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BLOWING HER BREATH UPON H M
I
KWAI DAN:
STORIESAND STUDIES OF STRANGE
THINGS *<^ LAFCADIO HEARN
LECTURER ON ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE IMPE
RIAL UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO, JAPAN (1896-1903)
HONORARY MEMBER OF THE JAPAN SOCIETY, LONDON

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COM-
PANY MDCCCCXI
COPYRIGHT 1904 BY
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN * CO.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
M tv
Published April 1904.
/
v
 Kr

INTRODUCTION

THE publication of a new volume of

Lafcadio Hearn s exquisite studies of Japan hap

pens, by a delicate irony, to fall in the very month

when the world is waiting with tense expectation
for news of the latest exploits of Japanese battle

ships. Whatever the outcome of the present

struggle between Russia and Japan, its signifi

cance lies in the fact that a nation of the East,

equipped with Western weapons and girding it

self with Western energy of will, is deliberately

measuring strength against one of the great

powers of the Occident. No one is wise enough
to forecast the results of such a conflict upon
the civilization of the world. The best one can
do is to estimate, as intelligently as possible,

the national characteristics of the peoples en

gaged, basing one s hopes and fears upon the

psychology of the two races rather than upon

242347
purely political and statistical studies of the

complicated questions involved in the present

war. The Russian people have had literary

spokesmen who for more than a generation

have fascinated the European audience. The

Japanese, on the other hand, have possessed no

such national and universally recognized figures
as Turgenieff or Tolstoy. They need an inter

preter.
It may be doubted whether any orien

tal race has ever had an interpreter gifted with

more perfect insight and sympathy than Laf-

cadio Hearn has brought to the translation of

Japan into terms of our occidental speech. His

long residence in that country, his flexibility of

mind, poetic imagination, and wonderfully pel

lucid style have fitted him for the most delicate
of literary tasks. He has seen marvels, and
he has told of them in a marvelous way. There
is
scarcely an aspect of contemporary Japanese

life, scarcely an element in the social, political,

and military questions involved in the present
conflict with Russia which is not made clear in

one or another of the books with which he has

charmed American readers.
 He characterizes Kwaidan as "

stories

and studies of strange things."

A hundred

thoughts suggested by the book might be writ

ten down, but most of them would begin and
end with this fact of strangeness. To read the

very names in the table of contents is like listen

ing to a Buddhist bell, struck somewhere far

away. Some of his tales are of the long ago, and

yet they seem to illumine the very souls and

minds of the little men who are at this hour

crowding the decks of Japan s armored cruisers.

But many of the stories are about women and

children, the lovely materials from which the

best fairy tales of the world have been woven.

They too are strange, these Japanese maidens

and wives and keen-eyed, dark-haired girls and

boys they are like us and yet not

;
like us ;
and the sky and the hills and the flowers are
all different from ours. Yet by a magic of
which Mr. Hearn, almost alone among contem

porary writers, is the master, in these delicate,

transparent, ghostly sketches of a world unreal

to us, there is a haunting sense of spiritual
reality.
In a penetrating and beautiful essay
contributed
"

to the "

Atlantic Monthly in

February, 1903, by Paul Elmer More, the se

cret of Mr. Hearn s magic is said to lie in the

fact that in his art is found "

the meeting of
three ways."
"To the religious instinct of In

dia, Buddhism in particular, which history

has engrafted on the aesthetic sense of Japan,
Mr. Hearn brings the interpreting spirit of oc
cidental science and these three traditions are
;

fused by the peculiar sympathies of his mind

into one rich and novel compound, a com
pound so rare as to have introduced into litera

ture a psychological sensation unknown be

fore." Mr. More s essay received the high
praise of Mr. Hearn s recognition and grati

tude, and were possible to reprint it here,

if it

it would provide a most suggestive introduc

tion to these new stories of old Japan, whose
substance is, as Mr. More has said,
"

so

strangely mingled together out of the austere

dreams of India and the subtle beauty of Japan
and the relentless science of Europe."

March, 1904.
 MOST of the following Kwaidan,
or Weird Tales, have been taken from old
Japanese such as the Yaso-Kidan,
books,
Bukkyo-Hyakkwa-Zenshdy Kokon- Chomonsku,
Tama-Sudar^ and Hyaku-Monogatari. Some
of the stories may have had a Chinese origin :

the very remarkable Dream of Akinosuke,"

"

for example, is certainly from a Chinese source.

But the Japanese story-teller, in every case, has
so recolored and reshaped his borrowing as to
naturalize it. One queer tale, "Yuki-Onna,"
...
was told me by
a farmer of Chofu, Nishitama-

gori, in Musashi province, as a legend of his

native village. Whether it has ever been writ
ten in Japanese I do not know ;
but the extra
ordinary belief which it records used certainly
iii
to exist in most parts of Japan, and in many
curious forms. . . . The incident of "

Riki-
Baka "

was a personal experience ;

and I wrote
it down almost
exactly as it happened, changing
only a family-name mentioned by the Japanese
narrator.
L. H.

TOKYO, JAPAN, January 2oth, 1904.

 CONTENTS

KWAIDAN
THE STORY OF MIMI-NASHI-HOICHI . i

OSHIDORI 21

THE STORY OF O-TEI 27

UBAZAKURA 37

DIPLOMACY 43

OF A MIRROR AND A BELL 51

JIKININKI 63

MUJINA 75

ROKURO-KUBI 81

A DEAD SECRET 101

YUKI-ONNA 109

THE STORY OF AOYAGI 119

JIU-ROKU-ZAKURA 137

THE DREAM OF AKINOSUKE .... 143

 RIKI-BAKA 157

HI-MA WARI 163

HORAI 171

INSECT-STUDIES
BUTTERFLIES 179

MOSQUITOES 205

ANTS 213
NOTE ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS

The two drawings are by the Japanese artist, Keishu

Takenouchi. The frontispiece illustrates the scene
in the story
"

Yuki-Onna" described on page //j, and

the drawing facing page 180 illustrates the Butterfly

Dance, described on page 203.

THE
STOW
op

NASHf
 THE

NASHf-

MORE than seven hundred years ago,

at Dan-no-ura, in the Straits of Shimonoseki,
was fought the last battle of the long contest
between the Heik, or Taira clan, and the
Genji, or Minamoto clan. There the Heike" per
ished utterly, with their women and children,
and their infant emperor likewise now remem
bered as Antoku Tenno. And that sea and
shore have been haunted for seven hundred

years. . . . Elsewhere I told you about the

strange crabs found there, called Heike" crabs,
3
which have human faces on their backs, and
are said to be the spirits of Heike warriors. 1

But there are many strange things to be seen

and heard along that coast. On dark nights
thousands of ghostly fires hover about the
beach, or flit above the waves, pale lights
which the fishermen call Oni-bi, or demon-fires ;

and, whenever the winds are up, a sound of

great shouting comes from that sea, like a
clamor of battle.
In former years the Heike were much
more restless than they now are. They would
rise about ships passing in the night, and try
to sink them and at all times they would watch
;

for swimmers, to pull them down. It was in

order to appease those dead that the Buddhist
2
temple, Amidaji, was built at Akamagaseki.
A cemetery also was made close by, near the
beach ;
and within it were set up monuments
inscribed with the names of the drowned em

peror and of his great vassals ;

and Buddhist
services were regularly performed there, on be
half of the spirits of them. After the temple
had been built, and the tombs erected, the
Heike gave less trouble than before but they ;

continued to do queer things at intervals,

1
See my Kotto, for a description of these curious crabs.
2
Or, Shimonoseki. The town is also known by the name
of Bakkan.

4
proving that they had not found the perfect r^
peace.

Some centuries ago there lived at Aka-

magaseki a blind man named Hoi chi, who was
famed for his skill in recitation and in playing
upon the biwa.
1
From childhood he had been
trained to recite and to play ;
and while yet a
lad he had surpassed his teachers. As a pro
fessional biwa-hoshi he became famous chiefly
by his recitations of the history of the Heike
and the Genji and it is said that when he sang
;

the song of the battle of Dan-no-ura "

even the
goblins \kijin\ could not refrain from tears."

At the outset of his career, HoYchi

was very poor ;
but he found a good friend to
help him. The
priest of the Amidaji was fond
of poetry and music and he often invited
;

Hoi chi to the temple, to play and recite. After

wards, being much impressed by the wonderful
skill of the lad, the priest proposed that Hoi chi
1
The biwa, a kind of four-stringed lute, is chiefly used in
musical recitative. Formerly the professional minstrels who
recited the Heike-Monogatari, and other tragical histories,
were called biwa-hoshi, or "lute-priests." The origin of this
appellation is not clear but it is possible that it may have
;

been suggested by the fact that lute-priests," as well as

"

blind shampooers, had heads shaven, like Buddhist

their

priests. The biwa is played with a kind of plectrum, called

bachi, usually made of horn.

5
 should make the temple his home and this of ;

A
f/^ ferwas gratefully accepted. Ho fchi was given a
room in the temple-building and, in return for
;

food and lodging, he was required only to grat

ify the priest with a musical performance on

certain evenings, when otherwise disengaged.

One summer night the priest was

called away, to perform a Buddhist service at
the house of a dead parishioner and he went ;

there with his acolyte, leaving Hoi chi alone in

the temple. It was a hot night and the blind
;

man sought to cool himself on the verandah

before his sleeping-room. The verandah over
looked a small garden in the rear of the Ami-
daji. There Ho fchi waited for the priest s
return, and tried to relieve his solitude by prac
ticing upon his biwa. Midnight passed and ;

the priest did not appear. But the atmosphere

was still too warm for comfort within doors ;

and Hoi chi remained outside. At last he heard

steps approaching from the back gate. Some
body crossed the garden, advanced to the ve
randah, and halted directly in front of him
but it was not the priest. A deep voice called
the blind man s name abruptly and uncere
moniously, in the manner of a samurai summon
ing an inferior :

"
"

Horchi 1

6
 Ho fchi was too much startled, for the
moment, to respond and the voice called again,
; ft
in a tone of harsh command,
"Ho fchi!"

Hai !
"
"

answered the blind man,

frightened by the menace in the voice, "I

am blind ! I cannot know who calls !

"

"There is nothing to fear,"

the

stranger exclaimed, speaking more gently.

"

am stopping near this temple, and have been

sent to you with a message. My present lord,
a person of exceedingly high rank, is now stay
ing in Akamagaseki, with many noble attend
ants. He wished to view the scene of the
battle of Dan-no-ura ;
and to-day he visited that

place. Having heard of your skill in reciting

the story of the battle, he now desires to hear

your performance so you : will take your biwa

and come with me at once to the house where
the august assembly is waiting."
In those times, the order of a samu
rai was not to be lightly disobeyed. Hoi chi
donned his sandals, took his biwa, and went
away with the stranger, who guided him deftly,
but obliged him to walk very fast. The hand
that guided was iron and the clank of the ;

warrior s stride proved him fully armed,

probably some palace-guard on duty. Hoi chi s

first alarm was over he began to imagine him-
:

7
self in good luck; for, remembering the re-

tainer s assurance about a "person of exceed-

ingly high rank," he thought that the lord who

wished to hear the recitation could not be less
than a daimyo of the first class. Presently the
samurai halted and Hoi chi became aware that
;

they had arrived at a large gateway and he ;

wondered, for he could not remember any large

gate in that part of the town, except the main
gate of the Amidaji. Kaimon!"* the samu
"

rai called, and there was a sound of unbar

ring and the twain passed on. They traversed
;

a space of garden, and halted again before

some entrance and the retainer cried in a
;

loud voice, "

Within there ! I have brought

Hoi Then came sounds of feet hurrying,
chi."

and screens sliding, and rain-doors opening,

and voices of women in converse. By the lan
guage of the women Ho fchi knew them to be
domestics in some noble household but he ;

could not imagine to what place he had been

conducted. Little time was allowed him for
conjecture. After he had been helped to mount
several stone steps, upon the last of which he
was told to leave his sandals, a woman s hand

guided him along interminable reaches of pol-

1
A respectful term, signifying the opening of a gate. It
was used by samurai when calling to the guards on duty at
a lord s gate for admission.
8
ished planking, and round pillared angles too

many to remember, and over widths amazing of

matted floor, into the middle of some vast

apartment. There he thought that many great ^/C

people were assembled the sound of the rus :

tling of silk was like the sound of leaves in a

forest. He heard also a great humming of
voices, talking in undertones and the speech ;

was the speech of courts.

Hoi chi was told to put himself at ease,
and he found a kneeling-cushion ready for him.
After having taken his place upon it, and tuned
his instrument, the voice of a woman whom he
divined to be the Rojo, or matron in charge of
the female service addressed him, saying,
"It is now
required that the history
of the Heike be recited, to the accompaniment
of the biwa."

Now the entire recital would have re

quired a time of many nights : therefore Hoi chi

ventured a question :

the whole of the story is not

"As

soon told, what portion is it augustly desired

that I now recite ? "

The woman s voice made answer :

"Recite the story of the battle at

Dan-no-ura, for the pity of it is the most

1
deep."

1
Or the phrase might be rendered, *
for the pity of that

9
 Then Horchi lifted up his voice, and
chanted the chant of the fight on the bitter sea,
wonderfully making his biwa to sound like the
straining of oars and the rushing of ships, the
whirr and the hissing of arrows, the shouting
and trampling of men, the crashing of steel upon
helmets, the plunging of slain in the flood. And
to left and right of him, in the pauses of his

playing, he could hear voices murmuring praise :

"

How marvelous an artist !

"

Never in our
"

own province was playing heard like this !

"

Not in all the empire is there another singer

"

like H5i chi Then fresh courage came to

!
"

him, and he played and sang yet better than

before and a hush of wonder deepened about
;

him. But when at last he came to tell the fate

of the fair and helpless, the piteous perishing
of the women and children, and the death-leap
of Nii-no-Ama, with the imperial infant in her

arms, then all the listeners uttered together

one long, long shuddering cry of anguish and ;

thereafter they wept and wailed so loudly and

so wildly that the blind man was frightened by
the violence of the grief that he had made. For
much time the sobbing and the wailing con
tinued. But gradually the sounds of lamentation
died away ;
and again, in the great stillness that

part is the deepest." The Japanese word for pity in the

original text is aware.

IO
followed, HoYchi heard the voice of the woman
whom he supposed to be the Rojo.
She said :

Although we had been assured that

"

you were a very skillful player upon the biwa,

and without an equal in recitative, we did not
know that any one could be so skillful as you
have proved yourself to-night. Our lord has
been pleased to say that he intends to bestow
upon you a fitting reward. But he desires that
you perform before him once every night
shall

for the next six nights after which time he

will probably make his august return-journey.
To-morrow night, therefore, you are to come
here at the same hour. The retainer who to

night conducted you will be sent for you. . .

There is another matter about which I have been

ordered to inform you. It is required that you
shall speak to no one of your visits here, during
the time of our lord s august sojourn at Akama-

gaseki. As he is traveling incognito, he com

1

mands no mention of these things be made.

that
. . . You are now free to go back to your
temple."

After Hoi chi had duly expressed his

*
least the meaning of the
"

is at
"

Traveling incognito
making a disguised
"

original phrase, august-journey"

(shinobi no go-ryoko).
II
thanks, a woman s hand conducted him to the
entrance of the house, where the same retainer,
who had before guided him, was waiting to take
him home. The retainer led him to the veran
dah at the rear of the temple, and there bade
him farewell.

It was almost dawn when Hoi chi re

turned ;
but his absence from the temple had
not been observed, as the priest, coming back
at a very late hour, had supposed him asleep.

During the day Hoi chi was able to take some

rest ;
and he said nothing about his strange
adventure. In the middle of the following night
the samurai again came for him, and led him to
the august assembly, where he gave another
recitation with the same success that had at
tended his previous performance. But during
this second visit his absence from the temple

was accidentally discovered; and after his re

turn in the morning he was summoned to the
presence of the priest, who said to him, in a
tone of kindly reproach :

We
have been very anxious about
"

you, friend Hoi chi. To go out, blind and alone,

at so late an hour, is dangerous. Why did you
go without telling us ? I could have ordered

a servant to accompany you. And where have

"

you been ?

12
 Hoi chi answered, evasively,
Pardon me, kind friend
"

I had to !

attend to some private business and I could ;

,

not arrange the matter at any other hour."

The
priest was surprised, rather than
pained, by Hoi chi s reticence he felt it to be:

unnatural, and suspected something wrong. He

feared that the blind lad had been bewitched or
deluded by some evil spirits. He did not ask

any more questions ;

but he privately instructed
the men-servants of the temple to keep watch

upon Hoi chi s movements, and to follow him in

case that he should again leave the temple after

dark.

On the very next night, Hoi chi was

seen to leave the temple and the servants im
;

mediately lighted their lanterns, and followed after

him. But it was a rainy night, and very dark ;

and before the temple-folks could get to the

roadway, Ho fchi had disappeared. Evidently
he had walked very fast, a strange thing, con
sidering his blindness ;
for the road was in a
bad condition. The men hurried through the
streets,making house which
inquiries at every
Hoi chi was accustomed to visit but nobody ;

could give them any news of him. At last, as

they were returning to the temple by way of

the shore, they were startled by the sound of a

13
biwa, furiously played, in the cemetery of the
Amidaji. Except for some ghostly fires such
as usually flitted there on dark nights all was

blackness in that direction. But the men at

once hastened to the cemetery and there, by ;

the help of their lanterns, they discovered Hoichi,

sitting alone in the rain before the memorial
tomb of Antoku Tenno, making his biwa re
sound, and loudly chanting the chant of the
battle of Dan-no-ura. And behind him, and
about him, and everywhere above the tombs,
the fires of the dead were burning, like candles.
Never before had so great a host of Oni-bi ap
peared in the sight of mortal man. . . .

Hoichi San Hoi chi San

"
"

the ! !

servants cried,
"

you are bewitched ! . . .

Hoi chi San!"

But the blind man did not seem to

hear. Strenuously he made his biwa to rattle
and ring and clang more and more wildly ;

he chanted the chant of the battle of Dan-no-

ura. They caught hold of him ; they shouted
into his ear,
"

Ho fchi San! Hoichi San ! come

home with us at once !
"

Reprovingly he spoke to them :

To interrupt me in such a manner,

"

before this august assembly, will not be toler

ated."

14
 Whereat, in spite of the weirdness 7->

of the thing, the servants could not help laugh

ing. Sure that he had been bewitched, they

now seized him, and pulled him up on his feet,
and by main force hurried him back to the
temple, where he was immediately relieved
of his wet by order of the priest, and
clothes,
reclad, and made to eat and drink. Then the
priest insisted upon a full explanation of his
friend s astonishing behavior,
Hoi chi long hesitated to speak. But
at last, finding that his conduct had really
alarmed and angered the good priest, he de
cided to abandon his reserve ;
and he related
everything that had happened from the time of
the first visit of the samurai.
The priest said :

my poor friend, you are now

"

Hofchi,
in great danger How unfortunate that you did
!

not tell me all this before Your wonderful !

skill in music has indeed brought you into

strange trouble.By this time you must be
aware that you have not been visiting any house
whatever, but have been passing your nights in
the cemetery, among the tombs of the Heike ;

and it was before the memorial-tomb of

Antoku Tenno that our people to-night found

you, sitting in the rain. All that you have been

imagining was illusion except the calling of
15
the dead. By once obeying them, you have put
yourself in their power. If you obey them again,

after what has already occurred, they will tear

you in pieces. But they would have destroyed
you, sooner or later, in any event. Now I . . .

shall not be able to remain with you to-night :

I am called away to perform another service.

But, before I go, it will be necessary to protect

your body by writing holy texts upon it."

Before sundown the priest and his

acolyte stripped Hoi chi :

then, with their writ
ing-brushes, they traced upon his breast and
back, head and face and neck, limbs and hands
and feet, even upon the soles of his feet, and
upon all parts of his body, the text of the

holy sutra called Hannya-Shin-Kyo? When

1
The Smaller Pragna-Paramita-Hridaya-Sutra is thus called
in Japanese. Both the smaller and larger sutras called
Pragna-Paramita Transcendent Wisdom
("
have been trans ")

lated by the late Professor Max Miiller, and can be found in

volume xlix. of the Sacred Books of the East Buddhist ("

Mahayana Sutras" ) .
Apropos of the magical use of the
text, as described in this story, it is worth remarking that the
subject of the sutra is the Doctrine of the Emptiness of
Forms, that is to say, of the unreal character of all phe
nomena or noumena. ..." Form is emptiness and empti ;

ness is Emptiness is not

form. different from form form ;

is not different from emptiness. What is form that is

emptiness. What is emptiness that is form. . . .

Percep
tion, name, concept, and knowledge, are also emptiness.
- . . There is no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind
16
 thishad been done, the priest instructed Hoi chi,
saying :- ft
go away, you
"Tonight, as soon as I

must seat yourself on the verandah, and wait.

You will be called. But, whatever may happen,
do not answer, and do not move. Say nothing,
and sit still as if meditating. If you stir, or
make any noise, you will be torn asunder. Do
not get frightened and do not think of calling
;

for help because no help could save you. If

you do exactly as I tell you, the danger will pass,
and you will have nothing more to fear."

After dark the priest and the acolyte

went away ;
and Ho fchi seated himself on the
verandah, according instructions given to the
him. He laid his biwa on the planking beside

him, and, assuming the attitude of meditation,

remained quite still, taking care not to cough,
or to breathe audibly. For hours he stayed
thus.

Then, from the roadway, he heard the

steps coming. They passed the gate, crossed
the garden, approached the verandah, stopped

directly in front of him.

Hoi chi the deep voice called. But
"
"

. . . But when the envelopment of consciousness has been

annihilated, then he [ the seeker ] becomes free from all fear,

and beyond the reach of change, enjoying final Nirvana."

17
 the blind man held his breath, and sat motion-
less.

"HoTchi!"
grimly called the voice a
tf/C second time. Then a third time savagely :

"Hoi chi!"

HoTchi remained as still as a stone,

and the voice grumbled :

No answer that won t do ...

"

! !

Must see where the fellow is." . . .

There was a noise of heavy feet mount

ing upon the verandah. The feet approached
deliberately, halted beside him. Then, for

long minutes, during which HoTchi felt his

whole body shake to the beating of his heart,
there was dead silence.
At last the gruff voice muttered close
to him :

"

Here is the biwa ;

but of the biwa-
player only two ears ... So that ex
I see !

plains why he did not answer he had no mouth :

to answer with there is nothing left of him

but his ears. . . . Now to my lord those ears
I will take in proof that the august com
mands have been obeyed, so far as was pos
"

sible . . .

At that instant HoTchi felt his ears

gripped by fingers of iron, and torn off Great !

cry. The heavy

as the pain was, he gave no
footfalls receded along the verandah, de-
18
scended into the garden, passed out to the
roadway, ceased. From either side of his

head, the blind man felt a thick warm trickling ;

^|%
but he dared not lift his hands. . . .

Before sunrise the priest came back.

He hastened at once to the verandah in the
rear, and slipped upon something
stepped
and uttered a cry of horror for he
clammy, ;

saw, by the light of his lantern, that the clam

miness was blood. But he perceived Hoifchi
sitting there, in the attitude of meditation

with the blood oozing from his wounds.

still
"

"My poor Hoichi! cried the startled

priest,
"

what is this ? . . . You have been

hurt?" . . .

At the sound of his friend s voice, the

blind man burst out sobbing, and
felt safe. He
tearfully told his adventure of the night.
"Poor, poor Hoi chi!"
the priest ex

claimed, "all
my fault !
my very grievous
fault !
Everywhere upon your body the
. . .

holy texts had been written except upon your

ears! I trusted my acolyte to do that part of
the work ;
and it was very, very wrong of me
not to have made sure that he had done it ! ...
Well, the matter cannot now be helped we ;

can only try to heal your hurts as soon as pos

sible. Cheer up, friend!
. . .the danger is
19
now well over. You will never again be troubled

by those visitors."

With the aid of a good doctor, Ho fchi

soon recovered from his injuries. story The
of his strange adventure spread far and wide,
and soon made him famous. Many noble per
sons went to Akamagaseki to hear him recite ;

and large presents of money were given to him,

so that he became a wealthy man. But . . .

from the time of his adventure, he was known

only by the appellation of Mimi-nashi-Hoichi :
"

Hojfchi-the-Earless."

20
 THERE was a falconer and hunter,
named Son jo, who lived in the district called

Tamura-no-Go, of the province of Mutsu. One

day he went out hunting, and could not find
any game. But on his way home, at a place
l
calledAkanuma, he perceived a pair of oshidori

(mandarin-ducks), swimming together in a river

that he was about to cross. To kill oshidori is

not good but Sonjo happened to be very hun

;

gry, and he shot at the pair. His arrow pierced

the male : the female escaped into the rushes
1
From ancient time, in the Far East, these birds have
been regarded as emblems of conjugal affection.
 of the further shore, and disappeared. Sonjo

ft took the dead bird home, and cooked it.

That night he dreamed a dreary
dream. It seemed to him that a beautiful woman
came into his room, and stood by his pillow, and
began to weep. So bitterly did she weep that

Sonjo felt as if his heart were being torn out

while he listened. And the woman cried to
him :
Why, oh why did you
"

! kill him ?
of what wrong was he guilty ? . . . At Aka-
numa we were so happy together, and you
killed him ! . . . What harm did he ever do
you ? Do you
even know what you have done ?
oh do you know what a cruel, what a wicked
!

thing you have done ? Me too you have . . .

killed, for I will not live without my hus

band ! . . .
Only to tell you this I came/ . . .

Then again she wept aloud, so bitterly that

the voice of her crying pierced into the mar
row of the listener s bones ; and she sobbed
out the words of this poem :

Hi kurureba
Sasoeshi mono wo
Akanuma no
Makomo no no kure"

Hitori-n6 zo uki !

[
"

At the coming of twilight I invited him

to return with me / Now to sleep alone in the

24
 shadow of the rushes of Akanuma ah ! what misery
unspeakable I"
]*
And after having uttered these verses she ex
claimed Ah, you do not know you can
"

notknow what you have done But to-morrow, !

when you go to Akanuma, you will see, you

will see. So saying, and weeping very
..."

piteously, she went away.

When Sonjo awoke in the morning,
thisdream mind that
remained so vivid in his
he was greatly troubled. He remembered the
words But to-morrow, when you go to
:
"

Akanuma, you will see, you will see." And

he resolved to go there at once, that he might
learn whether his dream was anything more
than a dream.
So he went to Akanuma and there, ;

when he came to the river-bank, he saw the

female oshidori swimming alone. In the same
moment the bird perceived Sonjo ; but, instead
of trying to escape, she swam straight towards
1
There
is a pathetic double meaning in the third verse ;

for the syllables composing the proper name Akanuma

("
Red Marsh may also be read as akanu-ma, signifying
")

the time of our inseparable (or delightful) relation." So

"

the poem can also be thus rendered: "When the day

began to fail, I had invited him to accompany me. Now, . . . !

after the time of that happy relation, what misery for the
one who must slumber alone in the shadow of the rushes !
"

The makomo is a sort of large rush, used for making

baskets.

25
him, looking at him the while in a strange fixed
way. Then, with her beak, she suddenly tore
open her own body, and died before the hunter s
eyes. . . .

Son] 6 shaved his head, and became

a priest.

26
OF
 OF

A LONG time ago, in the town of Nii-

gata, in the province of Echizen, there lived a

man calledNagao Chosei.
Nagao was the son of a physician,
and was educated for his father s profession.
At an early age he had been betrothed to a
girl called O-Tei, the daughter of one of his
father s friends ;
and both families had agreed
that the wedding should take place a^ soon as
Nagao had finished his studies. But the health
of O-Tei proved to be weak and in her fifteenth
;

year she was attacked by a fatal consumption.

f K% When she became aware that she must die, she
sent for Nagao to bid him farewell.
As he knelt at her bedside, she said to
him :

my betrothed, we were
"

Nagao-Sama,
promised to each other from the time of our
childhood and we were to have been married
;

at the end ofthis year. But now I am going to

die ;
the gods know what is best for us. If I
were able to live for some years longer, I could

only continue to be a cause of trouble and grief

to others. With this frail body, I could not be
a good wife ;
and therefore even to wish to live,
for your sake, would be a very selfish wish. I

am quite resigned to die and ;

I want you to

promise that you not grieve.

will . . .
Besides,
I want to tell you that I think we shall meet
. . .
again."
"

Indeed we meet again," Nagao

shall

answered earnestly. "

And in that Pure Land

there will be no pain of separation."

"Nay, nay!"
she responded softly,
meant not the Pure Land.
"I I believe that we
are destined to meet again in this world, al

though I shall be buried to-morrow."

Nagao looked at her wonderingly, and

saw her smile at his wonder. She continued,
in her gentle, dreamy voice,
 "

Yes, I mean in this world, in

your own present life, Nagao-Sama. . . . Pro

you wish it. Only, for this
viding, indeed, that
thing to happen, I must again be born a girl,
and grow up to womanhood. So you would
have to wait. Fifteen sixteen years : that
is a long time. But, my promised husband,
. . .

you are now only nineteen years old." . . .

Eager to soothe her dying moments,

he answered tenderly :

"To wait
you, my betrothed, for
were no joy than a duty.
less a are We
pledged to each other for the time of seven ex
istences."

"

But you doubt?" she questioned,

watching his face.
"

My dear one,"
he answered, "

I doubt
whether I should be able to know you in another
body, under another name, unless you can tell

me of a sign or token."
That I cannot
"

she said. Only do,"

"

the Gods and the Buddhas know how and where

we shall meet. But I am sure very, very
sure that,you be not unwilling to receive
if

me, I shall be able to come back to you. . . .

Remember these words of mine." . . .

She ceased to speak and her eyes ;

closed. She was dead.

 *
# #

Nagao had been sincerely attached to

O-Tei and his grief was deep. He had a mor
;

tuary tablet made, inscribed with her zokumyd

and he placed the tablet in his butsudan? and
every day set offerings before it. He thought a
great deal about the strange things that O-Tei
had said to him just before her death and, in ;

the hope of pleasing her spirit, he wrote a sol

emn promise to wed her if she could ever return
to him in another body. This written promise
he sealed with his seal, and placed in the butsu-
dan beside the mortuary tablet of O-Tei.

Nevertheless, as Nagao was an only

son, it was necessary that he should marry. He
soon found himself obliged to yield to the wishes
of his family, and to accept a wife of his father s

choosing. After his marriage he continued to

1
The Buddhist term zokumyo ("profane name ") signifies
the personal name, borne during life, in contradistinction to
the kaimyo sila-name or homyo
("
Law-name given after
") (" ")

death, religious posthumous appellations inscribed upon

the tomb, and upon the mortuary tablet in the parish-temple.
For some account of these, see my paper entitled, The "

Literature of the Dead," in Exotics and Retrospectives.

2
Buddhist household shrine.
set offerings before the tablet of O-Tei; and +
he never remember her with affection.
failed to

But by degrees her image became dim in his

memory, like a dream that is hard to recall.

And the years went by.

During those years many misfortunes
came upon him. He lost his parents by death,
then his wife and his only child. So that he
found himself alone in the world. He aban
doned his desolate home, and set out upon a
long journey in the hope of forgetting his sor
rows.

One day, in the course of his travels,

he arrived at Ikao, a mountain-village still
famed for its thermal springs, and for the beau
tiful scenery of its neighborhood. In the village-

inn at which he stopped, a young girl came to

wait upon him and, at the first sight of her
;

face, he felt his heart leap as it had never leaped

before. So strangely did she resemble O-Tei
that he pinched himself to make sure that he
was not dreaming. As she went and came,
bringing fire and food, or arranging the cham
ber of the guest, her every attitude and mo
tion revived in him some gracious memory of
the girl to whom he had been pledged in his

youth. He spoke to her and she responded in

;

33
a soft, clear voice of which the sweetness sad-
dened him with a sadness of other days.
Then, in great wonder, he questioned
her, saying :

"

Elder Sister, so much do you look

like a person whom I knew long ago, that I
was startled when you
first entered this room.

Pardon me, therefore, for asking what is your

native place, and what is your name ?
"

Immediately, and in the unf orgot-

ten voice of the dead, she thus made an
swer :

"

My name is O-Tei ;
and you are
Nagao Chosei of Echigo, my promised hus
band. Seventeen years ago, I died in Niigata :

then you made in writing a promise to marry

me if ever I could come back to this world in
the body of a woman and you sealed that
;

written promise with your seal, and put it in

the butsudan, beside the tablet inscribed with

my name. And therefore I came back." . . .

As she uttered these last words, she

fell unconscious.

Nagao married her and the marriage ;

was a happy one. But at no time afterwards

could she remember what she had told him in
answer to his question at Ikao neither could :

34
she remember anything of her previous exist- t+
ence. The recollection of the former birth,
mysteriously kindled in the moment of that

meeting, had again become obscured, and so

thereafter remained.

35
 THREE hundred
years ago, in the vil
lage called Asamimura, in the district called
Onsengori, in the province of lyo, there lived a
good man named Tokubei. This Tokubei was
the richest person in the district, and the mzt-
raosa, headman, of the village. In most
or
matters he was fortunate but he reached the
;

age of forty without knowing the happiness of

becoming a father. Therefore he and his wife,
in the affliction of their childlessness, addressed

many prayers to the divinity Fudo My 6 O, who

had a famous temple, called Saihoji, in Asami
mura.
At last their prayers were heard : the

39
 /^ wife of Tokubei gave birth to a daughter. The
f A child was very pretty and she received
;
the
name of Tsuyu. As the mother s milk was de

ficient, a milk-nurse, called O-Sode, was hired

for the little one.

O-Tsuyu grew up to be a very beauti

ful girl but at the age of fifteen she fell sick,
;

and the doctors thought that she was going to

die. In that time the nurse O-Sode, who loved

O-Tsuyu with a real mother s love, went to

the temple Saihoji, and fervently prayed to
Fud5-Sama on behalf of the girl. Every day,
for twenty-one days, she went to the temple and
prayed ;
and at the end of that time, O-Tsuyu
suddenly and completely recovered.
Then there was great rejoicing in the

house of Tokubei ;
and he gave a feast to all

his friends in celebration of the happy event.

But on the night of the feast the nurse O-Sode
was suddenly taken ill and on the following
;

morning, the doctor, who had been summoned

to attend her, announced that she was dying.
Then the family, in great sorrow,
gathered about her bed, to bid her farewell.
But she said to them :

It is time that I should tell you

"

something which you do not know. My prayer

has been heard. I besought Fudo-Sama that I

40
might be permitted to die in the place of T^
O-Tsuyu and this great favor has been granted
;

me. Therefore you must not grieve about my

"

death. But I have one request to make.

. . . Ct/C
I promised Fudo-Sama that I would have a
cherry-tree planted in the garden of Saihoji,
for a thank-offering and a commemoration. Now
I shall not be able myself to plant the tree
there : must beg that you will fulfill that
so I
vow for me. Good-bye, dear friends
. . . and ;

remember that I was happy to die for O-Tsuyu s

sake."

After the funeral of O-Sode, a young

cherry-tree, the finest that could be found,
was planted in the garden of Saihoji by the
parents of O-Tsuyu. The tree grew and flour
ished and on the sixteenth day of the second
;

month of the following year, the anniversary

of O-Sode s death, it blossomed in a wonder

ful way. So it continued to blossom for two

hundred and fifty-four years, always upon the

sixteenth day of the second month ;
and its

flowers, pink and white, were like the nipples of

a woman s breasts, bedewed with milk. And
the people called it Ubazakura, the Cherry-tree
of the Milk-Nurse.
 IT had been ordered that the execution
should take place in the garden of the yashiki.
So the man was taken there, and made to kneel
clown in a wide sanded space crossed by a line
of tobi-iski, or stepping-stones, such as
you may
still Japanese landscape-gardens. His
see in
arms were bound behind him. Retainers brought
water in buckets, and rice-bags filled with peb
bles and they packed the rice-bags round the
;

kneeling man, so wedging him in that he

could not move. The master came, and observed
the arrangements. He found them satisfactory,
and made no remarks.

45
 Suddenly the condemned man cried
out to him :

"

Honored Sir, the fault for which I

have been doomed I did not wittingly commit.
It was only my very great stupidity which
caused the Having been born stupid, by
fault.

reason of my Karma, I could not always help

making mistakes. But to kill a man for being
stupid is wrong, and that wrong will be re
paid. So surely as you kill me, so surely shall
I be avenged ;
out of the resentment that
you provoke will come the vengeance ;
and evil
will be rendered for evil." . . .

If any person be killed while feeling

strong resentment, the ghost of that person

will be able to take vengeance upon the killer.

This the samurai knew. He replied very gently,

almost caressingly :

"We shall allow

you to frighten us
as much as you please after you are dead.
But it is difficult to believe that
you mean what
you Will you try to give us some sign of
say.
your great resentment after your head has
been cut
"

off ?

"Assuredly I will," answered the

man.
"Very well," said the samurai, draw

ing his long sword am now going to cut

;
"I

off your head. Directly in front of

you there is
46
 a stepping-stone. After your head has been $&%
cuttry to bite the stepping-stone. If your
off,

angry ghost can help you to do that, some of

us may be frightened. Will you try to . . .

bite the stone?"

"
"

I will bite it ! cried the man, in

great anger, "I will bite it 1 I will bite

"

-
There was a flash, a swish, a crunch
ing thud the bound body bowed over the
:

rice sacks, two long blood-jets pumping from

the shorn neck; and the head rolled upon
the sand. Heavily toward the stepping-stone
it rolled:
then, suddenly bounding, it caught
the upper edge of the stone between its teeth,

clung desperately for a moment, and dropped

inert.

None spoke ;
but the retainers stared
in hcrror at their master. He seemed to be
quite unconcerned. He merely held out his
sword to the nearest attendant, who, with a
wooden dipper, poured water over the blade
from haft to point, and then carefully wiped the
steel several times with sheets of soft paper.
. . . And thus ended the ceremonial part of the
incident.

For months thereafter, the retainers

and the domestics lived in ceaseless fear of

47
ghostly visitation. None of them doubted that
the promised vengeance would come and their ;

constant terror caused them to hear and to see

much that did not exist. They became afraid
of the sound of the wind in thebamboos,
afraid even of the stirring of shadows in the
garden. At last, after taking counsel together,
they decided to petition their master to have
a >SV-<z/h-service performed on behalf of the
vengeful spirit.
"

Quite unnecessary," the samurai

said, when his chief retainer had uttered the
general wish. ..." I understand that the de
sire of a dying man for revenge may be a cause

for fear. But in this case there is nothing to

fear."

The retainer looked at his master be

seechingly, but hesitated to ask the reason of

this alarming confidence.
Oh, the reason
"

is simple enough,"

declared the samurai, divining the unspoken

doubt. Only the very last intention of that
"

fellow could have been dangerous and when I ;

challenged him to give me the sign, I diverted

his mind from the desire of revenge. He died
with the set purpose of biting the stepping-
stone and that purpose he was able to accom
;

plish, but nothing else. All the rest he must

have forgotten. ... So you need not feel any
further anxiety about the matter."
And indeed the dead man gave no
more trouble. Nothing at all happened.

49
J3EU,
 BEU.

EIGHT centuries ago, the priests of

Mugenyama, in the province of Totomi, wanted

a big bell for their temple ;
and they asked the
women of their parish to help them by contrib
uting old bronze mirrors for bell-metal.
[
Even to-day, in the courts of certain
Japanese temples, you may see heaps of old
bronze mirrors contributed for such a purpose.
The largest collection of this kind that I ever
saw was in the court of a temple of the Jodo
sect, at Hakata, in Kyushu : the mirrors had
53
 been given for the making of a bronze statue
f^
Jt of Amida, thirty-three feet high.]

There was at that time a young

woman, a farmer s wife, living at Mugenyama,
who presented her mirror to the temple, to be
used for bell-metal. But afterwards she much
regretted her mirror. She remembered things
that her mother had told her about it and she ;

remembered that it had belonged, not only to

her mother but to her mother s mother and
grandmother and she remembered some happy
;

smiles which it had reflected. Of course, if she

could have offered the priests a certain sum of

money in place of the mirror, she could have

asked them to give back her heirloom. But
she had not the money necessary. Whenever she
went to the temple, she saw her mirror lying
in the court-yard, behind a railing, among hun
dreds of other mirrors heaped there together.
She knew it by the Sho-Chiku-Bai in relief on
the back of it, those three fortunate em
blems of Pine, Bamboo, and Plumflower, which
delighted her baby-eyes when her mother first
showed her the mirror. She longed for some
chance to steal the mirror, and hide it, that
she might thereafter treasure it always. But the
chance did not come and she became very un
;

happy, felt as if she had foolishly given away

54
a part of her life. She thought about the old

saying that a mirror is the Soul of a Woman

(a saying mystically expressed, by the Chinese *
character for Soul, upon the backs of many
bronze mirrors), and she feared that it was
true in weirderways than she had before im
agined. But she could not dare to speak of her

pain to anybody.

Now, when all the mirrors contributed

for the Mugenyama bell had been sent to the
foundry, the bell-founders discovered that there
was one mirror among them which would not
melt. Again and again they tried to melt it ;

but it
Evidently the
resisted all their efforts.
woman who had given that mirror to the temple
must have regretted the giving. She had not
presented her offering with all her heart and ;

therefore her selfish soul, remaining attached to

the mirror, kept it hard and cold in the midst
of the furnace.
Of course everybody heard of the
matter, and everybody soon knew whose mirror
it was that would not melt. And because of
this public exposure of her secret fault, the poor
woman became very much ashamed and very
angry. And as she could not bear the shame,
she drowned herself, after having written a fare
well letter containing these words :

55
 "

When I am it will not be dif-

- ficult to melt the mirror
dead,
and to cast the bell.

But, to the person who breaks that bell by ring

ing it, great wealth will be given by the ghost
of me."

You must know that the last wish

or promise of anybody who dies in anger, or
performs suicide in anger, is generally supposed
to possess a supernatural force. After the dead
woman s mirror had been melted, and the bell
had been successfully cast, people remembered
the words of that letter. They felt sure that
the spirit of the writer would give wealth to the
breaker of the bell ; and, as soon as the bell
had been suspended in the court of the tem
ple, they went in multitude to ring it.
With
all their might and main they swung the ring

ing-beam ;
but the bell proved to be a good
bell, and it
bravely withstood their assaults.
Nevertheless, the people were not easily dis
couraged. Day after day, at all hours, they
continued to ring the bell furiously, caring
nothing whatever for the protests of the priests.
So the ringing became an affliction ;
and the
priests could not endure it ;
and they got rid of
the bell by rolling it down the hill into a swamp.

The swamp was deep, and swallowed it up,

and that was the end of the bell. Only its

56
legend remains ; and in that legend it is called

the Mugen-Kant, or Bell of Mugen.

Now there are queer old Japanese be

liefs inthe magical efficacy of a certain mental
operation implied, though not described, by the
verb nazoraeru. The word itself cannot be ade

quately rendered by any English word for it ;

is used in relation to many kinds of mimetic

magic, as well as in relation to the performance

of many religious acts of faith. Common mean
ings of nazoraeru, according to dictionaries, are
"

to imitate,"
"

to compare,"
"

to liken ; but~\ "

the esoteric meaning is to substitute, in imagi

nation, one object or action for another, so as to

bring about some magical or miraculous result.

For example you cannot afford to
:

build a Buddhist temple ;

but you can easily

lay a pebble before the image of the Buddha,

with the same pious feeling that would prompt

you to build a temple if

you were rich enough
to build one. The
merit of so offering the peb
ble becomes equal, or almost equal, to the merit
of erecting a temple. You cannot read the
. . .

six thousand seven hundred and seventy-one

57
 volumes of the Buddhist texts ;
but you can
ft make a revolving library, containing them, turn
round, by pushing it like a windlass. And if
you push with an earnest wish that you could
read the six thousand seven hundred and sev

enty-one volumes, you will acquire the same

merit as the reading of them would enable you
to gain. ... So much will perhaps suffice to

explain the religious meanings of nazoraeru.

The magical meanings could not all

be explained without a great variety of exam

ples ; but, for present purposes, the following
will serve. If you should make a little man of
straw, for the same reason that Sister Helen
made a little man of wax, and nail it, with
nails not less inches long, to some tree
than five

in a temple-grove at the Hour of the Ox,

and if the person, imaginatively represented by

that little straw man, should die thereafter in
atrocious agony, that would illustrate one
signification of nazoraeru. Or, . . . let us sup
pose that a robber has entered your house dur
ing the night, and carried away your valuables.
If you can discover the footprints of that rob

ber in your garden, and then promptly burn a

very large moxa on each of them, the soles of

the feet of the robber will become inflamed, and
will allow him no rest until he returns, of his
own accord, to put himself at your mercy.
58
That is another kind of mimetic magic ex- Cjfc^
pressed by the term nazoraeru. And a third f Jt
kind is illustrated by various legends of the
Mugen-Kane.

After the bell had been rolled into

the swamp, there was, of course, no more
chance of ringing it in such wise as to break it.

But persons who regretted this loss of oppor

tunity would strike and break objects imagina
tively substituted for the bell, thus hoping to

please the spirit of the owner of the mirror that

had made so much trouble. One of these per
sons was a woman called Umegae, famed in
Japanese legend because of her relation to Kaji-
wara Kagesue, a warrior of the Heike clan.
While the pair were traveling together, Kaji-
wara one day found himself in great straits for
want of money and Umegae, remembering
;

the tradition of the Bell of Mugen, took a basin

of bronze, and, mentally representing it to be
the bell, beat upon it until she broke it, cry
ing out, at the same time, for three hundred
pieces of gold. A
guest of the inn where the
pair were stopping made inquiry as to the cause
of the banging and the crying, and, on learning
the story the trouble, actually presented
of
Ume gae with three hundred ryo in gold. After
wards a song was made about Ume"gae s basin
59
 of bronze ;
and that song is sung by dancing-
ft girls even to this day :

Umgae no chozubachi tataft

O-kan6 ga naraba,
de>u

Mina San mi-uk6 wo

Sor tanomimasu.

["# by striking upon the wash-basin of

Umegae, I could make honorable money come to me^
then would I negotiate for the freedom of all my girl-
comrades"}

After this happening, the fame of the

Mugen-Kan6 became great ;
and many people
followed the
example Umegae, thereby of

hoping to emulate her luck. Among these folk

was a dissolute farmer who lived near Mugen-
yama, on the bank of the Ufgawa. Having
wasted his substance in riotous living, this
farmer made for himself, out of the mud in his

garden, a clay-model of the Mugen-Kane" and ;

he beat the clay-bell, and broke it, crying out

the while for great wealth.
Then, out of the ground before him,
rose up the figure of a white-robed woman, with

long loose-flowing hair, holding a covered jar.

And the woman said have come to an
: "I

swer your fervent prayer as it deserves to be

answered. Take, therefore, this jar."
So say-
60
ing, she put the jar into his hands, and disap- t
peared.
Into his house the happy man rushed,
to tell his wife the good news. He set down
in front of her the covered jar, which was
heavy, and they opened it together. And
they found that it was filled, up to the very
brim, with . . .

But, no ! I really cannot tell you with

what it was filled.

61
 ONCE, when Muso Kokushi, a priest
of the Zen sect, was journeying alone through
the province of Mino, he lost his way in a moun
tain-district where there was nobody to direct

him. For a long time he wandered about help

lessly ;
and he was beginning to despair of rind
ing shelter for the night, when he perceived, on
the top of a hill lighted by the last rays of the
sun, one of those little hermitages, called anjitsu,
which are built for solitary priests. It seemed
to be in a ruinous condition ; but he hastened
to it and found that it was inhabited by
eagerly,
an aged priest, from whom he begged the favor
of a night s lodging. This the old man harshly

65
 refused; but he directed Mus5 to a certain
f A hamlet, in the valley adjoining, where lodging
and food could be obtained.
Mus5 found his way to the hamlet,
which consisted of less than a dozen farm-cot

tages and he was kindly received at the dwell

;

ing of the headman. Forty or fifty persons

were assembled in the principal apartment, at
the moment of Muso s arrival ;
but he was
shown into a small separate room, where he was
promptly supplied with food and bedding. Be
ing very tired, he lay down to rest at an early
hour ; before midnight he was roused
but a little

from sleep by a sound of loud weeping in the

next apartment. Presently the sliding-screens
were gently pushed apart ;
and a young man,
carrying a lighted lantern, entered the room,
respectfully saluted him, and said :

"

Reverend
my painful duty
Sir, it is
to tellyou that I am now the responsible head
of this house. Yesterday I was only the eldest
son. But when you came here, tired as you
were, we did not wish that you should feel
embarrassed in any way therefore we did not :

tell you that father had died

only a few hours
before. The people whom you saw in the next
room are the inhabitants of this village :
they
allassembled here to pay their last respects to
the dead; and now they are going to another
66
village, about three miles off, for, by our
custom, no one of us may remain in this village
during the night after a death has taken place.
We make the proper offerings and prayers ;

then we go away, leaving the corpse alone.

Strange things always happen in the house where
a corpse has thus been left so we think that :

it will be better for

you to come away with us.
We can find you good lodging in the other vil
lage. But perhaps, as you are a priest, you have
no fear of demons or evil spirits ; and, if
you
are not afraid of being left alone with the body,

you will be very welcome to the use of this poor

house. However, I must tell you that nobody,
except a priest, would dare to remain here to
night."

Muso made answer :

For your kind intention and your

"

generous hospitality, I am deeply grateful. But

I am sorry that you did not tell me of your

father s death when I came for, though I ;

was a little tired, I certainly was not so tired that

I should have found any difficulty in doing my

duty as a priest. Had you told me, I could have

performed the service before your departure. As
it is, I shall
perform the service after you have
gone away ;
and I shallby the body until
stay
morning. I do not know what you mean by
your words about the danger of staying here
alone ;
but I am not afraid of ghosts or demons :

therefore please to feel no anxiety on my ac

count."

The young man appeared to be re

joiced by these assurances, and expressed his

gratitude in fitting words. Then the other mem
bers of the family, and the folk assembled in
the adjoining room, having been told of the

priest s kind promises, came to thank him,

after which the master of the house said :

"

Now, reverend Sir, much as we re

gret to leave you alone, we must bid you fare

well. By the rule of our village, none of us can

stay here after midnight. beg, kind Sir, We

that you will take every care of your honorable

body, while we are unable to attend upon you.

And if you happen to hear or see anything
strange during our absence, please tell us of the
matter when we return in the morning."

All then left the house, except the

priest, who went to the room where the dead
body was lying. The usual offerings had been
set before the corpse ;
and a small Buddhist
lamp tomyo was burning. The priest re
cited the service, and performed the funeral
ceremonies, after which he entered into med
itation. So meditating he remained through
several silent hours and there was no sound in
;

68
the deserted village. But, when the hush of the

night was at its deepest, there noiselessly en-

tered a Shape, vague and vast ; and in the same
moment Muso found himself without power to
move or speak. He saw that Shape lift the
corpse, as with hands, and devour it, more
quickly than a cat devours a rat, beginning
at the head, and eating everything : the hair
and the bones and even the shroud. And the
monstrous Thing, having thus consumed the
body, turned to the offerings, and ate them
also. Then it went away, as mysteriously as it

had come.

When the villagers returned next

morning, they found the priest awaiting them
at the door of theheadman s dwelling. All in
turn saluted him and when they had entered,
;

and looked about the room, no one expressed

any surprise at the disappearance of the dead
body and the offerings. But the master of the
house said to Muso :

"

Reverend
Sir, you have probably
seen unpleasant things during the night all of :

us were anxious about you. But now we are

very happy to find you alive and unharmed.

Gladly we would have stayed with you, if it had
been possible. But the law of our village, as I
told you last evening, obliges us to quit our
houses after a death has taken place, and to
leave the corpse alone. Whenever this law has
been broken, heretofore, some great misfortune
has followed. Whenever it is
obeyed, we find
that the corpse and the offerings disappear dur

ing our absence. Perhaps you have seen the

cause/
Then Muso told of the dim and awful
Shape that had entered the death-chamber to
devour the body and the offerings. No person
seemed to be surprised by his narration and ;

the master of the house observed :

"What
you have told us, reverend
Sir, agrees with what has been said about this
matter from ancient time."
Muso then inquired :

"Does not the priest on the hill

sometimes perform the funeral-service for your

"

dead ?
"What priest?" the young man
asked.
"The priest who yesterday evening
directed me to this village,"
answered Mus5.
I called at his anjitsu on the hill yonder. He
"

refused melodging, but told me the way here."

The listeners looked at each other, as
inastonishment and, after a ;
moment of silence,
the master of the house said :

"

Reverend Sir, there is no priest and

70
there is For the time of
no anjitsu on the hill.

many generations there has not been any resi

dent-priest in this neighborhood."
Muso said nothing more on the sub
ject ;
was
for evident that
it his kind hosts
supposed him to have been deluded by some
goblin. But after having bidden them farewell,
and obtained all necessary information as to his
road, he determined to look again for the her
mitage on the hill, and so to ascertain whether
he had really been deceived. He found the
dhjitsu without any difficulty; and, this time,
its aged occupant invited him to enter. When

he had done so, the hermit humbly bowed

down before him, exclaiming :
"

Ah ! I am
ashamed ! I am very much ashamed ! I am
exceedingly ashamed
"

You need not be ashamed for hav

"

ing refused me shelter," said Mus5. You "

directed me to the village yonder, where I was

very kindly treated ;

and I thank you for that
favor."

no man shelter," the

"I can give
recluse made answer and it is not for the
;
"

refusal that I am ashamed. I am ashamed only

that you should have seen me in my real shape,
for it was I who devoured the corpse and

the offerings last night before your eyes. . . .

Know, reverend Sir, that I am a jikininki,
l

an eater of human flesh. Have pity upon me,

and suffer me to confess the secret fault by
which I became reduced to this condition.
A
long, long time ago, I was a priest
"

in desolate region. There was no other

this

priest for many leagues around. So, in that

time, the bodies of the mountain-folk who died
used to be brought here, sometimes from
great distances, in order that I might repeat

over them the holy service. But I repeated the

service and performed the rites only as a matter
of business ;
I thought only of the food and
the clothes that my sacred profession enabled
me to gain. And because of this selfish impiety
I was reborn, immediately after my death, into
the state of a jikininki Since then I have been .

obliged to feed upon the corpses of the people

who die in this district :
every one of them I

must devour way in the that you saw last night.

. . .
Now, reverend Sir, let me beseech you to
perform a Se"gaki-service
2
forme help me by:

1
Literally, a man-eating goblin. The Japanese narrator

gives also the Sanscrit term, Rakshasa but this word is

"

;
"

quite as vague as jikininki, since there are many kinds of

Rakshasas. Apparently the word jikininki signifies here one
of the Baramon-Rasetsu-Gaki, forming the twenty-sixth
class of pretas enumerated in the old Buddhist books.
2
A Segaki -service is a special Buddhist service performed
on behalf of beings supposed to have entered into the con-

72
your prayers, I entreat you, so that I may
be soon able to escape from this horrible state
of existence." . . .

No sooner had the hermit uttered

this petition than he disappeared ;
and the her
mitage also disappeared at the same instant.
And Mus5 Kokushi found himself kneeling
alone in the high grass, beside an ancient and

moss-grown tomb, of the form called go-rin-

ishi* which seemed to be the tomb of a priest.

dition of gaki (pretas), or hungry spirits. For a brief account

of such a service, see my Japanese Miscellany.
i "five-circle
Literally, [or five-zone ] stone." A
funeral
monument consisting of five parts superimposed, each of
a different form, symbolizing the five mystic elements:
Ether, Air, Fire, Water, Earth.

73
I
 ON the Akasaka Road, in Tokyo,
there a slope called Kii-no-kuni-zaka,
is which
means the Slope of the Province of Kii. I do
not know why it is called the Slope of the Pro
vince of Kii. On one side of this slope you see
an ancient moat, deep and very wide, with high
green banks rising up to some place of gardens ;

and on the other side of the road extend

the long and lofty walls of an imperial palace.
Before the era of street-lamps and jinrikishas,
this neighborhood was very lonesome after
dark and belated pedestrians would go miles
;

out of their way rather than mount the Kii-

no-kuni-zaka, alone, after sunset.
77
 All because of a Mujina that used to
ft walk there.

The last man who saw the Mujina was

an old merchant of the Kyobashi quarter, who
died about thirty years ago. This is the story,
as he told it :

One night, at a late hour, he was hur

rying up the Kii-no-kuni-zaka, when he per
ceived a woman crouching by the moat, all

alone,and weeping bitterly. Fearing that she

intended to drown herself, he stopped to offer
her any assistance or consolation in his power.
She appeared to be a slight and graceful per
son, handsomely dressed and her hair was ar ;

ranged like that of a young girl of good family.

"

O-jochu," he exclaimed, approaching her,

O-jochu, do not cry like that
"

Tell me ! . . .

what the trouble is and if there be any way ;

to help you, I shall be glad to help you." (He

really meant what he said for he was a very ;

kind man.) But she continued to weep, hid

ing her face from him with one of her long

sleeves.
"

O-jochu," he said again, as gently

as he could, "

please, please listen to me !

. . . This is no place for a young lady at night !

2
O-jochu ("honorable damsel"), a polite form of ad
dress used in speaking to a young lady whom one does not
know.
Do not cry, I implore you only tell me how !

I may be of some help to you Slowly she !

"

rose up, but turned her back to him, and con-

tinued to moan and sob behind her sleeve. He
laid his hand lightly upon her shoulder, and
"

pleaded O-jochu
:
O-jochu O-jochu ! ! !

. .Listen to me, just for one little moment

. !

. .
O-jochu!
.
O-jochu Then that !" . . .

O-jochu turned round, and dropped her sleeve,

and stroked her face with her hand and the ;

man saw that she had no eyes or nose or mouth,

and he screamed and ran away.
Up Kii-no-kuni-zaka he ran and ran ;

and all was black and empty before him. On

and on he ran, never daring to look back and ;

at last he saw a lantern, so far away that it

looked like the gleam of a firefly ;
and he made
for it.proved to be only the lantern of an
It

itinerant j^tf-seller, who had set down his 1

stand by the road-side ;

but any light and any
human companionship was good after that ex

perience and he flung himself

;
down at the
feet of the J0&z-seller, crying out, "

Aa ! aa ! !

aa! //"...
Kort7 korf!" roughly exclaimed
"

the soba-man. Here what is the matter with

"

"

you ?
Anybody hurt you ?

i Soba is a preparation of buckwheat, somewhat resembling

vermicelli.

79
 "

No nobody hurt me," panted the

ft other,
"

only . . . Aa ! oaf" . . .

Only scared queried the

"

you?"
"

peddler, unsympathetically.
"

Robbers ?

Not robbers,
"

not robbers," gasped

the terrified man. ..." I saw ... I saw a
woman by the moat ;
and she showed me
. . . Aa / I cannot tell you what she showed
me!" ...
"

//// Was it
anything like THIS that
she showed you
"

? cried the soba-man, strok

ing his own face which therewith became

like unto an Egg. . . .
And, simultaneously,
the light went out.

80
 NEARLY hundred years ago there
five

was a samurai, named Isogai He fdazaemon

Taketsura, in the service of the Lord Kikuji, of
Kyushu. This Isogai had inherited, from many
warlike ancestors, a natural aptitude for military

exercises, and extraordinary strength.

While yet
a boy he had surpassed his teachers in the art
of swordsmanship, in archery, and in the use
of the spear, and had displayed all the ca
pacities of a daring and skillful soldier. After

wards, in the time of the Eikyo war, he so

distinguished himself that high honors were
bestowed upon him. But when the house of
1
The period of Eikyo lasted from 1429 to 1441.

83
Kikuji came to ruin, Isogai found himself with
out a master. He might then easily have ob
tained service under another daimyo but as he ;

had never sought distinction for his own sake

alone, and as his heart remained true to his
former lord, he preferred to give up the world.
So he cut off his hair, and became a traveling
priest, taking the Buddhist name of Kwairyo.
But always, under the koromo l of the
priest, Kwairyo kept warm within him the heart
of the samurai. As in other years he had

laughed at peril, so now also he scorned danger ;

and in all weathers and all seasons he journeyed

to preach the good Law in places where no
other priest would have dared to go. For that

age was an age of violence and disorder and ;

upon the highways there was no security for

the solitary traveler, even if he happened to be
a priest.

In the course of his first long journey,

Kwairyo had occasion to visit the province of
Kai. One evening, as he was traveling through
the mountains of that province, darkness over
took him in a very lonesome district, leagues
away from any village. So he resigned himself
to pass the night under the stars and having
;

found a suitable grassy spot, by the roadside,

1
The upper robe of a Buddhist priest is thus called.
84
he lay down there, and prepared to sleep. He fc
had always welcomed discomfort and even a ;

bare rock was for him a good bed, when no-

thing better could be found, and the root of a
pine-tree an excellent pillow. His body was
iron ;
and he never troubled himself about dews
or rain or frost or snow.

Scarcely had he lain down when a

man came along the road, carrying an axe and
a great bundle of chopped wood. This wood
cutter halted on seeing Kwairyo lying down,

and, after a moment of silent observation, said

to him in a tone of great surprise :

"What kind of a man can you be,

good Sir, that you dare to lie down alone in
such a place as this ? There are haunters. . .

about here, many of them. Are you not

"

afraid of Hairy Things ?

"My friend," cheerfully answered

Kwairyo,
"

I am only a wandering priest, a

Cloud-and-Water-Guest, as folks call it : Un-
sui-no-ryokaku. And I am not in the least afraid

of Hairy Things, if
you mean goblin-foxes,
or goblin-badgers, or any creatures of that kind.
As for lonesome places, I like them they are :

suitable for meditation. I am accustomed to

sleeping in the open air : and I have learned
never to be anxious about my life."

"

You must be indeed a brave man,

Sir Priest,"
the peasant responded, "to lie down
here This place has a bad name,
! a very bad
name. But, as the proverb has it, Kunshi aya-
yuki ni chikayorazu [ The superior man does
*

not needlessly expose himself to peril ] and I ;

must assure you, Sir, that it is very dangerous

to sleep here. Therefore, although my house
is only a wretched thatched hut, let me beg
of you to come home with me at once. In the

way of food, I have nothing to offer you but ;

there a roof at least, and you can sleep undef

is

it without risk."
He spoke earnestly and Kwairyo, lik;

ing the kindly tone of the man, accepted this

modest offer. The woodcutter guided him along
a narrow path, leading up from the main road
through mountain-forest. It was a rough and
dangerous path, sometimes skirting preci
pices, sometimes offering nothing but a net
work of slippery roots for the foot to rest upon,
- sometimes winding over or between masses
of jagged rock. But at last Kwairyo found him
self upon a cleared space at the top of a hill,
with a full moon shining overhead and he saw ;

before him a small thatched cottage, cheerfully

lighted from within. The woodcutter led him

to a shed at the back of the house, whither
water had been conducted, through bamboo-
pipes, from some neighboring stream and the ;

86
two men washed their feet. Beyond the shed
was a vegetable garden, and a grove of cedars
and bamboos and beyond the trees appeared
;

the glimmer of a cascade, pouring from some

loftier height, and swaying in the moonshine

like a long white robe.

As Kwairyo entered the cottage with

his guide, he perceived four persons men
and women warming their hands at a little
I
fire kindled in the ro of the principal apartment.

They bowed low to the priest, and greeted him

in the most respectful manner. Kwairyo won
dered that persons so poor, and dwelling in
such a solitude, should be aware of the polite
forms of greeting. These are good people," "

he thought to himself and they must have ;

"

been taught by some one well acquainted with

the rules of propriety." turning to his Then
host, the aruji>
or house-master, as the others
called him, Kwairyo said :
-
"

From the kindness of your speech,

and from the very politewelcome given me by
your household, I imagine that you have not

1
A sort of little fireplace, contrived in the floor of a room,
is thus described. The ro is usually a square shallow cavity,
lined with metal and half-filled with ashes, in which charcoal
is lighted.
always been a woodcutter. Perhaps you for-
merly belonged to one of the upper classes?
"

Smiling, the woodcutter answered :

Sir, you are not mistaken. Though

"

now living as you find me, I was once a person

of some distinction. My
story is the story of a
ruined ruined by my own fault. I used
life

to be in the service of a daimyo and my rank ;

in that service was not inconsiderable. But I

loved women and wine too well ;
and under the
influence of passion I acted wickedly. self My
ishness brought about the ruin of our house,
and caused the death of many persons. Retri
bution followed me ;
and I long remained a
fugitive in the land. Now I often pray that I

may be able to make some atonement for the

evil which I did, and to reestablish the ancestral
home. But I fear that I shall never find any
way of so doing. Nevertheless, I
try to over
come the karma of my errors by sincere repen

tance, and by helping, as far as I can, those

who are unfortunate."

Kwairyo was pleased by this announce

ment of good resolve and he said to the
;

:
aniji
"My friend, I have had occasion to
observe that men, prone to folly in their youth,

may in after years become very earnest in right

living. In the holy sutras it is written that those
88
strongest in wrong-doing can become, by power t^L*
of good resolve, the strongest in right-doing. I f Jt
do not doubt that you have a good heart ;
and
I hope that better fortune will come to you.

To-night I shall recite the sutras for your sake,

and pray that you may obtain the force to over
come the karma of any past errors."
With these assurances, Kwairyo bade
the aruji good-night and his host showed him
;

to a very small side-room, where a bed had been

made ready. Then all went to sleep except the
priest, who began to read the sutras by the
light of a paper lantern. Until a late hour he
continued to read and pray then he opened
:

a window in his little sleeping-room, to take a

last look at the landscape before lying down.
The night was beautiful there was no cloud in
:

the sky ;
there was no wind ;
and the strong
moonlight threw down sharp black shadows
of foliage, and glittered on the dews of the
garden. Shrillings of crickets and bell-insects
made a musical tumult ;
and the sound of the
neighboring cascade deepened with the night.
Kwairyo felt thirsty as he listened to the noise
of the water and, remembering the bamboo
;

aqueduct at the rear of the house, he thought

that he could go there and get a drink without

disturbing the sleeping household. Very gently

he pushed apart the sliding-screens that sepa-
80
rated his room from the main apartment and ;

he saw, by the light of the lantern, five recum

bent bodies without heads !

For one instant he stood bewildered,

imagining a crime. But in another moment
he perceived that there was no blood, and that
the headless necks did not look as if
they had
been cut. Then he thought to himself :-
"

Either this is an illusion made by goblins, or

I have been lured into the dwelling of a Rokuro-
Kubi. ... In the book Soshinki it is written
that if one find the body of a Rokuro-Kubi with
out its head, and remove the body to another
place, the head will never be able to join itself

again to the neck. And the book further says

that when the head comes back and finds that
its
body has been moved, it will strike itself
upon the floor three times, bounding like a
ball, and will pant as in great fear, and pre
sently die. Now, if these be Rokuro-Kubi, they
mean me no good ;
so I shall be justified in

following the instructions of the book." . . .

He seized the body of the aruji by

the feet, pulled it to the window, and pushed it
out. Then he went to the back-door, which he
found barred ;
and he surmised that the heads
had made their exit through the smoke-hole in
the roof, which had been left open. Gently un

barring the door, he made his way to the gar-

90
den, and proceeded with all possible caution to
the grove beyond it. He heard voices talking
in the grove and he went in the direction of
;

the voices, stealing from shadow to shadow,

until he reached a good hiding-place. Then,
from behind a trunk, he caught sight of the
heads, all five of them, flitting about, and

chatting as they flitted. They were eating

worms and which they found on the
insects

ground or among the trees. Presently the head

of the aruji stopped eating and said :

"

Ah, that traveling priest who came

to-night ! how fat all his body is ! When we
shall have eaten him, our bellies will be well
filled. ... I was foolish to talk to him as I did ;

it
only set him to reciting the sutras on behalf
of my soul ! To go near him while he is reciting
would be difficult ;
and we cannot touch him so
long as he is
praying. But as it is now nearly
morning, perhaps he has gone to sleep. . . .

Some one of you go to the house and see what

the fellow is doing."

Another head the head of a young

woman immediately rose up and flitted to the
house, lightly as a bat. After a few minutes
it came back, and cried out
huskily, in a tone of
great alarm :

That traveling priest is not in the

"

house ;
he is gone But that is not the worst
!
of the matter. He
has taken the body of our

aruji ;
and I do not know where he has put it."

At this announcement the head of

the aruji distinctly visible in the moonlight
assumed a frightful aspect : its eyes opened
monstrously ;
its hair stood up bristling ;
and
its teeth gnashed. Then a cry burst from its

lips ;
and weeping tears of rage it ex
claimed :

body has been moved, to

Since my
"

rejoin it is not possible Then I must die ! !

. . And all through the work of that priest

. !

Before I die I will get at that priest ! I will

tear him ! I will devour him ! . . .And there

he is behind that tree !
hiding behind
that tree! See him! the fat coward !" . . .

In the same moment the head of the

aruji,followed by the other four heads, sprang

at Kwairyo. But the strong priest had already
armed himself by plucking up a young tree ;

and with that tree he struck the heads as they

came, knocking them from him with tremen
dous blows. Four of them fled away. But the
head of the aruji, though battered again and
again, desperately continued to bound at the
priest, and at last caught him by the left sleeve
of his Kwairyo, however, as quickly
robe.

gripped the head by its topknot, and repeatedly

struck it. It did not release its hold but it ;

92
uttered a long moan, and thereafter ceased to tfe
struggle. It was dead. But its teeth still held
the sleeve and, for all his great strength,
;

Kwairyo could not force open the jaws.

With the head still hanging to his
sleeve he went back to the house, and there
caught sight of the other four Rokuro-Kubi
squatting together, with their bruised and bleed
ing heads reunited to their bodies. But when
they perceived him at the back-door all screamed,
The and fled, through
"
"

the priest
priest ! !

the other doorway, out into the woods.

Eastward the sky was brightening;
day was about to dawn; and Kwairyo knew
that the power of the goblins was limited to
the hours of darkness. He looked at the head

clinging to his sleeve, its face all fouled with

blood and foam and clay ;
and he laughed aloud
as he thought to himself :
"

What a miyagt !
After which he
"

the head of a goblin !

gathered together belongings, and

his few
leisurely descended the mountain to continue
his journey.

Right on he journeyed, until he came

to Suwa in Shinano and into the main street of
;

A
present made to friends or to the household on re
i

turning from a journey is thus called. Ordinarily, of course,

the miyagt consists of something produced in the locality to
which the journey has been made : this is the point of

Kwairyo s jest.

93
Suwa he solemnly strode, with the head dan-
gling at his elbow. Then women and
fainted,
children screamed and ran away ;
and there was
a great crowding and clamoring until the toritt

(as the police of those days were called) seized

the priest, and took him to jail. For they sup

posed the head to be the head of a murdered

man who, in the moment of being killed, had
caught the murderer s sleeve in his teeth. As
for Kwairyd, he only smiled and said nothing
when they questioned him. So, after having
passed a night in prison, he was brought before
the magistrates of the district. Then he was
ordered to explain how he, a priest, had been
found with the head of a man fastened to his
sleeve, and why he had dared thus shamelessly
to parade his crime in the sight of the people.

Kwairyo laughed long and loudly at

these questions and then he said ;
:

"

Sirs, I did not fasten the head to

my sleeve : it fastened itself there much

against my will. And I have not committed
any crime. For this is not the head of a man ;

it isthe head of a goblin andj if I caused ;

the death of the goblin, I did not do so by

any shedding of blood, but simply by taking

the precautions necessary to assure my own
safety."
. . . And he proceeded to relate the
whole of the adventure, bursting into another
94
hearty laugh as he told of his encounter with the
five heads.

But the magistrates did not laugh.

They judged him to be a hardened criminal,
and his story an insult to their intelligence.
Therefore, without further questioning, they
decided to order his immediate execution, all

of them except one, a very old man. This aged

officer had made no remark during the trial ;

but, after having heard the opinion of his col

leagues, he rose up, and said :

"

Let us first examine the head care

fully ;
for this, I think, has not yet been done.
If the priest has spoken truth, the head itself
should bear witness for him. Bring the head . .

"

here !

So the head, still

holding in its teeth
the koromo that had been stripped from Kwai-

ryo s shoulders, was put before the judges. ,The

old man turned it round and round, carefully
examined it, and discovered, on the nape of its

neck, several strange red characters. He called

the attention of his colleagues to these, and
also bade them observe that the edges of the
neck nowhere presented the appearance of hav
ing been cut by any weapon. On the contrary,
the line of severance was smooth as the line
at which a falling leaf detaches itself from the
stem. . . Then said the elder :

95
 "

I am quite sure that the priest told

us nothing but the truth. This is the head of a
Rokuro-Kubi. In the book Nan-ho- i-butsu-shi
it is written that certain red
characters can
always be found upon the nape of the neck of
a real Rokuro-Kubi. There are the characters :

you can see for yourselves that they have not

been painted. Moreover, it is well known that
such goblins have been dwelling in the moun
Kai from very ancient
tains of the province of
time. . . . But you, Sir,"
he exclaimed, turning
to Kwairyo, what
"

sort of sturdy priest may

you be? Certainly you have given proof of a
courage that few priests possess and you have ;

the air of a soldier rather than of a priest. Per

haps you once belonged to the samurai-class ?
"

have guessed rightly,

"You
Sir,"

Kwairyo responded. Before becoming a "

priest,
I long followed the profession of arms and in ;

those days I never feared man or devil. My

name then was Isogai He"i dazaemon Taketsura,
of Kyushu : there may be some among you
who remember it."

At the utterance of that name, a mur

mur of admiration filled the court-room for ;

there were many present who remembered it.

And Kwairyo immediately found himself among
friends instead of judges, friends anxious to

prove their admiration by fraternal kindness.

With honor they escorted him to the residence
of the daimyo,who welcomed him, and feasted
him, and made him a handsome present before
allowing him to depart. When Kwairyo left
Suwa, he was as happy as any priest is per
mitted to be in this transitory world. As for
the head, he took it with him, jocosely insist
ing that he intended it for a miyagt.

And now it
only remains to tell what
became of the head.

A
day or two after leaving Suwa,
Kwairyo met with a robber, who stopped him
in a lonesome place, and bade him strip.

Kwairyo at once removed his koromo, and of

fered it to the robber, who then first perceived
what was hanging to the sleeve. Though brave,
the highwayman was startled he dropped the :

garment, and sprang back. Then he cried out :

"

You
what kind of a priest are you ?
!

Why, you are a worse man than I am It is !

true that I have killed people but I never ;

walked about with anybody s head fastened to

my sleeve. . . .
Well, Sir priest, I suppose we
are of the same calling ;
and I must say that
I admire you I . . . Now that head would be
of use to me : I could frighten people with it.
Will you sell it ? You can have my robe in ex-
97
change for your koromo ; and I will give you
five ryo for the head."

Kwairyo answered :

I shall let you have the head and

"

the robe if you insist but I must tell you that;

this is not the head of a man. It is a goblin s

head. So, if you buy it, and have any trouble

in consequence, please to remember that you

were not deceived by me."

"

What
a nice priest you are ex !
"

claimed the robber. You kill men, and jest "

about it ! ... But I am really in earnest.

Here is
my robe ;
and here is the money ;

and let me have the head. . . . What is the

"

use of joking ?

"

Take the thing,"

said Kwairyo.
"

was not joking. The only joke if there be

any joke at all is that you are fool enough

to pay good money for a goblin s head." And

Kwairyo, loudly laughing, went upon his way.

Thus the robber got the head and the

koromo ; and for some time he played goblin-
priest upon the highways.
But, reaching the
neighborhood of Suwa, he there learned the
real history of the head and he then became ;

afraid that the spirit of the Rokuro-Kubi might

give him trouble. So he made up his mind to
take back the head to the place from which it

98
had come, and to bury it with its body. He r*
found his way to the lonely cottage in the
mountains of Kai but nobody was there, and
;

he could not discover the body. Therefore he

buried the head by itself, in the grove behind
the cottage and he had a tombstone set up
;

over the grave and he caused a Segaki-service

;

to be performed on behalf of the spirit of the

Rokuro-Kubi. And that tombstone known
as the Tombstone of the Rokuro-Kubi may
be seen (at least so the Japanese story-teller

declares) even unto this day.

99
 A LONG time ago, in the province of
Tamba, there lived a rich merchant named Ina-
muraya Gensuke. He had a daughter called
O-Sono. As she was very clever and pretty, he
thought it would be a pity to let her grow up
with only such teaching as the country-teachers
could give her so he sent her, in care of some
:

trusty attendants, to Kyoto, that she might be

trained in the polite accomplishments taught to
the ladies of the capital. After she had thus
been educated, she was married to a friend of
her father s family a merchant named Na-

garaya ;
and she lived happily with him for

nearly four years. They had one child, a

103
% boy. But O-Sono fell ill and died, in the fourth
^
year after her marriage.
On the night after the funeral of O-

Sono, her little son said that his mamma had

come back, and was in the room upstairs. She
had smiled at him, but would not talk to him :

so he became afraid, and ran away. Then some

of the family went upstairs to the room which
had been O-Sono s ;
and they were startled
to see,by the light of a small lamp which
had been kindled before a shrine in that room,
the figure of the dead mother. She appeared
as if standing in front of a tansu, or chest of

drawers, that still contained her ornaments and

her wearing-apparel. Her head and shoulders
could be very distinctly seen ;
but from the
waist downwards the figure thinned into invisi
it was like an imperfect reflection of
bility ;

her, and transparent as a shadow on water.

Then the folk were afraid, and left
the room. Below they consulted together and ;

the mother of O-Sono s husband said A :

"

woman is fond of her small things and O-Sono ;

was much attached to her belongings. Perhaps

she has come back to look at them. Many dead

persons will do that, unless the things be

given to the parish-temple. If we present O-

Sono s robes and girdles to the temple, her
spirit will probably find rest."

104
 It was agreed that this should be done C>t

as soon as possible. So on the following morn

ing the drawers were emptied and all of O- ;

Sono ornaments and dresses were taken to the

s

temple. But she came back the next night, and

looked at the tansu as before. And she came
back also on the night following, and the night
after that, and every night and the house ;

became a house of fear.

The mother of O-Sono s husband then

went to the parish-temple, and told the chief

priest all that had happened, and asked for

ghostly counsel. The temple was a Zen temple ;

and the head-priest was a learned old man,
known Daigen Osho. He said
as There must "

be something about which she is anxious, in or

near that tansu But we emptied all the
"

drawers," replied the old woman ;

"

there is

nothing in the tansu"

"

Well," said Daigen

to-night I shall go to your house, and
"

Osho,
keep watch in that room, and see what can be
done. You must give orders that no person
shall enter the room while I am watching, un
less I call."

After sundown, Daigen Osh5 went to

the house, and found the room made ready for
him. He remained there alone, reading the
105
sutras ;
and nothing appeared until after the
Hour of the Rat. Then the figure of O-Sono

suddenly outlined itself in front of the tanm.

Her face had a wistful look and she kept her ;

eyes fixed upon the tansu.

The priest uttered the holy formula
prescribed in such cases, and then, addressing
the figure by the kaimyo 2 of O-Sono, said :

"

I have come here in order to help you. Per

haps in that tansu there is something about
which you have reason to feel anxious. Shall I
try to find it for you ? The shadow appeared "

to give assent by a slight motion of the head ;

and the priest, rising, opened the top drawer.

It was empty. Successively he opened the
second, the third, and the fourth drawer he ;

searched carefully behind them and beneath

them ;
he carefully examined the interior of
the chest. He found nothing. But the figure
remained gazing as wistfully as before. What "

can she want ? thought the priest. Suddenly

"

1
The Hour of the Rat (Nt-no-Koku}, according to the
old Japanese method of reckoning time, was the first hour.
It corresponded to the time between our midnight and two
o clock in the morning for the ancient Japanese hours were
;

each equal to two modern hours.

2
Kaimyo, the posthumous Buddhist name, or religious
name, given to the dead. Strictly speaking, the meaning of
the word is sila-name. (See my paper entitled The Litera
"

ture of the Dead "

in Exotics and Retrospectives.}

106
it occurred to him that there might be some
thing hidden under the paper with which the
drawers were lined. He removed the lining of
the first drawer :
nothing He removed the
!

lining of the second and third drawers still :

nothing. But under the lining of the lowermost

drawer he found Is this the thing a letter. "

about which you have been troubled ? he asked.

"

The shadow of the woman turned toward him,

her faint gaze fixed upon the letter. Shall "

burn he asked. She bowed be

"

I it for you ?

fore him. "It shall be burned in the temple

this very morning," he promised and no one ;
"

shall read it, except myself."

The figure smiled
and vanished.

Dawn was breaking as the priest de

scended the stairs, to find the family waiting

anxiously below.
"

Do not be anxious," he said

to them: "she will not appear again."
And
she never did.
The
was burned. It was a love-
letter

letter written O-Sono in the time of her

to
studies at Kyoto. But the priest alone knew
what was in it and the secret died with him.
;

107
ruKJ-OATAJA
 ruKj 0/fNA

IN a village of Musashi Province, there

lived two woodcutters :Mosaku and Minokichi.
At the time of which I am speaking, Mosaku
was an old man and Minokichi, his apprentice,
;

was a lad of eighteen years. Every day they

went together to a forest situated about five
miles from their village. On the way to that
forest there is a wide river to cross and there
;

isa ferry-boat. Several times a bridge was built

where the ferry is ; but the bridge was each
time carried away by a flood. No common
bridge can resist the current there when the
river rises.

Mosaku and Minokichi were on their

in
way home, one very cold evening, when a great
snowstorm overtook them. They reached the
ferry and they found that the boatman had
;

gone away, leaving his boat on the other side of

the river. It was no day for swimming and ;

the woodcutters took shelter in the ferryman s

hut, thinking themselves lucky to find any

shelter at all. There was no brazier in the hut,

nor any place in which to make a fire it was :

only a two-mat hut, with a single door, but no

*

window. Mosaku and Minokichi fastened the

door, and lay down to rest, with their straw
rain-coats over them. At first they did not feel

very cold and they thought that the storm

;

would soon be over.

The old man almost immediately fell
asleep but the boy, Minokichi, lay awake a
;

long time, listening to the awful wind, and the

continual slashing of the snow against the door.
The river was roaring
and the hut swayed and
;

creaked like a junk at sea. It was a terrible

storm and the air was every moment becoming
;

colder and Minokichi shivered under his rain

;

coat. But at last, in spite of the cold, he too

fell asleep.
He was awakened by a showering of
snow in his face. The door of the hut had been
t
1
That is to say, with a floor-surface of about six feet

square.
112
forced open and, by the snow-light (yuki-
;

akari), he saw a woman in the room, a wo

man all in white. She was bending above Mo- <^

saku, and blowing her breath upon him and ;

her breath was like a bright white smoke. Al

most in the same moment she turned to Mino-
kichi,and stooped over him. He tried to cry
out, but found that he could not utter any
sound. The white woman bent down over him,
lower and lower, until her face almost touched
him and he saw that she was very beautiful,
;

though her eyes made him afraid. For a

little time she continued to look at him ;
then
she smiled, and she whispered : "I intended
to treat you like the other man. But I cannot

help feeling some pity for you, because you

are so young. . . . You are a pretty boy, Mino-
kichi ;
and I will not hurt you now.
you But, if

ever tell
anybody even your own mother
about what you have seen this night, I shall
know it and then I will kill you.
;
Re . . .

member what I say

"

With these words, she turned from

him, and passed through the doorway. Then he
found himself able to move and he sprang up, ;

and looked But the woman was nowhere

out.
to be seen and the snow was driving furiously
;

into the hut. Minokichi closed the door, and

secured it
by fixing several billets of wood
against it. He wondered if the wind had blown
it open he thought that he might have been
;

only dreaming, and might have mistaken the

gleam of the snow-light in the doorway for the

figure of a white woman : but he could not be

sure. He called to Mosaku, and was frightened
because the old man did not answer. He put
out his hand in the dark, and touched Mosaku s
face, and found that it was ice ! Mosaku was
stark and dead. . . .

By dawn the storm was over ;

and
when the ferryman returned to his station, a
little he found Minokichi lying
after sunrise,
senseless beside the frozen body of Mosaku.
Minokichi was promptly cared for, and soon
came to himself but he remained a long time
;

ill from the effects of the cold of that terrible

night. He had been greatly frightened also by

the old man s death but he said nothing about
;

the vision of the woman in white. As soon as

he got well again, he returned to his calling,
going alone every morning to the forest, and
coming back at nightfall with his bundles of

wood, which his mother helped him to sell.

One
evening, in the winter of the
following year, as he was on his way home, he
overtook a girl who happened to be traveling
114
 by the same road. She was a tall, slim girl, very
good-looking; and she answered Minokichi s

greeting in a voice as pleasant to the ear as the <*)*

Then he walked beside

voice of a song-bird. CtxC
her and they began to talk. The girl said that
;

her name was O-Yuki that she had lately lost ;

both of her parents and that she was going to

;

Yedo, where she happened to have some poor

relations, who might help her to find a situation
as servant. felt charmed by
Minokichi soon
this strange girl and the more that he looked
;

at her, the handsomer she appeared to be. He

asked her whether she was yet betrothed and ;

she answered, laughingly, that she was free.

Then, in her turn, she asked Minokichi whether
he was married, or pledged to marry and he ;

told her that, although he had only a widowed

mother to support, the question of an honor "

"

able daughter-in-law had not yet been consid

ered, as he was very young. After these . . .

confidences, they walked on for a long while

without speaking but, as the proverb declares,
;

Ki ga artba, m mo kuchi hodo ni mono wo iu :

When the wish is there, the eyes can say as
"

much as the mouth."

By the time they reached
the village, they had become very much pleased
1
This name, signifying Snow," is not
"

uncommon. On
the subject of Japanese female names, see my paper in the
volume entitled Shadowing*.
with each other ;
and then Minokichi asked
O-Yuki to rest awhile at his house. After some
shy hesitation, she went there with him and ;

his mother made her welcome, and prepared a

warm meal for her. O-Yuki behaved so nicely
that Minokichi s mother took a sudden fancy to
her, and persuaded her to delay her journey to
Yedo. And the natural end of the matter was
that Yuki never went to Yedo at all. She re
mained in the house, as an "

honorable daughter-
in-law."

O-Yuki proved a very good daughter-

in-law. When Minokichi s mother came to die,
some five years later, her last words were
words of affection and praise for the wife of
her son. And O-Yuki bore Minokichi ten chil
dren, boys and girls, handsome children all

of them, and very fair of skin.

The country-folk thought O-Yuki a
wonderful person, by nature different from
themselves. Most of the peasant-women age
early but
; O-Yuki, even after having become
the mother of ten children, looked as young and
fresh as on the day when she had first come to
the village.

One night, after the children had

gone to sleep, O-Yuki was sewing by the light
116
of a paper lamp ;
and Minokichi, watching her,
|X
said:-
"To see you sewing there, with the

light on your face, makes me think of a strange

thing that happened when I was a lad of eigh
teen. I then saw somebody as beautiful and

white as you are now indeed, she was very

like you."
. . .

Without lifting her eyes from her

work, O-Yuki responded :

"

Tell me about her. . . . Where did

"

you see her ?

Then Minokichi told her about the

terrible night in the ferryman s hut, and
about the White Woman that had stooped above
him, smiling and whispering, and about the
silent death of old Mosaku. And he said :

Asleep or awake, that was the only

"

time that I saw a being as beautiful as you. Of

course, she was not a human being ;
and I was
afraid of her, very much afraid, but she
was so white ! .
Indeed, I have never been
. .

sure whether it was a dream that I saw, or the

Woman of the Snow." . . .

O-Yuki flung down her sewing, and

arose, and bowed above Minokichi where he sat,
and shrieked into his face :

"Itwas I I I ! Yukiit was! And

I told you then that I would kill you if
you ever
117
said one word about it ! . . . But for those chil-
dren asleep there, I would kill you this moment !

And now you had better take very, very good

care of them ;
for if ever they have reason to

complain of you, I will treat you as you de

serve I" . . .

Even as she screamed, her voice be

came thin, like a crying of wind ;
then she
melted into a bright white mist that spired to
the roof-beams, and shuddered away through
the smoke-hole. Never again was she
. . .

seen.

118
THte
 THte

IN the era of Bummei [1469-1486]

there was a young samurai called Tomotada in
the service ofHatakeyama Yoshimune, the Lord
of Noto. Tomotada was a native of Echizen ;

but at an early age he had been taken, as page,

into the palace of the daimyo of Noto, and had
been educated, under the supervision of that
prince, for the profession of arms. As he grew
up, he proved himself both a good scholar and
a good and continued to enjoy the favor
soldier,
of his prince. Being gifted with an amiable
121
 character, a winning address,and a very hand
ft some person, he was admired and much liked
by his samurai-comrades.
When Tomotada was about twenty
years old, he was sent upon a private mission
to Hosokawa Masamoto, the great daimyo of

Kyoto, a kinsman of Hatakeyama Yoshimune.

Having been ordered to journey through Echizen,
the youth requested and obtained permission to

pay a visit, on the way, to his widowed mother.

It was the coldest period of the year
when he started the country was covered with
;

snow ; and, though mounted upon a powerful

horse, he found himself obliged to proceed
slowly. The road which he followed passed
through a mountain-district where the settle
ments were few and far between and on the
;

second day of his journey, after a weary ride

of hours, he was dismayed to find that he could
not reach his intended halting-place until late in
the night. He had reason to be anxious ;
for
a heavy snowstorm came on, with an intensely
cold wind and the horse showed signs of ex
;

haustion. But, in that trying moment, Tomotada

unexpectedly perceived the thatched roof of a

cottage on the summit of a near hill, where
willow-trees were growing. With difficulty he

urged his tired animal to the dwelling and ;

he loudly knocked upon the storm-doors, which

122
had been closed against the wind. An old wo
man opened them, and cried out compassionately
at the sight of the handsome stranger :
"

Ah,
how pitiful ! a young gentleman traveling
alone in such weather ! . . .
Deign, young
master, to enter."

Tomotada dismounted, and after lead

ing his horse to a shed in the rear, entered the

cottage, where he saw an old man and a girl

warming themselves by a fire of bamboo splints.

They respectfully invited him to approach the

fireand the old folks then proceeded
;
to warm
some rice-wine, and to prepare food for the

traveler, whom they ventured to question in re

gard to his journey. Meanwhile the young girl
disappeared behind a screen. Tomotada had ob
served, with astonishment, that she was ex

tremely beautiful, though her attire was of

the most wretched kind, and her long, loose hair
in disorder. He
wondered that so handsome
a girl should be living in such a miserable and
lonesome place.
The old man said to him :

"Honored Sir, the next village is

far ;
and the snow is falling thickly. The wind
is
piercing and the road is very bad. There
;

fore, to proceed further this night would prob

ably be dangerous. Although this hovel is

123
unworthy of your presence, and although we
have not any comfort to offer, perhaps it were
safer to remain to-night under this miserable
roof. . . . We would take good care of your
horse."

Tomotada accepted this humble pro

posal, secretly glad of the chance thus af
forded him to see more of the young girl.

Presently a coarse but ample meal was set

before him and the girl came from behind the
;

screen, to serve the wine. She was now reclad,

in a rough but cleanly robe of homespun ;
and
her long, loose hair had been neatly combed and
smoothed. As she bent forward to fill his cup,
Tomotada was amazed to perceive that she was
incomparably more beautiful than any woman
whom he had ever before seen and there was ;

a grace about her every motion that astonished

him. But the elders began to apologize for her,
saying: our daughter, Aoyagi, has been
"

Sir,
1

brought up here, in the mountains, almost alone ;

and she knows nothing of gentle service. We

pray that you will pardon her stupidity and her
ignorance." Tomotada protested that he deemed

himself lucky to be waited upon by so comely

a maiden. He could not turn his eyes away
from her though he saw that his admiring
i The name signifies "Green Willow;"
though rarely
met with, it is still in use.

124
gaze made her blush and he left the wine ;
,C%
and food untasted before him. The mother
said :
"

Kind Sir, we very much hope that **\

you will try to eat and to drink a little,
though our peasant-fare is of the worst, as

you must have been chilled by that piercing

wind/ Then, to please the old folks, Tomotada
ate and drank as he could but the charm of ;

the blushing girl still grew upon him. He talked

with her, and found that her speech was sweet
as her face. Brought up in the mountains she
might have been but, in that case, her pa ;

rents must at some time have been persons of

high degree for she spoke and moved like a

;

damsel of rank. Suddenly he addressed her

with a poem which was also a question
inspired by the delight in his heart :

"

Tadzunetsuru,
Hana ka tot koso,
Hi wo kurase,
Akenu ni otoru
Akan sasuran ? "

[" Being on my way to pay a visit, Ifound

that which I took to be a flower : therefore here I
spend the day. . . .
Why, in the time before dawn,
the dawn-blush tint should glow that, indeed, I
know not"~\*

1
The poem may be read in two ways ;
several of the

125
 Without a moment s hesitation, she
ft answered him in these verses :

"

Izuru hi no
Honomeku iro wo
Waga sode ni
Tsutsumaba asu mo
Kimiya tomaran."

If with my sleeve I hide the faintfair color

["

of the dawning sun, then, perhaps, in the morning

J
my lord will remain"]

Then Tomotada knew that she ac

cepted his admiration and he was scarcely less ;

surprised by the art with which she had uttered

her feelings in verse, than delighted by the as
surance which the verses conveyed. He was
now certain that in all this world he could not
hope to meet, much less to win, a girl more
beautiful and witty than this rustic maid before

phrases having a double meaning. But the art of its con

would need considerable space to explain, and could
struction

scarcely interest the Western reader. The meaning which

Tomotada desired to convey might be thus expressed:
"

While journeying to visit my mother, I met with a being

lovely as a flower and for the sake of that lovely person, I
;

am passing the day here. Fair one, wherefore that dawn-

. . .

like blush before the hour of dawn? can it mean that you
love me ? "

1
Another reading is possible but ;
this one gives the sig
nification of the answer intended.
126
him and a voice in his heart seemed to cry out
;
\7r*
urgently, "Take the luck that the gods have
In short he was bewitched
"

put in your way !

bewitched to such a degree that, without

further preliminary, he asked the old people to

give him their daughter in marriage, telling

them, at the same time, his name and lineage,
and his rank in the train of the Lord of Noto.
They bowed down before him, with

many exclamations of grateful astonishment.

But, after some moments of apparent hesitation,
the father replied :

"

Honored master, you are a person

of high position, and likely to rise to still higher
things. Too great is the favor that you deign
to offer us ; indeed, the depth of our gratitude
therefor is not to be spoken or measured. But
this girl of ours, being a stupid country-girl of
vulgar birth, with no training or teaching of any
sort, it would be improper to let her become
the wife of a noble samurai. Even to speak of
such a matter is not right. . . .
But, since you
find the girl to your liking, and have conde
scended to pardon her peasant-manners and to
overlook her great rudeness, we do gladly pre
sent her to you, for an humble handmaid. Deign,

therefore, to act hereafter in her regard accord

ing to your august pleasure."

127
 Ere morning the storm had passed ;

A
f/^ and day broke through a cloudless east. Even
if the sleeve of Aoyagi hid from her lover s eyes

the rose-blush of that dawn, he could no longer

tarry. But neither could he resign himself to

part with the girl and, when everything had
;

been prepared for his journey, he thus addressed

her parents :

may seem thankless to

"

Though it

ask for more than I have already received, I

must once again beg you to give me your daugh

ter for wife. It would be difficult for me to

separate from her now and as she is willing to ;

accompany me, you permit, I can take her

if

with me as she is. If you will give her to me,

I shall ever cherish you as parents. And, . . .

in the meantime, please to accept this poor ac

knowledgment of your kindest hospitality."

So saying, he placed before his hum
ble host a purse of gold ryo. But the old man,
after many prostrations, gently pushed back the
gift, and said :

master, the gold would be of

"Kind

no use to us and you will probably have need

;

of it during your long, cold journey. Here we

buy nothing and we could not spend so much

;

money upon ourselves, even if we wished. . . .

As for the girl, we have already bestowed her

128
as a free gift she belongs to you therefore
; :

not necessary to ask our leave to take her

it is

away. Already she has told us that she hopes

to accompany you, and to remain your servant 5^
so long as you may be willing to endure her
presence. We are only too happy to know that
you deign to accept her and we pray that you ;

will not trouble yourself on our account. In

this place we could not provide her with proper

clothing, much less with a dowry. Moreover,

being old, we should in any event have to sepa
rate from her before long. Therefore it is
very
fortunate that you should be willing to take her
with you now."

It was in vain that Tomotada tried to

persuade the old people to accept a present he :

found that they cared nothing for money. But

he saw that^ they were really anxious to trust
their daughter s fate to his hands and he there ;

fore decided to take her with him. So he placed

her upon his horse, and bade the old folks fare
well for the time being, with many sincere ex

pressions of gratitude.
"

Honored Sir,"
the father made
we, and not you, who have reason
"

answer, it is

for gratitude. We are sure that you will be

kind to our girl and we have no fears for her
;

sake." . . .

129
ff ,
^. [Here, in the Japanese original, there
fA is a queer break in the natural course of the
narration, which therefrom remains curiously in
consistent. Nothing further is said about the
mother of Tomotada, or about the parents of
Aoyagi, or about the daimyd of Noto. Evidently
the writer wearied of his work at this point,
and hurried the story, very carelessly, to its
startling end. I am not able to supply his omis

sions, or to repair his faults of construction ; but

I must venture to put in a few explanatory de
tails, without which the rest of the tale would
not hold together. It appears that Tomo
. . .

tada rashly took Aoyagi with him to Kyoto, and

so got into trouble ; but we are not informed as
to where the couple lived afterwards?^

. Now a samurai was not allowed

. .

to marry without the consent of his lord and ;

Tomotada could not expect to obtain this sanc

tion before his mission had been accomplished.
He had reason, under such circumstances, to
fear that the beauty of Aoyagi might attract

dangerous attention, and that means might be

devised of taking her away from him. In Kyoto
he therefore tried to keep her hidden from curi
ous eyes. But a retainer of the Lord Hosoakwa
one day caught sight of Aoyagi, discovered her
relation to Tomotada, and reported the mat-

ISO
ter to the daimyo. Thereupon the daimyo a
young prince, and fond of pretty faces gave ft
orders that the girl should be brought to the

palace and she was taken thither at once,

;

without ceremony.

Tomotada sorrowed unspeakably but ;

he knew himself powerless. He was only an

humble messenger in the service of a far-off
daimyo and for the time being he was at the
;

mercy of a much more powerful daimyo, whose

wishes were not to be questioned. Moreover
Tomotada knew that he had acted foolishly,
that he had brought about his own misfortune,
by entering into a clandestine relation which
the code of the military class condemned.
There was now but one hope for him, a de

sperate hope that Aoyagi might

: be able and
willing to escape and to flee with him. After
long reflection, he resolved to try to send her
a letter. The attempt would be
dangerous, of
course :
any writing sent to her might find its
way to the hands of the daimyo and to send a
;

any inmate of the palace was an

love-letter to

unpardonable offense. But he resolved to dare

the risk and, in the form of a Chinese poem,
;

he composed a letter which he endeavored to

have conveyed to her. The poem was written
with only twenty-eight characters. But with
 those twenty-eight characters he was able to .

If express all the depth of his passion, and to

r
-
suggest all the pain of his loss :

Koshi 5-son gojin wo ou ;

Ryokuju namida wo tarte rakin wo hitataru ;

Komon hitotabi irite fukaki koto umi no gotoshi ;

Kor6 yori shoro kore rojin.

[Closely, closely the youthful prince now

follows after the gem-bright maid ;
The tears of the fair one, falling, have
moistened all her robes.
But the august lord, having once become
enamored of her the depth of his longing is like the

depth of the sea.

Therefore it is only I that am left forlorn,

only I that am left to wander alone.~\

On the evening of the day after this

poem had been sent, Tomotada was summoned

to appear before the Lord Hosokawa. The
youth at once suspected that his confidence had
been betrayed and he could not hope, if his
;

letter had been seen by the daimyo, to escape

the severest penalty. Now he will order my
"

death," thought Tomotada but I do not ;

"

1
So the Japanese story-teller would have us believe,
although the verses seem commonplace in translation. I
have tried to give only their general meaning an effective :

literal translation would require some scholarship.

I 32
care to live unless Aoyagi be restored to me.
Besides, if the death-sentence be passed, I can
at least try to kill Hosokawa." He slipped his
swords into his girdle, and hastened to the
palace.
On entering the presence-room he saw
the Lord Hosokawa seated upon the da fs, sur
rounded by samurai of high rank, in caps and
robes of ceremony. All were silent as statues ;

and while Tomotada advanced to make obei

sance, the hush seemed to him sinister and
heavy, like the stillness before a storm. But
Hosokawa suddenly descended from the da fs,
and, taking the youth by the arm, began to re
peat the words of the poem Koshi d-son :
"

gojin wo ou" . . . And Tomotada, looking up,

saw kindly tears in the prince s eyes.
Then said Hosokawa :

"

you Because
each other so love

much, I have taken it upon myself to authorize

your marriage, in lieu of my kinsman, the Lord
of Noto and your wedding shall now be cele
;

brated before me. The guests are assembled ;

the gifts are ready."

At a signal from the lord, the sliding-
screens concealing a further apartment were

pushed open ;
and Tomotada saw there many
dignitaries of the court, assembled for the cere
mony, and Aoyagi awaiting him in bride s

133
 apparel. Thus was she given back to
. . .

ft him and the wedding was joyous and splen

;

did and precious gifts were made to the

;

young couple by the prince, and by the mem

bers of his household.

For five happy years, after that wed

ding, Tomotada and Aoyagi dwelt together.
But one morning Aoyagi, while talking with
her husband about some household matter, sud

denly uttered a great cry of pain, and then

became very white and still. After a few
moments she said, in a feeble voice :
"

Par
don me for thus rudely crying out but the
pain was so sudden My dear husband, ! . . .

our union must have been brought about through

some Karma-relation in a former state of exist
ence ;
and that happy relation, I think, will
bring us again together in more than one life
to come. But for this present existence of

ours, the relation is now ended ;

we are about
to be separated. Repeat me, I beseech you,
for
the Nembutsu-Tprayer, because I am dying."
"

Oh ! what strange wild fancies !

"

cried the startled husband,

"

you are only

134
a little unwell, my dear one! ... lie down >?*+

for a while, and rest; and the sickness will

. . .
pass."
"

No, no !
"

she responded "

I am
I do not imagine it I know
dying !
;
! . . .

And were needless now, my dear husband,

it

to hide the truth from you any longer I am :

not a human mybeing. The soul of a tree is

soul ;
the
the heart of a tree
my heart is ;

sap of the willow is my life. And some one, at

this cruel moment, is cutting down my tree ;

that why I must die

is ! . . . Even to weep
were now beyond my strength !
quickly,
quickly repeat the Nembutsu for me . . .

quickly ! ... Ah ! "...

With another cry of pain she turned

aside her beautiful head, and tried to hide her
face behind her sleeve. But almost in the same
moment her whole form appeared to collapse in
the strangest way, and to sink down, down,
down level with the floor. Tomotada had
sprung to support her but there was nothing ;

to support There lay on the matting only the

!

empty robes of the fair creature and the orna

ments that she had worn in her hair the body :

had ceased to exist. . . .

Tomotada shaved his head, took the

135
Buddhist vows, and became an itinerant priest.
He traveled through all the provinces of the

empire ; and, at all the holy places which he

visited,he offered up prayers for the soul of
Aoyagi. Reaching Echizen, in the course of his
pilgrimage, he sought the home of the parents
of his beloved. But when he arrived at the
lonely place among the hills, where their dwell
ing had been, he found that the cottage had
disappeared. There was nothing to mark even
the spot where it had stood, except the stumps
of three willows two old trees and one young
tree that had been cut down long before his
arrival.
Beside the stumps of those willow-
trees he erected a memorial tomb, inscribed
with divers holy texts and he there performed
;

many Buddhist services on behalf of the spirits

of Aoyagi and of her parents.

136
 Usonoyona,
Jiu-roku-zakura
Saki ni keri !

IN Wake"gori, a district of the pro

vince of lyo, there is a very ancient and famous

cherry-tree, called Jiu-roku-zakura, or "the

Cherry-tree of the Sixteenth Day,"

because it

blooms every year upon the sixteenth day of

the first month (by the old lunar calendar),
and only upon that day. Thus the time of its
flowering is the Period of Great Cold, though
the natural habit of a cherry-tree is to wait for
the spring season before venturing to blossom.
But the Jiu-roku-zakura blossoms with a life

139
 that is not or, at least, was not originally
ft its own. There is the ghost of a man in that
tree.

He was a samurai of lyo; and the

tree grew in his garden and it used to flower
;

at the usual time, that is to say, about the

end of March or the beginning of April. He
had played under that tree when he was a child ;

and his parents and grandparents and ancestors

had hung to its blossoming branches, season
after season for more than a hundred years,
bright strips of colored paper inscribed with

poems of praise. He himself became very old,

outliving all his children and there was nothing
;

in the world left for him to love except that

tree. And lo ! in the summer of a certain year,
the tree withered and died !

Exceedingly the old man sorrowed for

his tree. Then kind neighbors found for him a
young and beautiful cherry-tree, and planted it
in his garden, hoping thus to comfort him.
And he thanked them, and pretended to be
glad. But really his heart was full of pain ;
for
he had loved the old tree so well that nothing
could have consoled him for the loss of it.
At
last there came to him a happy

thought he remembered a way by which the

:

perishing tree might be saved. (It was the six-

140
teenth day of the first month.) Alone he went
into his garden, and bowed down before the
withered tree, and spoke to it, saying Now :
"

deign, I beseech once more to bloom, -

you,
because I am going to die in your stead."
(For
it is believed that one can really give away one s

life to another person, or to a creature, or even

to a tree, by the favor of the gods ;

and thus
to transfer one s life is expressed by the term
migawari ni tatsu,
"

to act as a substitute.")
Then under that tree he spread a white cloth,
and divers coverings, and sat down upon the
coverings, and performed hara-kiri after the
fashion of a samurai. And the ghost of him
went into the tree, and made it blossom in that
same hour.
And every year it still blooms on the
sixteenth day of the first month, in the season
of snow.

141
THE
-
 IN the district called Yamato
ToYchi of

province, there used to live a goshi named Mi-

yata Akinosuke. ... [Here I must tell you that

in Japanese feudal times there was a privileged
class of soldier-farmers, free-holders, cor

responding to the class of yeomen in England ;

and these were called goshi.]

In Akinosuke" s garden there was a
great and ancient cedar-tree, under which he
was wont to rest on sultry days. One very warm
afternoon he was sitting under this tree with
US
two fr ien ds, fellow-goshi, chatting and
* kis

drinking wine, when he felt all of a sudden very

drowsy, so drowsy that he begged his friends
to excuse him for taking a nap in their presence.
Then he lay down at the foot of the tree, and
dreamed this dream :

He thought that as he was lying

there in his garden, he saw a procession, like
the train of some great daimyo, descending a
hill near by, and that he got up to look at it.

A very grand procession it proved to be,

more imposing than anything of the kind which
he had ever seen before ;
and was advancing
it

toward his dwelling. He observed in the van

of it a number of young men richly appareled,
who were drawing a great lacquered palace-
carriage, or gosho-gnruma, hung with bright
blue silk. When the procession arrived within
a short distance of the house it halted ;
and a
richly dressed man evidently a person of rank
advanced from it, approached Akinosuke,
bowed to him profoundly, and then said :

Honored Sir, you see before you a

"

ktrai [vassal] of the Kokuo of Tokoyo.

1

My
1
This name "

Tokoyo
"

is indefinite. According to cir

cumstances signify any unknown
it
may country, or that
undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler re
turns, or that Fairyland of far-eastern fable, the Realm of
H5rai. The term Kokuo means the ruler of a country,
"
"

therefore a king. The original phrase, Tokoyo no Kokuo,

146
master, the King, commands me to greet you A>

in hisaugust name, and to place myself wholly

at your disposal. He also bids me inform you
that he augustly desires your presence at the

palace. Be therefore pleased immediately to

enter this honorable carriage, which he has sent
for your conveyance."

Upon hearing these words Akinosuke

wanted to make some fitting reply but he was ;

too much astonished and embarrassed for speech ;

and in the same moment his will seemed to

melt away from him, so that he could only do
He entered the carriage
as the ktrai bade him. ;

the kerai took a place beside him, and made a

signal the drawers, seizing the silken ropes,

;

turned the great vehicle southward ; and the

journey began.
In a very short time, to Akinosuke s

amazement, the carriage stopped in front of a

huge two-storied gateway ( romon ), of Chinese
style, which he had never before seen. Here
the kerai dismounted, saying, go to announce "I

the honorable arrival," and he disappeared.

After some little waiting, Akinosuke saw two
noble-looking men, wearing robes of purple
silk and high caps of the form
indicating lofty
rank, come from the gateway. These, after hav-

might be rendered here as the Ruler of or the

"
"

Horai,"

King of Fairyland."
 ing respectfully saluted him, helped him to de-
ft scend from the carriage, and led him through
the great gate and across a vast garden, to the
entrance of a palace whose front appeared to
extend, west and east, to a distance of miles.
Akinosuke was then shown into a reception-
room of wonderful size and splendor. His guides
conducted him to the place of honor, and re
spectfully seated themselves apart ; while serv
ing-maids, in costume of ceremony, brought re
freshments. When Akinosuke had partaken of
the refreshments, the two purple-robed attend
ants bowed low before him, and addressed him
in the following words, each speaking alter
nately, according to the etiquette of courts :

is now our honorable

"It
duty to in
form you ... as to the reason of your having
been summoned hither. Our master, the . . .

King, augustly desires that you become his

son-in-law and it is his wish and com
;
. . .

mand that you shall wed this very day . . . the

August Princess, his
maiden-daughter. . . .

We shall soon conduct you to the presence-

chamber . . where His Augustness even now
.

iswaiting to receive you. . . . But it will be

necessary that we first invest you . . . with
the appropriate garments of ceremony."
1

1
The last phrase, according to old custom, had to be ut-
148
 Having thus spoken, the attendants f|
,
rose together, and proceeded to an alcove con

taining a great chest of gold lacquer. They

opened the chest, and took from it various robes
and girdles of rich material, and a kamuri, or
regal headdress. With these they attired Aki-
*
^j

riosuke as befitted a princely bridegroom ; and

he was then conducted to the presence-room,
where he saw the Kokuo of Tokoyo seated upon
the daiza* wearing the high black cap of state,
and robed in robes of yellow silk. Before the

daiza, to left and right, a multitude of digni

taries sat in rank, motionless and splendid as
images in a temple ;
and Akinosuke, advancing
into their midst, saluted the king with the triple

prostration of usage. The king greeted him with

gracious words, and then said :

You have
already been informed as
"

to the reason of your having been summoned

to Our presence. We have decided that you
shall become the adopted husband of Our only

daughter and the wedding ceremony shall

;

*
now be performed.
As the king finished speaking, a sound

tered by both attendants at the same time. All these cere

monial observances can still be studied on the Japanese
stage.
1
This was the name given to the estrade, or dais, upon
which a feudal prince or ruler sat in state. The term literally
"

seat."
signifies great

149
 f joyful music was heard and a long train of
;

beautiful court ladies advanced from behind a

curtain, to conduct Akinosuke to the room in

which his bride awaited him.
The room was immense but ;
it could

scarcely contain the multitude of guests assem

bled to witness the wedding ceremony. All
bowed down before Akinosuke as he took his

place, facing the King s daughter, on the kneel-

ing-cushion prepared for him. As a maiden of
heaven the bride appeared to be ;
and her robes
were beautiful as a summer sky. And the mar
riage was performed amid great rejoicing.
Afterwards the pair were conducted
to a suite of apartments that had been prepared
for them in another portion of the palace and ;

there they received the congratulations of many

noble persons, and wedding gifts beyond count
ing.

Some days later Akinosuke was again

summoned to the throne-room. On this occa
sion hewas received even more graciously than
before and the King said to him
;
:

"

In the southwestern part of Our

dominion there is an island called Raishu. We
have now appointed you Governor of that is
land. You will find the people loyal and docile ;

but their laws have not yet been brought into

150
proper accord with the laws of Tokoyo and ;
f |-^-

their customs have not been properly regulated.

We entrust you with the duty of improving <^

their social condition as far as may be possible ;

and We desire that you shall rule them with

kindness and wisdom. All preparations neces

sary for your journey to Raishu have already

been made."

So Akinosuk^ and his bride departed

from the palace Tokoyo, accompanied to the
of

shore by a great escort of nobles and officials ;

and they embarked upon a ship of state pro

vided by the king. And with favoring winds
they safely sailed to Raishu, and found the
good people of that island assembled upon the
beach to welcome them.

Akinosuke entered at once upon his

new duties ;
and they did not prove to be hard.
During the first three years of his governorship

he was occupied chiefly with the framing and

the enactment of laws but he had wise coun
;

selors to help him, and he never found the

work unpleasant. When it was all finished, he
had no active duties to perform, beyond attend
ing the rites and ceremonies ordained by an
cient custom. The country was so healthy and
so fertile that sickness and want were unknown ;
 and the people were so good that no laws were
ft ever broken. And Akinosuk6 dwelt and ruled
in Raishu for twenty years more, making in
alltwenty-three years of sojourn, during which
no shadow of sorrow traversed his life.
But
in the twenty-fourth year of his

governorship, a great misfortune came upon

him ;
for his wife, who had borne him seven
children, five boys and two girls, fell sick

and She was buried, with high pomp, on

died.
the summit of a beautiful hill in the district of

Hanryok5 and a monument, exceedingly splen

;

did, was placed above her grave. But Akinosuke

felt such grief at her death that he no longer
cared to live.

Now when the legal period of mourn

ing was over, there came to Raishu, from the
Tokoyo palace, a shislia, or royal messenger.
The shisha delivered to Akinosuke a message
of condolence, and then him -
said to :

"

These are the words which our au

gust master, the King of Tokoyo, commands
that I repeat to
you :
*
We will now send you

back to your own people and country. As for

the seven children, they are the grandsons and
the granddaughters of the King, and shall be

fitly cared for. Do not, therefore, allow your

mind to be troubled concerning them.

152
 On receiving this mandate, Akinosuke
submissively prepared for his departure. When
all his affairs had been settled, and the cere
mony of bidding farewell to his counselors and
trusted officials had been concluded, he was es
much honor to the port.
corted with There he
embarked upon the ship sent for him and
;

the ship sailed out into the blue sea, under the
blue sky and the shape of the island of
;

Raishu itself turned blue, and then turned gray,

and then vanished forever. And Akino . . .

suke suddenly awoke under the cedar-tree in

his own garden ! . . .

For the moment he was stupefied and

dazed. But he perceived his two friends still
seated near him, drinking and chatting mer
rily.
He stared at them in a bewildered way,
and cried aloud,
"

How strange !
"

Akinosuk^ must have been dream

"

one of them exclaimed, with a laugh.

ing,"

"What did you see, Akinosuke, that was

"

?
strange
Then Akinosuk^ told his dream,
that dream of three-and- twenty years sojourn
in the realm of Tokoyo, in the island of Rai
shu ;
and they were astonished, because he
had really slept for no more than a few min
utes.

153
 One goshi said ;

you saw strange things.

"

Indeed,
We also saw something strange while you were
napping. A little yellow butterfly was flutter
ing over your face for a moment or two and ;

we watched it. Then it alighted on the ground

beside you, close to the tree and almost as ;

soon as alighted there, a big, big ant

it came
out of a hole, and seized it and pulled it down
into the hole. Just before you woke up, we saw
that very butterfly come out of the hole again,
and flutter over your face as before. And then
it
suddenly disappeared : we do not know where
it went."

"

Perhaps it was Akinosuke s soul,"

the other goshi said ;

"

certainly I
thought I

saw it
fly into his mouth. . . .
But, even if

that butterflywas Akinosuke s soul, the fact

would not explain his dream."
"

The ants might explain it,",

returned
the first speaker.
"

Ants are queer beings

possibly goblins. . . .
Anyhow, there is a big
ant s nest under that cedar-tree." , . .

"
"

Let us look ! cried Akinosuke,

greatly moved by this suggestion. And he went
for a spade.

The ground about and beneath the

cedar-tree proved to have been excavated, in a

154
most surprising way, by a prodigious colony of
ants. The ants had furthermore built inside
their excavations and their tiny constructions
;

of straw, clay, and stems bore an odd resem

blance to miniature towns. In the middle of a
structure considerably larger than the rest there
was a marvelous swarming of small ants around
the body of one very big ant, which had yellow
ish wings and a long black head.
"

Why, there is the King of my

dream Akinosuke and there
"

! cried ;
"

is the

palace of Tokoyo ! . . . How extraordinary !

. . . Raishu ought to lie somewhere southwest

of it to the left of that big root. Yes! . . .

here it is ! ... How very strange Now I !

am sure that I can find the mountain of Han-

ryok5, and the grave of the princess." . . .

In the wreck of the nest he searched

and searched, and at last discovered a tiny
mound, on the top of which was fixed a water-
worn pebble, in shape resembling a Buddhist
monument. Underneath it he found em
bedded in clay the dead body of a female ant.

155
 His name was Riki, signifying
Strength ;
but the people called him Riki-the-
Simple, or
"

Riki-the-Fool, Riki-Baka,"

because he had been born into perpetual child

hood. For the same reason they were kind to
him, even when he set a house on fire by
putting a lighted match to a mosquito-curtain,
and clapped his hands for joy to see the blaze.
At sixteen years he was a tall, strong lad but ;

in mind he remained always at the happy age of

two, and therefore continued to play with very
small children. The bigger children of the

neighborhood, from four to seven years old, did

not care to play with him, because he could not

159
 learn their songs and games. His favorite toy
was a broomstick, which he used as a hobby -
horse and for hours at a time he would ride
;

Ct/C on that broomstick, up and down the slope in

front of my house, with amazing peals of laugh
ter. But at last he became troublesome by rea
son of his noise ;
and I had to tell him that he
must find another playground. He bowed sub
missively, and then went off, sorrowfully
trailing his broomstick behind him. Gentle at
all times, and perfectly harmless if allowed no
chance to play with fire, he seldom gave anybody
cause for complaint. His relation to the life
of our street was scarcely more than that of a
dog or a chicken and when he finally disap
;

peared, I did not miss him. Months and months

passed by before anything happened to remind
me of Riki.
"What has become of Riki?" I then
asked the old woodcutter who supplies our
neighborhood with fuel. I remembered that
Riki had often helped him to carry his bundles.
Riki-Baka ? answered the old man.
"
"

Ah, Riki is dead poor fellow

"

Yes, ! . . .

he died nearly a year ago, very suddenly the ;

doctors said that he had some disease of the

brain. And there is a strange story now about
that poor Riki.
"

When Riki died, his mother wrote

160
his name, Riki-Baka, in the palm of his left
hand, putting Riki in the Chinese character,
and Baka in kana. And she repeated many
prayers for him, prayers that he might be
reborn into some more happy condition.
Now, about three months ago, in
"

the honorable residence of Nanigashi-Sama, in

Kojimachi, a boy was born with characters on

the palm of his left hand ;
and the characters
were quite plain to read, RiKi-BAKA /

So the people of that house knew

"

that the birth must have happened in answer to

somebody s prayer ;
and they caused inquiry to
be made everywhere. At a vegetable-seller
last

brought word to them that there used to be a

simple lad, called Riki-Baka, living in the Ushi-

gome quarter, and that he had died during the
last autumn ;
and they sent two men-servants
to look for the mother of Riki.
Those servants found the mother of
"

Riki, and told her what had happened and she ;

was glad exceedingly for that Nanigashi house

isa very rich and famous house. But the ser
vants said that the family of Nanigashi-Sama
were very angry about the word Baka on the *

child s hand. And where is your Riki buried ?

*

the servants asked. He is buried in the ceme

tery of Zenddji, she told them. Please to give

us some of the clay of his grave, they requested.
161
 So she went with them to the tem-
"

pie Zendoji, and showed them Riki s grave ;

an d they took some of the grave-clay away with

them, wrapped up in a furoshiki? . . .
They
gave Riki s mother some money, ten yen.". . .

"

But what did they want with that

"

clay ? I inquired.
"Well,"
the old man answered, "you

know that it would not do to let the child

grow up with that name on his hand. And there

is no other means of removing characters that

come in that way upon the body of a child :

you must rub the skin with clay taken from the
grave of the body of the former birth." . . .

1
A square piece of cotton-goods, or other woven material,
used as a wrapper in which to carry small packages.

162
JfT-MAWARJ
 ON the wooded hill behind the house
Robert and I are looking for fairy-rings. Robert
is eight years old, comely, and very wise I;

am a little more than seven, and I reverence

Robert. It is a glowing glorious August day ;

and the warm air is filled with sharp sweet scents

of resin.
We do not find any fairy-rings ;
but
we find a great many pine-cones in the high
grass. ... I tell Robert the old Welsh story
of the man who went to sleep, unawares, inside
of a fairy-ring, and so disappeared for seven

years, and would never eat

or speak after his

165
friends had delivered him from the enchant
ment.
"

They eat nothing but the points of

needles, you know," says Robert.

"

Who ?
"

I ask.

"Goblins," Robert answers.

This revelation leaves me dumb with
astonishment and awe. . . . But Robert sud
denly cries out :

"

There is a Harper ! he is coming

"

to the house !

And down the hill we run to hear the

harper. But what a harper Not like the

. . . !

hoary minstrels of the picture-books. swarthy, A

sturdy, unkempt vagabond, bold with black

eyes under scowling black brows. More like a

bricklayer than a bard, and his garments are
corduroy !

"Wonder if he is going to sing in

Welsh murmurs Robert.
"

I feel too much disappointed to make

any remarks. The harper poses his harp a

huge instrument upon our doorstep, sets all
the strings ringing with a sweep of his grimy

fingers, clears his throat with a sort of angry

growl, and begins,

Believe me, if all those endearing young charms,

Which I gaze on sofondly to-day . . .

1 66
 The accent, the attitude, the voice, all

fill me
with repulsion unutterable, shock me
with a new sensation of formidable vulgarity.
I want to cry out loud,
"

You have no right

For have heard
"

to sing that song ! I it sung

by the lips of the dearest and fairest being in

my little world and that this rude, coarse

;

man should dare to sing it vexes me like a

mockery, angers me like an insolence. But

only for a moment! With the utterance . . .

of the syllables to-day,"

that deep, grim voice
"

suddenly breaks into a quivering tenderness in

describable then, marvelously changing, it
;

mellows into tones sonorous and rich as the

bass of a great organ, while a sensation un
like anything ever felt before takes me by the

throat. . . . What witchcraft has he learned ?

what secret has he found this scowling man

of the road ? . . . Oh ! is there anybody else
in the whole world who can sing like that ? . . .

And the form of the singer flickers and dims ;

and the house, and the lawn, and all visible

shapes of things tremble and swim before me.
Yet instinctively I fear that man I almost ;

hate him ;
and I feel
myself flushing with anger
and shame because of his power to move me
thus. . . .

"

He made you cry,"

Robert com-
167
 passionately observes, to my further confusion,
ft as the harper strides away, richer by a gift
of sixpence taken without thanks. ..." But I

think he must be a gipsy. Gipsies are bad peo

ple and they are wizards. Let us go . . .

back to the wood."

We
climb again to the pines, and
there squat down upon the sun-flecked grass,
and look over town and sea. But we do not
play as before : the spell of the wizard is

strong upon us both. . . .

"Perhaps he is

a goblin," I venture at last, "or a fairy?"

"

No/ says Robert,

"

only a gipsy. But

that is
nearly as bad. They steal children, you
know." . . .

"

What shall we do if he comes up

"

here ? I gasp, in sudden terror at the lone-

someness of our situation.

Oh, he would n answers

"

t dare,"

Robert "

not by daylight, you know." . . .

[Only yesterday, near the village of

Takata, noticed a flower which the Japanese
I

call by nearly the same name as we do Hi- :

mawari, "The Sunward-turning;" and over

the space of forty years there thrilled back to
me the voice of that wandering harper,
168
As the Sunflower turns on her god, when he jfv^-%

sets,
The same look that she turned when he rose.

Again I saw the sun-flecked shadows on that

far Welsh hill and Robert for a moment again
;

stood beside me, with his girl s face and his

curls of gold. We were looking for fairy-rings.
. . But all Jhat existed of the real Robert
.

must long agb have suffered a sea-change into

something rich and strange. . . . Greater love
hath no man tlian this, that a man lay down his

life for his friend. . . .

]

169
 BLUE vision of depth lost in height, -

sea and sky interblending through luminous

haze. The day is of spring, and the hour
morning.
Only sky and sea, one azure enor
mity. ... In the fore, ripples are catching a

silvery light, and threads of foam are swirling.

But a little further off no motion is visible, nor
anything save color dim warm blue of water
:

widening away to melt into blue of air. Hori

zon there is none :
only distance soaring into
space, infinite concavity hollowing before
you, and hugely arching above you, the
color deepening with the height. But far in

173
 the midway-blue there hangs a faint, faint vision
ft of palace towers, with high roofs horned and
curved like moons, some shadowing
of splen
dor strange and old, illumined by a sunshine
soft as memory.
. . . What I have thus been trying to
describe is a kakemono, that is to say, a Jap
anese painting on silk, suspended to the wall of

my alcove; and the name of it is SHINKIRO,

which signifies "

Mirage."
But the shapes of
the mirage are unmistakable. Those are the
glimmering portals of Horai the blest ;
and
those are the moony roofs of the Palace of
the Dragon-King ;
and the fashion of them
(though limned by a Japanese brush of to-day)
is the fashion of things Chinese, twenty-one
hundred years ago. . . .

Thus much is told of the place in the

Chinese books of that time :

In Horai there is neither death nor

pain ;
and there is no winter. The flowers
in
that place never fade, and the fruits never fail ;

and if a man taste of those fruits even but once,

he can never again feel thirst or hunger. In
Horai grow the enchanted plants So-rin-ski, and
Riku-go-aoi, and Ban-kon-td, which heal all man
ner of sickness and there grows also the
;

magical grass Yo-skin-shi, that quickens the

174
dead and the magical grass is watered by a
;
pt^
fairy water of which a single drink confers per

petual youth. The people of Horai eat their rice

out of very, very small bowls but the rice never
;

diminishes within those bowls, however much

of it be eaten, until the eater desires no more.
And the people of Horai drink their wine out
of very, very small cups but no man can empty
;

one of those cups, however stoutly he may

drink, until there comes upon him the plea
sant drowsiness of intoxication.

All this and more is told in the le

gends of the time of the Shin dynasty. But

that the people who wrote down those legends
ever saw Horai, even in a mirage, is not believ
able. For really there are no enchanted fruits
which leave the eater forever satisfied, nor
any magical grass which revives the dead,
nor any fountain of fairy water, nor any bowls
which never lack rice, nor any cups which
never lack wine. It is not true that sorrow and
death never enter Horai ;
neither is it true
that there is not any winter. The winter in
Horai is cold; and winds then bite to the
bone ;
and the heaping of snow is monstrous on
the roofs of the Dragon-King.
Nevertheless there are wonderful
things in H5rai ;
and the most wonderful of all

175
has not been mentioned by any Chinese writer.
I mean the atmosphere of Horai. It is an at-

mosphere peculiar to the place and, because of ;

it, the sunshine in Horai is whiter than any

other sunshine, a milky light that never daz

zles, astonishingly clear, but very soft. This

atmosphere is not of our human period : it is

enormously old, so old that I feel afraid when

I try to think how old it is ;
and it is not a
mixture of nitrogen and oxygen. It is not made
of air at all, but of ghost, the substance of
quintillions of quintillions of generations of souls
blended into one immense translucency, souls
of people who thought in ways never resembling
our ways. Whatever mortal man inhales that

atmosphere, he takes into his blood the thrilling

of these spirits and they change the senses
;

within him, reshaping his notions of Space

and Time, so that he can see only as they
used to see, and feel only as they used to feel,
and think only as they used to think. Soft as
sleep are these changes of sense ; and Horai,
discerned across them, might thus be de
scribed :

Because in Horai there is no know

ledge of great evil, the hearts of the people never
grow old. And, by reason of being always young
in heart, the people of Horai smile from birth
until death except when the Gods send sorrow
among them ; and faces then are veiled until the
sorrow goes away. All folk in Horai love and
trust each other, as if all were members of a sin
gle household ; and the speech of the women
is likebirdsong, because the hearts of them are
light as the souls of birds ; and the swaying
of the sleeves of the maidens at play seems a
flutter of wide, soft wings. In Horai nothing is
hidden but grief, because there is no reason for

shame ; and nothing locked away, because

is

there could not be any theft ; and by night as

well as by day all doors remain unbarred, be
cause there is no reason for fear. And because
the people are fairies though mortal all

things in Horai, except the Palace of the Dragon-

King, are small and quaint and queer ; and
these fairy -folk do really eat their rice out of very
small bowls, and drink their wine out of very,
very small cups. . . .

Much of this seeming would be

due to the inhalation of that ghostly atmosphere
but not all. For the spell wrought by the
dead is only the charm of an Ideal, the glamour
of an ancient hope and something of that
;

hope has found fulfillment in many hearts, in

the simple beauty of unselfish lives, in the
sweetness of Woman. . . .

17;
 Evil winds from the West are
ft blowing over Horai ;
and the magical atmo
sphere, alas ! is shrinking away before them.
It lingers now in patches only, and bands,
like those long bright bands of cloud that trail
across the landscapes of Japanese painters.
Under these shreds of the elfish vapor you still
can find Horai but not elsewhere. . . . Re
member that Horai is also called
Shinkiro,
which signifies Mirage, the Vision of the
Intangible. And the Vision is fading, never
again to appear save in pictures and poems and
dreams.
BUTTERFLY DANCE
 WOULD that I could hope for the luck
of that Chinese scholar known to Japanese liter
Rosan For he was beloved by two
"

ature as "

spirit-maidens, celestial sisters, who every ten

days came to visit him and to tell him stories

about butterflies. Now there are marvelous Chi
nese stories about butterflies ghostly stories ;
and I want to know them. But never shall I be

able to read Chinese, nor even Japanese ;

and
the little Japanese poetry that I manage, with
exceeding difficulty, to translate, contains so

many allusions to Chinese stories of butterflies

that I am tormented with the torment of Tanta
lus. . . .
And, of course, no spirit-maidens will

181
ever deign to visit so skeptical a person as

myself.
I want know, for example, the
to
whole story of that Chinese maiden whom the
butterflies took to be a flower, and followed in

multitude, so fragrant and so fair was she.

Also I should like to know something more
concerning the butterflies of the Emperor Genso,
or Ming Hwang, who made them choose his
loves for him. ... He used to hold wine-par
ties in his amazing garden ladies of ex
;
and
ceeding beauty were in attendance and caged ;

butterflies, set free among them, would fly to

the and then, upon that fairest the
fairest;
Imperial favor was bestowed. But after Genso
Kotei had seen Yokihi (whom the Chinese call
Yang-Kwei-Fei), he would not suffer the but
terflies to choose for him, which was unlucky,
as Yokihi got him into serious trouble. . . .

Again, I should like to know more about the

experience of that Chinese scholar, celebrated

in Japan under the name of Soshu, who dreamed
that he was a butterfly, and had all the sensa
tions of a butterfly in that dream. For his spirit
had really been wandering about in the shape
of a butterfly and, when he awoke, the memo
;

riesand the feelings of butterfly existence re

mained so vivid in his mind that he could not
act like a human being. . . .
Finally I should
182
like to know the text of a certain Chinese official

recognition of sundry butterflies as the spirits

of an Emperor and of his attendants. . . .

Most
of the Japanese literature about

butterflies, excepting some poetry, appears to

be of Chinese origin ; and even that old na
tional aesthetic feeling on the subject, which
found such delightful expression in Japanese
artand song and custom, may have been first
developed under Chinese teaching. Chinese
precedent doubtless explains why Japanese
poets and painters chose so often for their
geimyo, or professional appellations, such names
as Chomu Butterfly-Dream)," Icho
(" Solitary ("

Butterfly),"
etc. And even to this day such gri
my o as Chohana (" Butterfly-Blossom "),
Choki-
chi ("Butterfly-Luck"),
or Chonosukt ("But

terfly-Help "),
are affected by dancing-girls.
Besides artistic names having reference to but
terflies, there are still in use real personal names

(yobina) of this kind, such as Kocho, or Cho,

are borne by wo
"

meaning Butterfly." They

men only, as a rule, though there are some
strange exceptions. And here I may men . . .

tion that, in the province of Mutsu, there still

exists the curious old custom of calling the

youngest daughter in a family Te^o^a^ which

quaint word, obsolete elsewhere, signifies in

183
Mutsu dialect a butterfly. In classic time this
word signified also a beautiful woman. . . .

It is possible also that some weird

Japanese beliefs about butterflies are of Chinese
derivation ;
but these beliefs might be older
than China herself. The most interesting one,
I think, is that the soul of a living person may
wander about in the form of a butterfly. Some
pretty fancies have been evolved out of this
belief, such as the notion that if a butterfly
enters your guest-room and perches behind the
bamboo screen, the person whom you most love
is coming to see you. That a butterfly may be
the spirit of somebody is not a reason for being
afraid of it. Nevertheless there are times when
even butterflies can inspire fear by appearing in
prodigious numbers ;
and Japanese history re
cords such an event. When Tai ra-no-Masakado
was secretly preparing for his famous revolt,
there appeared in Kyoto so vast a swarm of
butterflies that the people were frightened,

thinking the apparition to be a portent of com

ing evil. Perhaps those butterflies were
. . .

supposed to be the spirits of the thousands

doomed to perish in battle, and agitated on the
eve of war by some mysterious premonition of
death.

However, in Japanese belief, a butter-

184
fly may be the soul of a dead person as well ^H
as a living person. Indeed it is a cus-
of
torn of souls to take butterfly-shape in order
to announce the fact of their final departure
from the body and for this reason any but
;

terfly which enters a house ought to be kindly

treated.
To this belief, and to queer fancies
connected with it, there are many allusions in

popular drama. For example, there is a well-

known play called Tond-ctiru-Kocho-no-Kanza-
shi ; or, Flying Hairpin of Kocho."
"The

Kocho a beautiful person who kills herself

is

because of false accusations and cruel treatment.

Her would-be avenger long seeks in vain for
the author of the wrong. But at last the dead
woman s hairpin turns into a butterfly, and serves
as a guide to vengeance by hovering above the
place where the villain is hiding.

Of course those big paper butter

and me-cko) which figure at weddings
flies (p-cho

must not be thought of as having any ghostly

signification.As emblems they only express
the joy of loving union, and the hope that the

newly married couple may pass through life to

gether as a pair of butterflies flit

lightly through
some pleasant garden, now hovering upward,
now downward, but never widely separating.
* A small selection of
II

hokku on but
terflies will help to illustrate Japanese interest
in the aesthetic side of the subject. Some are

pictures only, tiny color-sketches made with

seventeen syllables some are nothing more ;

than pretty fancies, or graceful suggestions ;

but the reader will find variety. Probably he

will not care much for the verses in themselves.
The taste for Japanese poetry of the epigram
matic sort is a taste that must be slowly ac
quired and it is only by degrees, after patient
;

study, that the possibilities of such composition

can be fairly estimated. Hasty criticism has
declared that to put forward any serious claim
on behalf of seventeen-sy liable poems would "

be absurd." But what, then, of Crashaw s fa

mous line upon the miracle at the marriage
feast in Cana ?

Nympha pudica Deum vidit, et erubuit*

Only fourteen syllables and immortality.

* "

The modest nymph beheld her God, and blushed."

(Or, in a more familiar rendering The modest water saw
:
"

its God, and blushed.") In this line the double value

of theword nympha used by classical poets both in the
meaning of fountain and in that of the divinity of a foun
tain, or spring reminds one of that graceful playing with
words which Japanese poets practice.
1 86
Now with seventeen Japanese syllables things
quite as wonderful indeed, much more won
derful have been done, not once or twice,
but probably a thousand times. However, . . .

there is nothing wonderful in the following

hokku, which have been selected for more than
literary reasons :

r
Nugi-kakuru
Haori sugata no
Kocho kana !

{Like a haori being taken off that is the

shape of a butterfly /]

Torisashi no
Sao no jama suru,
Kocho kana !

More usually written nugi-kaktru, which means either

1

"

to take off and hang up," or to begin to take off,"

"
as in
the above poem. More loosely, but more effectively, the
verses might thus be rendered : Like a woman slipping "

off her haori that is the appearance of a butterfly."

One
must have seen the Japanese garment described, to appreciate
the comparison. The haori is a silk upper-dress, a kind of
sleeved cloak, worn by both sexes but the poem suggests ;

a woman s which is usually of richer color or material.

haori,
The sleeves are wide and the lining is usually of brightly-
;

colored silk, often beautifully variegated. In taking off the

haori, the brilliant lining is displayed, and at such an in
stant the fluttering splendor might well be likened to the ap

pearance of a butterfly in motion.

187
 \Ah, the butterfly keeps getting in the way
z
of the bird-catcher s pole ! ]

Tsurigane ni
Tomarite nemuru
Koch5 kana !

\_Perchcd upon the temple-bell, the butterfly

sleeps^
Neru-uchi mo
Asobu-yume wo ya
Kusa no cho !

\_Even while sleeping, its dream is of play

ah, the butterfly of the grass /*]

Oki, oki yo !

Waga tomo ni sen,

N^ru-kocho !

[
Wake up ! wake up ! I will make thee

my comrade, thou sleeping butterfly ?\

1
The bird-catcher s pole is smeared with bird-lime ; and
the verses suggest that the insect preventing the man from is

using his pole, by persistently getting in the way of it, as

the birds might take warning from seeing the butterfly limed.

Jama suru means to hinder or

"
" "

prevent."
2
Even while it is
resting, the wings of the butterfly may
be seen to quiver at moments, as if the creature were

dreaming of flight.
3
A little poem by Basho, greatest of all Japanese composers
of hokku. The verses are intended to suggest the joyous

feeling of spring-time.
1 88
 Kago no tori
Cho wo urayamu
Metsuki kana !

[Ah, the sad expression in the eyes of that

caged bird ! envying the butterfly /
]

Cho tond
Kaze naki hi to mo
Miezari ki !

[Even though it did not appear to be a

windy day* the fluttering of the butterflies /]

Rakkwa eda ni
Kae ru to mireba
Kocho kana !

[
When I saw the fallen flower return to
the branch lo ! it was only a butterfly /*]

1
a windless day but two negatives in Japan
"
"

Literally, ;

ese poetry do not necessarily imply an affirmative, as in Eng

lish. The meaning is, that although there is no wind, the flut

tering motion of the butterflies suggests, to the eyes at least,

that a strong breeze is playing.
2
Alluding to the Buddhist proverb Rakkwa Sda ni :

kaerazu ha-kyo futatabi terasazu

,
The fall en flower returns ("

not to the branch the broken mirror never again reflects.")

;

So says the proverb yet it seemed to me that I saw a

fallen flower return to the branch. . . . No : it was only a
butterfly.

189
 Chiru-hana ni
Karusa arasoii

Kocho kana !

the butterfly strives to compete in

\How
r
lightness with the falling flowers ! ]

Chocho ya !

Onna no michi no
Ato ya saki !

[See that butterfly on the woman s path,

now fluttering behind her^ now before ! ]

Chocho ya
J !
s

Hana-nusubito wo
Tsuke te -yuku !

\Ha ! the butterfly ! it is following the

person who stole the flowers /]

Aki no cho
Tomo nakereba ya ;

Hito ni tsuku.

[Poor autumn butterfly ! when left with

out a comrade (of its own race), it follows after man
"

(or a person )
"

!
]

1
Alluding probably to the light fluttering motion of fall

ing cherry-petals.

IQO
 Owarete mo,
Isoganu furi no
Chocho kana !

[Ah, the butterfly ! Even when chased, it

never has the air of being in a hurry,.] ^

Cho wa mina
Jiu-shichi-hachi no
Sugata kana !

[As for butterflies, they all have the ap

pearance of being about seventeen or eighteen years
1
old. ]

Cho tobu ya
Kono yo no urami
Naki yo ni !

[How the butterfly sports, just as if

there were no enmity (or "

envy ")
in this world f]

Cho tobu ya,

Kono yo ni nozomi
Nai yd ni !

[Ah, the butterfly ! it sports about as if

it had nothing more to desire in this present state of
existence^
1
That is to say, the grace of their motion makes one
think of the grace of young girls, daintily costumed, in robes
with long fluttering sleeves. An old Japanese proverb
. . .

declares that even a devil pretty at eighteen

is Oni mo jiu- :

kachi azami no hana :

"

Even a devil at eighteen, flower-of-

the-thistle."

191
 Nami no hana ni
Tomari kanetaru,
Kocho kana !

[Having found it difficult indeed to perch

upon the {foam-) blossoms of the waves, alas for
the butterfly /]

Mutsumashi ya !

Umare-kawaraba
Nobe no cho. 1

[If {in our next existence) we be born into

the state of butterflies upon the moor, then perchance
we may be happy together /]

Nadeshiko ni
Chocho shiroshi
Tare no kon ?
2

\On the pink-flower there is a white butter

fly : whose spirit ,

/ wonder ?]
Ichi-nichi no
Tsuma to miek^ri
Cho futatsu.

\The one-day wife has at last appeared

a pair of butterflies /]
1
Or perhaps the verses might be more effectively ren
if we
dered thus Happy together, do you say ? Yes
"

should be reborn as field-butterflies in some future life then :

we might accord !
"

This poem was composed by the cele

brated poet Issa, on the occasion of divorcing his wife.
2
Or, Tart no tama ?

192
 Kite wa maii,
Futari shidzuka no
Kocho kana !

[Approaching they dance; but when the xVf^*

two meet at last they are very quiet, the butterflies /]

Cho wo oii

Kokoro-mochitashi
Itsumade"mo !

[
Would that I might always have the
*
heart (desire) of chasing butterflies ! J~

Besides these specimens of poetry

about butterflies, I have one queer example to
offer ofJapanese prose literature on the same
topic. The
original, of which I have attempted

only a free translation, can be found in the cu

rious old book Mushi-Isamt Insect-Admoni ("

tions it assumes the form of a discourse

;
and
")

to a butterfly. But it is really a didactic alle

gory, suggesting the moral significance of a

social rise and fall :

Butterfly-pursuing heart I wish to have al-

* "

/ Literally,
v ways ;
"

i. c., Iwould that I might always be able to find

I
pleasure in simple things, like a happy child.
193
 Now, under the sun of spring, the
"

winds are gentle, and flowers pinkly bloom, and

grasses are soft, and the hearts of people are
glad. Butterflies
everywhere flutter joyously :

so many persons now compose Chinese verses

and Japanese verses about butterflies.
"

And this season, O Butterfly, is in

deed the season of your bright prosperity so :

comely you now are that in the whole world

is nothing more
there comely. For that reason
all other insects admire and envy you there ;

is among them even one that does not envy

not

you. Nor do insects alone regard you with

envy men also both envy and admire you.
:

Soshu of China, in a dream, assumed your

shape Sakoku of Japan, after dying, took
;

your form, and therein made ghostly apparition.

Nor is the envy that you inspire shared only by
insects and mankind even things without soul
:

change their form into yours ;

witness the
1
barley-grass, which turns into a butterfly.
"And therefore you are lifted up
with pride, and think to yourself In all :

this world there is nothing superior to me !

Ah I can very well guess what is in your

!

heart you are too much satisfied with your

:

own person. That is why you let yourself be

blown thus lightly about by every wind ;

An old popular error, probably imported from China.

1

194
that is why you still, always,never remain

always thinking In the whole world there

: is

no one so fortunate as I.
"

But now try to think a little about

your own personal history. It is worth recall

ing; for there is a vulgar side to it. How a

vulgar side ? Well, for a considerable time

after you were born, you had no such reason
for rejoicing in your form. You were then a
mere cabbage-insect, a hairy worm and you ;

were so poor that you could not afford even one

robe to cover your nakedness and your ap ;

pearance was altogether disgusting. Everybody

in those days hated the sight of you. Indeed
you had good reason to be ashamed of yourself ;

and so ashamed you were that you collected old

twigs and rubbish to hide in, and you made a
hiding-nest, and hung it to a branch, and
then everybody cried out at you, Raincoat In
sect !
(Mino-mushi.}
l
And during that period
of your life, your sins were grievous. Among
the tender green leaves of beautiful cherry-
trees you and your fellows assembled, and
there made ugliness extraordinary ;
and the ex-
1
A name suggested by the resemblance of the larva s

covering to the mino, or straw-raincoat, worn by

artificial

Japanese peasants. I am not sure whether the dictionary

rendering,
"

basket- worm," is quite correct; but the larva

commonly called minomushi does really construct for itself
something much like the covering of the basket-worm.

195
pectant eyes of the people, who came from far
away to admire the beauty of those cherry-
trees, were hurt by the sight of you. And of

things even more hateful than

you were this

guilty. You knew that poor, poor men and wo

men had been cultivating daikon in their fields,
toiling and toiling under the hot sun till

their hearts were

with bitterness by rea
filled

son of having to care for that daikon ; and

you persuaded your companions to go with you,
and to gather upon the leaves of that daikon,
and on the leaves of other vegetables planted
by those poor people. Out of your greediness

you ravaged those leaves, and gnawed them

into all shapes of ugliness, caring nothing for
the trouble of those poor folk. Yes, such a . . .

creature you were, and such were your doings.

"

And now that you have a comely

form, you despise your old comrades, the in
sects ; and, whenever you happen to meet any of

them, you pretend not to know them [literally,

4
You make an I-don t-know face ]. Now you
want have none but wealthy and exalted
to

people for friends. Ah you have forgot

. . . !

ten the old times, have you ?

It true that people have
"

is
many
forgotten your past, and are charmed by the
sight of your present graceful shape and white
wings, and write Chinese verses and Japanese
verses about you. The high-born damsel, who
could not bear even to look at you in your
former shape, now gazes at you with delight,
and wants you to perch upon her hairpin, and
holds out her dainty fan in the hope that you
will light upon it. But this reminds me that
there is an ancient Chinese story about you,
which is not pretty.
"In the time of the
Emperor Genso,
the Imperial Palace contained hundreds and
thousands of beautiful ladies, so many, in

deed, that it would have been difficult for any

man to decide which among them was the love
liest. So all of those beautiful persons were
assembled together in one place and you were
;

set free to fly among them and it was decreed

;

that the damselupon whose hairpin you perched

should be augustly summoned to the Imperial
Chamber. In that time there could not be
more than one Empress which was a good
law but, because of you, the Emperor Genso
;

did great mischief in the land. For your mind

is light and frivolous and although among so
;

many beautiful women there must have been

some persons of pure heart, you would look for
nothing but beauty, and so betook yourself
to the person most beautiful in outward appear
ance. Therefore many of the female attendants
ceased altogether to think about the right way
197
of women, and began to study how to make
themselves appear splendid in the eyes of men.
And the end of it was that the Emperor Genso
died a pitiful and painful death all because
of your light and trifling mind. Indeed, your
real character can easily be seen from your con
duct in other matters. There are trees, for ex
ample, such as the evergreen-oak and the
pine, whose leaves do not fade and fall, but
remain always green ;
these are trees of firm

heart, trees of solid character. But you say

that they are stiff and formal ; and you hate
the sight of them, and never pay them a visit.

Only to the cherry-tree, and the kaido* and

the peony, and the yellow rose you go : those

you because they have showy flowers, and

like

you try only to please them. Such conduct,

let me assure you,
is
very unbecoming. Those
trees certainly have handsome flowers but ;

hunger-satisfying fruits they have not and ;

they are grateful to those only who are fond of

luxury and show. And that is just the reason
why they are pleased by your fluttering wings
and delicate shape that is why they are kind
;

to you.

Now, in this spring season, while

"

you sportively dance through the gardens of the

wealthy, or hover among the beautiful alleys of

l
Pyrus spectabilis.

198
cherry-trees in blossom, you say to yourself :
Nobody in the world has such pleasure as I,
or such excellent friends. And, in spite of all
f
that people may say, I most love the peony,
and the golden yellow rose is
my own darling,
and I will
obey her every least behest ;
for that
is
my pride and my delight. ... So you say.
But the opulent and elegant season of flowers is
very short soon they will fade and fall. Then,
:

in the time of summer heat, there will be green

leaves onlyand presently the winds of autumn
;

when even the leaves themselves will

will blow,

shower down like rain, parari-parari And your .

fate will thenbe as the fate of the unlucky in

the proverb, Tanomi ki no shita ni am furu

[Even through the tree on which I relied for shel

ter the rain leaks down]. For you will seek out

your old friend, the root-cutting insect, the grub,

and beg him to let you return into your old-
time hole ; but now having wings, you will
not be able to enter the hole because of them,
and you not be able to shelter your body
will

anywhere between heaven and earth, and all

the moor-grass will then have withered, and

you will not have even one drop of dew with

which to moisten your tongue, and there will
be nothing left for you to do but to lie down
and die. All because of your light and frivolous
but, ah! how lamentable an end
"

heart ! . . .

199
* Most of the
III

Japanese stories about

butterflies appear, as I have said, to be of Chi
nese origin. But I have one which is probably
indigenous ;
and it seems to me worth telling for
the benefit of persons who believe that there is

no romantic love in the Far East.

"
"

Behind the cemetery of the temple of

Sozanji, in the suburbs of the capital, there
long stood a solitary cottage, occupied by an
old man named Takahama. He was liked in the

neighborhood, by reason of his amiable ways ;

but almost everybody supposed him to be a little

mad. Unless a man take the Buddhist vows, he
is expected to marry, and to bring up a family.
But Takahama did not belong to the religious
life and he could not be persuaded to marry.
;

Neither had he ever been known to enter into a

love-relation with any woman. For more than
fifty years he had lived entirely alone.
One summer he fell sick, and knew
that he had not long to live. He then sent for
his sister-in-law, a widow, and for her only son,
a lad of about twenty years old, to whom he
was much attached. Both promptly came, and
did whatever they could to soothe the old man s
last hours.

200
 One sultry afternoon, while the widow
and her son were watching at his bedside, Taka-
hama asleep. At the same moment a very
fell
Jw^
large white butterfly entered the room, and /
perched upon the sick man s pillow. The nephew
drove it
away with a fan ;
but it returned im

mediately to the pillow, and was again driven

away, only to come back a third time. Then
the nephew chased it into the garden, and across
the garden, through an open gate, into the cem

etery of the neighboring temple. But it con

tinued to flutter before him as if unwilling to
be driven further, and acted so queerly that he
began to wonder whether it was really a butter
fly, or a ma. 1
He again chased it, and followed
it far into the cemetery, until he saw it
fly

against a tomb, a woman s tomb. There it

unaccountably disappeared and he searched ;

for it in vain. He then examined the monument.

It bore the personal name Akiko," together
"

with an unfamiliar family name, and an inscrip

tion stating thatAkiko had died at the age of
eighteen. Apparently the tomb had been erected
about fifty years previously moss had begun :

to gather upon it. But it had been well cared

for there were fresh flowers before it
: and ;

the water-tank had recently been filled.

On returning to the sick room, the
1
An evil spirit.

201
young man was shocked by the announcement
that his uncle had ceased to breathe. Death
had come to the sleeper painlessly and the ;

dead face smiled.

The young man told his mother of
what he had seen in the cemetery.
"Ah!" exclaimed the widow, "then

must have been Akiko

"

it ! . . .

But who was Akiko, mother

"
"

? the

nephew asked.
The widow answered :

When your good uncle was young

"

he was betrothed to a charming girl called

Akiko, the daughter of a neighbor. Akiko died
of consumption, only a little before the day

appointed for the wedding ; and her promised

husband sorrowed greatly. After Akiko had
been buried, he made a vow never to marry ;

and he built this little house beside the ceme

tery, so that he might be always near her grave.
All this happened more than fifty years ago.
And every day of those fifty years winter
and summer alike your uncle went to the

cemetery, and prayed at the grave, and swept

the tomb, and set offerings before it. But he
did not like to have any mention made of the
matter and he never spoke of it.
; So, at . . .

last, Akiko came for him : the white butterfly

was her soul."

202
 I had almost forgotten to mention an
^
ancient Japanese dance, called the Butterfly yfj*^
Dance (Kockd-Mai), which used to be performed
in the Imperial Palace, by dancers costumed as

butterflies. Whether it is danced occasionally

nowadays I do not know. be very
It is said to

difficult to learn. Six dancers are required for

the proper performance of it ;
and they must
move in particular figures, obeying traditional
rules for every step, pose, or gesture, and
circling about each other very slowly to the
sound of hand-drums and great drums, small
flutes and great flutes, and pandean pipes of a

form unknown to Western Pan.

203
 WITH a view to self-protection I have
been reading Dr. Howard s book,
"

Mosquitoes."
I am persecuted by mosquitoes. There are sev
eral species in my neighborhood but only one
;

of them is a serious torment, a tiny needly

thing, all silver-speckled and silver-streaked. The

puncture of it is sharp as an electric burn and ;

the mere hum of it has a lancinating

quality of
tone which foretells the quality of the pain about
to come, much in the same way that a par
ticular smell suggests a particular taste. I find

that this mosquito much resembles the creature

which Dr. Howard calls Stegomyia fasciata^ or
Culex fasciatus : and that its habits are the
207
 same as those of the Stegomyia. For example,
* diurnal rather than nocturnal, and becomes
it is

most troublesome during the afternoon. And I

have discovered that it comes from the Buddhist
cemetery, a very old cemetery, in the rear
of my garden.

Dr. Howard s book declares that, in

order to rid a neighborhood of mosquitoes, it

isonly necessary to pour a little petroleum, or

kerosene oil, into the stagnant water where they
breed. Once a week the oil should be used,
"

at the rate of one ounce for every fifteen square

feet of water-surface, and a proportionate quan
tity for any less surface." But please to
. . .

consider the conditions in my neighborhood !

I have said that my tormentors come

from the Buddhist cemetery. Before nearly
every tomb in that old cemetery there is a

water-receptacle, or cistern, called mizutamt.

In the majority of cases this mizutamt is sim

ply an oblong cavity chiseled in the broad pe

destal supporting the monument but before ;

tombs of a costly kind, having no pedestal-tank,

a larger separate tank placed, cut out of a
is

single block of stone, and decorated with a

family crest, or with symbolic carvings. In
front of a tomb of the humblest class, having
no mizutamt, water is placed in cups or other
208
vessels, for the dead must have water. -Flow-
ers also must be offered to them and before ;

every tomb you will find a pair of bamboo cups,

or other flower-vessels and these, of course,
;

contain water. There is a well in the cemetery

to supply water for the graves. Whenever the
tombs are visited by relatives and friends of
the dead, fresh water poured into the tanks
is

and cups. But as an old cemetery of this kind

contains thousands of mizutamt, and tens of
thousands of flower-vessels, the water in all
of these cannot be renewed every day. It be
comes stagnant and populous. The deeper tanks
seldom get dry ;
the rainfall at Tokyo being
heavy enough to keep them partly filled during
nine months out of the twelve.
Well, it is in these tanks and flower-
vessels that mine enemies are born they rise :

by millions from the water of the dead and, ;

according to Buddhist doctrine, some of them

may be reincarnations of those very dead, con
demned by the error of former lives to the
condition of Jiki-ketsu-gaki, or blood-drinking

pretas. .
Anyhow the malevolence of the
. .

Culex fasciatus would justify the suspicion

that some wicked human soul had been com

pressed into that wailing speck of a body. . . .

Now, to return to the subject of

209
kerosene-oil, you can exterminate the mosqui
toes of any locality by covering with a film of
kerosene all stagnant water surfaces therein.
The larvae die on rising to breathe and the ;

adult females perish when they approach the

water to launch their rafts of eggs. And I
read, in Dr. Howard s book, that the actual
cost of freeing from mosquitoes one American
town of fifty thousand inhabitants, does not
exceed three hundred dollars ! . . .

wonder what would be said if the

I

city-government of Tokyo which is aggres

sively scientific and progressive were sud
denly to command that all water-surfaces in the
Buddhist cemeteries should be covered, at regu
lar intervals, with a film of kerosene oil ! How
could the religion which prohibits the taking
of any life even of invisible life yield to
such a mandate Would
piety even dream
? filial

of consenting to obey such an order ? And then

to think of the cost, in labor and time, of put

ting kerosene oil, every seven days, into the

millions of mizutamt, and the tens of millions
of bamboo flower-cups, in the Tokyo grave
yards ! . . .
Impossible ! To
free the city from

mosquitoes it would be necessary to demolish

the ancient graveyards and that would sig
;

nify the ruin of the Buddhist temples attached

2IO
to them ;
and that would mean the dispari-
tion of so many charming gardens, with their
lotus-ponds and Sanscrit-lettered monuments \jflf
and humpy bridges and holy groves and weirdly- x/
^/
smiling Buddhas So the extermination of the
!

Culex fasciatus would involve the destruction

of the poetry of the ancestral cult, surely too
great a price to pay ! . . .

Besides, I should like, when my time

comes, to be laid away in some Buddhist grave
yard of the ancient kind, so that my ghostly

company should be ancient, caring nothing for

the fashions and the changes and the disinte

grations of Meiji. That old cemetery behind my

garden would be a suitable place. Everything
there is beautiful with a beauty of exceeding
and startling queerness each tree and stone has
;

been shaped by some old, old ideal which no

longer exists in any living brain ;
even the shad
ows are not and sun, but of a world
of this time

forgotten, that never knew steam or electricity or

magnetism or kerosene oil Also in the boom !

of the big bell there a quaintness of tone

is

which wakens feelings, so strangely far-away

from all the nineteenth-century part of me, that
the faint blind stirrings of them make me afraid,

deliciously afraid. Never do I hear that billow

ing peal but I become aware of a striving and a
211
fluttering in the abyssal part ofmy ghost, a
sensation as of memories struggling to reach the

light beyond the obscurations of a million mil

lion deaths and births. I hope to remain within
hearing of that bell. And, considering the
. . .

possibility of being doomed to the state of a

Jiki-ketsu-gaki, I want to have my chance of

being reborn in some bamboo flower-cup, or
mizutamt, whence I might issue softly, singing
my thin and pungent song, to bite some people
that I know.

212
ANTS
 I

THIS morning sky, after the night s

tempest, a pure and dazzling blue. The air
is

the delicious air ! is full of sweet resinous

odors, shed from the countless pine-boughs

broken and strewn by the gale. In the neigh
boring bamboo-grove I hear the flute-call of the
bird that praises the Sutra of the Lotos ; and
the land is very still by reason of the south
wind. Now the summer, long delayed, is
truly
with us : butterflies of queer Japanese colors
are flickering about semi are wheezing
; wasps ;

are humming gnats are dancing in the sun

; ;

and the ants are busy repairing their damaged

215
habitations. ... I bethink me of a Japanese

poem - :

Yuku e" naki :

Ari no sumai ya !

Go-getsu ame".

\_Now the poor creature has nowhere to go !

. .Alas for the dwellings of the ants in this rain of
.

thefifth month /]

But those big black ants in my gar

den do not seem to need any sympathy. They
have weathered the storm in some unimagin
able way, while great trees were being uprooted,
and houses blown to fragments, and roads
washed out of existence. Yet, before the ty
phoon, they took no other visible precaution
than to block up the gates of their subterranean
town. And the spectacle of their triumphant toil
to-day impels me to attempt an essay on Ants.
I should have liked to preface my dis

quisitions with something from the old Japanese

literature, something emotional or metaphysi
cal. But all that my Japanese friends were able
to find for me on the subject, excepting some
verses of little worth, was Chinese.
This
Chinese material consisted chiefly of strange
stories ;
and one of them seems to me worth
1
quoting, faute de mieuxf
216
 In the province of Taishu, in China,
there was a pious man who, every day, during

many years, fervently worshiped a certain god

dess. One morning, while he was engaged in
his devotions, a beautiful woman, wearing a

yellow robe, came into his chamber and stood

before him. He, greatly surprised, asked her
what she wanted, and why she had entered
unannounced. She answered I am not a :
"

woman I am the goddess whom you have so

:

long and so faithfully worshiped and I have ;

now come to prove to you that your devotion

has not been in vain. Are you acquainted
. . .

with the language of Ants ? The worshiper "

replied I am only
: a low-born
"

and ignorant
person, not a scholar and even of the lan ;

guage of superior men I know nothing." At

these words the goddess smiled, and drew from
her bosom a little box, shaped like an incense
box. She opened the box, dipped a finger into
it,and took therefrom some kind of ointment
with which she anointed the ears of the man.
she said to him, try to find some
" "

Now,"

Ants, and when you find any, stoop down, and

listen carefully to their talk. You will be able
217
to understand it ;
and you will hear of some
thing to your advantage. Only remember . . .

that you must not frighten or vex the Ants."

Then the goddess vanished away.
The man immediately went out to
look for some Ants. had scarcely crossedHe
the threshold of his door when he perceived
two Ants upon a stone supporting one of the
house-pillars. He stooped over them, and lis
tened and he was astonished to find that he
;

could hear them talking, and could understand

what they said. Let us try to find a warmer
"

proposed one of the Ants. Why a "

place,"

warmer place? asked the other

"

"what is the ;

"

matter with this place It is too damp and

"

cold below," said the first Ant ;

"

there is a

big treasure buried here ;

and the sunshine
cannot warm the ground about Then the it."

two Ants went away together, and the listener

ran for a spade.
By digging in the neighborhood of
the pillar, he soon found a number of large jars
full of gold coin. The discovery of this treasure
made him a very rich man.
Afterwards he often tried to listen
to the conversation of Ants. But he was never
again able to hear them speak. The ointment
of the goddess had opened his ears to their

mysterious language for only a single day.

218
 Now I, like that Chinese devotee,
must confess myself a very ignorant person, and
naturally unable to hear the conversation of
Ants. But the Fairy of Science sometimes
touches my ears and eyes with her wand and ;

then, for a littletime, I am able to hear things

inaudible, and to perceive things imperceptible.

II

For the same reason that it is consid

ered wicked, in sundry circles, to speak of a
non-Christian people having produced a civiliza
tion ethically superior to our own, certain per
sons will not be pleased by what I am going to

say about ants. But there are men, incompar

ably wiser than I can ever hope to be, who think
about insects and civilizations independently of
the blessings of Christianity and I find en ;

couragement in the new Cambridge Natural

History which contains the following remarks
,

by Professor David Sharp, concerning ants

- :

"

Observation has revealed the most

remarkable phenomena in the lives of these in
sects. Indeed we can scarcely avoid the conclu-

219
* sion that they have acquired, in many respects,
the art of living together in societies more per

fectly than our own species has and that they ;

have anticipated us in the acquisition of some

of the industries and arts that greatly facilitate
social life."

I suppose that few well-informed per

sons will dispute this plain statement by a

trained specialist. The contemporary man of
science not apt to become sentimental about
is

ants or bees but he will not hesitate to ac

;

knowledge that, in regard to social evolution,

these insects appear to have advanced "

beyond
man." Mr. Herbert Spencer, whom nobody
willcharge with romantic tendencies, goes con
siderably further than Professor Sharp show ;

ing us that ants are, in a very real sense, ethi

cally as well as economically in advance of
humanity, their lives being entirely devoted
to altruistic ends. Indeed, Professor Sharp
somewhat needlessly qualifies his praise of the
ant with this cautious observation :

"

The competence of the ant is not

like that of man. It is devoted to the welfare
of the species rather than to that of the indi

vidual, which is, as it were, sacrificed or special

ized for the benefit of the community."
220
 The obvious implication, that any social

state, in which the improvement of the indi

vidual is sacrificed to the common welfare,
leaves much to be desired, is probably cor
rect, from the actual human standpoint. For
man is
yet imperfectly evolved and human ;

society has much to gain from his further in-

dividuation. regard But in to social insects

the implied criticism is open to question. The "

improvement of the individual," says Herbert

Spencer,
"

consists in the better fitting of

him for social
cooperation this, being ;
and
conducive to social prosperity, is conducive
to the maintenance of the race." In other
words, the value of the individual can be only
in relation to the society and this granted, ;

whether the sacrifice of the individual for the

sake of that society be good or evil must de

pend upon what the society might gain or lose
through a further individuation of members. its

. . .
But, as we
presently see, the con
shall

ditions of ant-society that most deserve our

attention are the ethical conditions and these ;

are beyond human criticism, since they realize

that ideal of moral evolution described by Mr.

Spencer as a state in which egoism and altru

"

ism are so conciliated that the one merges into

the other." That is to say, a state in which the

only possible pleasure is the pleasure of un-

221
selfish action. Or, again to quote Mr. Spencer,
the activities of the insect-society are "ac
tivities which postpone individual well-being
so completely to the well-being of the commu

nity that individual life appears to be attended

to only just so far as is necessary to make
possible due attention to social life, ... the
individual taking only just such food and just
such rest as are needful to maintain its vigor."

Ill

I hope my reader is aware that ants

practise horticulture and agriculture that they ;

are skillful in the cultivation of mushrooms ;

that they have domesticated (according to pre

sent knowledge) five hundred and eighty-four
different kinds of animals ;
that they make
tunnels through solid rock ;
that they know
how to against atmospheric changes
provide
which might endanger the health of their chil
dren ;
and that, for insects, their longevity is

exceptional, members of the more highly

evolved species living for a considerable number
of years.
But it is not especially of these mat
ters that I wish to speak. What I want to talk
about is the awful propriety, the terrible moral-
222
ity,
of the ant.
1
Our most
appalling ideals of t^
conduct fall short of the ethics of the ant, as

progress is reckoned in time, by nothing less

than millions of years ! . . . When I say

"

the

ant,"
I mean the highest type of ant, not, of

course, the entire ant-family. About two thou

sand species of ants are already known ; and
these exhibit, in their social organizations,
widely varying degrees of evolution. Certain
social phenomena of the greatest biological im

portance, and of no less importance in their

strange relation to the subject of ethics, can be
studied to advantage only in the existence of
the most highly evolved societies of ants.

After all that has been written of late

years about the probable value of relative ex

perience in the long life of the ant, I suppose
that few persons would venture to deny individ
ual character to the ant. The intelligence of
the creature in meeting and overcoming
little

difficulties of a totally new kind, and in adapt

ing itself to conditions entirely foreign to its

experience, proves a considerable power of in-

1
An
interesting fact in this connection is that the Japan
ese word
for ant, art, is represented by an ideograph formed
of the character for insect combined with the character
"
"

signifying
"

moral rectitude,"
"

propriety
"

(giri). So the
Chinese character actually means "

The Propriety-Insect."

22 3
dependent thinking. But this at least is certain :

that the ant has no individuality capable of be

ing exercised in a purely selfish direction I ;

am using the word selfish in

"

its
ordinary
"

acceptation. A
greedy ant, a sensual ant, an
ant capable of any one of the seven deadly sins,
or even of a small venial sin, is unimaginable.

Equally unimaginable, of course, a romantic

ant, an ideological ant, a poetical ant, or an ant
inclined to metaphysical speculations. No hu
man mind could attain to the absolute matter-
of-fact quality of the ant-mind ;
no human
being, as now constituted, could cultivate a
mental habit so impeccably practical as that of
the ant. But
this superlatively practical mind is

incapable of moral error. It would be difficult,

perhaps, to prove that the ant has no religious

ideas. But it is certain that such ideas could
not be of any use to it. The being
incapable of
moral weakness is
beyond the need of spirit
"

ual guidance."

Only in a vague way can we conceive

the character of ant-society, and the nature of

ant-morality ;
and to do even this we must try
to imagine some yet impossible state of human

society and human morals. Let us, then, im

agine a world full of peopleincessantly and
furiously working, all of whom seem to be

224
women. No one of these women could be per
suaded or deluded into,taking a single atom
of food more than is needful to maintain her
strength and no one ;
of them ever sleeps a
second longer than is necessary to keep her
nervous system in good working-order. And all
of them are sopeculiarly constituted that the
least unnecessary indulgence would result in
some derangement of function.
The work daily performed by these
female laborers comprises road-making, bridge-
building, timber-cutting, architectural construc
tion of numberless kinds, horticulture and agri
culture, the feeding and sheltering of a hundred
varieties of domestic animals, the manufacture
of sundry chemical products, the storage and
conservation of countless food-stuffs, and the
care of the children of the race. All this labor
is done for the commonwealth no citizen of
which is capable even of thinking about "pro
perty," except as a res publica ; and the sole
object of the commonwealth is the nurture and
training of its young, nearly all of whom are
girls. The period of infancy is long the chil :

dren remain for a great while, not only helpless,

but shapeless, and withal so delicate that they
must be very carefully guarded against the
change of temperature. Fortunately their
least

nurses understand the laws of health: each

225
* thoroughly knows all that she ought to
in regard to ventilation, disinfection, drainage,

moisture, and the danger of germs, germs

know

being as visible, perhaps, to her myopic sight

as they become to our own
eyes under the mi
croscope. Indeed, all matters of hygiene are so
well comprehended that no nurse ever makes
a mistake about the sanitary conditions of her

neighborhood.
In spite of this perpetual labor no
worker remains unkempt each is scrupulously
:

neat, making her toilet many times a day. But

as every worker is born with the most beautiful
of combs and brushes attached to -her wrists, no
time is wasted in the toilet-room. Besides keep
ing themselves strictly clean, the workers must
also keep their houses and gardens in faultless

order, for the sake of the children. Nothing

less than an earthquake, an eruption, an inun
dation, or a desperate war, is allowed to inter
rupt the daily routine of dusting, sweeping,
scrubbing, and disinfecting.

IV

Now for stranger facts :

This world of incessant toil is a more

than Vestal world. It is true that males can
226
sometimes be perceived but they ap
in it ;

and they have

pear only at particular seasons,
nothing whatever to do with the workers or
with the work. None of them would presume
to address a worker, except, perhaps, under
extraordinary circumstances of common peril.
And no worker would think of talking to a male ;
for males, in this queer world, are inferior

beings, equally incapable of fighting or work

ing, and tolerated only as necessary evils. One
special class of females, the Mothers-Elect of
the race, do condescend to consort with
males, during a very brief period, at particular
seasons. But the Mothers-Elect do not work ;

and they must accept husbands. A worker

could not even dream of keeping company with
a male, not merely because such association
would signify the most frivolous waste of time,
nor yet because the worker necessarily regards
allmales with unspeakable contempt but be ;

cause the worker isincapable of wedlock. Some

workers, indeed, are capable of parthenogenesis,
and give birth to children who never had fathers
As a general rule, however, the worker is truly
feminine by her moral instincts only she has :

all the tenderness, the patience, and the fore

sight that we call

"

maternal
"

but her sex

;

has disappeared, like the sex of the Dragon-

Maiden in the Buddhist legend.
227
 For defense against creatures of prey,
or enemies of the state, the workers are pro
vided with weapons and they are furthermore
;

protected by a large military force. The warriors

are so much bigger than the workers (in some
communities, at least) that it is difficult, at first

sight, to believe them of the same race. Sol

diers one hundred times larger than the work
ers whom they guard are not uncommon. But
allthese soldiers are Amazons, or, more cor
rectly speaking, semi-females. They can work
sturdily ;
but being built for fighting and for
heavy pulling chiefly, their usefulness is re
stricted to those directions in which force, rather
than skill, is required.

[Why females, rather than males,

should have been evolutionally specialized into

soldiery and laborers may not be nearly so

simple a question as it appears. I am very sure
of not being able to answer it. But natural
economy may have decided the matter. In

many forms of life, the female greatly exceeds

the male in bulk and in energy perhaps, in
;

this case, the larger reserve of life-force pos

sessed originally by the complete female could
be more rapidly and effectively utilized for the
development of a special fighting-caste. All
energies which, in the fertile female, would be
228
expended in the giving of life seem here to
have been diverted to the evolution of aggres
sive power, or working-capacity.]

Of the true females, the Mothers-

Elect, there are very few indeed and these ;

are treated like queens. So constantly and so

reverentially are they waited upon that they

can seldom have any wishes to express. They
are relieved from every care of existence, ex

cept the duty of bearing offspring. Night and

day they are cared for in every possible manner.
They alone are superabundantly and richly
fed : for the sake of the offspring they must
eat and drink and repose right royally ;
and
their physiological specialization allows of such

indulgence ad libitum. They seldom go out,

and never unless attended by a powerful escort ;

as they cannot be permitted to incur unnecessary

fatigue or danger. Probably they have no great

desire to go out. Around them revolves the
whole activity of the race : all its intelligence
and toil and thrift are directed solely toward
the well-being of these Mothers and of their
children.
But last and least of the race rank
the husbands of these Mothers, the necessary

Evils, the males. They appear only at a par

ticular season, as I have already observed ; and

229
their lives are very short. Some cannot even
boast of noble descent, though destined to

royal wedlock ;
for they are not royal offspring,
but virgin-born, parthenogenetic children,
and, for that reason especially, inferior beings,
the chance results of some mysterious atavism.
But of any sort of males the commonwealth
tolerates but few, barely enough to serve as
husbands for the Mothers-Elect, and these few
perish almost as soon as their duty has been
done. The meaning of Nature s law, in this
extraordinary world, is identical with Ruskin s

teaching that life without effort is crime ;

and
since the males are useless as workers or fight

ers, their existence is of only momentary impor

tance. They are not, indeed, sacrificed, like
the Aztec victim chosen for the festival of Tez-
and allowed a honeymoon of twenty
catlipoca,

days before his heart was torn out. But they

are scarcely less unfortunate in their high for
tune. Imagine youths brought up in the know

ledge that they are destined to become royal

bridegrooms for a single night, that after
their bridal they will have no moral right to

live, that marriage, for each and all of them,

and that they can
will signify certain death,

not even hope to be lamented by their young

widows, who will survive them for a time of
many generations. . . . !

230
 But all the foregoing is no more than gi
a proem to the real "

Romance of the Insect- xrj

World."

By far the most startling discovery

in relation to this astonishing civilization is that

of the suppression of sex. In certain advanced

forms of ant-life sex totally disappears in the

majority of individuals ;
in nearly all the

higher ant-societies sex-life appears, to exist only

to the extent absolutely needed for the continu
ance of the species. But the biological fact in
itself is much less startling than the ethical
suggestion which it offers ; for this practical

suppression, or regulation, of sex-faculty appears

to be voluntary ! .Voluntary, at least, so far as

the species is concerned. It is now believed

that these wonderful creatures have learned how
to develop, or to arrest the development, of sex
in their by some particular mode of
young,
nutrition. They have succeeded in placing un
der perfect control what is commonly supposed
to be the most powerful and unmanageable of
instincts. And this rigid restraint of sex-life to

within the limits necessary to provide against

extinction is but one (though the most amazing)
of many vital economies effected by the race.

capacity for egoistic pleasure in the

Every
231
common meaning word
"

of the "egoistic
has
been equally -repressed through physiological
modification. No indulgence of any natural
appetite is possible except to that degree in
which such indulgence can directly or indirectly
benefit the species even the indispensable
;

requirements of food and sleep being satisfied

only to the exact extent necessary for the main
tenance of healthy activity. The individual can
exist, act, think, only for the communal good ;

and the commune triumphantly refuses, in so

far as cosmic law permits, to let itself be ruled
either by Love or Hunger.

Most of us have been brought up in

the belief that without some kind of religious

creed some hope of future reward or fear of
future punishment no civilization could exist.

We have been taught to think that in the ab

sence of laws based upon moral ideas, and in
the absence of an effective police to enforce
such laws, nearly everybody would seek only
his or her personal advantage, to the disadvan

tage of everybody else. The strong would then

destroy the weak pity and sympathy would
;

disappear ;
and the wholesocial fabric would

fall to pieces. . These teachings confess

. .

the existing imperfection of human nature and ;

they contain obvious truth. But those who first

232
proclaimed that truth, thousands and thousands
of years ago, never imagined a form of social
existence in which selfishness would be naturally

impossible. It remained for irreligious Nature

to furnish us with proof positive that there can
exist a society in which the pleasure of active
beneficence makes needless the idea of duty,
a society in which instinctive morality can

dispense with ethical codes of every sort, a

society of which every member is born so abso-)

lutely unselfish,and so energetically good, that?

moral training could signify, even for its young
est, neither more nor less than waste of precious
time.

To the Evolutionist such facts neces

sarily suggest that the value of our moral ideal

ism is but temporary ;
and that something
better than virtue, better than kindness, better
than self-denial, in the present human mean

ing of those terms, might, under certain

conditions, eventually replace them. He finds
himself obliged to face the question whether a
world without moral notions might not be
morally better than a world in which conduct
is regulated
by such notions. He must even
ask himself whether the existence of religious
commandments, moral laws, and ethical stand
ards among ourselves does not prove us still in

233
a very primitive stage of social evolution. And
these questions naturally lead up to another :

Will humanity ever be able, on this planet,

to reach an ethical condition beyond all its

ideals, a condition in which everything that

we now call evil willhave been atrophied out
of existence, and everything that we call virtue

have been transmuted into instinct ;

a state
of altruism in which and codes
ethical concepts
will have become as useless as they would

be, even now, in the societies of the higher

ants.

The giants of modern thought have

given some attention to this question and the ;

greatest among them has answered it

partly
in the affirmative. Herbert Spencer has ex
pressed his belief that humanity will arrive at
some state of civilization ethically comparable
with that of the ant :

"

If we have, in lower orders of crea

tures, cases in which the nature is constitution
activities have
ally so modified that altruistic
become one with egoistic activities, there is an
irresistible implication thata parallel identifica
tion will, under parallel conditions, take place

among human beings. Social insects furnish us

with instances completely to the point, and
234
instances showing us, indeed, to what a mar
velous degree the life of the individual may be
absorbed in subserving the lives of other indi
viduals. Neither the ant nor the bee can
. . .

be supposed to have a sense of duty, in the

acceptation we give to that word nor can it ;

be supposed that it
continually undergoing is

self-sacrifice, in the ordinary acceptation of that

word. . . .
[The facts] show us that it is within
the possibilities of organization to produce a
nature which shall be just as energetic and
even more energetic in the pursuit of altru
istic ends, as is in other cases shown in the pur
suit of egoistic and they show that, in
ends ;

such cases, these altruistic ends are pursued in

pursuing ends which, on their other face, are
egoistic. For the satisfaction of the needs of
the organization, these actions, conducive to the
welfare of others, must be carried on. ...

"

So far from
being true that there its

must go on, throughout all the future, a con

dition in which self-regard is to be continually

subjected by the regard for others, it will, con-

trari-wise, be the case that a regard for others
will eventually become so large a source of

pleasure as to overgrow the pleasure which is

derivable from direct egoistic gratification. . . .

235
Eventually, then, there will come also a state
in which egoism and altruism are so conciliated
that the one merges in the other."

VI

Of course the foregoing prediction

does not imply that human nature will ever
undergo such physiological change as would be
represented by structural specializations com
parable to those by which the various castes of
insect societies are differentiated. We are not
bidden to imagine a future state of humanity
in which the active majority would consist of
semi-female workers and Amazons toiling for
an inactive minority of selected Mothers. Even
in his chapter, "

Human Population in the Fu

ture," Mr. Spencer has attempted no detailed
statement of the physical modifications inevi
table to the production of higher moral types,

though his general statement in regard to a

perfected nervous system, and a great diminu
tion of human fertility, suggests that such moral
evolution would signify a very considerable
amount of physical change. If it be legitimate
to believe in a future humanity to which the
pleasure of mutual beneficence will represent
the whole joy of life, would it not also be legiti
mate to imagine other transformations, physical

236
and moral, which the facts of insect-biology
have proved to be within the range of evolu-
tional possibility ? ... I do not know. I most fcD

worshipfully reverence Herbert Spencer as the <"j

greatest philosopher that has yet appeared in

this world ;
and I should be very sorry to write
down anything contrary to his teaching, in such
wise that the reader could imagine it to have
,been inspired by the Synthetic Philosophy. For
the ensuing reflections, I alone am responsible ;

and if I err, let the sin be upon my own head.

suppose that the moral transforma

I

tions predicted by Mr. Spencer, could be ef

fected only with the aid of physiological change,
and at a terrible cost. Those ethical conditions
manifested by insect-societies can have been
reached only through effort desperately sus
tained for millions of years against the most
atrocious necessities. Necessities equally mer
ciless may have to be met and mastered eventu
ally by the human race. Mr. Spencer has shown
that the time of the greatest possible human
suffering is yet to come, and that it will be con
comitant with the period of the greatest possi
ble pressure of population. Among other results
of that long stress, I understand that there will
be a vast increase of human intelligence and
sympathy ;
and that this increase of intelligence

237
will be effected at the cost of human fertility.
But this decline in reproductive power will not,

we are told, be sufficient to assure the very high

est social conditions : it will
only relieve that
pressure of population which has been the main
cause of human suffering. The state of perfect
social equilibrium will be approached, but never
quite reached, by mankind

Unless there be discovered some means

of solving economic problems, just as social insects

have solved them, by the suppression of sex-life.

Supposing that such a discovery were

made, and that the human race should decide
to arrest the development of sex in the ma

jority of its young, so as to effect a transfer

ence of those forces, now demanded by sex-life

to the development of higher activities, might

not the result be an eventual state of polymor
phism, like that of ants ? And, in such event,
might not the Coming Race be indeed repre
sented in its higher types, through feminine
rather than masculine evolution, by a ma
jority of beings of neither sex ?

Considering how many

persons, even
now, through merely unselfish (not to speak of
religious) motives, sentence themselves to celi-
238
bacy, should not appear improbable that a
it

more highly evolved humanity would cheerfully

sacrifice a large proportion of its sex-life for the

common weal, particularly in view of certain

advantages to be gained. Not the least of such
advantages always supposing that mankind
were able to control sex-life after the natural

manner of the ants would be a prodigious

increase of longevity. The higher types of a
humanity superior to sex might be able to
realize the dream of
life for a thousand years.

Already we find our lives too short

for the work we have to do and with the con
;

stantly accelerating progress of discovery, and

the never-ceasing expansion of knowledge, we
shall certainly find more and more reason to

regret, as time goes on, the brevity of exist

ence. That Science will ever discover the Elixir
of the Alchemists hope is
extremely unlikely.
The Cosmic Powers will not allow us to cheat
them. For every advantage which they yield
us the full price must be paid nothing for :

nothing the everlasting law. Perhaps the

is

price of long life will prove to be the price that the

ant&hajp paid for it. Perhaps, upon some elder
planet, that price has already been paid, and the
power to produce offspring restricted to a caste
morphologically differentiated, in unimaginable
ways, from the rest of the species. . . .

239
 VII
But while the facts of insect-biology
suggest so much in regard to the future course
of human evolution, do they not also suggest

something of largest significance concerning

the relation of ethics to cosmic law ? Appar

ently, the highest evolution will not be per

mitted to creatures capable of what human
moral experience has in all eras condemned.

Apparently, the highest possible strength is the

strength of unselfishness and power supreme
;

never will be accorded to cruelty or to lust.

There may be no gods but the forces that
;

shape and dissolve all forms of being would

seem to be much more exacting than gods. To
"

prove a dramatic tendency

"

in the ways of

the stars is not possible but the cosmic pro

;

cess seems nevertheless to affirm the worth of

every human system of ethics fundamentally

opposed to human egoism.

240
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