Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan by Lafcadio Hearn Read Free Book Online

shall
pass from him. If he have lost aught, it shall be found. If he have a
suit at law, he shall gain. If he love a woman, he shall surely win her
-though he should have to wait. And many happinesses will come to him.'
    The dai-kitsu paper reads almost similarly, with the sole differences
that, instead of Kwannon, the deities of wealth and prosperity—
Daikoku, Bishamon, and Benten—are to be worshipped, and that the
fortunate man will not have to wait at all for the woman loved. But the
kyo paper reads thus:
    'He who draweth forth this mikuji, it will be well for him to obey the
heavenly law and to worship Kwannon the Merciful. If he have any
sickness, even much more sick he shall become. If he have lost aught, it
shall never be found. If he have a suit at law, he shall never gain it.
If he love a woman, let him have no more expectation of winning her.
Only by the most diligent piety can he hope to escape the most frightful
calamities. And there shall be no felicity in his portion.'
    'All the same, we are fortunate,' declares Akira. 'Twice out of three
times we have found luck. Now we will go to see another statue of
Buddha.' And he guides me, through many curious streets, to the
southern verge of the city.
Sec. 4
    Before us rises a hill, with a broad flight of stone steps sloping to
its summit, between foliage of cedars and maples. We climb; and I see
above me the Lions of Buddha waiting—the male yawning menace, the
female with mouth closed. Passing between them, we enter a large temple
court, at whose farther end rises another wooded eminence.
    And here is the temple, with roof of blue-painted copper tiles, and
tilted eaves and gargoyles and dragons, all weather-stained to one
neutral tone. The paper screens are open, but a melancholy rhythmic
chant from within tells us that the noonday service is being held: the
priests are chanting the syllables of Sanscrit texts transliterated into
Chinese—intoning the Sutra called the Sutra of the Lotus of the Good
Law. One of those who chant keeps time by tapping with a mallet, cotton-
wrapped, some grotesque object shaped like a dolphin's head, all
lacquered in scarlet and gold, which gives forth a dull, booming tone—
a mokugyo.
    To the right of the temple is a little shrine, filling the air with
fragrance of incense-burning. I peer in through the blue smoke that
curls up from half a dozen tiny rods planted in a small brazier full of
ashes; and far back in the shadow I see a swarthy Buddha, tiara-coiffed,
with head bowed and hands joined, just as I see the Japanese praying,
erect in the sun, before the thresholds of temples. The figure is of
wood, rudely wrought and rudely coloured: still the placid face has
beauty of suggestion.
    Crossing the court to the left of the building, I find another flight of
steps before me, leading up a slope to something mysterious still
higher, among enormous trees. I ascend these steps also, reach the top,
guarded by two small symbolic lions, and suddenly find myself in cool
shadow, and startled by a spectacle totally unfamiliar.
    Dark—almost black—soil and the shadowing of trees immemorially old,
through whose vaulted foliage the sunlight leaks thinly down in rare
flecks; a crepuscular light, tender and solemn, revealing the weirdest
host of unfamiliar shapes—a vast congregation of grey, columnar, mossy
things, stony, monumental, sculptured with Chinese ideographs. And about
them, behind them, rising high above them, thickly set as rushes in a
marsh-verge, tall slender wooden tablets, like laths, covered with
similar fantastic lettering, pierce the green gloom by thousands, by
tens of thousands.
    And before I can note other details, I know that I am in a hakaba, a
cemetery—a very ancient Buddhist cemetery.
    These laths are called in the Japanese tongue sotoba.
[8]
All have
notches cut upon their edges on both sides near the top-five notches;
and all are painted with Chinese characters on both faces. One
inscription is always the phrase