Part 5

Tanoshimi mo Samété hakanashi Haru no yumé![49]

[_Translation._]

--_All the delight having perished, hopeless I remain: it was only a dream of Spring!_[50]

[No date.]

... I wonder whether it was because of the sorrow that I suffered--my face and limbs became slightly swollen during the fortnight[51] after my boy's death.--It was nothing very serious, after all, and it soon went away.... Now the period of twenty-one days [the period of danger] is past....

Here the poor mother's diary ends. The closing statement regarding the time of twenty-one days from the birth of her child leaves it probable that these last lines were written on the thirteenth or fourteenth day of the third month. She died on the twenty-eighth of the same month.

*

I doubt if any one not really familiar with the life of Japan can fully understand this simple history. But to imagine the merely material conditions of the existence here recorded should not be difficult:--the couple occupying a tiny house of two rooms--one room of six mats and one of three;--the husband earning barely per month;--the wife sewing, washing, cooking (outside the house, of course);--no comfort of fire, even during the period of greatest cold. I estimate that the pair must have lived at an average cost of about seven pence a day, not including house-rent. Their pleasures were indeed very cheap: a payment of twopence admitted them to theatres or to _gidayū_-recitations; and their sight-seeing was done on foot. Yet even these diversions were luxuries for them. Expenses represented by the necessary purchase of clothing, or by the obligation of making presents to kindred upon the occasion of a marriage or a birth or a death, could only have been met by heroic economy. Now it is true that thousands of poor folk in Tōkyō live still more cheaply than this,--live upon a much smaller income than £1 per month,--and nevertheless remain always clean, neat, and cheerful. But only a very strong woman can easily bear and bring up children under such conditions,--conditions much more hazardous than those of the harder but healthier peasant-life of the interior. And, as might be supposed, the weakly fail and perish in multitude.

*

Readers of the diary may have wondered at the eagerness shown by so shy and gentle a woman to become thus suddenly the wife of a total stranger, about whose character she knew absolutely nothing. A majority of Japanese marriages, indeed, are arranged for in the matter-of-fact way here described, and with the aid of a _nakōdo_; but the circumstances, in this particular case, were exceptionally discomforting. The explanation is pathetically simple. All good girls are expected to marry; and to remain unmarried after a certain age is a shame and a reproach. The dread of such reproach, doubtless, impelled the writer of the diary to snatch at the first chance of fulfilling her natural destiny. She was already twenty-nine years old;--another such chance might never have offered itself.

*

To me the chief significance of this humble confession of struggle and failure is not in the utterance of anything exceptional, but in the expression of something as common to Japanese life as blue air and sunshine. The brave resolve of the woman to win affection by docility and by faultless performance of duty, her gratitude for every small kindness, her childlike piety, her supreme unselfishness, her Buddhist interpretation of suffering as the penalty for some fault committed in a previous life, her attempts to write poetry when her heart was breaking,--all this, indeed, I find touching, and more than touching. But I do not find it exceptional. The traits revealed are typical,--typical of the moral nature of the woman of the people. Perhaps there are not many Japanese women of the same humble class who could express their personal joy and pain in a record at once so artless and pathetic; but there are millions of such women inheriting--from ages and ages of unquestioning faith--a like conception of life as duty, and an equal capacity of unselfish attachment.

[Footnote 1: A _kozukai_ is a man-servant chiefly employed as doorkeeper and messenger. The term is rendered better by the French word _concierge_ than by our English word "porter"; but neither expression exactly meets the Japanese meaning.]

[Footnote 2: The reader must understand that "the man of the opposite house" is acting as _nakōdo_, or match-maker, in the interest of a widower who wishes to remarry. By the statement, "no preparation has been made," the hither means that he is unable to provide for his daughter's marriage, and cannot furnish her with a bridal outfit,--clothing, household furniture, etc.,--as required by custom. The reply that "no preparation is needed" signifies that the proposed husband is willing to take the girl without any marriage gifts.]

[Footnote 3: Throughout this Ms., except in one instance, the more respectful form _Sama_ never occurs after a masculine name, the popular form _Shi_ being used even after the names of kindred.]

[Footnote 4: The father has evidently been consulting a fortune-telling book, such as the _San-zé-sō_, or a professional diviner. The allusion to the astrologically determined natures, or temperaments, of the pair could scarcely be otherwise explained.]

[Footnote 5: _Miai_ is a term used to signify a meeting arranged in order to enable the parties affianced to see each other before the wedding-day.]

[Footnote 6: Meaning: "I am ready to become your wife, if you are willing to take me as you have been informed that I am,--a poor girl without money or clothes."]

[Footnote 7: Lucky and unlucky days were named and symbolized as follows, according to the old Japanese astrological system:--

Senkatsu:--forenoon good; afternoon bad.

Tomobiki:--forenoon good; afternoon good at the beginning and the end, but bad in the middle.

Senpu;--forenoon bad; afternoon good.

Butsumetsu:--wholly unlucky.

Taian;--altogether good.

Shakō:--all unlucky, except at noon.]

[Footnote 8: This statement also implies that a professional diviner has been consulted. The reference to the direction, or _bōgaku_, can be fully understood only by those conversant with the old Chinese nature-philosophy.]

[Footnote 9: Lit. "thrice-three-nine-times-wine-cup."]

[Footnote 10: At a Japanese wedding it is customary to avoid the use of any words to which an unlucky signification attaches, or of any words suggesting misfortune in even an indirect way. The word _sumu_, "to finish," or "to end"; the word _kaēru_, "to return," (suggesting divorce), as well as many others, are forbidden at weddings. Accordingly, the term _o-hiraki_ has long been euphemistically substituted for the term _oitoma_ ("honourable leave-taking," i.e. "farewell"), in the popular etiquette of wedding assemblies.]

[Footnote 11: "I felt a tumultuous beating within my breast," would perhaps be a closer rendering of the real sense; but it would sound oddly artificial by comparison with the simple Japanese utterance: "_Ato ni wa futari sashi-mukai to nari, muné uchi-sawagi; sono bazukashisa bisthi ni tsukushi-gatashi._"]

[Footnote 12: From _sato_, "the parental home," and _kaëri_, "to return." The first visit of a bride to her parents, after marriage, is thus called.]

[Footnote 13: _Aigasa_, a fantastic term compounded from the verb _au_, "to accord," "to harmonize," and the noun _kasa_, "an umbrella." It signifies one umbrella used by two persons--especially lovers: an umbrella-of-loving-accord. To understand the wife's anxiety about being seen walking with her husband under the borrowed umbrella, the reader must know that it is not yet considered decorous for wife and husband even to walk side by side in public. A newly wedded pair, using a single umbrella in this way, would be particularly liable to have jests made at their expense--jests that might prove trying to the nerves of a timid bride.]

[Footnote 14: She means the great Buddhist temple of Kwannon,--the most popular, and perhaps the most famous, Buddhist temple in Tokyo.]

[Footnote 15: In the Ōkubo quarter. The shrine is shadowed by a fine grove of trees.]

[Footnote 16: That is to say, "It was agreed that we should all go together to see the flowers." The word _hanami_ ("flower-seeing") might be given to any of the numerous flower-festivals of the year, according to circumstances; but it here refers to the season of cherry blossoms. Throughout this diary the dates are those of the old lunar calendar.]

[Footnote 17: A literal rendering is almost impossible. There is a ferry, called the Ferry of Imado, over the Sumidagawa; but the reference here is really neither to the ferry nor to the ferryman, but to the _nakōdo_, or match-maker, who arranged for the marriage. _Miméguri-Inari_ is the popular name of a famous temple of the God of Rice, in Mukojima; but there is an untranslatable play here upon the name, suggesting a lovers' meeting. The reference to the Sumidagawa also contains a play upon the syllables _sumi_,--the verb "sumi" signifying "to be clear." _Shirahigé-Yashiro_ ("White-Hair Temple") is the name of a real and very celebrated Shintō shrine in the city; but the name is here used chiefly to express the hope that the union may last into the period of hoary age. Besides these suggestions, we may suppose that the poem contains allusions to the actual journey made,--over the Sumidagawa by ferry, and thence to the various temples named. From old time, poems of like meaning have been made about these places; but the lines above given are certainly original, with the obvious exception of a few phrases which have become current coin in popular poetry.]

[Footnote 18: The Soga Brothers were famous heroes of the twelfth century. The word _kaichō_ signifies the religious festival during which the principal image of a temple is exposed to view.]

[Footnote 19: Name of a public hall at which various kinds of entertainments are given, more especially recitations by professional story-tellers.]

[Footnote 20: Lit. "there never yet having been any waves nor even wind between us."

[Footnote 21: The Shinto parish-temple, or more correctly, district-temple of the Yotsuya] quarter. Each quarter, or district, of the city has its tutelar divinity, or Ujigami. Suga-jinja is the Ujigami-temple of Yotsuya.]

[Footnote 22: _Iyogasuri_ is the name given to a kind of dark-blue cotton-cloth, with a sprinkling of white in small patterns, manufactured at Iyo, in Shikoku.]

[Footnote 23: The Kanazawa-tei is a public hall in the Yotsuya quarter. Harimadayū is the professional name of a celebrated chanter of the dramatic recitations called _jōruri_ and _gidayū_,--in which the reciter, or chanter, mimes the voices and action of many different characters.]

[Footnote 24: She alludes to a popular saying of Buddhist origin:--_Jishin, kwaji, kaminari, misoka, kikin, yamai no naki kuni é yuku_ ("Let us go to the Land where there is neither earthquake, nor fire, nor lightning, nor any last day of the month, nor famine, nor sickness").]

[Footnote 25: _Ujigami_ of the Ushigomé district.]

[Footnote 26: Festival of the "Further Shore" (that is to say, Paradise). There are two great Buddhist festivals thus called,--the first representing a period of seven days during the spring equinox; the second, a period of seven days during the autumnal equinox.]

[Footnote 27: This drama is founded upon the history of a famous rice merchant named Matsumaëya Gorōbei.]

[Footnote 28: Shiogama-Daimyōjin, a Shinto deity, to whom women pray for easy delivery in child-birth. Shrines of this divinity may be found in almost every province of Japan.]

[Footnote 29: Uréshiki ma wa wazuka nité, mata kanashimi to henzuru; umaréru mono wa kanarazu shizu.--A Buddhist text that has become a Japanese proverb.]

[Footnote 30: Composed by the bereaved mother herself, as a discipline against grief.]

[Footnote 31: _Nadéshiko_ literally means a pink; but in poetry the word is commonly used in the meaning of "baby."]

[Footnote 32: _Samidaré_ is the name given to the old fifth month, or, more strictly speaking, to a rainy period occurring in that month. The verses are, of course, allusive, and their real meaning might be rendered thus: "Oh! the season of grief! All things now seem sad: the sleeves of my robe are moist with my tears!"]

[Footnote 33: The _sotoba_ is a tall wooden lath, inscribed with Buddhist texts, and planted above a grave. For a full account of the _sotoba_, see the article entitled "The Literature of the Dead," in my _Exotics and Retrospectives_, p. 102. I am not able to give any account or explanation of the curious superstition here referred to; but it is probably of the same class with the strange custom recorded in my _Gleanings in Buddha-Fields_, p. 126.]

[Footnote 34: It would be unfair to suppose that this visit to the theatre was made only for pleasure; it was made rather in the hope of forgetting pain, and probably by order of the husband.

Ōkubo Hikozaëmon was the favourite minister and adviser of the Shōgun Iyem-itsu. Numberless stories of his sagacity and kindness are recorded in popular literature; and in many dramas the notable incidents of his official career are still represented.]

[Footnote 35: There are five holidays thus named in every year. These _go-sekku_ are usually called, _Jinjitsu_ (the 7th of the 1st month), _Joki_ (the 3d of the 3d month), _Tango_ (the 5th of the 5th month), _Tanabata_ (the 7th of the 7th month), and _Chōyō_ (the 9th of the 9th month).]

[Footnote 36: A divinity half-Buddhist, half-Shintō, in origin, but now popularly considered Shintō. This god is especially worshipped as a healer, and a protector against sickness. His principal temple in Tōkyō is in the Nihonbashi district.]

[Footnote 37: A festival in commemoration of the thirtieth anniversary of the establishment of Tōkyō as the Imperial capital, instead of Kyōtō.]

[Footnote 38: _Daimyō-no-g yōretsu_. On the festival mentioned there was a pageant representing feudal princes travelling in state, accompanied by their retainers and servants. The real armour, costumes, and weapons of the period before Meiji were effectively displayed on this occasion.]

[Footnote 39: A congratulatory feast, held on the evening of the seventh day after the birth of a child. Relatives and friends invited usually make small presents to the baby.]

[Footnote 40: The first annual Festival of Girls is thus called.]

[Footnote 41: All the objects here mentioned are toys--toys appropriate to the occasion. The _Dairi_ are old-fashioned toy-figures, representing an emperor and empress in ancient costume. _Hina_ are dolls.]

[Footnote 42: Another name for the Buddhist Paradise of the West,--the heaven of Amida (Amitābha).]

[Footnote 43: Nephritis.]

[Footnote 44: Or, "very thin and loose,"--the Karma-relation being emblematically spoken of as a bond or tie. She means, of course, that the loss of the child was the inevitable consequence of some fault committed in a previous state of existence.]

[Footnote 45: _Gidayū-bon_, "the book of the _gidayū_." There are many _gidayū_ books. _Gidayū_ is the name given to a kind of musical drama. In the dramatic composition here referred to, the characters Miyagino and Shinobu are sisters, who relate their sorrows to each other.]

[Footnote 46: I.e. before she herself (the mother) dies;--there is a colloquial phrase in the Japanese text. _Ko ga oya ni sakidatsu_ is the common expression: "the child goes before the parents,"--that is to say, dies before the parents.]

[Footnote 47: A euphemistic expression for death.]

[Footnote 48: _Aënaku_ is an adjective signifying, according to circumstances, "feeble," or "transitory," or "sad." Its use here might best be rendered by some such phrase as "Piteous to say!"]

[Footnote 49: Her poem bears no date.]

[Footnote 50: A necessarily free translation;--the lines might also be read thus: "Having awakened, all the joy fleets and fades;--it was only a dream of Spring." The verb _saméru_, very effectively used here, allows of this double rendering; for it means either "to awake" or "to fade." The adjective _hakanashi_ also has a double meaning: according to circumstances it may signify either "fleeting" (evanescent) or "hopeless" (wretched).]

[Footnote 51: Lit. "the first two _nanuka_": one _nanuka_ representing a period of seven successive days from the date of death.]

Heiké-gani

In various countries of which the peoples appear strange to us, by reason of beliefs, ideas, customs, and arts having nothing in common with our own, there can be found something in the nature of the land--something in its flora or fauna--characterized by a corresponding strangeness. Probably the relative queerness of the exotic nature in such regions helped more or less to develop the apparent oddity of the exotic mind. National differences of thought or feeling should not be less evolutionally interpretable than the forms of vegetables or of insects; and, in the mental evolution of a people, the influence of environment upon imagination must be counted as a factor....

*

These reflections were induced by a box of crabs sent me from the Province of Chōshū,--crabs possessing that very same quality of grotesqueness which we are accustomed to think of as being peculiarly Japanese. On the backs of these creatures there are bossings and depressions that curiously simulate the shape of a human face,--a distorted face,--a face modelled in relief as a Japanese craftsman might have modelled it in some moment of artistic whim.

Two varieties of such crabs--nicely dried and polished--are constantly exposed for sale in the shops of Akamagaséki (better known to foreigners by the name of Shimonoséki). They are caught along the neighbouring stretch of coast called Dan-no-Ura, where the great clan of the Heiké, or Taira, were exterminated in a naval battle, seven centuries ago, by the rival clan of Genji, or Minamoto. Readers of Japanese history will remember the story of the Imperial Nun, Nii-no-Ama, who in the hour of that awful tragedy composed a poem, and then leaped into the sea, with the child-emperor Antoku in her arms.

Now the grotesque crabs of this coast are called Heiké-gani, or "Heiké-crabs," because of a legend that the spirits of the drowned and slaughtered warriors of the Heiké-clan assumed such shapes; and it is said that the fury or the agony of the death-struggle can still be discerned in the faces upon the backs of the crabs. But to feel the romance of this legend you should be familiar with old pictures of the fight of Dan-no-Ura,--old coloured prints of the armoured combatants, with their grim battle-masks of iron and their great fierce eyes.

The smaller variety of crab is known simply as a "Heiké-crab,"--Heiké-gani. Each Heiké-gani is supposed to be animated by the spirit of a common Heiké warrior only,--an ordinary samurai. But the larger kind of crab is also termed Taishō-gani ("Chieftain-crab"), or Tatsugashira ("Dragon-helmet"); and all Taishō-gani or Tatsugashira are thought to be animated by ghosts of those great Heiké captains who bore upon their helmets monsters unknown to Western heraldry, and glittering horns, and dragons of gold.

I got a Japanese friend to draw for me the two pictures of Heiké-gani herewith reproduced; and I can vouch for their accuracy. But I told him that I could not see anything resembling a helmet, either in his drawing of the Tatsugashira, nor in the original figure upon the back of the crab.

"Can you see it?" I asked. "Why, yes,--somewhat like this," he answered, making the following sketch:--

"Well, I can make out part of the head-gear," I said;--"but that outline of yours is not according to facts,--and that face is vapid as the face of the Moon. Look at the nightmare on the back of the real crab!..."

Fireflies

I

I want to talk about Japanese fireflies, but not entomologically. If you are interested, as you ought to be, in the scientific side of the subject, you should seek enlightenment from a Japanese professor of biology, now lecturing at the Imperial University of Tōkyō. He signs himself "Mr. S. Watasé" (the "S" standing for the personal name Shozaburo); and he has been a teacher as well as a student of science in America, where a number of his lectures have been published,[1]--lectures upon animal phosphorescence, animal electricity, the light-producing organs of insects and fishes, and other wonderful topics of biology. He can tell you all that is known concerning the morphology of fireflies, the physiology of fireflies, the photometry of fireflies, the chemistry of their luminous substance, the spectroscopic analysis of their light, and the significance of that light in terms of ether-vibration. By experiment he can show you that, under normal conditions of temperature and environment, the number of light-pulsations produced by one species of Japanese firefly averages twenty-six per minute; and that the rate suddenly rises to sixty-three per minute, if the insect be frightened by seizure. Also he can prove to you that another and smaller kind of firefly, when taken in the hand, will increase the number of its light-pulsings to upward of two hundred per minute. He suggests that the light may be of some protective value to the insect,--like the "warning colours" of sundry nauseous caterpillars and butterflies,--because the firefly has a very bitter taste, and birds appear to find it unpalatable. (Frogs, he has observed, do not mind the bad taste: they fill their cold bellies with fireflies till the light shines through them, much as the light of a candle-flame will glow through a porcelain jar.) But whether of protective value or not, the tiny dynamo would seem to be used in a variety of ways,--as a phototelegraph, for example. As other insects converse by sound or by touch, the firefly utters its emotion in luminous pulsings: its speech is a language of light.... I am only giving you some hints about the character of the professor's lectures, which are never merely technical. And for the best part of this non-scientific essay of mine,--especially that concerning the capture and the sale of fireflies in Japan,--I am indebted to some delightful lectures which he delivered last year to Japanese audiences in Tōkyō.

II

As written to-day, the Japanese name of the firefly (_hotaru_) is ideographically composed with the sign for fire, doubled, above the sign for insect. The real origin of the word is nevertheless doubtful; and various etymologies have been suggested. Some scholars think that the appellation anciently signified "the First-born of Fire"; while others believe that it was first composed with syllables meaning "star" and "drop." The more poetical of the proposed derivations, I am sorry to say, are considered the least probable. But whatever may have been the primal meaning of the word _hotaru_, there can be no doubt as to the romantic quality of certain folk-names still given to the insect. Two species of firefly have a wide distribution in Japan; and these have been popularly named _Genji-botaru_ and _Heiké-botaru_: that is to say, "the Minamoto-Firefly" and "the Taira-Firefly." A legend avers that these fireflies are the ghosts of the old Minamoto and Taira warriors; that, even in their insect shapes, they remember the awful clan-struggle of the twelfth century; and that once every year, on the night of the twentieth day of the fourth month,[2] they fight a great battle on the Uji River. Therefore, on that night all caged fireflies should be set free, in order that they may be able to take part in the contest.

*