Frisson

... “A’ the blude that’s shed on earthRins through the springs o’ that Countrie.”

But those very associations that make burning red unbearable to modern nerves must have already been enormously old when it first became the color of pomp and luxury. How then should such associations affect us unpleasantly now?

I would answer that the emotional suggestions of the color continued to be pleasurable for the adult, as they still are for the child, only while they remained more vague and much less voluminous than at present. Becoming intensified inthe modern brain, they gradually ceased to yield pleasure,—somewhat as warmth increased to the degree of heat ceases to be pleasurable. Still later they became painful; and their actual painfulness exposes the fundamentally savage nature of those sensations of splendor and power which the color once called into play. And the intensification of the feeling evoked by red has not been due merely to later accumulation of inherited impressions, but also to the growth and development of emotions essentially antithetical to ideas of violence and pain, and yet inseparable from them. The moral sensibility of an era that has condemned not a few of the amusements of our forebears to the limbo of old barbarities,—the humanity of an age that refuses to believe in a hell of literal fire, that prohibits every brutal sport, that compels kindness to animals,—is offended by the cruel suggestiveness of the color. But within the slowly-unfolding brain of the child, this modern sensibility is not evolved;—and until it has been evolved, with the aid of experience and of education, the feeling aroused by such a color as vivid scarlet will naturally continue to be pleasurable rather than painful.

While thus trying to explain why a color dignified as imperial in other centuries should have become offensive in our own, I found myself wondering whether most of our actual refinements might not in like manner become the vulgarities of a future age. Our standards of taste and our ideals of beauty can have only a value relative to conditions which are constantly changing. Real and ideal alike are transitory,—mere apparitional undulations in the flux of the perpetual Becoming. Perhaps the finest ethical or æsthetical sentiment of to-day will manifest itself in another era only as some extraordinary psychological atavism,—some rare individual reversion to the conditions of a barbarous past.

What in the meantime would be the fate of sensations that are even now becoming intolerable? Any faculty, mental or physical, however previously developed by evolutional necessities, would have a tendency to dwindle and disappear from the moment that it ceased to be either useful or pleasurable. Continuance of the power to perceive red would depend upon the possiblefuture usefulness of that power to the race. Not without suggestiveness in this connection may be the fact that it represents the lowest rate of those ether-oscillations which produce color. Perhaps our increasing dislike to it indicates that power to distinguish it will eventually pass away—pass away in a sort of Daltonism at the inferior end of the color-scale. Such visual loss would probably be more than compensated by superior coincident specializations of retinal sensibility. A more highly organized generation might enjoy wonders of color now unimaginable, and yet never be able to perceive red,—not, at least, that red whose sensation is the spectral smouldering of the agonies and the furies of our evolutional past, the haunting of a horror innominable, immeasurable,—enormous phantom-menace of expired human pain.

Some there may be who have never felt the thrill of a human touch; but surely these are few! Most of us in early childhood discover strange differences in physical contact;—we find that some caresses soothe, while others irritate; and we form in consequence various unreasoning likes and antipathies. With the ripening of youth we seem to feel these distinctions more and more keenly,—until the fateful day in which we learn that a certain feminine touch communicates an unspeakable shiver of delight,—exercises a witchcraft that we try to account for by theories of the occult and the supernatural. Age may smile at these magical fancies of youth; and nevertheless, in spite of much science, the imagination of the lover is probably nearer to truth than is the wisdom of the disillusioned.

We seldom permit ourselves in mature life to think very seriously about such experiences. We do not deny them; but we incline to regard them as nervous idiosyncrasies. We scarcely notice that even in the daily act of shaking hands with persons of either sex, sensations may be received which no physiology can explain.

I remember the touch of many hands,—the quality of each clasp, the sense of physical sympathy or repulsion aroused. Thousands I have indeed forgotten,—probably because their contact told me nothing in particular; but the strong experiences I fully recollect. I found that their agreeable or disagreeable character was often quite independent of the moral relation: but in the most extraordinary case that I can recall—(a strangely fascinating personality with the strangest of careers as poet, soldier, and refugee)—the moral and the physical charm were equally powerful and equally rare. “Whenever I shake hands with that man,” said to me one of many who had yielded to his spell, “I feel a warm shock go all through me, like a glow of summer.” Even at this moment when I think of that dead hand, I can feel it reached out to me over the space of twenty years and of manya thousand miles. Yet it was a hand that had killed....

These, with other memories and reflections, came to me just after reading a criticism on Mr. Bain’s evolutional interpretation of the thrill of pleasure sometimes given by the touch of the human skin. The critic asked why a satin cushion kept at a temperature of about 98° would not give the same thrill; and the question seemed to me unfair because, in the very passage criticised, Mr. Bain had sufficiently suggested the reason. Taking him to have meant—as he must have meant,—not that the thrill is given by any kind of warmth and softness, but only by thepeculiarwarmth and softness of the human skin, his interpretation can scarcely be contested by a sarcasm. A satin cushion at a temperature of about 98° could not give the same sensation as that given by the touch of the human skin for reasons even much more simple than Mr. Bain implied,—since it is totally different from the human skin in substance, in texture, and in the all-important fact that it is not alive, but dead. Of course warmth and softness in themselves are not enough to produce the thrill of pleasure considered by Mr. Bain: under easily imaginable circumstances they may produce something of the reverse. Smoothness has quite as much to do with the pleasure of touch as either softness or warmth can have; yet a moist or a very dry smoothness may be disagreeable. Again, cool smoothness in the human skin is perhaps even more agreeable than warm smoothness; yet there is a cool smoothness common to many lower forms of life which causes a shudder. Whatever be those qualities making pleasurable the touch of a hand, for example, they are probably very many in combination, and they are certainly peculiar to thelivingtouch. No possible artificial combination of warmth and smoothness and softness combined could excite the same quality of pleasure that certain human touches give,—although, as other psychologists than Mr. Bain have observed, it may give rise to a fainter kind of agreeable feeling.

A special sensation can be explained only by special conditions. Some philosophers would explain the conditions producing this pleasurable thrill, orfrisson, as mainly subjective; others, as mainly objective. Is it not most likely that either view contains truth;—that the physical causemust be sought in some quality, definable or indefinable, attaching to a particular touch; and that the cause of the coincident emotional phenomena should be looked for in the experience, not of the individual, but of the race?

Remembering that there can be no two tangible things exactly alike,—no two blades of grass, or drops of water, or grains of sand,—it ought not to seem incredible that the touch of one person should have power to impart a sensation different from any sensation producible by the touch of any other person. That such difference could neither be estimated nor qualified would not necessarily imply unimportance or even feebleness. Among the voices of the thousands of millions of human beings in this world, there are no two precisely the same;—yet how much to the ear and to the heart of wife or mother, child or lover, may signify the unspeakably fine difference by which each of a billion voices varies from every other! Not even in thought, much less in words, can such distinction be specified; but who is unfamiliar with the fact and with its immense relative importance?

That any two human skins should be absolutely alike is not possible. There are individual variations perceptible even to the naked eye,—for has not Mr. Galton taught us that the visible finger-marks of no two persons are the same? But in addition to differences visible—whether to the naked eye, or only under the microscope, there must be other differences of quality depending upon constitutional vigor, upon nervous and glandular activities, upon relative chemical composition of tissue. Whether touch be a sense delicate enough to discern such differences, would be, of course, a question for psycho-physics to decide,—and a question not simply of magnitudes, but of qualities of sensation. Perhaps it is not yet even legitimate to suppose that, just as by ear we can distinguish the qualitative differences of a million voices, so by touch we might be able to distinguish qualitative differences of surface scarcely less delicate. Yet it is worth while here to remark that the tingle or shiver of pleasure excited in us by certain qualities of voice, very much resembles the thrill given sometimes by the touch of a hand. Is it not possible that there may be recognized, in the particular quality of a living skin, something not less uniquely attractive than the indeterminable charm of what we call a bewitching voice?

Perhaps it is not impossible. But in the character of thefrissonitself there is a hint that the charm of the touch provoking it may be due to something much more deeply vital than any physical combination of smoothness, warmth and softness,—to something, as Mr. Bain has suggested, electric or magnetic. Human electricity is no fiction: every living body,—even a plant,—is to some degree electrical; and the electric conditions of no two organisms would be exactly the same. Can the thrill be partly accounted for by some individual peculiarity of these conditions? May there not be electrical differences of touch appreciable by delicate nervous systems,—differences subtle as those infinitesimal variations of timbre by which every voice of a million voices is known from every other?

Such a theory might be offered in explanation of the fact that the slightest touch of a particular woman, for example, will cause a shock of pleasure to men whom the caresses of other and fairer women would leave indifferent. But it could not serve to explain why the same contact shouldproduce no effect upon some persons, while causing ecstasy in others. No purely physical theory can interpret all the mystery of thefrisson. A deeper explanation is needed;—and I imagine that one is suggested by the phenomenon of “loveat first sight.”

The power of a woman to inspire love at first sight does not depend upon some attraction visible to the common eye. It depends partly upon something objective which only certain eyes can see; and it depends partly upon some thing which no mortal can see,—the psychical composition of the subject of the passion. Nobody can pretend to explain in detail the whole enigma of first love. But a general explanation is suggested by evolutional philosophy,—namely, that the attraction depends upon an inherited individual susceptibility to special qualities of feminine influence, and subjectively represents a kind of superindividual recognition,—a sudden wakening of that inherited composite memory which is more commonly called “passional affinity.” Certainly if first love be evolutionally explicable, it means the perception by the lover of some thing differentiating the beloved from all other women,—something corresponding to an inherited ideal within himself, previously latent, but suddenly lighted and defined by result of that visual impression.

And like sight, though perhaps less deeply, do other of our senses reach into the buried past. A single strain of melody, the sweetness of a single voice—what thrill immeasurable will either make in the fathomless sleep of ancestral memory! Again, who does not know that speechless delight bestirred in us on rare bright days by something odorous in the atmosphere,—enchanting, but indefinable? The first breath of spring, the blowing of a mountain breeze, a south wind from the sea may bring this emotion,—emotion overwhelming, yet nameless as its cause,—an ecstasy formless and transparent as the air. Whatever be the odor, diluted to very ghostliness, that arouses this delight, the delight itself is too weirdly voluminous to be explained by any memory-revival of merely individual experience. More probably it is older even than human life,—reaches deeper into the infinite blind depth of dead pleasure and pain.

Out of that ghostly abyss also must come the thrill responding within us to a living touch,—touch electrical of man, questioning the heart,—touch magical of woman, invoking memory of caresses given by countless delicate and loving hands long crumbled into dust. Doubt it not!—the touch that makes a thrill within you is a touch that you have felt before,—sense-echo of forgotten intimacies in many unremembered lives!

I doubt if there be any other form of terror that even approaches the fear of the supernatural, and more especially the fear of the supernatural in dreams. Children know this fear both by night and by day; but the adult is not likely to suffer from it except in slumber, or under the most abnormal conditions of mind produced by illness. Reason, in our healthy waking hours, keeps the play of ideas far above those deep-lying regions of inherited emotion where dwell the primitive forms of terror. But even as known to the adult in dreams only, there is no waking fear comparable to this fear,—none so deep and yet so vague,—none so unutterable. The indefiniteness of the horror renders verbal expression of it impossible; yet the suffering is so intense that, if prolonged beyond a certain term of seconds, it will kill. And the reasonis that such fear is not of the individual life: it is infinitely more massive than any personal experience could account for;—it is prenatal, ancestral fear. Dim it necessarily is, because compounded of countless blurred millions of inherited fears. But for the same reason, its depth is abysmal.

The training of the mind under civilization has been directed toward the conquest of fear in general, and—excepting that ethical quality of the feeling which belongs to religion—of the supernatural in particular. Potentially in most of us this fear exists; but its sources are well-guarded; and outside of sleep it can scarcely perturb any vigorous mind except in the presence of facts so foreign to all relative experience that the imagination is clutched before the reason can grapple with the surprise.

Once only, after the period of childhood, I knew this emotion in a strong form. It was remarkable as representing the vivid projection of a dream-fear into waking consciousness; and the experience was peculiarly tropical. In tropical countries, owing to atmospheric conditions, the oppression of dreams is a more serious suffering than with us, and is perhaps most common during the siesta. All who can afford it pass their nights in the country; but for obvious reasons the majority of colonists must be content to take their siesta, and its consequences, in town.

The West-Indian siesta does not refresh like that dreamless midday nap which we enjoy in Northern summers. It is a stupefaction rather than a sleep,—beginning with a miserable feeling of weight at the base of the brain: it is a helpless surrender of the whole mental and physical being to the overpressure of light and heat. Often it is haunted by ugly visions, and often broken by violent leaps of the heart. Occasionally it is disturbed also by noises never noticed at other times. When the city lies all naked to the sun, stripped by noon of every shadow, and empty of wayfarers, the silence becomes amazing. In that silence the papery rustle of a palm-leaf, or the sudden sound of a lazy wavelet on the beach,—like the clack of a thirsty tongue,—comes immensely magnified to the ear. And this noon, with its monstrous silence, is for the black people the hour of ghosts. Everything alive is senseless with the intoxication of light;—even the woods drowse and droop in their wrapping of lianas, drunk with sun....

Out of the siesta I used to be most often startled, not by sounds, but by something which I can describe only as a sudden shock of thought. This would follow upon a peculiar internal commotion caused, I believe, by some abnormal effect of heat upon the lungs. A slow suffocating sensation would struggle up into the twilight-region between half-consciousness and real sleep, and there bestir the ghastliest imaginings,—fancies and fears of living burial. These would be accompanied by a voice, or rather the idea of a voice, mocking and reproaching:—“‘Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun.’... Outside it is day,—tropical day,—primeval day! And you sleep!!... ‘Though a man live many years and rejoice in them all, yet—’ ... Sleep on!—all this splendor will be the same when your eyes are dust!... ‘Yet let him remember the days of darkness;—for they shall be MANY!’”

How often, with that phantom crescendo in my ears, have I leaped in terror from the hot couch, to peer through the slatted shutters at the enormous light without—silencing, mesmerizing;—then dashed cold water over my head, and staggered back to the scorching mattress, again to drowse, again to be awakened by the same voice, or by the trickling of my own perspiration—a feeling not always to be distinguished from that caused by the running of a centipede! And how I used to long for the night, with its Cross of the South! Not because the night ever brought coolness to the city, but because it brought relief from theweightof that merciless sunfire. For the feeling of such light is the feeling of a deluge of something ponderable,—something that drowns and dazzles and burns and numbs all at the same time, and suggests the idea of liquified electricity.

There are times, however, when the tropical heat seems only to thicken after sunset. On the mountains the nights are, as a rule, delightful the whole year round. They are even more delightful on the coast facing the trade-winds; and you may sleep there in a seaward chamber, caressed by a warm, strong breeze,—a breeze that plays upon you not by gusts or whiffs, but with a steady ceaseless blowing,—the great fanning wind-current of the world’s whirling. But in the towns of the other coast—nearly all situated at the base of wooded ranges cutting off the trade-breeze,—the humid atmosphere occasionally becomes at night something nameless,—something worse than the air of an overheated conservatory. Sleep in such a medium is apt to be visited by nightmare of the most atrocious kind.

My personal experience was as follows:—

I was making a tour of the island with a half-breed guide; and we had to stop for one night in a small leeward-coast settlement, where we found accommodation at a sort of lodging-house kept by an aged widow. There were seven persons only in the house that night,—the old lady, her two daughters, two colored female-servants, myself and my guide. We were given a single-windowed room upstairs, rather small,—otherwise a typical, Creole bedroom, with bare clean floor, some heavy furniture of antique pattern, and a few rocking-chairs. There was in one corner a bracket supporting a sort of household shrine—what the Creoles call achapelle. The shrine contained a white image of the Virgin before which a tiny light was floating in a cup of oil.By colonial custom your servant, while travelling with you, sleeps either in the same room, or before the threshold; and my man simply lay down on a mat beside the huge four-pillared couch assigned to me, and almost immediately began to snore. Before getting into bed, I satisfied myself that the door was securely fastened.

The night stifled;—the air seemed to be coagulating. The single large window, overlooking a garden, had been left open,—but there was no movement in that atmosphere. Bats—very large bats,—flew soundlessly in and out;—one actually fanning my face with its wings as it circled over the bed. Heavy scents of ripe fruit—nauseously sweet—rose from the garden, where palms and plantains stood still as if made of metal. From the woods above the town stormed the usual night-chorus of tree-frogs, insects, and nocturnal birds,—a tumult not to be accurately described by any simile, but suggesting, through numberless sharp tinkling tones, the fancy of a wide slow cataract of broken glass. I tossed and turned on the hot hard bed, vainly trying to find one spot a little cooler than the rest. Then I rose, drew a rocking-chair to the window and lighted acigar. The smoke hung motionless; after each puff, I had to blow it away. My man had ceased to snore. The bronze of his naked breast—shining with moisture under the faint light of the shrine-lamp,—showed no movement of respiration. He might have been a corpse. The heavy heat seemed always to become heavier. At last, utterly exhausted, I went back to bed, and slept.

It must have been well after midnight when I felt the first vague uneasiness,—the suspicion,—that precedes a nightmare. I was half-conscious, dream-conscious of the actual,—knew myself in that very room,—wanted to get up. Immediately the uneasiness grew into terror, because I found that I could not move. Something unutterable in the air was mastering will. I tried to cry out, and my utmost effort resulted only in a whisper too low for any one to hear. Simultaneously I became aware of a Step ascending the stair,—a muffled heaviness; and the real nightmare began,—the horror of the ghastly magnetism that held voice and limb,—the hopeless will-struggle against dumbness and impotence. The stealthy Step approached, but with lentor malevolently measured,—slowly, slowly, as ifthe stairs were miles deep. It gained the threshold,—waited. Gradually then, and without sound, the locked door opened; and the Thing entered, bending as it came,—a thing robed,—feminine,—reaching to the roof,—not to be looked at! A floor-plank creaked as It neared the bed;—and then—with a frantic effort—I woke, bathed in sweat; my heart beating as if it were going to burst. The shrine-light had died: in the blackness I could see nothing; but I thought I heard that Step retreating. I certainly heard the plank creak again. With the panic still upon me, I was actually unable to stir. The wisdom of striking a match occurred to me, but I dared not yet rise. Presently, as I held my breath to listen, a new wave of black fear passed through me; for I heard moanings,—long nightmare moanings,—moanings that seemed to be answering each other from two different rooms below. And then, close to me, my guide began to moan,—hoarsely, hideously. I cried to him:—

“Louis!—Louis!”

We both sat up at once. I heard him panting, and I knew that he was fumbling for his cutlass in the dark. Then, in a voice husky with fear, he asked:—

“Missié, ess ou tanne?” [Monsieur, est-ce que vous entendez?]

The moaners continued to moan,—always in crescendo: then there were sudden screams,—“Madame!”—“Manzell!”—and running of bare feet, and sounds of lamps being lighted, and, at last, a general clamor of frightened voices. I rose, and groped for the matches. The moans and the clamor ceased.

“Missié,” my man asked again, “ess ou tè oué y?” [Monsieur, est-ce que vous l’avez vue?]

—“Ça ou le di?” [Qu’est-ce que vous voulez dire?] I responded in bewilderment, as my fingers closed on the match-box.

—“Fenm-là?” he answered....That Woman?

The question shocked me into absolute immobility. Then I wondered if I could have understood. But he went on in his patois, as if talking to himself:—

—“Tall, tall—high like this room, that Zombi. When She came the floor cracked. I heard—I saw.”

After a moment, I succeeded in lighting a candle, and I went to the door. It was still locked,—double-locked. No human being could have entered through the high window.

—“Louis!” I said, without believing what I said,—“you have been only dreaming.”

—“Missié,” he answered, “it was no dream.She has been in all the rooms, touching people!”

I said,—

—“That is foolishness! See!—the door is double-locked.”

Louis did not even look at the door, but responded:—

—“Door locked, door not locked, Zombi comes and goes.... I do not like this house.... Missié, leave that candle burning!”

He uttered the last phrase imperatively, without using the respectfulsouplé—just as a guide speaks at an instant of common danger; and his tone conveyed to me the contagion of his fear. Despite the candle, I knew for one moment the sensation of nightmare outside of sleep! The coincidences stunned reason; and the hideous primitive fancy fitted itself, like a certitude, to the explanation of cause and effect. The similarity of my vision and the vision of Louis, the creaking of the floor heard by us both, the visit of the nightmare to every room in succession,—these formed a more than unpleasant combination of evidence. I tried the planking with my foot inthe place where I thought I had seen the figure: it uttered the very same loud creak that I had heard before. “Ça pa ka sam révé,” said Louis. No!—that was not like dreaming. I left the candle burning, and went back to bed—not to sleep, but to think. Louis lay down again, with his hand on the hilt of his cutlass.

I thought for a long time. All was now silent below. The heat was at last lifting; and occasional whiffs of cooler air from the garden announced the wakening of a land-breeze. Louis, in spite of his recent terror, soon began to snore again. Then I was startled by hearing a plank creak—quite loudly,—the same plank that I had tried with my foot. This time Louis did not seem to hear it. There was nothing there. It creaked twice more,—and I understood. The intense heat first, and the change of temperature later, had been successively warping and unwarping the wood so as to produce those sounds. In the state of dreaming, which is the state of imperfect sleep, noises may be audible enough to affect imagination strongly,—and may startle into motion a long procession of distorted fancies. At the same time it occurred to me that the almost concomitant experiences of nightmare in the different rooms could be quite sufficiently explained by the sickening atmospheric oppression of the hour.

There still remained the ugly similitude of the two dreams to be accounted for; and a natural solution of this riddle also, I was able to find after some little reflection. The coincidence had certainly been startling; but the similitude was only partial. That which my guide had seen in his nightmare was a familiar creation of West-Indian superstition—probably of African origin. But the shape that I had dreamed about used to vex my sleep in childhood,—a phantom created for me by the impression of a certain horrible Celtic story which ought not to have been told to any child blessed, or cursed, with an imagination.

Musing on this experience led me afterwards to think about the meaning of that fear which we call “the fear of darkness,” and yet is not really fear of darkness. Darkness, as a simplecondition, never could have originated the feeling,—a feeling that must have preceded any definite idea of ghosts by thousands of ages. The inherited, instinctive fear, as exhibited by children, is not a fear of darkness in itself, but of indefinable danger associated with darkness. Evolutionally explained, this dim but voluminous terror would have for its primal element the impressions created by real experience—experience of something acting in darkness;—and the fear of the supernatural would mingle in it only as a much later emotional development. The primeval cavern-gloom lighted by nocturnal eyes;—the blackness of forest-gaps by river-marges, where destruction lay in wait to seize the thirsty;—the umbrages of tangled shores concealing horror;—the dusk of the python’s lair;—the place of hasty refuge echoing the fury of famished brute and desperate man;—the place of burial, and the fancied frightful kinship of the buried to the cave-haunters:—all these, and countless other impressions of the relation of darkness to death, must have made that ancestral fear of the dark which haunts the imagination of the child, and still betimes seizes the adult as he sleeps in the security of civilization.

Not all the fear of dreams can be the fear of the immemorial. But that strange nightmare-sensation of being held by invisible power exerted from a distance—is it quite sufficiently explained by the simple suspension of will-power during sleep? Or could it be a composite inheritance of numberless memories ofhaving been caught? Perhaps the true explanation would suggest no prenatal experience of monstrous mesmerisms nor of monstrous webs,—nothing more startling than the evolutional certainty that man, in the course of his development, has left behind him conditions of terror incomparably worse than any now existing. Yet enough of the psychological riddle of nightmare remains to tempt the question whether human organic memory holds no record of extinct forms of pain,—pain related to strange powers once exerted by some ghastly vanished life.

This year the Tōkyō color-prints—Nishiki-è—seem to me of unusual interest. They reproduce, or almost reproduce, the color-charm of the early broadsides; and they show a marked improvement in line-drawing. Certainly one could not wish for anything prettier than the best prints of the present season.

My latest purchase has been a set of weird studies,—spectres of all kinds known to the Far East, including many varieties not yet discovered in the West. Some are extremely unpleasant; but a few are really charming. Here, for example, is a delicious thing by “Chikanobu,” just published, and for sale at the remarkable price of threesen!

Can you guess what it represents?... Yes, a girl,—but what kind of a girl? Study it a little.... Very lovely, is she not, with that shy sweetness in her downcast gaze,—that light and dainty grace, as of a resting butterfly?... No,she is not some Psyche of the most Eastern East, in the sense that you mean—but she is a soul. Observe that the cherry-flowers falling from the branch above, are passingthroughher form. See also the folds of her robe, below, melting into blue faint mist. How delicate and vapory the whole thing is! It gives you the feeling of spring; and all those fairy colors are the colors of a Japanese spring-morning.... No, she is not the personification of any season. Rather she is a dream—such a dream as might haunt the slumbers of Far-Eastern youth; but the artist did not intend her to represent a dream.... You cannot guess? Well, she is a tree-spirit,—the Spirit of the Cherry-tree. Only in the twilight of morning or of evening she appears, gliding about her tree;—and whoever sees her must love her. But, if approached, she vanishes back into the trunk, like a vapor absorbed. There is a legend of one tree-spirit who loved a man, and even gave him a son; but such conduct was quite at variance with the shy habits of her race....

You ask what is the use of drawing the Impossible? Your asking proves that you do not feel the charm of this vision of youth,—this dream of spring.Ihold that the Impossible bears amuch closer relation to fact than does most of what we call the real and the commonplace. The Impossible may not be naked truth; but I think that it is usually truth,—masked and veiled, perhaps, but eternal. Now to me this Japanese dream is true,—true, at least, as human love is. Considered even as a ghost it is true. Whoever pretends not to believe in ghosts of any sort, lies to his own heart. Every man is haunted by ghosts. And this color-print reminds me of a ghost whom we all know,—though most of us (poets excepted) are unwilling to confess the acquaintance.

Perhaps—for it happens to some of us—you may have seen this haunter, in dreams of the night, even during childhood. Then, of course, you could not know the beautiful shape bending above your rest: possibly you thought her to be an angel, or the soul of a dead sister. But in waking life we first become aware of her presence about the time when boyhood begins to ripen into youth.

This first of her apparitions is a shock of ecstasy, a breathless delight; but the wonder and the pleasure are quickly followed by a sense ofsadness inexpressible,—totally unlike any sadness ever felt before,—though in her gaze there is only caress, and on her lips the most exquisite of smiles. And you cannot imagine the reason of that feeling until you have learned who she is,—which is not an easy thing to learn.

Only a moment she remains; but during that luminous moment all the tides of your being set and surge to her with a longing for which there is not any word. And then—suddenly!—she is not; and you find that the sun has gloomed, the colors of the world turned grey.

Thereafter enchantment remains between you and all that you loved before,—persons or things or places. None of them will ever seem again so near and dear as in other days.

Often she will return. Once that you have seen her she will never cease to visit you. And this haunting,—ineffably sweet, inexplicably sad,—may fill you with rash desire to wander over the world in search of somebody like her. But however long and far you wander, never will you find that somebody.

Later you may learn to fear her visits because of the pain they bring,—the strange pain that you cannot understand. But the breadth of zonesand seas cannot divide you from her; walls of iron cannot exclude her. Soundless and subtle as a shudder of ether is the motion of her.

Ancient her beauty as the heart of man,—yet ever waxing fairer, forever remaining young. Mortals wither in Time as leaves in the frost of autumn; but Time only brightens the glow and the bloom of her endless youth.

All men have loved her;—all must continue to love her. But none shall touch with his lips even the hem of her garment.

All men adore her; yet all she deceives, and many are the ways of her deception. Most often she lures her lover into the presence of some earthly maid, and blends herself incomprehensibly with the body of that maid, and works such sudden glamour that the human gaze becomes divine,—that the human limbs shine through their raiment. But presently the luminous haunter detaches herself from the mortal, and leaves her dupe to wonder at the mockery of sense.

No man can describe her, though nearly all men have some time tried to do so. Pictured she cannot be,—since her beauty itself is a ceaseless becoming, multiple to infinitude, and tremulous with perpetual quickening, as with flowing of light.

There is a story, indeed, that thousands of years ago some marvellous sculptor was able to fix in stone a single remembrance of her. But this doing became for many the cause of sorrow supreme; and the Gods decreed, out of compassion, that to no other mortal should ever be given power to work the like wonder. In these years we can worship only;—we cannot portray.

But who is she?—what is she?... Ah! that is what I wanted you to ask. Well, she has never had a name; but I shall call her a tree-spirit.

The Japanese say that you can exorcise a tree-spirit,—if you are cruel enough to do it,—simply by cutting down her tree.

But you cannot exorcise the Spirit of whom I speak,—nor ever cut down her tree.

For her tree is the measureless, timeless, billion-branching Tree of Life,—even the World-Tree, Yggdrasil, whose roots are in Night and Death, whose head is above the Gods.

Seek to woo her—she is Echo. Seek to clasp her—she is Shadow. But her smile will haunt you into the hour of dissolution and beyond,—through numberless lives to come.

And never will you return her smile,—never,because of that which it awakens within you,—the pain that you cannot understand.

And never, never shall you win to her,—because she is the phantom light of long-expired suns,—because she was shaped by the beating of infinite millions of hearts that are dust,—because her witchery was made in the endless ebb and flow of the visions and hopes of youth, through countless forgotten cycles of your own incalculable past.

FOOTNOTES:[1]Nowakiis the name given to certain destructive storms usually occurring toward the end of autumn. All the chapters of the Genji Monogatari have remarkably poetical and effective titles. There is an English translation, by Mr. Kenchō Suyematsu, of the first seventeen chapters.[2]The Kurando, or Kurōdo, was an official intrusted with the care of the imperial records.[3]Achōis about one-fifteenth of a mile.[4]Hagiis the name commonly given to the bush-clover.Ominameshiis the common term for thevaleriana officinalis.[5]That is to say, there are now many people who go every night to the graveyards, to decorate and prepare the graves before the great Festival of the Dead.[6]Most of these names survive in the appellations of well-known districts of the present Tōkyō.[7]Katabirais a name given to many kinds of light textures used for summer-robes. The material is usually hemp, but sometimes, as in the case referred to here, of fine silk. Some of these robes are transparent, and very beautiful.—Hakata, in Kyūshū, is still famous for the silk girdles made there. The fabric is very heavy and strong.[8]Améis a nutritive gelatinous extract obtained from wheat and other substances. It is sold in many forms—as candy, as a syrupy liquid resembling molasses, as a sweet hot drink, as a solid jelly. Children are very fond of it. Its principal element is starch-sugar.[9]Ōyama mountain in Sagami is a great resort of Pilgrims. There is a celebrated temple there, dedicated to Iwanaga-Himé (“Long-Rock Princess”), sister of the beautiful Goddess of Fuji. Sekison-San is a popular name both for the divinity and for the mountain itself.[10]Prices of the year 1897.[11]Calyptotryphus Marmoratus. (?)[12]Homeogryllus Japonicus.[13]Locusta Japonica. (?)[14]Sanscrit:Yama. Probably this name was given to the insect on account of its large staring eyes. Images of King Emma are always made with very big and awful eyes.[15]Mushi no koe fumu.[16]Such figures are really elaborate tiles, and are calledonigawara, or “demon-tiles.” It may naturally be asked why demon-heads should be ever placed above Buddhist gate-ways. Originally they were not intended to represent demons, in the Buddhist sense, but guardian-spirits whose duty it was to drive demons away. Theonigawarawere introduced into Japan either from China or Korea—not improbably Korea; for we read that the first roof-tiles made in Japan were manufactured shortly after the introduction of the new faith by Korean priests, and under the supervision of Shōtoku Taishi, the princely founder and supporter of Japanese Buddhism. They were baked at Koizumi-mura, in Yamato;—but we are not told whether there were any of this extraordinary shape among them. It is worth while remarking that in Korea to-day you can see hideous faces painted upon house-doors,—even upon the gates of the royal palace; and these, intended merely to frighten away evil spirits, suggest the real origin of the demon-tiles. The Japanese, on first seeing such tiles, called them demon-tiles because the faces upon them resembled those conventionally given to Buddhist demons; and now that their history has been forgotten, they are popularly supposed to represent demon-guardians. There would be nothing contrary to Buddhist faith in the fancy;—for there are many legends of good demons. Besides, in the eternal order of divine law, even the worst demon must at last become a Buddha.[17]Osmanthus fragrans.This is one of the very few Japanese plants having richly-perfumed flowers.[18]The word “sotoba” is identical with the Sanscrit “stûpa.” Originally a mausoleum, and later a simple monument—commemorative or otherwise,—the stûpa was introduced with Buddhism into China, and thence, perhaps by way of Korea, into Japan. Chinese forms of the stone stûpa are to be found in many of the old Japanese temple-grounds. The woodensotobais only a symbol of the stûpa; and the more elaborate forms of it plainly suggest its history. The slight carving along its upper edges represents that superimposition of cube, sphere, crescent, pyramid, and body-pyriform (symbolizing the Five Great Elements), which forms the design of the most beautiful funeral monuments.[19]These relations of the elements to the Buddhas named are not, however, permanently fixed in the doctrine,—for obvious philosophical reasons. Sometimes Sakyamuni is identified with Ether, and Amitâbha with Air, etc., etc. In the above enumeration I have followed the order taken by Professor Bunyiu Nanjio, who nevertheless suggests that this order is not to be considered perpetual.[20]The above prayer is customarily said after having read a sûtra, or copied a sacred text, or caused a Buddhist service to be performed.[21]Dai-en-kyō-chi (Âdarsana-gñâna). Amida is the Japanese form of the name Amitâbha.[22]“Great (or Noble) Elder Sister” is the meaning of the titledai-shiaffixed to thekaimyōof a woman. In the rite of the Zen sectdai-shialways signifies a married woman;shin-nyo, a maid.[23]Thiskaimyō, or posthumous name, literally signifies: Radiant-Chastity-Beaming-Through-Luminous-Clouds.[24]The Supreme Wisdom; the state of Buddhahood.[25]San-Akudō,—the three unhappy conditions of Hell, of the World of Hungry Spirits (Pretas), and of Animal Existence.[26]“Haijō Kongō” means “the Diamond of Universal Enlightenment:” it is the honorific appellation of Kūkai or Kobodaishi, founder of the Shingon-Shū.[27]From a Zen sotoba.[28]In Japanese “Sanbodai.” The term “tower” refers of course to thesotoba, the symbol of a real tower, or at least of the desire to erect such a monument, were it possible.[29]In Japanese,Anuka-tara-sanmaku-sanbodai,—the supreme form of Buddhist enlightenment.[30]From a sotoba of the Jodo sect.[31]From a sotoba of the Jōdo sect. The Amida-Kyō, or Sûtra of Amida, is the Japanese [Chinese] version of the smaller Sukhâvatî-Vyûha Sûtra.[32]Gokurakuis the common word in Japan for the Buddhist heaven. The above inscription, translated for me from a sotoba of the Jōdo sect, is an abbreviated form of a verse in the Smaller Sukhâvatî-Vyûha (seeBuddhist Mahâyâna Texts: “Sacred Books of the East”), which Max Müller has thus rendered in full:—“In that world Sukhâvatî, O Sâriputra, there is neither bodily nor mental pain for living beings. The sources of happiness are innumerable there. For that reason is that world called Sukhâvatî, the happy.”[33]From a sotoba of the Jōdo sect.[34]Sotoba of the Jōdo sect.[35]Sotoba of the Jōdo sect.[36]Sotoba of the Zen sect.[37]Sotoba of the Zen sect.[38]Tathâgata.[39]From a sotoba of the Zen sect.[40]Avatamsaka Sûtra.—This text is also from a Zen sotoba.[41]From a tombstone of the Jōdo sect. The text is evidently from the Chinese version of the Amitâyur-Dhyâna-Sûtra (seeBuddhist Mahâyâna Texts: “Sacred Books of the East”). It reads in the English version thus:—“In fine, it is your mind that becomes Buddha;—nay, it is your mind that is indeed Buddha.”[42]Pratyeka-Buddha sastra?—From a sotoba of the Zen sect.[43]San-zé, ormitsu-yo,—the Past, Present, and Future.[44]“Mind” is here expressed by the charactershinorkokoro.—The text is from a Zen sotoba, but is used also, I am told, by the mystical sects of Tendai and Shingon.[45]Krityânushthâna-gñâna.—The text is from a sotoba of the Shingon sect.[46]More literally, “Self and Other:” i. e., the Ego and the Non-Ego in the meaning of “I” and “Thou.” There is no “I” and “Thou” in Buddhahood.—This text was copied from a Zen sotoba.[47]From a Zen sotoba.[48]The Chinese word literally means “void,”—as in the expression “Void Supreme,” to signify the state of Nirvana. But the philosophical reference here is to the ultimate substance, or primary matter; and the rendering of the term by “Ether” (rather in the Greek than the modern sense, of course) has the sanction of Bunyiu Nanjio, and the approval of other eminent Sanscrit and Chinese scholars.[49]Literally, “illuminates the Zenjō-mind.” Zenjō is the SanscritDhyâna. It is believed that in realDhyânathe mind can hold communication with the Absolute.—From a sotoba of the Zen sect.[50]From a sotoba of the Tendai sect.[51]From a Jōdo sotoba.[52]Literally, “the Great-Round-Mirror-Wisdom-Sûtra.” Sansc.,Adarsana-gñâna.—From a Zen sotoba.[53]Sotoba of the Zen sect.[54]Pratyavekshana-gñâna.[55]From a Zen sotoba.[56]Buddhist Mahâyâna Texts: “Sacred Books of the East,” vol. xlix. p. 180.[57]From a sotoba of the Zen sect.[58]Lit.: “the Inscription of the Tower of Diamond,”—name of a Buddhist text.[59]The Six States of Existence are Heaven, Man, Demons, Hell, Hungry Spirits (Pretas), and Animals.—The above is from a Zen sotoba.[60]Sotoba of the Nichiren sect.[61]San-dokuorMitsu-no-doku, viz.:—Anger, Ignorance, and Desire.—From a Zen sotoba.[62]Japanese title of the Saddhârma-Pundarika Sûtra. See, for legend, chap. xi. of Kern’s translation in theSacred Books of the Eastseries.[63]There is a great variety ofsîla;—five, eight, and ten for different classes of laity; two hundred and fifty for priests;—five hundred for nuns, etc., etc.—Be it here observed that the posthumous Buddhist name given to the dead must not be studied as referring always to conduct in this world, but rather as referring tosîlain another world. Thekaimyōis thus a title of spiritual initiation.—Some Japanese Buddhist sects hold what are calledJu-Kai-E(“sîla-giving assemblies”), at which the initiated are givenkaimyōof another sort,—sîla-names of admission as neophytes.[64]That is, according to the Japanese reading of the Chinese characters.[65]By the old calendar, the eleventh month was the Month of Frost.[66]The second year of the period Shōtoku corresponds to 1712A.D.—(For the meaning of the phrase “Dragon of Elder Water” the reader will do well to consult Professor Rein’sJapan, pp. 434-436.)[67]This beautiful kaimyō is identical with that placed upon the monument of my dear friend Nishida, buried in the Nichiren cemetery of Chōmanji, in Matsué.[68]Signifying:—“believing man of mind as chastely pure as the snow upon a peak in winter.”[69]This is the kaimyō of the lady for whose sake the temple of Kobudera was built; and the words “Mansion of Self-witness” here refer to the temple itself, which is thus named (Ji-Shō In). The Chinese text reads:—“Ji-Shō-In den, Kwo-zan Kyō-kei, Daishi,”—literally, “Great Elder-Sister, Dawn-Katsura-of-Luminous-Mountain, dwelling in the August Mansion of Self-witness.” The katsura (olea fragrans) is a tree mysteriously connected, in Japanese poetical fancy, with the moon; and its name is often used, as here, to signify the moon.Katsura-no-hana, or “katsura-flower” is a poetical term for moonlight.—This kaimyō is remarkable in having the honorific term “August” prefixed to the name of the mansion or temple,—a sign of the high rank of the dead lady. The full date inscribed is “twenty-eighth day of Mid-Autumn” (the old eighth month) “of the seventeenth year of Kwansei” (1640A. D.)[70]The prefixdai(great) before the ordinary termdōji(male child) is of rare occurrence. Probably the lad was of princely birth. The grave is in a reserved part of the Kobudera cemetery; and the year-date of death is “the fourth of Enkyō”—corresponding to 1747.[71]The tomb bearing this kaimyō is set beside that inscribed with the kaimyō preceding. Probably the boys were brothers. In both instances we have the honorific prefix “dai,” and the term “August” qualifying the mansion-name. The year-date of death is “the second of Kwan-en” (1749).[72]Probably a princely child,—sister apparently of the highborn boys before referred to. She is buried beside them in Kobudera. Observe here again the use of the prefixdai,—this time before the termdōnyo, “child-girl” or “child-daughter.” Perhaps thedaihere would be better rendered by “grand” than by “great.” Notice that the term “August” precedes the mansion-name in this case also. The date of death is given as “the sixth year of Hōreki” (1756).[73]Cettia cantans,—the Japanese nightingale.[74]Such, at least, is the posture prescribed by the old etiquette formen. But the rules were very complicated, and varied somewhat according to rank as well as to sex. Women usually turn the fingers inward instead of outward when assuming this posture.[75]Blue jewels, blue eyes, blue flowers delight us; but in these the color accompanies either transparency or visible softness. It is perhaps because of the incongruity between hard opacity and blue that the sight of a book in sky-blue binding is unendurable. I can imagine nothing more atrocious.[76]This essay was written several years ago. During 1897 I noticed for the first time since my arrival in Japan a sprinkling of dark greens and light-yellows in the fashions of the season; but the general tone of costume was little affected by these exceptions to older taste. The light-yellow appeared only in some girdles of children.

[1]Nowakiis the name given to certain destructive storms usually occurring toward the end of autumn. All the chapters of the Genji Monogatari have remarkably poetical and effective titles. There is an English translation, by Mr. Kenchō Suyematsu, of the first seventeen chapters.

[2]The Kurando, or Kurōdo, was an official intrusted with the care of the imperial records.

[3]Achōis about one-fifteenth of a mile.

[4]Hagiis the name commonly given to the bush-clover.Ominameshiis the common term for thevaleriana officinalis.

[5]That is to say, there are now many people who go every night to the graveyards, to decorate and prepare the graves before the great Festival of the Dead.

[6]Most of these names survive in the appellations of well-known districts of the present Tōkyō.

[7]Katabirais a name given to many kinds of light textures used for summer-robes. The material is usually hemp, but sometimes, as in the case referred to here, of fine silk. Some of these robes are transparent, and very beautiful.—Hakata, in Kyūshū, is still famous for the silk girdles made there. The fabric is very heavy and strong.

[8]Améis a nutritive gelatinous extract obtained from wheat and other substances. It is sold in many forms—as candy, as a syrupy liquid resembling molasses, as a sweet hot drink, as a solid jelly. Children are very fond of it. Its principal element is starch-sugar.

[9]Ōyama mountain in Sagami is a great resort of Pilgrims. There is a celebrated temple there, dedicated to Iwanaga-Himé (“Long-Rock Princess”), sister of the beautiful Goddess of Fuji. Sekison-San is a popular name both for the divinity and for the mountain itself.

[10]Prices of the year 1897.

[11]Calyptotryphus Marmoratus. (?)

[12]Homeogryllus Japonicus.

[13]Locusta Japonica. (?)

[14]Sanscrit:Yama. Probably this name was given to the insect on account of its large staring eyes. Images of King Emma are always made with very big and awful eyes.

[15]Mushi no koe fumu.

[16]Such figures are really elaborate tiles, and are calledonigawara, or “demon-tiles.” It may naturally be asked why demon-heads should be ever placed above Buddhist gate-ways. Originally they were not intended to represent demons, in the Buddhist sense, but guardian-spirits whose duty it was to drive demons away. Theonigawarawere introduced into Japan either from China or Korea—not improbably Korea; for we read that the first roof-tiles made in Japan were manufactured shortly after the introduction of the new faith by Korean priests, and under the supervision of Shōtoku Taishi, the princely founder and supporter of Japanese Buddhism. They were baked at Koizumi-mura, in Yamato;—but we are not told whether there were any of this extraordinary shape among them. It is worth while remarking that in Korea to-day you can see hideous faces painted upon house-doors,—even upon the gates of the royal palace; and these, intended merely to frighten away evil spirits, suggest the real origin of the demon-tiles. The Japanese, on first seeing such tiles, called them demon-tiles because the faces upon them resembled those conventionally given to Buddhist demons; and now that their history has been forgotten, they are popularly supposed to represent demon-guardians. There would be nothing contrary to Buddhist faith in the fancy;—for there are many legends of good demons. Besides, in the eternal order of divine law, even the worst demon must at last become a Buddha.

[17]Osmanthus fragrans.This is one of the very few Japanese plants having richly-perfumed flowers.

[18]The word “sotoba” is identical with the Sanscrit “stûpa.” Originally a mausoleum, and later a simple monument—commemorative or otherwise,—the stûpa was introduced with Buddhism into China, and thence, perhaps by way of Korea, into Japan. Chinese forms of the stone stûpa are to be found in many of the old Japanese temple-grounds. The woodensotobais only a symbol of the stûpa; and the more elaborate forms of it plainly suggest its history. The slight carving along its upper edges represents that superimposition of cube, sphere, crescent, pyramid, and body-pyriform (symbolizing the Five Great Elements), which forms the design of the most beautiful funeral monuments.

[19]These relations of the elements to the Buddhas named are not, however, permanently fixed in the doctrine,—for obvious philosophical reasons. Sometimes Sakyamuni is identified with Ether, and Amitâbha with Air, etc., etc. In the above enumeration I have followed the order taken by Professor Bunyiu Nanjio, who nevertheless suggests that this order is not to be considered perpetual.

[20]The above prayer is customarily said after having read a sûtra, or copied a sacred text, or caused a Buddhist service to be performed.

[21]Dai-en-kyō-chi (Âdarsana-gñâna). Amida is the Japanese form of the name Amitâbha.

[22]“Great (or Noble) Elder Sister” is the meaning of the titledai-shiaffixed to thekaimyōof a woman. In the rite of the Zen sectdai-shialways signifies a married woman;shin-nyo, a maid.

[23]Thiskaimyō, or posthumous name, literally signifies: Radiant-Chastity-Beaming-Through-Luminous-Clouds.

[24]The Supreme Wisdom; the state of Buddhahood.

[25]San-Akudō,—the three unhappy conditions of Hell, of the World of Hungry Spirits (Pretas), and of Animal Existence.

[26]“Haijō Kongō” means “the Diamond of Universal Enlightenment:” it is the honorific appellation of Kūkai or Kobodaishi, founder of the Shingon-Shū.

[27]From a Zen sotoba.

[28]In Japanese “Sanbodai.” The term “tower” refers of course to thesotoba, the symbol of a real tower, or at least of the desire to erect such a monument, were it possible.

[29]In Japanese,Anuka-tara-sanmaku-sanbodai,—the supreme form of Buddhist enlightenment.

[30]From a sotoba of the Jodo sect.

[31]From a sotoba of the Jōdo sect. The Amida-Kyō, or Sûtra of Amida, is the Japanese [Chinese] version of the smaller Sukhâvatî-Vyûha Sûtra.

[32]Gokurakuis the common word in Japan for the Buddhist heaven. The above inscription, translated for me from a sotoba of the Jōdo sect, is an abbreviated form of a verse in the Smaller Sukhâvatî-Vyûha (seeBuddhist Mahâyâna Texts: “Sacred Books of the East”), which Max Müller has thus rendered in full:—“In that world Sukhâvatî, O Sâriputra, there is neither bodily nor mental pain for living beings. The sources of happiness are innumerable there. For that reason is that world called Sukhâvatî, the happy.”

[33]From a sotoba of the Jōdo sect.

[34]Sotoba of the Jōdo sect.

[35]Sotoba of the Jōdo sect.

[36]Sotoba of the Zen sect.

[37]Sotoba of the Zen sect.

[38]Tathâgata.

[39]From a sotoba of the Zen sect.

[40]Avatamsaka Sûtra.—This text is also from a Zen sotoba.

[41]From a tombstone of the Jōdo sect. The text is evidently from the Chinese version of the Amitâyur-Dhyâna-Sûtra (seeBuddhist Mahâyâna Texts: “Sacred Books of the East”). It reads in the English version thus:—“In fine, it is your mind that becomes Buddha;—nay, it is your mind that is indeed Buddha.”

[42]Pratyeka-Buddha sastra?—From a sotoba of the Zen sect.

[43]San-zé, ormitsu-yo,—the Past, Present, and Future.

[44]“Mind” is here expressed by the charactershinorkokoro.—The text is from a Zen sotoba, but is used also, I am told, by the mystical sects of Tendai and Shingon.

[45]Krityânushthâna-gñâna.—The text is from a sotoba of the Shingon sect.

[46]More literally, “Self and Other:” i. e., the Ego and the Non-Ego in the meaning of “I” and “Thou.” There is no “I” and “Thou” in Buddhahood.—This text was copied from a Zen sotoba.

[47]From a Zen sotoba.

[48]The Chinese word literally means “void,”—as in the expression “Void Supreme,” to signify the state of Nirvana. But the philosophical reference here is to the ultimate substance, or primary matter; and the rendering of the term by “Ether” (rather in the Greek than the modern sense, of course) has the sanction of Bunyiu Nanjio, and the approval of other eminent Sanscrit and Chinese scholars.

[49]Literally, “illuminates the Zenjō-mind.” Zenjō is the SanscritDhyâna. It is believed that in realDhyânathe mind can hold communication with the Absolute.—From a sotoba of the Zen sect.

[50]From a sotoba of the Tendai sect.

[51]From a Jōdo sotoba.

[52]Literally, “the Great-Round-Mirror-Wisdom-Sûtra.” Sansc.,Adarsana-gñâna.—From a Zen sotoba.

[53]Sotoba of the Zen sect.

[54]Pratyavekshana-gñâna.

[55]From a Zen sotoba.

[56]Buddhist Mahâyâna Texts: “Sacred Books of the East,” vol. xlix. p. 180.

[57]From a sotoba of the Zen sect.

[58]Lit.: “the Inscription of the Tower of Diamond,”—name of a Buddhist text.

[59]The Six States of Existence are Heaven, Man, Demons, Hell, Hungry Spirits (Pretas), and Animals.—The above is from a Zen sotoba.

[60]Sotoba of the Nichiren sect.

[61]San-dokuorMitsu-no-doku, viz.:—Anger, Ignorance, and Desire.—From a Zen sotoba.

[62]Japanese title of the Saddhârma-Pundarika Sûtra. See, for legend, chap. xi. of Kern’s translation in theSacred Books of the Eastseries.

[63]There is a great variety ofsîla;—five, eight, and ten for different classes of laity; two hundred and fifty for priests;—five hundred for nuns, etc., etc.—Be it here observed that the posthumous Buddhist name given to the dead must not be studied as referring always to conduct in this world, but rather as referring tosîlain another world. Thekaimyōis thus a title of spiritual initiation.—Some Japanese Buddhist sects hold what are calledJu-Kai-E(“sîla-giving assemblies”), at which the initiated are givenkaimyōof another sort,—sîla-names of admission as neophytes.

[64]That is, according to the Japanese reading of the Chinese characters.

[65]By the old calendar, the eleventh month was the Month of Frost.

[66]The second year of the period Shōtoku corresponds to 1712A.D.—(For the meaning of the phrase “Dragon of Elder Water” the reader will do well to consult Professor Rein’sJapan, pp. 434-436.)

[67]This beautiful kaimyō is identical with that placed upon the monument of my dear friend Nishida, buried in the Nichiren cemetery of Chōmanji, in Matsué.

[68]Signifying:—“believing man of mind as chastely pure as the snow upon a peak in winter.”

[69]This is the kaimyō of the lady for whose sake the temple of Kobudera was built; and the words “Mansion of Self-witness” here refer to the temple itself, which is thus named (Ji-Shō In). The Chinese text reads:—“Ji-Shō-In den, Kwo-zan Kyō-kei, Daishi,”—literally, “Great Elder-Sister, Dawn-Katsura-of-Luminous-Mountain, dwelling in the August Mansion of Self-witness.” The katsura (olea fragrans) is a tree mysteriously connected, in Japanese poetical fancy, with the moon; and its name is often used, as here, to signify the moon.Katsura-no-hana, or “katsura-flower” is a poetical term for moonlight.—This kaimyō is remarkable in having the honorific term “August” prefixed to the name of the mansion or temple,—a sign of the high rank of the dead lady. The full date inscribed is “twenty-eighth day of Mid-Autumn” (the old eighth month) “of the seventeenth year of Kwansei” (1640A. D.)

[70]The prefixdai(great) before the ordinary termdōji(male child) is of rare occurrence. Probably the lad was of princely birth. The grave is in a reserved part of the Kobudera cemetery; and the year-date of death is “the fourth of Enkyō”—corresponding to 1747.

[71]The tomb bearing this kaimyō is set beside that inscribed with the kaimyō preceding. Probably the boys were brothers. In both instances we have the honorific prefix “dai,” and the term “August” qualifying the mansion-name. The year-date of death is “the second of Kwan-en” (1749).

[72]Probably a princely child,—sister apparently of the highborn boys before referred to. She is buried beside them in Kobudera. Observe here again the use of the prefixdai,—this time before the termdōnyo, “child-girl” or “child-daughter.” Perhaps thedaihere would be better rendered by “grand” than by “great.” Notice that the term “August” precedes the mansion-name in this case also. The date of death is given as “the sixth year of Hōreki” (1756).

[73]Cettia cantans,—the Japanese nightingale.

[74]Such, at least, is the posture prescribed by the old etiquette formen. But the rules were very complicated, and varied somewhat according to rank as well as to sex. Women usually turn the fingers inward instead of outward when assuming this posture.

[75]Blue jewels, blue eyes, blue flowers delight us; but in these the color accompanies either transparency or visible softness. It is perhaps because of the incongruity between hard opacity and blue that the sight of a book in sky-blue binding is unendurable. I can imagine nothing more atrocious.

[76]This essay was written several years ago. During 1897 I noticed for the first time since my arrival in Japan a sprinkling of dark greens and light-yellows in the fashions of the season; but the general tone of costume was little affected by these exceptions to older taste. The light-yellow appeared only in some girdles of children.

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