Out of the East (19 page)
(There suddenly recurred to me, with new meaning, some words of a student's composition regarding the future of a just man:
His soul shall hover eternally in the universe.)
"And therefore," continued Asakichi, "one who has a son can die with a cheerful mind."
"Because the son will make those offerings of food and drink without which the spirit would suffer?" I queried.
"It is not only that. There are duties much more important than the making of offerings. It is because every man needs some one to love him after he is dead. Now you will understand."
"Only your words," I replied, "only the facts of the belief. The feeling I do not understand. I cannot think that the love of the living could make me happy after death. I cannot even imagine myself conscious of any love after death. And you, you are going far away to battle,âdo you think it unfortunate that you have no son? "
"I? Oh no! I myself
am
a son,âa younger son. My parents are still alive and strong, and my brother is caring for them. If I am killed, there will be many at home to love me,âbrothers, sisters, and little ones. It is different with us soldiers: we are nearly all very young."
"For how many years," I asked, "are the offerings made to the dead?"
"For one hundred years."
"Only for a hundred years?"
"Yes. Even in the Buddhist temples the prayers and the offerings are made only for a hundred years."
"Then do the dead cease to care for remembrance in a hundred years? Or do they fade out at last? Is there a dying of souls?"
"No, but after one hundred years they are no longer with us. Some say they are born again; others say they become kami, and do reverence to them as kami, and on certain days make offerings to them in the toko."
(Such were, I knew, the commonly accepted explanations, but I had heard of beliefs strangely at variance with these. There are traditions that, in families of exceeding virtue, the souls of ancestors took material form, and remained sometimes visible through hundreds of years. A sengaji pilgrim
1
of old days has left an account of two whom he said he had seen in some remote part of the interior. They were small, dim shapes, "dark like old bronze." They could not speak, but made little moaning sounds, and they did not eat, but only inhaled the warm vapor of the food daily set before them. Every year, their descendants said, they became smaller and vaguer.)
"Do you think it is very strange that we should love the dead?" Asakichi asked.
"No," I replied, "I think it is beautiful. But to me, as a Western stranger, the custom seems not of to-day, but of a more ancient world. The thoughts of the old Greeks about the dead must have been much like those of the modern Japanese. The feelings of an Athenian soldier in the age of Pericles were perhaps the same as yours in this era of Meiji. And you have read at school how the Greeks sacrificed to the dead, and how they paid honor to the spirits of brave men and patriots?"
"Yes. Some of their customs were very like our own. Those of us who fall in battle against China will also be honored. They will be revered as kami. Even our Emperor will honor them."
"But," I said, "to die so far away from the graves of one's fathers, in a foreign land, would seem, even to Western people, a very sad thing."
"Oh no. There will be monuments set up to honor our dead in their own native villages and towns, and the bodies of our soldiers will be burned, and the ashes sent home to Japan. At least that will be done whenever possible. It might be difficult after a great battle."
(A sudden memory of Homer surged back to me, with a vision of that antique plain where "the pyres of the dead burnt continually in multitude.")
"And the spirits of the soldiers slain in this war," I asked,â"will they not always be prayed to help the country in time of national danger?"
"Oh yes, always. We shall be loved and worshiped by all the people."
He said "we" quite naturally, like one already destined. After a little pause he resinned:â
The last year that I was at school we had a military excursion. We marched to a shrine in the district of Iu, where the spirits of heroes are worshiped. It is a beautiful and lonesome place, among hills; and the temple is shadowed by very high trees. It is always dim and cool and silent there. We drew up before the shrine in military order; nobody spoke. Then the bugle sounded through the holy grove, like a call to battle; and we all presented arms; and the tears came to my eyes,âI do not know why. I looked at my comrades, and I saw they felt as I did. Perhaps, because you are a foreigner, you will not understand. But there is a little poem, that every Japanese knows, which expresses the feeling very well. It was written long ago by the great priest Saigyo Hoshi, who had been a warrior before becoming a priest, and whose real name was Sato Norikyo:â
"'Nani go to no
Owashimasu ka wa
Shirane domo
Arigata sa ni zo
Namida kobwruru.'"
2
It was not the first time that I had heard such a confession. Many of my students had not hesitated to speak of sentiments evoked by the sacred traditions and the dim solemnity of the ancient shrines. Really the experience of Asakichi was no more individual than might be a single ripple in a fathomless sea. He had only uttered the ancestral feeling of a race,âthe vague but immeasurable emotion of Shint
Å
.
We talked on till the soft summer darkness fell. Stars and the electric lights of the citadel twinkled out together; bugles sang; and from Kiyomasa's fortress rolled into the night a sound deep as a thunder-peal, the chant of ten thousand men:â
Nishi mo higashi mo
Mina teki zo,
Minami mo kita mo
Mina teki zo:
Yose-kura teki wa
Shiranuhi no
Tsukushi no hate no
Saisuma gata.
3
"You have learned that song, have you not?" I asked.
"Oh yes," said Asakichi. "Every soldier knows it."
Oh! the land to south and north
All is full of foes!
Westward, eastward, looking forth,
All is full of foes!
None can well the number tell
Of the hosts that pour
From the strand of Satsuma,
From Tsukushi's shore.
It was the Kumamoto R
Å
j
Å
, the Song of the Siege. We listened, and could even catch some words in that mighty volume of sound:â
Tenchi mo kuzuru
Bakari nari,
Tenchi wa kuzure
Yama kawa wa
Sakuru tameshi no
Araba tote,
Ugokanu mono wa
Kimi ga mi yo.
For a little while Asakichi sat listening, swaying his shoulders in time to the strong rhythm of the chant; then, as one suddenly waking, he laughed, and said:â
"Teacher, I must go! I do not know how to thank you enough, nor to tell you how happy this day has been for me. But first,"âtaking from his breast a little envelope,â" please accept this. You asked me for a photograph long ago: I brought it for a souvenir."
What if Earth should sundered be?
What if Heaven fall?
What if mountain mix with sea?
Brave hearts each and all,
Know one thing shall still endure,
Ruin cannot whelm,
Everlasting, holy, pure,â
This Imperial Realm.
He rose, and buckled on his sword. I pressed his hand at the entrance.
"And what may I send you from Korea, teacher?" he asked.
"Only a letter," I said,â"after the next great victory."
"Surely, if I can hold a pen," he responded.
Then straightening up till he looked like a statue of bronze, he gave me the formal military salute, and strode away in the dark.
I returned to the desolate guest-room and dreamed. I heard the thunder of the soldiers' song. I listened to the roar of the trains, bearing away so many young hearts, so much priceless loyalty, so much splendid faith and love and valor, to the fever of Chinese rice-fields, to gathering cyclones of death.
The evening of the same day that we saw the name "Kosuga Asakichi" in the long list published by the local newspaper, Manyemon decorated and illuminated the alcove of the guest-room as for a sacred Festival; filling the vases with flowers, lighting several small lamps, and kindling incense-rods in a little cup of bronze. When all was finished, he called me. Approaching the recess, I saw the lad's photograph within, set upright on a tiny dai; and before it was spread a miniature feast of rice and fruits and cakes,âthe old man's offering.
"Perhaps," ventured Manyemon, "it would please his spirit if the master should be honorably willing to talk to him. He would understand the master's English."
I did talk to him ; and the portrait seemed to smile through the wreaths of the incense. But that which I said was for him only, and the Gods.
Footnotes
1
This was written in Kumamoto during the fall of 1894. The enthusiasm of the nation was concentrated and silent; but under that exterior calm smouldered all the fierceness of the old feudal days. The Government was obliged to decline the freely proffered services of myriads of volunteers,âchiefly swordsmen. Had a call for such volunteers been made I am sure 100,000 men would have answered it within a week. But the war spirit manifested itself in other ways not less painful than extraordinary. Many killed themselves on being refused the chance of military service; and I may cite at random a Few strange facts from the local press. The gendarme at Soul, ordered to escort Minister Otori back to Japan, killed himself for chagrin at not having been allowed to proceed instead to the field of battle. An officer named Ishiyama, prevented by illness from joining his regiment on the day of its departure for Korea, rose from his sick-bed, and, after saluting a portrait of the Emperor, killed himself with his sword. A soldier named Ikeda, at Osaka, having been told that because of some breach of discipline he might not be permitted to go to the front, shot himself. Captain Kani, of the "Mixed Brigade," was prostrated by sickness during the attack made by his regiment on a fort near Chinchow, and carried insensible to the hospital. Recovering a week later, he went (November 28) to the spot where he had fallen, and killed himself,âleaving this letter, translated by the
Japan Daily Mail:
"It was here that illness compelled me to halt and to let my men storm the fort without me. Never can I wipe out such a disgrace in life. To clear my honor I die thus,âleaving this letter to speak for me."
A lieutenant in Tokyo, finding none to take care of his little motherless girl after his departure, killed her, and joined his regiment before the facts were known. He afterwards sought death on the field and found it, that he might join his child on her journey to the Meido. This reminds one of the terrible spirit of feudal times. The samurai, before going into a hopeless contest, sometimes killed his wife and children the better to forget those three things no warrior should remember on the battle-field,ânamely, home, the dear ones, and his own body. After that act of ferocious heroism the samurai was ready for the shini-mono-gurui,âthe hour of the "death-fury,"âgiving and taking no quarter.
1
A sengaji pilgrim is one who makes the pilgrimage to the thousand famous temples of the Nichiren sect; a journey requiring many years to perform.
2
"What thing (cause) there may be, I cannot tell. But [whenever I come in presence of the shrine] grateful tears overflow."
3
This would be a free translation in nearly the same measure:â