Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan: First Series — Ch 4: A Pilgrimage to Enoshima, Part 1

KAMAKURA.

A long, straggling country village, between low wooded hills, with a canal passing through it.

Old Japanese cottages, dingy, neutral-tinted, with roofs of thatch, very steeply sloping, above their wooden walls and paper shoji.

Green patches on all the roof-slopes, some sort of grass;

and on the very summits, on the ridges, luxurious growths of yaneshobu, [1] the roof-plant, bearing pretty purple flowers.

In the lukewarm air a mingling of Japanese odours, smells of sake, smells of seaweed soup, smells of daikon, the strong native radish; and dominating all, a sweet, thick, heavy scent of incense,--incense from the shrines of gods.

Akira has hired two jinricksha for our pilgrimage; a speckless azure sky arches the world; and the land lies glorified in a joy of sunshine.

And yet a sense of melancholy, of desolation unspeakable, weighs upon me as we roll along the bank of the tiny stream, between the mouldering lines of wretched little homes with grass growing on their roofs.

For this mouldering hamlet represents all that remains of the million-peopled streets of Yoritomo's capital, the mighty city of the Shogunate, the ancient seat of feudal power, whither came the envoys of Kublai Khan demanding tribute, to lose their heads for their temerity.

And only some of the unnumbered temples of the once magnificent city now remain, saved from the conflagrations of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, doubtless because built in high places, or because isolated from the maze of burning streets by vast courts and groves.

Here still dwell the ancient gods in the great silence of their decaying temples, without worshippers, without revenues, surrounded by desolations of rice-fields, where the chanting of frogs replaces the sea-like murmur of the city that was and is not.

Sec.

2 The first great temple--En-gaku-ji--invites us to cross the canal by a little bridge facing its outward gate--a roofed gate with fine Chinese lines, but without carving.

Passing it, we ascend a long, imposing succession of broad steps, leading up through a magnificent grove to a terrace, where we reach the second gate.

This gate is a surprise; a stupendous structure of two stories--with huge sweeping curves of roof and enormous gables--antique, Chinese, magnificent.

It is more than four hundred years old, but seems scarcely affected by the wearing of the centuries.

The whole of the ponderous and complicated upper structure is sustained upon an open-work of round, plain pillars and cross-beams; the vast eaves are full of bird-nests; and the storm of twittering from the roofs is like a rushing of water.

Immense the work is, and imposing in its aspect of settled power; but, in its way, it has great severity: there are no carvings, no gargoyles, no dragons; and yet the maze of projecting timbers below the eaves will both excite and delude expectation, so strangely does it suggest the grotesqueries and fantasticalities of another art.

You look everywhere for the heads of lions, elephants, dragons, and see only the four-angled ends of beams, and feel rather astonished than disappointed.

The majesty of the edifice could not have been strengthened by any such carving.

After the gate another long series of wide steps, and more trees, millennial, thick-shadowing, and then the terrace of the temple itself, with two beautiful stone lanterns (toro) at its entrance.

The architecture of the temple resembles that of the gate, although on a lesser scale.

Over the doors is a tablet with Chinese characters, signifying, 'Great, Pure, Clear, Shining Treasure.'

But a heavy framework of wooden bars closes the sanctuary, and there is no one to let us in.

Peering between the bars I see, in a sort of twilight, first a pavement of squares of marble, then an aisle of massive wooden pillars upholding the dim lofty roof, and at the farther end, between the pillars, Shaka, colossal, black-visaged, gold-robed, enthroned upon a giant lotus fully forty feet in circumference.

At his right hand some white mysterious figure stands, holding an incense-box; at his left, another white figure is praying with clasped hands.

Both are of superhuman stature.

But it is too dark within the edifice to discern who they may be--whether disciples of the Buddha, or divinities, or figures of saints.

Beyond this temple extends an immense grove of trees--ancient cedars and pines--with splendid bamboos thickly planted between them, rising perpendicularly as masts to mix their plumes with the foliage of the giants: the effect is tropical, magnificent.

Through this shadowing, a flight of broad stone steps slant up gently to some yet older shrine.

And ascending them we reach another portal, smaller than the imposing Chinese structure through which we already passed, but wonderful, weird, full of dragons, dragons of a form which sculptors no longer carve, which they have even forgotten how to make, winged dragons rising from a storm-whirl of waters or thereinto descending.

The dragon upon the panel of the left gate has her mouth closed; the jaws of the dragon on the panel of the right gate are open and menacing.

Female and male they are, like the lions of Buddha.

And the whirls of the eddying water, and the crests of the billowing, stand out from the panel in astonishing boldness of relief, in loops and curlings of grey wood time-seasoned to the hardness of stone.

The little temple beyond contains no celebrated image, but a shari only, or relic of Buddha, brought from India.

And I cannot see it, having no time to wait until the absent keeper of the shari can be found.

Sec.

3 'Now we shall go to look at the big bell,' says Akira.

We turn to the left as we descend along a path cut between hills faced for the height of seven or eight feet with protection-walls made green by moss; and reach a flight of extraordinarily dilapidated steps, with grass springing between their every joint and break--steps so worn down and displaced by countless feet that they have become ruins, painful and even dangerous to mount.

We reach the summit, however, without mishap, and find ourselves before a little temple, on the steps of which an old priest awaits us, with smiling bow of welcome.

We return his salutation;

but ere entering the temple turn to look at the tsurigane on the right--the famous bell.

Under a lofty open shed, with a tilted Chinese roof, the great bell is hung.

I should judge it to be fully nine feet high, and about five feet in diameter, with lips about eight inches thick.

The shape of it is not like that of our bells, which broaden toward the lips; this has the same diameter through all its height, and it is covered with Buddhist texts cut into the smooth metal of it.

It is rung by means of a heavy swinging beam, suspended from the roof by chains, and moved like a battering-ram.

There are loops of palm-fibre rope attached to this beam to pull it by;

and when you pull hard enough, so as to give it a good swing, it strikes a moulding like a lotus-flower on the side of the bell.

This it must have done many hundred times; for the square, flat end of it, though showing the grain of a very dense wood, has been battered into a convex disk with ragged protruding edges, like the surface of a long-used printer's mallet.

A priest makes a sign to me to ring the bell.

I first touch the great lips with my hand very lightly; and a musical murmur comes from them.

Then I set the beam swinging strongly; and a sound deep as thunder, rich as the bass of a mighty organ--a sound enormous, extraordinary, yet beautiful--rolls over the hills and away.

Then swiftly follows another and lesser and sweeter billowing of tone; then another; then an eddying of waves of echoes.

Only once was it struck, the astounding bell; yet it continues to sob and moan for at least ten minutes!

And the age of this bell is six hundred and fifty years.

[2] In the little temple near by, the priest shows us a series of curious paintings, representing the six hundredth anniversary of the casting of the bell.

(For this is a sacred bell, and the spirit of a god is believed to dwell within it.

) Otherwise the temple has little of interest.

There are some kakemono representing Iyeyasu and his retainers; and on either side of the door, separating the inner from the outward sanctuary, there are life-size images of Japanese warriors in antique costume.

On the altars of the inner shrine are small images, grouped upon a miniature landscape-work of painted wood--the Jiugo-Doji, or Fifteen Youths--the Sons of the Goddess Benten.

There are gohei before the shrine, and a mirror upon it; emblems of Shinto.

The sanctuary has changed hands in the great transfer of Buddhist temples to the State religion.

In nearly every celebrated temple little Japanese prints are sold, containing the history of the shrine, and its miraculous legends.

I find several such things on sale at the door of the temple, and in one of them, ornamented with a curious engraving of the bell, I discover, with Akira's aid, the following traditions: Sec.

4 In the twelfth year of Bummei, this bell rang itself.

And one who laughed on being told of the miracle, met with misfortune; and another, who believed, thereafter prospered, and obtained all his desires.

Now, in that time there died in the village of Tamanawa a sick man whose name was Ono-no-Kimi; and Ono-no-Kimi descended to the region of the dead, and went before the Judgment-Seat of Emma-O. And Emma, Judge of Souls, said to him, 'You come too soon!

The measure of life allotted you in the Shaba-world has not yet been exhausted.

Go back at once.'

But Ono-no-Kimi pleaded, saying, 'How may I go back, not knowing my way through the darkness?'

And Emma answered him, 'You can find your way back by listening to the sound of the bell of En-gaku-ji, which is heard in the Nan-en-budi world, going south.'

And Ono-no-Kimi went south, and heard the bell, and found his way through the darknesses, and revived in the Shaba-world.

Also in those days there appeared in many provinces a Buddhist priest of giant stature, whom none remembered to have seen before, and whose name no man knew, travelling through the land, and everywhere exhorting the people to pray before the bell of En-gaku-ji.

And it was at last discovered that the giant pilgrim was the holy bell itself, transformed by supernatural power into the form of a priest.

And after these things had happened, many prayed before the bell, and obtained their wishes.

Sec.

5 'Oh!

there is something still to see,' my guide exclaims as we reach the great Chinese gate again; and he leads the way across the grounds by another path to a little hill, previously hidden from view by trees.

The face of the hill, a mass of soft stone perhaps one hundred feet high, is hollowed out into chambers, full of images.

These look like burial-caves; and the images seem funereal monuments.

There are two stories of chambers--three above, two below; and the former are connected with the latter by a narrow interior stairway cut through the living rock.

And all around the dripping walls of these chambers on pedestals are grey slabs, shaped exactly like the haka in Buddhist cemeteries, and chiselled with figures of divinities in high relief.

All have glory-disks: some are naive and sincere like the work of our own mediaeval image-makers.

Several are not unfamiliar.

I have seen before, in the cemetery of Kuboyama, this kneeling woman with countless shadowy hands; and this figure tiara-coiffed, slumbering with one knee raised, and cheek pillowed upon the left hand--the placid and pathetic symbol of the perpetual rest.

Others, like Madonnas, hold lotus-flowers, and their feet rest upon the coils of a serpent.

I cannot see them all, for the rock roof of one chamber has fallen in; and a sunbeam entering the ruin reveals a host of inaccessible sculptures half buried in rubbish.

But no!

--this grotto-work is not for the dead; and these are not haka, as I imagined, but only images of the Goddess of Mercy.

These chambers are chapels; and these sculptures are the En-gaku-ji-no-hyaku-Kwannon, 'the Hundred Kwannons of En-gaku-ji.'

And I see in the upper chamber above the stairs a granite tablet in a rock-niche, chiselled with an inscription in Sanscrit transliterated into Chinese characters, 'Adoration to the great merciful Kwan-ze-on, who looketh down above the sound of prayer.'

[3] Sec.

6 Entering the grounds of the next temple, the Temple of Ken-cho-ji, through the 'Gate of the Forest of Contemplative Words,' and the 'Gate of the Great Mountain of Wealth,' one might almost fancy one's self reentering, by some queer mistake, the grounds of En-gaku-ji.

For the third gate before us, and the imposing temple beyond it, constructed upon the same models as those of the structures previously visited, were also the work of the same architect.

Passing this third gate--colossal, severe, superb--we come to a fountain of bronze before the temple doors, an immense and beautiful lotus-leaf of metal, forming a broad shallow basin kept full to the brim by a jet in its midst.

This temple also is paved with black and white square slabs, and we can enter it with our shoes.

Outside it is plain and solemn as that of En-gaku-ji; but the interior offers a more extraordinary spectacle of faded splendour.

In lieu of the black Shaka throned against a background of flamelets, is a colossal Jizo-Sama, with a nimbus of fire--a single gilded circle large as a wagon-wheel, breaking into fire-tongues at three points.

He is seated upon an enormous lotus of tarnished gold--over the lofty edge of which the skirt of his robe trails down.

Behind him, standing on ascending tiers of golden steps, are glimmering hosts of miniature figures of him, reflections, multiplications of him, ranged there by ranks of hundreds--the Thousand Jizo.

From the ceiling above him droop the dingy splendours of a sort of dais-work, a streaming circle of pendants like a fringe, shimmering faintly through the webbed dust of centuries.

And the ceiling itself must once have been a marvel;

all beamed in caissons, each caisson containing, upon a gold ground, the painted figure of a flying bird.

Formerly the eight great pillars supporting the roof were also covered with gilding; but only a few traces of it linger still upon their worm-pierced surfaces, and about the bases of their capitals.

And there are wonderful friezes above the doors, from which all colour has long since faded away, marvellous grey old carvings in relief; floating figures of tennin, or heavenly spirits playing upon flutes and biwa.

There is a chamber separated by a heavy wooden screen from the aisle on the right; and the priest in charge of the building slides the screen aside, and bids us enter.

In this chamber is a drum elevated upon a brazen stand,--the hugest I ever saw, fully eighteen feet in circumference.

Beside it hangs a big bell, covered with Buddhist texts.

I am sorry to learn that it is prohibited to sound the great drum.

There is nothing else to see except some dingy paper lanterns figured with the svastika--the sacred Buddhist symbol called by the Japanese manji.

Sec.

7 Akira tells me that in the book called Jizo-kyo-Kosui, this legend is related of the great statue of Jizo in this same ancient temple of Ken-cho-ji.

Formerly there lived at Kamakura the wife of a Ronin [4] named Soga Sadayoshi.

She lived by feeding silkworms and gathering the silk.

She used often to visit the temple of Ken-cho-ji; and one very cold day that she went there, she thought that the image of Jizo looked like one suffering from cold; and she resolved to make a cap to keep the god's head warm--such a cap as the people of the country wear in cold weather.

And she went home and made the cap and covered the god's head with it, saying, 'Would I were rich enough to give thee a warm covering for all thine august body; but, alas!

I am poor, and even this which I offer thee is unworthy of thy divine acceptance.'

Now this woman very suddenly died in the fiftieth year of her age, in the twelfth month of the fifth year of the period called Chisho.

But her body remained warm for three days, so that her relatives would not suffer her to be taken to the burning-ground.

And on the evening of the third day she came to life again.

Then she related that on the day of her death she had gone before the judgment-seat of Emma, king and judge of the dead.

And Emma, seeing her, became wroth, and said to her: 'You have been a wicked woman, and have scorned the teaching of the Buddha.

All your life you have passed in destroying the lives of silkworms by putting them into heated water.

Now you shall go to the Kwakkto-Jigoku, and there burn until your sins shall be expiated.'

Forthwith she was seized and dragged by demons to a great pot filled with molten metal, and thrown into the pot, and she cried out horribly.

And suddenly Jizo-Sama descended into the molten metal beside her, and the metal became like a flowing of oil and ceased to burn; and Jizo put his arms about her and lifted her out.

And he went with her before King Emma, and asked that she should be pardoned for his sake, forasmuch as she had become related to him by one act of goodness.

So she found pardon, and returned to the Shaba-world.

'Akira,' I ask, 'it cannot then be lawful, according to Buddhism, for any one to wear silk?'

'Assuredly not,' replies Akira; 'and by the law of Buddha priests are expressly forbidden to wear silk.

Nevertheless,' he adds with that quiet smile of his, in which I am beginning to discern suggestions of sarcasm, 'nearly all the priests wear silk.'

Sec.

8 Akira also tells me this: It is related in the seventh volume of the book Kamakurashi that there was formerly at Kamakura a temple called Emmei-ji, in which there was enshrined a famous statue of Jizo, called Hadaka-Jizo, or Naked Jizo.

The statue was indeed naked, but clothes were put upon it; and it stood upright with its feet upon a chessboard.

Now, when pilgrims came to the temple and paid a certain fee, the priest of the temple would remove the clothes of the statue; and then all could see that, though the face was the face of Jizo, the body was the body of a woman.

Now this was the origin of the famous image of Hadaka-Jizo standing upon the chessboard.

On one occasion the great prince Taira-no-Tokyori was playing chess with his wife in the presence of many guests.

And he made her agree, after they had played several games, that whosoever should lose the next game would have to stand naked on the chessboard.

And in the next game they played his wife lost.

And she prayed to Jizo to save her from the shame of appearing naked.

And Jizo came in answer to her prayer and stood upon the chessboard, and disrobed himself, and changed his body suddenly into the body of a woman.

Sec.

9 As we travel on, the road curves and narrows between higher elevations, and becomes more sombre.

'Oi!

mat!'

my Buddhist guide calls softly to the runners; and our two vehicles halt in a band of sunshine, descending, through an opening in the foliage of immense trees, over a flight of ancient mossy steps.

'Here,' says my friend, 'is the temple of the King of Death; it is called Emma-Do; and it is a temple of the Zen sect--Zen-Oji.

And it is more than seven hundred years old, and there is a famous statue in it.'

We ascend to a small, narrow court in which the edifice stands.

At the head of the steps, to the right, is a stone tablet, very old, with characters cut at least an inch deep into the granite of it, Chinese characters signifying, 'This is the Temple of Emma, King.'

The temple resembles outwardly and inwardly the others we have visited, and, like those of Shaka and of the colossal Jizo of Kamakura, has a paved floor, so that we are not obliged to remove our shoes on entering.

Everything is worn, dim, vaguely grey; there is a pungent scent of mouldiness; the paint has long ago peeled away from the naked wood of the pillars.

Throned to right and left against the high walls tower nine grim figures--five on one side, four on the other--wearing strange crowns with trumpet-shapen ornaments; figures hoary with centuries, and so like to the icon of Emma, which I saw at Kuboyama, that I ask, 'Are all these Emma?'

'Oh, no!'

my guide answers; 'these are his attendants only--the Jiu-O, the Ten Kings.'

'But there are only nine?'

I query.

'Nine, and Emma completes the number.

You have not yet seen Emma.'

Where is he?

I see at the farther end of the chamber an altar elevated upon a platform approached by wooden steps; but there is no image, only the usual altar furniture of gilded bronze and lacquer-ware.

Behind the altar I see only a curtain about six feet square--a curtain once dark red, now almost without any definite hue--probably veiling some alcove.

A temple guardian approaches, and invites us to ascend the platform.

I

remove my shoes before mounting upon the matted surface, and follow the guardian behind the altar, in front of the curtain.

He makes me a sign to look, and lifts the veil with a long rod.

And suddenly, out of the blackness of some mysterious profundity masked by that sombre curtain, there glowers upon me an apparition at the sight of which I involuntarily start back--a monstrosity exceeding all anticipation--a Face.

[5] A Face tremendous, menacing, frightful, dull red, as with the redness of heated iron cooling into grey.

The first shock of the vision is no doubt partly due to the somewhat theatrical manner in which the work is suddenly revealed out of darkness by the lifting of the curtain.

But as the surprise passes I begin to recognise the immense energy of the conception--to look for the secret of the grim artist.

The wonder of the creation is not in the tiger frown, nor in the violence of the terrific mouth, nor in the fury and ghastly colour of the head as a whole: it is in the eyes--eyes of nightmare.