each day."

"I know that. What I do not know are the ideas behind the facts. If the dead go to the Meido, why should offerings be made to ancestors in the household shrines, and prayers be said to them as if they were really present? Do not the common people thus confuse Buddhist teachings and Shint
ō
belief?"

"Perhaps many do. But even by those who are Buddhists only, the offerings and the prayers to the dead are made in different places at the same time,—in the parish temples, and also before the family butsudan."

"But how can souls be thought of as being in the Meido, and also in various other places at the same time? Even if the people believe the soul to be multiple, that would not explain away the contradiction. for the dead, according to Buddhist teaching, are judged."

"We think of the soul both as one and as many. We think of it as of one person, but not as of a substance. We think of it as something that may be in many places at once, like a moving of air."

"Or of electricity?" I suggested.

"Yes."

Evidently, to my young friend's mind the ideas of the Meido and of the home-worship of the dead had never seemed irreconcilable; and perhaps to any student of Buddhist philosophy the two faiths would not appear to involve any serious contradictions. The Sutra of the Lotus of the Good Law teaches that the Buddha state "
is endless and without limit,—immense as the element of ether"
Of a Buddha who had long entered into Nirvana it declares, "
Even after his complete extinction, he wanders through this whole world in all ten points of space"
And the same Sutra, after recounting the simultaneous apparition of all the Buddhas who had ever been, makes the teacher proclaim, "
All these you see are my proper bodies, by kotis of thousands, like the sands of the Ganges: they have appeared that the law may be fulfilled"
But it seemed to me obvious that, in the artless imagination of the common people, no real accord could ever have been established between the primitive conceptions of Shint
ō
and the much more definite Buddhist doctrine of a judgment of souls.

"Can you really think of death," I asked, "as life, as light?"

"Oh yes," was the smiling answer. "We think that after death we shall still be with our families. We shall see our parents, our friends. We shall remain in this world,—viewing the light as now."