Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (34 page)

Takata-Toki-to-en-musubi-negaimas. Jiu-hassai-no-otoko
[96]

This lover presumes to write his girl's whole name; but the example, so
far as I am able to discover, is unique. Other enamoured ones write only
the yobi-na of their bewitchers; and the honourable prefix, 'O,' and the
honourable suffix, 'San,' find no place in the familiarity of love.
There is no 'O-Haru-San,' 'O-Kin-San,' 'O-Take-San,' 'O-Kiku-San'; but
there are hosts of Haru, and Kin, and Take, and Kiku. Girls, of course,
never dream of writing their lovers' names. But there are many geimyo
here, 'artistic names,'—names of mischievous geisha who worship the
Golden Kitten, written by their saucy selves: Rakue and Asa and Wakai,
Aikichi and Kotabuki and Kohachi, Kohana and Tamakichi and Katsuko, and
Asakichi and Hanakichi and Katsukichi, and Chiyoe and Chiyotsuru.
'Fortunate-Pleasure,' 'Happy-Dawn,' and 'Youth' (such are their
appellations), 'Blest-Love' and 'Length-of-Days,' and 'Blossom-Child'
and 'Jewel-of-Fortune' and 'Child-of-Luck,' and 'Joyous-Sunrise' and
'Flower-of-Bliss' and 'Glorious Victory,' and 'Life-as-the-Stork's-for-
a-thousand-years.' Often shall he curse the day he was born who falls in
love with Happy-Dawn; thrice unlucky the wight bewitched by the Child-
of-Luck; woe unto him who hopes to cherish the Flower-of-Bliss; and more
than once shall he wish himself dead whose heart is snared by Life-as-
the-Stork's-for-a-thou sand-years. And I see that somebody who inscribes
his age as twenty and three has become enamoured of young Wakagusa,
whose name signifies the tender Grass of Spring. Now there is but one
possible misfortune for you, dear boy, worse than falling in love with
Wakagusa—and that is that she should happen to fall in love with you.
Because then you would, both of you, write some beautiful letters to
your friends, and drink death, and pass away in each other's arms,
murmuring your trust to rest together upon the same lotus-flower in
Paradise: 'Hasu no ha no ue ni oite matsu.' Nay! pray the Deities rather
to dissipate the bewitchment that is upon you:

Te ni toru na, Yahari no ni oke Gengebana.
[97]

And here is a lover's inscription—in English! Who presumes to suppose
that the gods know English? Some student, no doubt, who for pure shyness
engraved his soul's secret in this foreign tongue of mine—never
dreaming that a foreign eye would look upon it. 'I wish You, Harul' Not
once, but four—no, five times!—each time omitting the preposition.
Praying—in this ancient grove—in this ancient Land of Izumo—unto
the most ancient gods in English! Verily, the shyest love presumes much
upon the forbearance of the gods. And great indeed must be, either the
patience of Take-haya-susano-wo-no-mikoto, or the rustiness of the ten-
grasp sabre that was augustly girded upon him.

By every shady wayside and in every ancient grove, on almost every
hilltop and in the outskirts of every village, you may see, while
travelling through the Hondo country, some little Shinto shrine, before
which, or at either side of which, are images of seated foxes in stone.
Usually there is a pair of these, facing each other. But there may be a
dozen, or a score, or several hundred, in which case most of the images
are very small. And in more than one of the larger towns you may see in
the court of some great miya a countless host of stone foxes, of all
dimensions, from toy-figures but a few inches high to the colossi whose
pedestals tower above your head, all squatting around the temple in
tiered ranks of thousands. Such shrines and temples, everybody knows,
are dedicated to Inari the God of Rice. After having travelled much in
Japan, you will find that whenever you try to recall any country-place
you have visited, there will appear in some nook or corner of that
remembrance a pair of green-and-grey foxes of stone, with broken noses.
In my own memories of Japanese travel, these shapes have become de
rigueur, as picturesque detail.

In the neighbourhood of the capital and in Tokyo itself-sometimes in
the cemeteries—very beautiful idealised figures of foxes may be seen,
elegant as greyhounds. They have long green or grey eyes of crystal
quartz or some other diaphanous substance; and they create a strong
impression as mythological conceptions. But throughout the interior,
fox-images are much less artistically fashioned. In Izumo, particularly,
such stone-carving has a decidedly primitive appearance. There is an
astonishing multiplicity and variety of fox-images in the Province of
the Gods—images comical, quaint, grotesque, or monstrous, but, for the
most part, very rudely chiselled. I cannot, however, declare them less
interesting on that account. The work of the Tokkaido sculptor copies
the conventional artistic notion of light grace and ghostliness. The
rustic foxes of Izumo have no grace: they are uncouth; but they betray
in countless queer ways the personal fancies of their makers. They are
of many moods—whimsical, apathetic, inquisitive, saturnine, jocose,
ironical; they watch and snooze and squint and wink and sneer; they wait
with lurking smiles; they listen with cocked ears most stealthily,
keeping their mouths open or closed. There is an amusing individuality
about them all, and an air of knowing mockery about most of them, even
those whose noses have been broken off. Moreover, these ancient country
foxes have certain natural beauties which their modern Tokyo kindred
cannot show. Time has bestowed upon them divers speckled coats of
beautiful soft colours while they have been sitting on their pedestals,
listening to the ebbing and flowing of the centuries and snickering
weirdly at mankind. Their backs are clad with finest green velvet of old
mosses; their limbs are spotted and their tails are tipped with the dead
gold or the dead silver of delicate fungi. And the places they most
haunt are the loveliest—high shadowy groves where the uguisu sings in
green twilight, above some voiceless shrine with its lamps and its lions
of stone so mossed as to seem things born of the soil—like mushrooms.

I found it difficult to understand why, out of every thousand foxes,
nine hundred should have broken noses. The main street of the city of
Matsue might be paved from end to end with the tips of the noses of
mutilated Izumo foxes. A friend answered my expression of wonder in this
regard by the simple but suggestive word, 'Kodomo', which means, 'The
children'

Inari the name by which the Fox-God is generally known, signifies 'Load-
of-Rice.' But the antique name of the Deity is the August-Spirit-of-
Food: he is the Uka-no-mi-tama-no-mikoto of the Kojiki.
[98]
In much more
recent times only has he borne the name that indicates his connection
with the fox-cult, Miketsu-no-Kami, or the Three-Fox-God. Indeed, the
conception of the fox as a supernatural being does not seem to have been
introduced into Japan before the tenth or eleventh century; and although
a shrine of the deity, with statues of foxes, may be found in the court
of most of the large Shinto temples, it is worthy of note that in all
the vast domains of the oldest Shinto shrine in Japan—Kitzuki—you
cannot find the image of a fox. And it is only in modern art—the art
of Toyokuni and others—that Inari is represented as a bearded man
riding a white fox. [2]

Inari is not worshipped as the God of Rice only; indeed, there are many
Inari just as in antique Greece there were many deities called Hermes,
Zeus, Athena, Poseidon—one in the knowledge of the learned, but
essentially different in the imagination of the common people. Inari has
been multiplied by reason of his different attributes. For instance,
Matsue has a Kamiya-San-no-Inari-San, who is the God of Coughs and Bad
Colds—afflictions extremely common and remarkably severe in the Land
of Izumo. He has a temple in the Kamachi at which he is worshipped under
the vulgar appellation of Kaze-no-Kami and the politer one of Kamiya-
San-no-Inari. And those who are cured of their coughs and colds after
having prayed to him, bring to his temple offerings of tofu.

At Oba, likewise, there is a particular Inari, of great fame. Fastened
to the wall of his shrine is a large box full of small clay foxes. The
pilgrim who has a prayer to make puts one of these little foxes in his
sleeve and carries it home, He must keep it, and pay it all due honour,
until such time as his petition has been granted. Then he must take it
back to the temple, and restore it to the box, and, if he be able, make
some small gift to the shrine.

Inari is often worshipped as a healer; and still more frequently as a
deity having power to give wealth. (Perhaps because all the wealth of
Old Japan was reckoned in koku of rice.) Therefore his foxes are
sometimes represented holding keys in their mouths. And from being the
deity who gives wealth, Inari has also become in some localities the
special divinity of the joro class. There is, for example, an Inari
temple worth visiting in the neighbourhood of the Yoshiwara at Yokohama.
It stands in the same court with a temple of Benten, and is more than
usually large for a shrine of Inari. You approach it through a
succession of torii one behind the other: they are of different heights,
diminishing in size as they are placed nearer to the temple, and planted
more and more closely in proportion to their smallness. Before each
torii sit a pair of weird foxes—one to the right and one to the left.
The first pair are large as greyhounds; the second two are much smaller;
and the sizes of the rest lessen as the dimensions of the torii lessen.
At the foot of the wooden steps of the temple there is a pair of very
graceful foxes of dark grey stone, wearing pieces of red cloth about
their necks. Upon the steps themselves are white wooden foxes—one at
each end of each step—each successive pair being smaller than the pair
below; and at the threshold of the doorway are two very little foxes,
not more than three inches high, sitting on sky-blue pedestals. These
have the tips of their tails gilded. Then, if you look into the temple
you will see on the left something like a long low table on which are
placed thousands of tiny fox-images, even smaller than those in the
doorway, having only plain white tails. There is no image of Inari;
indeed, I have never seen an image of Inari as yet in any Inari temple.
On the altar appear the usual emblems of Shinto; and before it, just
opposite the doorway, stands a sort of lantern, having glass sides and a
wooden bottom studded with nail-points on which to fix votive candles.
[3]

And here, from time to time, if you will watch, you will probably see
more than one handsome girl, with brightly painted lips and the
beautiful antique attire that no maiden or wife may wear, come to the
foot of the steps, toss a coin into the money-box at the door, and call
out: 'O-rosoku!' which means 'an honourable candle.' Immediately, from
an inner chamber, some old man will enter the shrine-room with a lighted
candle, stick it upon a nail-point in the lantern, and then retire. Such
candle-offerings are always accompanied by secret prayers for good-
fortune. But this Inari is worshipped by many besides members of the
joro class.

The pieces of coloured cloth about the necks of the foxes are also
votive offerings.

Fox-images in Izumo seem to be more numerous than in other provinces,
and they are symbols there, so far as the mass of the peasantry is
concerned, of something else besides the worship of the Rice-Deity.
Indeed, the old conception of the Deity of Rice-fields has been
overshadowed and almost effaced among the lowest classes by a weird cult
totally foreign to the spirit of pure Shinto—the Fox-cult. The worship
of the retainer has almost replaced the worship of the god. Originally
the Fox was sacred to Inari only as the Tortoise is still sacred to
Kompira; the Deer to the Great Deity of Kasuga; the Rat to Daikoku; the
Tai-fish to Ebisu; the White Serpent to Benten; or the Centipede to
Bishamon, God of Battles. But in the course of centuries the Fox usurped
divinity. And the stone images of him are not the only outward evidences
of his cult. At the rear of almost every Inari temple you will generally
find in the wall of the shrine building, one or two feet above the
ground, an aperture about eight inches in diameter and perfectly
circular. It is often made so as to be closed at will by a sliding
plank. This circular orifice is a Fox-hole, and if you find one open,
and look within, you will probably see offerings of tofu or other food
which foxes are supposed to be fond of. You will also, most likely, find
grains of rice scattered on some little projection of woodwork below or
near the hole, or placed on the edge of the hole itself; and you may see
some peasant clap his hands before the hole, utter some little prayer,
and swallow a grain or two of that rice in the belief that it will
either cure or prevent sickness. Now the fox for whom such a hole is
made is an invisible fox, a phantom fox—the fox respectfully referred
to by the peasant as O-Kitsune-San. If he ever suffers himself to become
visible, his colour is said to be snowy white.

According to some, there are various kinds of ghostly foxes. According
to others, there are two sorts of foxes only, the Inari-fox (O-Kitsune-
San) and the wild fox (kitsune). Some people again class foxes into
Superior and Inferior Foxes, and allege the existence of four Superior
Sorts—Byakko, Kokko, Jenko, and Reiko—all of which possess
supernatural powers. Others again count only three kinds of foxes—the
Field-fox, the Man-fox, and the Inari-fox. But many confound the Field-
fox or wild fox with the Man-fox, and others identify the Inari-fox with
the Man-fox. One cannot possibly unravel the confusion of these beliefs,
especially among the peasantry. The beliefs vary, moreover, in different
districts. I have only been able, after a residence of fourteen months
in Izumo, where the superstition is especially strong, and marked by
certain unique features, to make the following very loose summary of
them: