Part 4

You know the story probably; at any rate, you will find it in Mitford's tales of old Japan. It is a beautiful story, full of noble details, telling how, by the mean contrivance of a certain lord, the Prince of Ako was put in the wrong, and his condemnation to death and confiscation obtained. And how, then, forty-seven gentlemen, faithful vassals of the dead lord, swore to avenge the honor of their master, and for that purpose to put aside all that might stand in the way. For this end they put aside all else they cared for, even wife and children, and through every obstacle pursued their plan up to the favorable moment when they surprised, on a winter night, in his palace, among his guards, the object of their vengeance, whose suspicions had been allayed by long delay. And how his decapitated head was placed by them upon his victim's tomb, before the forty-seven surrendered themselves to justice, and were allowed to commit suicide by hara-kiri, and how they have since lived forever in memory of Japan.

These laws, then, destroyed nothing; they reasserted certain Japanese traditions and customs, but made out, through many details, the relations of dependence of all classes of society upon the shogun, as vassal indeed of the Mikado, but supreme ruler who held the key of all. All this did Iyémitsŭ carry out, as well as the consequent seclusion of the country; the only manner of avoiding ideals which might clash with those upon which this consolidation of the past was based. And to many of these ideals, to the idea of the sacredness of the family, to the idea of subjection to the law of the ruler, Christianity, by its ideal of marriage, by its distinctions of the duty to Cæsar,--to name only a few reasons,--might be found an insidious dissolvent. Therefore, if it be necessary to find a high motive, Iyémitsŭ did what he could to trample out the remains of Christianity, which were to expire, a few years after his death, in a final holocaust as terrible and glorious as Nero himself could have wished to see.

From that time, for two centuries, all went on the same, until the arrival of the foreigners found a system so complete, so interlocked and rigid, as to go to pieces with the breaking of a few links.

That break was supplied by the necessity of yielding to the Christian and foreign demand of entrance, and in so far abandoning the old ways.

With this proof of weakness the enemies of the Tokugawa and those of the system began to assert themselves, circumstances aiding, and in 1868 the last of the race resigned all powers and retired to private life.

The details of the enormous changes, as they followed one another, are too many and sudden, and apparently too contradictory, for me to explain further. Even now I repeat this deficient summary of the Tokugawa story only because of wishing to recall who they were that have temples and tombs about us, and to recall, also, that such has been the end of the beginning which is buried here.

* * * * *

The approach to the temple, to which most paths lead, is through a great broad avenue, a quarter of a mile long, bordered by high stone walls, above which rise high banks and higher trees. Between these dark green walls, all in their own shade,--in the center of the enormous path and in the full light of the sky,--a brilliant torrent rushes down in a groove of granite, hidden occasionally under the road. Here and there drop out from the walls noisy columns of clearest water.

In the distance beyond, through a mass of closer shade, made by two rows of dark cryptomeria, that are planted on banks faced with stones,--for here the road divides into three different grades of ascent by enormous steps,--shine the high white walls of the temple grounds, edged with a red-lacquered fence and a black roofed gate of red and gold. In the open space before it, with wide roads diverging through high walls, crowned with scarlet fences, stands a granite Torii, some thirty feet high, whose transverse stones are crossed by a great black tablet, marked with the gilded divine name of Iyéyasŭ. On one side a five-storied pagoda, graceful and tall, certainly one hundred feet high, blood-red and gold in the sunlight, and green, white, and gold in the shadows of its five rows of eaves, rises free from the trees around it and sends a tall spear, encircled with nine gilded rings, into the unbroken sky. Bindings and edges of copper, bright green with weathering, sparkle on its black roofs, and from their twenty corners hang bells of bright green copper. Above the steep steps, against the white wall, we pass through the first gate. It is recessed, and two gigantic columns of trees stand in the corners. Two monsters of uncertain lion-form occupy the niches on each side. From the upper side of the red pillars, as supports for the engaged lintel, stretch out the gilded heads of tapirs,--protectors against pestilence,--of lions and elephants, and great bunches of the petals of the peony. Above, the architrave and frieze are painted flat with many colors and with gold, and the ends of the many beams which support the roofing are gilded. Everywhere, even to the ends of the bronze tiles of the black roof, the crest of Iyéyasŭ's family, the Tokugawa, is stamped in gilded metal.

At the inside corner of the gate stands a gigantic cedar, said to have grown to this height since the time when Iyéyasŭ carried it about with him in his palanquin. Opposite to three red buildings, which are storehouses for the memorial treasures of the temple, stands, closer to the wall, a charming building, mostly gray,--partly owing to the wearing of the black lacquer with time,--and decorated with carved panels, which make a frieze or string-course all around its sides. Above this line of green, red, blue, white, and gold, a large space of gray wood, spotted with gilt metal where the framework of the outer beams is joined, spreads up to the pediment under the eaves, which is all carved and painted on a ground of green. The heavy roof above is of black bronze and gilded metal and is spotted with the golden Tokugawa crest. Below the colored band, midway, the black wall has gratings with golden hinges, for this delicate splendor is given to a stable--the stable of the sacred horse of the god Iyéyasŭ. The patient little cream-colored pony has no look of carrying such honors; and I can scarcely imagine his little form galloping out in the silence of the night under the terrible rider.

A gentle splashing of water, which mingles with the rustling of the trees and the quiet echoes of the pavement, comes from the end of the court where its edge is a descent filled with high forest trees. This lapping sound comes from the temple font, a great wet mass of stone, looking like solid water. It has been so exactly balanced on its base that the clear mountain stream overflows its sides and top in a perfectly fitting liquid sheet. This sacred well-basin has a canopy with great black bronze-and-gold roof, supported by white stone pillars, three on each corner, that are set in bronze sockets and strapped with gilded metal. The pediment and the brackets which cap the pillars are brilliantly painted, and the recessed space below the curved roof-beam is filled with palm-like curves of carved waves and winged dragons. Next to this, and at right angles to it, is a heavy bronze Torii, through which we go up to another court, turning away from the buildings we have seen. On the dark surface of the Torii glisten the golden Tokugawa crests; on the great tie-beam, the upper pillars, and the central upright. Near us, the eaves of its lower roof continuing the lines of the water-tank pavilion, is the closed library, red, delicately adorned with color under the eaves, and with the same heavy black roofing of bronze dotted with gold which all the buildings have in a heavy monotony. The steps lead us to another court, spotted with different buildings, among tremendous trees--a bronze pavilion with a hanging bell, a bell tower, and a drum tower, closed in with sloping walls of red lacquer, and a large lantern of bronze under a bronze pavilion, whose curious, European, semi-Gothic details contrast suddenly with all this alien art, and prove its origin a tribute from trading Christian Holland to the mortal deity worshiped here. On one side, where the forest slopes down in sun and shadow, stands a Buddhist temple, sole survivor of the faith in this place, now turned over to the official and native worship. The latticed gold-and-black screens were all closed, except in the center, through which we could see the haze and occasional glitter of the gold of gods and altar ornaments, and the paleness of the mats. On its red veranda stood a young Buddhist priest, whom our companions knew; a slight, elegant figure, a type of modesty and refinement. Farther back, on the other side of the veranda, an older companion looked down the valley at some girls whose voices we could hear among the trees.

The main entrance rises above the high steps to a little esplanade with heavy railing, on the level of a higher embankment. The court that we were in was full of broken shadows from its own tall trees, and from all this accumulation of buildings, red-lacquered and gilded, black-and-bronze roofed, spotted and stained with moss and lichens, or glittering here and there in their many metals. Long lines of light trickled down the gray trunks and made a light gray haze over all these miscellaneous treasures. Great lanterns (toro) of stone, capped with green and yellow moss, metal ones of bronze and iron, stand in files together here and in the lower court, or are disposed in rows along the great stone wall, which is streaked by the weather and spotted with white and purple lichens. Along its upper edge runs the red-lacquered wall, heavily roofed, of the cloister which surrounds the farther court above. Its face is paneled between the metal-fastened beams and posts with two rows of deep carvings of innumerable birds and trees and waves and clouds and flowers. All these are painted and gilded, as are the frieze above and the intervals between the gilded rafters.

On all this space, and on the great white gate, the "Gate Magnificent," the full sun embroidered the red and white and colored surfaces with millions of stitches of light and shadow.

The gate, or triumphal arch, is a two-storied building with heavy bronze-tiled roof, capped and edged, like all the rest, with gilded metal, and spotted with the gilded crest of the Tokugawa. Its front toward us rises in the well-known curve, shadowing a pediment, full of painted sculpture. Eight white pillars embroidered with delicate reliefs support the white lintel, which is embossed with great divine monsters and strapped with gilded metal. In the niches on each side are seated two repellant painted images, inside of white walls, which are trellises of deeply-carved floral ornament. These figures are warriors on guard, in ancient and Japanese costume, armed with bows and quivers of arrows, whose white, wrinkled, and crafty faces look no welcome to the intruder, and recall the cruel, doubtful look of the guardian statues of foxes that protect the entrances of the primitive shrines of the land-god Inari. The far-projecting white capitals are the half-bodies of lion-like monsters with open mouths and stretched-out paws. Above these, below the carved balcony which marks the second story, the cornice is made of a wilderness of tenfold brackets, black lacquered and patterned with gold, and from each of the ten highest ones a gilded lion's head frowns with narrowed eyes.

The balcony is one long set of panels--of little panels carved and painted on its white line with children playing among flowers. Above, again, as many white pillars as below; along their sides a wild fringe of ramping dragons and the pointed leaves of the bamboo. This time the pillars are crowned with the fabulous dragon-horse, with gilded hoofs dropping into air, and lengthy processes of horns receding far back into the upper bracketings of the roof. Upon the center of the white-and-gold lintel, so delicately carved with waves as to seem smooth in this delirium of sculpture, is stretched between two of the monster capitals a great white dragon with gilded claws and gigantic protruding head. But all these beasts are tame if compared with the wild army of dragons that cover and people the innumerable brackets which make the cornice and support the complicated rafters under the roof. Tier upon tier hang farther and farther out, like some great mass of vampires about to fall. They are gilded; their jaws are lacquered red far down into their throats, against which their white teeth glitter. Far into the shade spreads a nightmare of frowning eyebrows, and pointed fangs and outstretched claws extended toward the intruder. It would be terrible did not one feel the coldness of the unbelieving imagination which perhaps merely copied these duplicates of earlier terrors.

So it is, at least, in this bright, reasonable morning light; but I can fancy that late in autumn evenings, or in winter moonlight, or lighted by dubious torches, one might believe in the threats of these blinking eyes and grinning jaws, and fear that the golden terrors might cease clinging to the golden beams. It is steadying to the eye to meet at last the plain gold-and-black checker pattern of the ends of the final rafters below the roof, and to see against the sky peaceful bells like inverted tulips, with gilded clappers for pistils, hanging from the corners of the great bronze roof.

And as we pass through the gate we are made to see how ill omen was turned from the Luck of the Tokugawa by an "evil-averting pillar," which has its pattern carved upside down as a sacrifice of otherwise finished perfection.

I noticed also that a childish realism has furnished the lower monsters of the gate with real bristles for their distended nostrils; and this trifle recalls again the taint of the unbelieving imagination, which insists upon small points of truth as a sort of legal protection for its failing in the greater ones.

Within this third cloistered court which we now entered is an inclosed terrace, some fifty yards square. Inside of its walls are the oratory and the final shrine, to which we can pass through another smaller gate, this time with lower steps. The base of the terrace, which makes the level of the innermost court, is cased with large blocks of cemented stone. Above it is a fence or wall with heavy roof and projecting gilded rafters. Great black brackets support the roof. Between them all is carved and colored in birds and flowers and leaves, almost real in the shadow. Between the decorated string-courses the wall is pierced with gilded screens, through which play the lights and darks, the colors and the gilding of the shrine inside. At the very bottom, touching the stone plinth, carved and painted sculptures in high relief project and cast the shadows of leaves and birds upon the brilliant granite.

Beyond this inclosure and the shrine within it the court is abruptly ended by a lofty stone wall, high as the temple roof, and built into the face of the mountain. From its very edge the great slope is covered with tall trees that look down upon this basin filled with gilding and lacquers, with carvings and bronze, with all that is most artificial, delicate, labored, and transitory in the art of man.

It is in this contrast, insisted upon with consummate skill, that lies the secret beauty of the art of the men who did all this. The very lavishness of finish and of detail, the heaped-up exaggerations of refinement and civilization, bring out the more the simplicity and quiet of the nature about them. Up to the very edges of the carvings and the lacquers grow the lichens and mosses and small things of the forest. The gilded temples stand hidden in everlasting hills and trees, open above to the upper sky which lights them, and to the changing weather with which their meaning changes. Nothing could recall more completely the lessons of death, the permanence of change, and the transitoriness of man.

We went up the steps of the recessed gate, which repeats the former theme of white and gold and black in forms of an elegance that touches the limits of good taste. Its heavy black roof, whose four ridges are crowned by long bronze dragons and crawling lions, opens in a high curve on the front and sides to show under the bent white-and-gold ridge-beams a pediment strapped and intersected by spaces of small carvings, white and tinted, relieved by red perpendiculars of beams.

White and gold shine in the great brackets and the recesses of the rafters. Below the white frieze, carved with many small figures of Chinese story, the pillars and the lintel are inlaid in many carved woods, ornaments of dragons, plants, and diapered patterns on the whitened ground. The opened doors repeat the same faint tones of wood, and of white and gold, and of gilded metals. The walls, which are open at the base, are merely lattice screens. Their exquisite flowered patterns fluctuate with gilded accents of whites, greens, lavenders, and blues.

The gate inside is, therefore, nothing but an ornamented trellis, made still lighter by contrast with the solid white doors, trellised at top, but whose lower panels are exquisitely embellished with inlaid carved woods and chiseled golden metal. We took off our shoes, and ascended the bronze-covered steps of the oratory and shrine, which come down from the red-lacquered veranda, behind the four carved white pillars of the descending porch. Great white dragons with spiky claws project from the pillars, and crawl in and out of the double transom. In the shadow of the roof golden monsters hang from the complex brackets. The friezes and bands of the temple face are filled with carving, delicate as embossed tapestry, while the panels, deeply cut into auspicious forms of birds and flowers, carry full color and gold far up into the golden rafters.

* * * * *

All recesses and openings are filled with half-realities, as if to suggest a dread or a delicious interior, as flowers might pass through palings, or great beasts, types of power, might show great limbs through confining barriers. The long building, indeed, is a great framework, strongly marked, dropped on a solid base, and weighted down by a heavy roofing. The white pillars or posts which divide its face and corners stand clear between the black-and-gold latticed screens, partly lifted, which make almost all its wall.

Strips of the sacramental white paper hang from the lower lintel against the golden shade of the interior. Inside, pale mats cover the black-lacquer floor. Exquisite plain gold pillars, recalling Egyptian shapes, divide the gilded central walls. Here and there on the gilded tie-beams curved lines of emerald-green or crimson, like tendrils, mark with exquisite sobriety a few chamfered cuttings. On either side of the long room (fifty feet) are two recesses with large gold panels on which symbolic forms are freely sketched, and carved inlays of emblematic birds fill their farthest walls. Their ceilings are carved, inlaid, and painted with imperial flowers, mystic birds, and flying figures, and the pervading crest of the Tokugawa. For these were the waiting-rooms of the family, and, as A---- remarked, the impression is that of a princess's exquisite apartment, as if the Tartar tent had grown into greater fixity, and had been touched by a fairy's wand.

All was bare except for an occasional sacred mirror, or hanging gilded ornament, or the hanging papers of the native worship; and this absence of the Buddhist images and implements of worship left clear and distinct the sense of a personal residence--the residence of a divinized spirit, not unlike the one that he was used to in life.

Even more, on the outside of the building the curved stone base, like a great pedestal, with pierced niches filled with flowers carved and painted between the great brackets that support the veranda, makes the temple seem as if only deposited for a time, however long that time may be.

We merely looked at the central passage, that, dividing the building, leads down and then up to the shrine itself, and waited for the time when we shall get further permission, and I shall be allowed to sketch and photograph. As for me, I was wearied with the pleasure of the endless detail; for even now, with all my talk, I have been able to note but a little of what I can remember.

We withdrew, put on our shoes again at the gate, and turned below to the east side of the court. We passed the Hall of Perfumes, where incense was once burned while the monks chanted prayers in the court, as they did when Iyéyasŭ was buried. We passed the Hall of the Sacred Dances, whose open front makes a large, shady, dim stage, with a great red railing on its projecting edge. Within it moved a white shadow, the figure of a woman-dancer. And then we came to a white-and-gold gate, inside of the roofed cloister wall. Above the open door that leads to it sleeps a carved white cat, in high relief, said to have been the work of a famous left-handed sculptor, carpenter, and architect. Its cautious rest may not have been so far from the habits of the living Iyéyasŭ, to whose tomb, farther on, this is the entrance.

Framed by the gold and white of the gate and of the half-opened door rise the steps built into the hillside and all carpeted with brilliant green mosses. The stone railings, which for two hundred feet higher up accompany the steps, are also cushioned with this green velvet, and our steps were as noiseless as if those of the white cat herself. All is green, the dark trees descending in sunlight to our right and rising on the bank to our left, until we reach an open space above, with a bank of rocky wall inclosing the clearing.

Here is the small final shrine, and behind it a stone esplanade with a stone fence, within which stands, in the extreme of costly simplicity, the bronze tomb of Iyéyasŭ. A large bronze gate, roofed in bronze, of apparently a single casting, with bronze doors, closes the entrance. Before the monument, on a low stone table, are the Buddhist ornaments--the storks, the lotus, and the lion-covered vases, all of brass and of great size.

The tomb itself is of pale golden bronze, in form like an Indian shrine: a domed cylinder surmounted by a great projecting roof which rises from a necking that separates and connects them above--the roof a finial in the shape of a forked flame. Five bronze steps, or bases, support this emblematic combination of the cube, the cylinder, and the globe.

The crest of the Tokugawa, ten times repeated, seals the door upon the burnt ashes of the man who crystallized the past of his country for more than centuries, and left Japan as Perry found it. All his precautions, all his elaborate political conservatism, have been scattered to the winds with the Luck of the Tokugawa, and the hated foreigner leans in sightseeing curiosity upon the railing of his tomb.

But the solemnity of the resting-place cannot be broken. It lies apart from all associations of history, in this extreme of cost and of refined simplicity, in face of the surrounding powers of nature. There is here no defiance of time, no apparent attempt at an equal permanency; it is like a courteous acceptance of the eternal peace, the eternal nothingness of the tomb.