A Japanese Boy
different sects have different notions. My family were formerly
parishioners to a temple of the Hokké sect; therefore. I best remember
the mass as observed by that particular denomination. The church society
and its officers meet in the vestry to take action in the preparation of
floating lanterns. These are hasty, rude contrivances which the active
of the parishioners volunteer in getting up; it does not require much
skill in carpentry to make them, but it takes time to make so many. Look
at one: an odd piece of board for the bottom, two split bamboos bent and
stuck on it like the handle of a basket one across the other, and a hood
of paper glued round the whole; a nail in the center holds a penny
candle. All very inartistic indeed, as befits their use, as we shall see
presently.
On the mass day all about the temple are strung up an untold number of
the lanterns. Now, devout old folks and young come in streams all day to
put up prayers for their beloved dead, and those so inclined buy the
lanterns for the purpose of lighting the way for the departed. The goods
when paid for are handed over by the presiding elders, who have charge
of the sale, to the priest and assistant priests; they write sûtra
verses on them and order them to be left before the altar. If business
is good, by the latter part of the evening the entire stock is disposed
of; the till rattles with money, and the priests are in good cheer. Then
follows a great chanting and beating of drums, and after prayers have
been said once for all, the lanterns are put on board several boats and
the drums and cymbals also carried to enliven the next scene; the
priests and committee walk down to the shore slowly. Things being placed
aright, out they pull on the heaving sea--the incoming tide having been
looked to beforehand, so that at high tide the lighted lanterns may be
set afloat and go drifting at their will with the falling flood.
Ah, they are gone, the skiffs! We discern them no more. I want you to
understand that it is a dark night, otherwise my picture isn't so good,
although in point of fact the moon does often chance to look up on the
occasion. And the moonlight on the swelling tide is not very bad, I
acknowledge, yet, you see, I wish to preserve the grand effect of "fire
and darkness." So, pray, gentle reader, indulge my fancy this time; I
won't always ask this. Well, it's a dark night then: as the boats slip
out of our sight we can hear the lapping noise that comes of their
swaying from side to side caused by the queer Japanese mode of sculling.
Ere long we cease to hear it; the vessels are well out in the obscurity.
Do we not see anything of them? Not quite. The lights they convey show
us their whereabouts. We are all this while on shore, mind you. The
onset of water seems to take uncommon delight in driving us up,
chuckling to itself along the beach, until at last we are crowded into a
narrow strip of sand with the rest of the spectators. There! it's up to
the high-water-mark; we won't be annoyed any longer. Let's sit down.
While we watch, ten thousand points of light dot the expanse; no finer
illumination, I for one, ever expect to see on earth; and soon there
blazes out a great ruddy flame from the chief priest's boat amid the
confused echoes of prayers on all the vessels. That is the end of it,
friends; sit still and look on, if you choose,--many indeed do so--and
observe the lights recede and drift away, or die out. Of these some
never return and are believed to have gone where they were bidden,
others and a majority, to be frank with you, are washed ashore next
morning shattered into fragments.
CHAPTER XIII.
It is wonderful how the memory brings up, as I write, ten thousand
irrelevant trivialities,--delightful to me, nevertheless,--many of which
have no claim to be placed here, except that they are more or less
related to the temple. Verily, the faculty of memory is a godsent gift,
a boon of solitary hours.
Our temple was the nearest to the sea of the row on Temple street, which
I referred to in the earlier portion of this sketch. The head-priest was
an amiable, gentle person, very learned they say, though giving no
indication of being such. He did his duty, to be sure, in sermons, but
never cared much to distinguish himself in eloquence; he would rather
read or entertain visitors in the quiet of his tastefully upholstered
zashiki (guest room), sipping the excellent Uji tea and viewing the
artistic beds of chrysanthemum laid out with great formality. He
cultivated exquisite flowers; the slender stems bent under the large
flaunting heads, and the priest-gardener took pity and provided them
with firm props; he was as attached to them as a father to his children.
If a storm by night passed over them and he discovered them in the
morning sagged, matted, and drenched with rain, his compassion knew no
bounds.
It must be confessed that at times his fine taste shaded into
squeamishness; he could not help being captious about his servitor's
slipshod management of business, and yet extremely averse was he to
giving his own opinion utterance, always turning aside in silent
disgust. He suffered little children, however, nay, loved them; he took
quite a fancy to me, calling me pet names, gladdening me on my visits
with goodies and a bunch of chrysanthemum flowers from his garden, and
always sending me home safely by a boy-priest. This last, found
vegetating in almost every temple, is a young lad of poor parentage sent
thither to be taken care of out of charity. The specimen I found here
was a poor boy, hence happy; he was sure of dinner now and more full of
fun than well became his cloth.
Once he frightened me half to death. It happened in this way: I
accompanied some one of my relatives to our family burying ground in the
temple yard, on the eve of the annual memorial day for the dead, when
every family sends a delegate to the tombs and invites the spirits home.
The delegate delivers the oral message with profound respect and
formality, bowing low to the ground before the ancestral tombstones as
in an august presence. Then he turns about and asks the invisible to get
on his back, secures him with both hands behind and gravely walks
homeward. At home, in the yard on a bed of sand taken from the sea-shore
a fire is built of flax stems, according to religious custom. This is
called the "reception fire." The spirits are next requested to alight
carefully at the high home altar so as not to bruise their shanks. In
Japan each house has a sacred closet wherein are enshrined images,
ancestral tablets, charms and amulets, where cake and oranges, flowers
and incense are offered, and before which the family commemorate the
days of their ancestors' death. This elevated place is called the
"Buddha's shelf." Let me remark here that the Eastern people are
regardful of their dead; they do not slight them because they are dead.
Revile as you may and wrongly call it "ancestor worship," the spirit
that prompts the act is entirely praiseworthy. Besides the closet, the
tops of cabinet, cupboard and similar pieces of household furniture are
turned into the depositories of Shinto relics and paper gods. These
"gods' shelves" are, too, carefully served with such offerings as salt
fish, saké, and light in the evening.
But I am wandering from the main narrative; my talk too often gallops
into minor tracks unbridled. As I commenced the narration, I was
stooping before the resting places of my grandfather (of whose quiet
departure from our hearth, by the bye, I haven't told you), of my
grandmother and of my sister who passed on before I had ever thought of
appearing. Regarding the last two relatives of mine, having never seen
them in life, I was in the habit of asking a heap of questions in the
tiresome inquisitiveness of children. My mother deigned to tell me,
especially in a reminiscent mood, a great deal concerning them, without
minding my sisters, who took occasion to upbraid me merrily on this, my
singular ignorance, in face of my other positive assertion that I had
witnessed my mother's wedding. Dear mamma's stories, interesting as they
are, touching as they do not a little on the pleasures, fashions and
general social regime of Old Japan, I feel obliged to omit. For the
present, I must go on with my own story.
I was stooping, I say, before the tombs, all about being silent and
gloomy; my young animated imagination dwelling not on my grandfather's
goodness but on old wives' awful tales of graveyards and dark nights,
pale apparitions and grinning skeletons; and my whole being surcharged
with fear, requiring but the shrill wind to make my hair stand on end,
and ready to start at my own shadow, when suddenly there came a moan
from behind the adjoining slabs, and a moment later a ghost shot up with
a wild shriek. I drew back involuntarily and caught my breath, so did my
companion. Then the ghost shook its gaunt sides and burst out laughing
in ghoulish delight. We were taken aback, but soon rallied courage
sufficiently to peer at the merry spook. How provoking! The young priest
stood on one of the tombstones, with the broad sleeve of his monkish
habiliment over his face. He came down to us quickly, wearing a
mischievous smile, passed over the whole thing as a huge jest, putting
in a slight excuse for causing our undue alarm, and politely offered his
service in carrying the flowers and water-pail. His words and manners
smoothed away our ruffled temper and rendered a scolding impossible; a
few more hours made it look too slight to report to the head-priest. In
the main the young priest had the best of us; he earned what he liked
better than a good dinner,--some capital fun.
And in this connection, here comes bounding toward me in my remembrance
our pet dog Gem. I will relate how he came to be so closely associated
in my thought with the grave; it is a sad, good story. My young brother,
who had a boy's fondness for animal pets in an eminent degree, got him
from another boy whose dog had a litter of several puppies. When my
brother brought him home in his arms, Gem was but a mass of tender flesh
covered over with soft down; he had just been weaned; consequently by
night he yelped, and cried piteously for his mother, under the piazza
where my brother shielded him from the paternal eye. My father was not a
great lover of pets: the cat he could not bear for her soft-voiced,
velvet-pawed deceitfulness; the dog for his belligerent, deep-mouthed
barks at strangers and for fear of his becoming mad in summer time; and
the canary bird--poor thing--it was too bad that people should deprive
it of its native freedom.
We had our doubts, therefore, how Gem and papa were to get along.
However, we were not without a ray of hope that in time they would come
to be good friends, for papa had once shown that he did not altogether
lack the love of dumb animals. It was when I began to love the little
white and spotted mice penned in a box with a glass front and a wheel
within. My father suffered them to be kept in the house out of his love
for me; gradually his curiosity was awakened to take a look
occasionally at what his son exhibited such absorbing interest in; next
he became a keen admirer of my little revelers,--their gambols, their
assiduous turning of the wheel, their cunning way of holding rice
grains, and their house-keeping in a wad of cotton in the drawer
beneath, to which they could descend by a hole in the floor of the box.
After a while I grew negligent about them, and then it was my father who
fed them and took care of them.
On the whole, he bade fair to come to a better understanding with our
precious Gem. Nevertheless, Gem--or rather my young brother--had trouble
with him during his canine minority. When the puppy had grown big, true