Sec. 3
As to its exterior forms, modern Shinto is indeed difficult to analyse; but through all the intricate texture of extraneous beliefs so thickly interwoven about it, indications of its earliest character are still easily discerned. In certain of its primitive rites, in its archaic prayers and texts and symbols, in the history of its shrines, and even in many of the artless ideas of its poorest worshippers, it is plainly revealed as the most ancient of all forms of worship—that which Herbert Spencer terms 'the root of all religions'—devotion to the dead. Indeed, it has been frequently so expounded by its own greatest scholars and theologians. Its divinities are ghosts; all the dead become deities. In the Tama-no-mihashira the great commentator Hirata says 'the spirits of the dead continue to exist in the unseen world which is everywhere about us, and they all become gods of varying character and degrees of influence. Some reside in temples built in their honour; others hover near their tombs; and they continue to render services to their prince, parents, wife, and children, as when in the body.' And they do more than this, for they control the lives and the doings of men. 'Every human action,' says Hirata, 'is the work of a god.' [3] And Motowori, scarcely less famous an exponent of pure Shinto doctrine, writes: 'All the moral ideas which a man requires are implanted in his bosom by the gods, and are of the same nature with those instincts which impel him to eat when he is hungry or to drink when he is thirsty.' [4] With this doctrine of Intuition no Decalogue is required, no fixed code of ethics; and the human conscience is declared to be the only necessary guide. Though every action be 'the work of a Kami.' yet each man has within him the power to discern the righteous impulse from the unrighteous, the influence of the good deity from that of the evil. No moral teacher is so infallible as one's own heart. 'To have learned that there is no way (michi),'[5] says Motowori, 'to be learned and practiced, is really to have learned the Way of the Gods.' [6] And Hirata writes: 'If you desire to practise true virtue, learn to stand in awe of the Unseen; and that will prevent you from doing wrong. Make a vow to the Gods who rule over the Unseen, and cultivate the conscience (ma-gokoro) implanted in you; and then you will never wander from the way.' How this spiritual self- culture may best be obtained, the same great expounder has stated with almost equal brevity: 'Devotion to the memory of ancestors is the mainspring of all virtues. No one who discharges his duty to them will ever be disrespectful to the Gods or to his living parents. Such a man will be faithful to his prince, loyal to his friends, and kind and gentle with his wife and children.' [7]
How far are these antique beliefs removed from the ideas of the nineteenth century? Certainly not so far that we can afford to smile at them. The faith of the primitive man and the knowledge of the most profound psychologist may meet in strange harmony upon the threshold of the same ultimate truth, and the thought of a child may repeat the conclusions of a Spencer or a Schopenhauer. Are not our ancestors in very truth our Kami? Is not every action indeed the work of the Dead who dwell within us? Have not our impulses and tendencies, our capacities and weaknesses, our heroisms and timidities, been created by those vanished myriads from whom we received the all-mysterious bequest of Life? Do we still think of that infinitely complex Something which is each one of us, and which we call EGO, as 'I' or as 'They'? What is our pride or shame but the pride or shame of the Unseen in that which They have made?—and what our Conscience but the inherited sum of countless dead experiences with varying good and evil? Nor can we hastily reject the Shinto thought that all the dead become gods, while we respect the convictions of those strong souls of to-day who proclaim the divinity of man.
Sec. 4
Shino ancestor-worship, no doubt, like all ancestor-worship, was developed out of funeral rites, according to that general law of religious evolution traced so fully by Herbert Spencer. And there is reason to believe that the early forms of Shinto public worship may have been evolved out of a yet older family worship—much after the manner in which M. Fustel de Coulanges, in his wonderful book, La Cite Antique, has shown the religious public institutions among the Greeks and Romans to have been developed from the religion of the hearth. Indeed, the word ujigami, now used to signify a Shinto parish temple, and also its deity, means 'family God,' and in its present form is a corruption or contraction of uchi-no-Kami, meaning the 'god of the interior' or 'the god of the house.' Shinto expounders have, it is true, attempted to interpret the term otherwise; and Hirata, as quoted by Mr. Ernest Satow, declared the name should be applied only to the common ancestor, or ancestors, or to one so entitled to the gratitude of a community as to merit equal honours. Such, undoubtedly, was the just use of the term in his time, and long before it; but the etymology of the word would certainly seem to indicate its origin in family worship, and to confirm modern scientific beliefs in regard to the evolution of religious institutions.
Now just as among the Greeks and Latins the family cult always continued to exist through all the development and expansion of the public religion, so the Shinto family worship has continued concomitantly with the communal worship at the countless ujigami, with popular worship at the famed Ohoya-shiro of various provinces or districts, and with national worship at the great shrines of Ise and Kitzuki. Many objects connected with the family cult are certainly of alien or modern origin; but its simple rites and its unconscious poetry retain their archaic charm. And, to the student of Japanese life, by far the most interesting aspect of Shinto is offered in this home worship, which, like the home worship of the antique Occident, exists in a dual form.
Sec. 5
In nearly all Izumo dwellings there is a kamidana, [8] or 'Shelf of the Gods.' On this is usually placed a small Shinto shrine (miya) containing tablets bearing the names of gods (one at least of which tablets is furnished by the neighbouring Shinto parish temple), and various ofuda, holy texts or charms which most often are written promises in the name of some Kami to protect his worshipper. If there be no miya, the tablets or ofuda are simply placed upon the shelf in a certain order, the most sacred having the middle place. Very rarely are images to be seen upon a kamidana: for primitive Shintoism excluded images rigidly as Jewish or Mohammedan law; and all Shinto iconography belongs to a comparatively modern era—especially to the period of Ryobu-Shinto—and must be considered of Buddhist origin. If there be any images, they will probably be such as have been made only within recent years at Kitauki: those small twin figures of Oho-kuni-nushi-no-Kami and of Koto-shiro- nushi-no-Kami, described in a former paper upon the Kitzuki-no-oho- yashiro. Shinto kakemono, which are also of latter-day origin, representing incidents from the Kojiki, are much more common than Shinto icons: these usually occupy the toko, or alcove, in the same room in which the kamidana is placed; but they will not be seen in the houses of the more cultivated classes. Ordinarily there will be found upon the kamidana nothing but the simple miya containing some ofuda: very, very seldom will a mirror [9] be seen, or gohei—except the gohei attached to the small shimenawa either hung just above the kamidana or suspended to the box-like frame in which the miya sometimes is placed. The shimenawa and the paper gohei are the true emblems of Shinto: even the ofuda and the mamori are quite modern. Not only before the household shrine, but also above the house-door of almost every home in Izumo, the shimenawa is suspended. It is ordinarily a thin rope of rice straw; but before the dwellings of high Shinto officials, such as the Taisha-Guji of Kitzuki, its size and weight are enormous. One of the first curious facts that the traveller in Izumo cannot fail to be impressed by is the universal presence of this symbolic rope of straw, which may sometimes even be seen round a rice-field. But the grand displays of the sacred symbol are upon the great festivals of the new year, the accession of Jimmu Tenno to the throne of Japan, and the Emperor's birthday. Then all the miles of streets are festooned with shimenawa thick as ship-cables.
Sec. 6
A particular feature of Matsue are the miya-shops—establishments not, indeed, peculiar to the old Izumo town, but much more interesting than those to be found in larger cities of other provinces. There are miya of a hundred varieties and sizes, from the child's toy miya which sells for less than one sen, to the large shrine destined for some rich home, and costing perhaps ten yen or more. Besides these, the household shrines of Shinto, may occasionally be seen massive shrines of precious wood, lacquered and gilded, worth from three hundred even to fifteen hundred yen. These are not household shrines; but festival shrines, and are made only for rich merchants. They are displayed on Shinto holidays, and twice a year are borne through the streets in procession, to shouts of 'Chosaya! chosaya!' [10] Each temple parish also possesses a large portable miya which is paraded on these occasions with much chanting and beating of drums. The majority of household miya are cheap constructions. A very fine one can be purchased for about two yen; but those little shrines one sees in the houses of the common people cost, as a rule, considerably less than half a yen. And elaborate or costly household shrines are contrary to the spirit of pure Shinto The true miya should be made of spotless white hinoki [11] wood, and be put together without nails. Most of those I have seen in the shops had their several parts joined only with rice-paste; but the skill of the maker rendered this sufficient. Pure Shinto requires that a miya should be without gilding or ornamentation. The beautiful miniature temples in some rich homes may justly excite admiration by their artistic structure and decoration; but the ten or thirteen cent miya, in the house of a labourer or a kurumaya, of plain white wood, truly represents that spirit of simplicity characterising the primitive religion.
Sec. 7
The kamidana or 'God-shelf,' upon which are placed the miya and other sacred objects of Shinto worship, is usually fastened at a height of about six or seven feet above the floor. As a rule it should not be placed higher than the hand can reach with ease; but in houses having lofty rooms the miya is sometimes put up at such a height that the sacred offerings cannot be made without the aid of a box or other object to stand upon. It is not commonly a part of the house structure, but a plain shelf attached with brackets either to the wall itself, at some angle of the apartment, or, as is much more usual, to the kamoi, or horizontal grooved beam, in which the screens of opaque paper (fusuma), which divide room from room, slide to and fro. Occasionally it is painted or lacquered. But the ordinary kamidana is of white wood, and is made larger or smaller in proportion to the size of the miya, or the number of the ofuda and other sacred objects to be placed upon it. In some houses, notably those of innkeepers and small merchants, the kamidana is made long enough to support a number of small shrines dedicated to different Shinto deities, particularly those believed to preside over wealth and commercial prosperity. In the houses of the poor it is nearly always placed in the room facing the street; and Matsue shopkeepers usually erect it in their shops—so that the passer-by or the customer can tell at a glance in what deities the occupant puts his trust. There are many regulations concerning it. It may be placed to face south or east, but should not face west, and under no possible circumstances should it be suffered to face north or north-west. One explanation of this is the influence upon Shinto of Chinese philosophy, according to which there is some fancied relation between South or East and the Male Principle, and between West or North and the Female Principle. But the popular notion on the subject is that because a dead person is buried with the head turned north, it would be very wrong to place a miya so as to face north—since everything relating to death is impure; and the regulation about the west is not strictly observed. Most kamidana in Izumo, however, face south or east. In the houses of the poorest—often consisting of but one apartment—there can be little choice as to rooms; but it is a rule, observed in the dwellings of the middle classes, that the kamidana must not be placed either in the guest room (zashiki) nor in the kitchen; and in shizoku houses its place is usually in one of the smaller family apartments. Respect must be shown it. One must not sleep, for example, or even lie down to rest, with his feet turned towards it. One must not pray before it, or even stand before it, while in a state of religious impurity—such as that entailed by having touched a corpse, or attended a Buddhist funeral, or even during the period of mourning for kindred buried according to the Buddhist rite. Should any member of the family be thus buried, then during fifty days [12] the kamidana must be entirely screened from view with pure white paper, and even the Shinto ofuda, or pious invocations fastened upon the house-door, must have white paper pasted over them. During the same mourning period the fire in the house is considered unclean; and at the close of the term all the ashes of the braziers and of the kitchen must be cast away, and new fire kindled with a flint and steel. Nor are funerals the only source of legal uncleanliness. Shinto, as the religion of purity and purification, has a Deuteronomy of quite an extensive kind. During certain periods women must not even pray before the miya, much less make offerings or touch the sacred vessels, or kindle the lights of the Kami.
Sec. 8
Before the miya, or whatever holy object of Shinto worship be placed upon the kamidana, are set two quaintly shaped jars for the offerings of sake; two small vases, to contain sprays of the sacred plant sakaki, or offerings of flowers; and a small lamp, shaped like a tiny saucer, where a wick of rush-pith floats in rape-seed oil. Strictly speaking, all these utensils, except the flower-vases, should be made of unglazed red earthenware, such as we find described in the early chapters of the Kojiki: and still at Shinto festivals in Izumo, when sake is drunk in honour of the gods, it is drunk out of cups of red baked unglazed clay shaped like shallow round dishes. But of late years it has become the fashion to make all the utensils of a fine kamidana of brass or bronze— even the hanaike, or flower-vases. Among the poor, the most archaic utensils are still used to a great extent, especially in the remoter country districts; the lamp being a simple saucer or kawarake of red clay; and the flower-vases most often bamboo cups, made by simply cutting a section of bamboo immediately below a joint and about five inches above it.
The brazen lamp is a much more complicated object than the kawarake, which costs but one rin. The brass lamp costs about twenty-five sen, at least. It consists of two parts. The lower part, shaped like a very shallow, broad wineglass, with a very thick stem, has an interior as well as an exterior rim; and the bottom of a correspondingly broad and shallow brass cup, which is the upper part and contains the oil, fits exactly into this inner rim. This kind of lamp is always furnished with a small brass object in the shape of a flat ring, with a stem set at right angles to the surface of the ring. It is used for moving the floating wick and keeping it at any position required; and the little perpendicular stem is long enough to prevent the fingers from touching the oil.
The most curious objects to be seen on any ordinary kamidana are the stoppers of the sake-vessels or o-mikidokkuri ('honourable sake-jars'). These stoppers—o-mikidokkuri-nokuchisashi—may be made of brass, or of fine thin slips of wood jointed and bent into the singular form required. Properly speaking, the thing is not a real stopper, in spite of its name; its lower part does not fill the mouth of the jar at all: it simply hangs in the orifice like a leaf put there stem downwards. I find it difficult to learn its history; but, though there are many designs of it—the finer ones being of brass—the shape of all seems to hint at a Buddhist origin. Possibly the shape was borrowed from a Buddhist symbol—the Hoshi-notama, that mystic gem whose lambent glow (iconographically suggested as a playing of flame) is the emblem of Pure Essence; and thus the object would be typical at once of the purity of the wine-offering and the purity of the heart of the giver.
The little lamp may not be lighted every evening in all homes, since there are families too poor to afford even this infinitesimal nightly expenditure of oil. But upon the first, fifteenth, and twenty-eighth of each month the light is always kindled; for these are Shinto holidays of obligation, when offerings must be made to the gods, and when all uji- ko, or parishioners of a Shinto temple, are supposed to visit their ujigami. In every home on these days sake is poured as an offering into the o-mikidokkuri, and in the vases of the kamidana are placed sprays of the holy sakaki, or sprigs of pine, or fresh flowers. On the first day of the new year the kamidana is always decked with sakaki, moromoki (ferns), and pine-sprigs, and also with a shimenawa; and large double rice cakes are placed upon it as offerings to the gods.
Sec. 9
But only the ancient gods of Shinto are worshipped before the kamidana. The family ancestors or family dead are worshipped either in a separate room (called the mitamaya or 'Spirit Chamber'), or, if worshipped according to the Buddhist rites, before the butsuma or butsudan.
The Buddhist family worship coexists in the vast majority of Izumo homes with the Shinto family worship; and whether the dead be honoured in the mitamaya or before the butsudan altogether depends upon the religious traditions of the household. Moreover, there are families in Izumo— particularly in Kitzuki—whose members do not profess Buddhism in any form, and a very few, belonging to the Shin-shu or Nichirenshu, [13] whose members do not practise Shinto. But the domestic cult of the dead is maintained, whether the family be Shinto or Buddhist. The ihai or tablets of the Buddhist family dead (Hotoke) are never placed in a special room or shrine, but in the Buddhist household shrine [14] along with the images or pictures of Buddhist divinities usually there inclosed—or, at least, this is always the case when the honours paid them are given according to the Buddhist instead of the Shinto rite. The form of the butsudan or butsuma, the character of its holy images, its ofuda, or its pictures, and even the prayers said before it, differ according to the fifteen different shu, or sects; and a very large volume would have to be written in order to treat the subject of the butsuma exhaustively. Therefore I must content myself with stating that there are Buddhist household shrines of all dimensions, prices, and degrees of magnificence; and that the butsudan of the Shin-shu, although to me the least interesting of all, is popularly considered to be the most beautiful in design and finish. The butsudan of a very poor household may be worth a few cents, but the rich devotee might purchase in Kyoto a shrine worth as many thousands of yen as he could pay.
Though the forms of the butsuma and the character of its contents may greatly vary, the form of the ancestral or mortuary tablet is generally that represented in Fig. 4 of the illustrations of ihai given in this book. [15] There are some much more elaborate shapes, costly and rare, and simpler shapes of the cheapest and plainest descriptions; but the form thus illustrated is the common one in Izumo and the whole San-indo country. There are differences, however, of size; and the ihai of a man is larger than that of a woman, and has a headpiece also, which the tablet of a female has not; while a child's ihai is always very small. The average height of the ihai made for a male adult is a little more than a foot, and its thickness about an inch. It has a top, or headpiece, surmounted by the symbol I of the Hoshi-no-tama or Mystic Gem, and ordinarily decorated with a cloud-design of some kind, and the pedestal is a lotus-flower rising out of clouds. As a general rule all this is richly lacquered and gilded; the tablet itself being lacquered in black, and bearing the posthumous name, or kaimyo, in letters of gold—ken-mu-ji-sho-shin-ji, or other syllables indicating the supposed virtues of the departed. The poorest people, unable to afford such handsome tablets, have ihai made of plain wood; and the kaimyo is sometimes simply written on these in black characters; but more commonly it is written upon a strip of white paper, which is then pasted upon the ihai with rice-paste. The living name is perhaps inscribed upon the back of the tablet. Such tablets accumulate, of course, with the passing of generations; and in certain homes great numbers are preserved.
A beautiful and touching custom still exists in Izumo, and perhaps throughout Japan, although much less common than it used to be. So far as I can learn, however, it was always confined to the cultivated classes. When a husband dies, two ihai are made, in case the wife resolves never to marry again. On one of these the kaimyo of the dead man is painted in characters of gold, and on the other that of the living widow; but, in the latter case, the first character of the kaimyo is painted in red, and the other characters in gold. These two tablets are then placed in the household butsuma. Two larger ones similarly inscribed, are placed in the parish temple; but no cup is set before that of the wife. The solitary crimson ideograph signifies a solemn pledge to remain faithful to the memory of the dead. Furthermore, the wife loses her living name among all her friends and relatives, and is thereafter addressed only by a fragment of her kaimyo—as, for example, 'Shin-toku-in-San,' an abbreviation of the much longer and more sonorous posthumous name, Shin-toku-in-den-joyo-teiso-daishi. [16] Thus to be called by one's kaimyo is at once an honour to the memory of the husband and the constancy of the bereaved wife. A precisely similar pledge is taken by a man after the loss of a wife to whom he was passionately attached; and one crimson letter upon his ihai registers the vow not only in the home but also in the place of public worship. But the widower is never called by his kaimyo, as is the widow.
The first religious duty of the morning in a Buddhist household is to set before the tablets of the dead a little cup of tea, made with the first hot water prepared—O-Hotoke-San-nio-cha-to-ageru. [17] Daily offerings of boiled rice are also made; and fresh flowers are put in the shrine vases; and incense—although not allowed by Shinto—is burned before the tablets. At night, and also during the day upon certain festivals, both candles and a small oil-lamp are lighted in the butsuma—a lamp somewhat differently shaped from the lamp of the miya and called rinto On the day of each month corresponding to the date of death a little repast is served before the tablets, consisting of shojin-ryori only, the vegetarian food of the. Buddhists. But as Shinto family worship has its special annual festival, which endures from the first to the third day of the new year, so Buddhist ancestor-worship has its yearly Bonku, or Bommatsuri, lasting from the thirteenth to the sixteenth day of the seventh month. This is the Buddhist Feast of Souls. Then the butsuma is decorated to the utmost, special offerings of food and of flowers are made, and all the house is made beautiful to welcome the coming of the ghostly visitors.
Now Shinto, like Buddhism, has its ihai; but these are of the simplest possible shape and material—mere slips of plain white wood. The average height is only about eight inches. These tablets are either placed in a special miya kept in a different room from that in which the shrine of the Kami is erected, or else simply arranged on a small shelf called by the people Mitama-San-no-tana,—'the Shelf of the August Spirits.' The shelf or the shrine of the ancestors and household dead is placed always at a considerable height in the mitamaya or soreisha (as the Spirit Chamber is sometimes called), just as is the miya of the Kami in the other apartment. Sometimes no tablets are used, the name being simply painted upon the woodwork of the Spirit Shrine. But Shinto has no kaimyo: the living name of the dead is written upon the ihai, with the sole addition of the word 'Mitama' (Spirit). And monthly upon the day corresponding to the menstrual date of death, offerings of fish, wine, and other food are made to the spirits, accompanied by special prayer. [18] The Mitama-San have also their particular lamps and flower-vases, and, though in lesser degree, are honoured with rites like those of the Kami.
The prayers uttered before the ihai of either faith begin with the respective religious formulas of Shinto or of Buddhism. The Shintoist, clapping his hands thrice or four times, [19] first utters the sacramental Harai-tamai. The Buddhist, according to his sect, murmurs Namu-myo-ho-ren-ge-kyo, or Namu Amida Butsu, or some other holy words of prayer or of praise to the Buddha, ere commencing his prayer to the ancestors. The words said to them are seldom spoken aloud, either by Shintoist or Buddhist: they are either whispered very low under the breath, or shaped only within the heart.
Sec. 10
At nightfall in Izumo homes the lamps of the gods and of the ancestors are kindled, either by a trusted servant or by some member of the family. Shinto orthodox regulations require that the lamps should be filled with pure vegetable oil only—tomoshiabura—and oil of rape-seed is customarily used. However, there is an evident inclination among the poorer classes to substitute a microscopic kerosene lamp for the ancient form of utensil. But by the strictly orthodox this is held to be very wrong, and even to light the lamps with a match is somewhat heretical. For it is not supposed that matches are always made with pure substances, and the lights of the Kami should be kindled only with purest fire—that holy natural fire which lies hidden within all things. Therefore in some little closet in the home of any strictly orthodox Shinto family there is always a small box containing the ancient instruments used for the lighting of' holy fire. These consist of the hi-uchi-ishi, or 'fire-strike-stone'; the hi-uchi-gane, or steel; the hokuchi, or tinder, made of dried moss; and the tsukegi, fine slivers of resinous pine. A little tinder is laid upon the flint and set smouldering with a few strokes of the steel, and blown upon until it flames. A slip of pine is then ignited at this flame, and with it the lamps of the ancestors and the gods are lighted. If several great deities are represented in the miya or upon the kamidana by several ofuda, then a separate lamp is sometimes lighted for each; and if there be a butsuma in the dwelling, its tapers or lamp are lighted at the same time.
Although the use of the flint and steel for lighting the lamps of the gods will probably have become obsolete within another generation, it still prevails largely in Izumo, especially in the country districts. Even where the safety-match has entirely supplanted the orthodox utensils, the orthodox sentiment shows itself in the matter of the choice of matches to be used. Foreign matches are inadmissible: the native matchmaker quite successfully represented that foreign matches contained phosphorus 'made from the bones of dead animals,' and that to kindle the lights of the Kami with such unholy fire would be sacrilege. In other parts of Japan the matchmakers stamped upon their boxes the words: 'Saikyo go honzon yo' (Fit for the use of the August High Temple of Saikyo). [20] But Shinto sentiment in Izumo was too strong to be affected much by any such declaration: indeed, the recommendation of the matches as suitable for use in a Shin-shu temple was of itself sufficient to prejudice Shintoists against them. Accordingly special precautions had to be taken before safety-matches could be satisfactorily introduced into the Province of the Gods. Izumo match- boxes now bear the inscription: 'Pure, and fit to use for kindling the lamps of the Kami, or of the Hotoke!'
The inevitable danger to all things in Japan is fire. It is the traditional rule that when a house takes fire, the first objects to be saved, if possible, are the household gods and the tablets of the ancestors. It is even said that if these are saved, most of the family valuables are certain to be saved, and that if these are lost, all is lost.
Sec. 11
The terms soreisha and mitamaya, as used in Izumo, may, I am told, signify either the small miya in which the Shinto ihai (usually made of cherry-wood) is kept, or that part of the dwelling in which it is placed, and where the offerings are made. These, by all who can afford it, are served upon tables of plain white wood, and of the same high narrow form as the tables upon which offerings are made in the temples and at public funeral ceremonies.
The most ordinary form of prayer addressed to the ancient ancestors in the household cult of Shinto is not uttered aloud. After pronouncing the initial formula of all popular Shinto prayer, 'Harai-tamai,' etc., the worshipper says, with his heart only—'Spirits august of our far-off ancestors, ye forefathers of the generations, and of our families and of our kindred, unto you, the founders of our homes, we this day utter the gladness of our thanks.'
In the family cult of the Buddhists a distinction is made between the household Hotoke—the souls of those long dead—and the souls of those but recently deceased. These last are called Shin-botoke, 'new Buddhas,' or more strictly, 'the newly dead.' No direct request for any supernatural favour is made to a Shin-botoke; for, though respectfully called Hotoke, the freshly departed soul is not really deemed to have reached Buddhahood: it is only on the long road thither, and is in need itself, perhaps, of aid, rather than capable of giving aid. Indeed, among the deeply pious its condition is a matter of affectionate concern. And especially is this the case when a little child dies; for it is thought that the soul of an infant is feeble and exposed to many dangers. Wherefore a mother, speaking to the departed soul of her child, will advise it, admonish it, command it tenderly, as if addressing a living son or daughter. The ordinary words said in Izumo homes to any Shin-botoke take rather the form of adjuration or counsel than of prayer, such as these:—
'Jobutsu seyo,' or 'Jobutsu shimasare.' [Do thou become a Buddha.]
'Mayo na yo.' [Go not astray; or, Be never deluded.]
'Miren-wo nokorazu.' [Suffer no regret (for this world) to linger with thee.]
These prayers are never uttered aloud. Much more in accordance with the Occidental idea of prayer is the following, uttered by Shin-shu believers on behalf of a Shin-botoke:
'O-mukai kudasare Amida-Sama.' [Vouchsafe, O Lord Amida, augustly to welcome (this soul).]
Needless to say that ancestor-worship, although adopted in China and Japan into Buddhism, is not of Buddhist origin. Needless also to say that Buddhism discountenances suicide. Yet in Japan, anxiety about the condition of the soul of the departed often caused suicide—or at least justified it on the part of those who, though accepting Buddhist dogma, might adhere to primitive custom. Retainers killed themselves in the belief that by dying they might give to the soul of their lord or lady, counsel, aid, and service. Thus in the novel Hogen-nomono-gatari, a retainer is made to say after the death of his young master:—'Over the mountain of Shide, over the ghostly River of Sanzu, who will conduct him? If he be afraid, will he not call my name, as he was wont to do? Surely better that, by slaying myself, I go to serve him as of old, than to linger here, and mourn for him in vain.'
In Buddhist household worship, the prayers addressed to the family Hotoke proper, the souls of those long dead, are very different from the addresses made to the Shin-botoke. The following are a few examples: they are always said under the breath:
'Kanai anzen.' [(Vouchsafe) that our family may be preserved.]
'Enmei sakusai.' [That we may enjoy long life without sorrow.]
'Shobai hanjo.' [That our business may prosper.] [Said only by merchants and tradesmen.]
'Shison chokin.' [That the perpetuity of our descent may be assured.]
'Onteki taisan.' [That our enemies be scattered.]
'Yakubyo shometsu.' [That pestilence may not come nigh us.]
Some of the above are used also by Shinto worshippers. The old samurai still repeat the special prayers of their caste:—
'Tenka taihei.' [That long peace may prevail throughout the world.]
'Bu-un chokyu.' [That we may have eternal good-fortune in war.]
'Ka-ei-manzoku.' [That our house (family) may for ever remain fortunate.]
But besides these silent formulae, any prayers prompted by the heart, whether of supplication or of gratitude, may, of course, be repeated. Such prayers are said, or rather thought, in the speech of daily life. The following little prayer uttered by an Izumo mother to the ancestral spirit, besought on behalf of a sick child, is an example:—
'O-kage ni kodomo no byoki mo zenkwai itashimashite, arigato- gozarimasu!' [By thine august influence the illness of my child has passed away;—I thank thee.]
'O-kage ni' literally signifies 'in the august shadow of.' There is a ghostly beauty in the original phrase that neither a free nor yet a precise translation can preserve.
Sec. 12
Thus, in this home-worship of the Far East, by love the dead are made divine; and the foreknowledge of this tender apotheosis must temper with consolation the natural melancholy of age. Never in Japan are the dead so quickly forgotten as with us: by simple faith they are deemed still to dwell among their beloved; and their place within the home remains ever holy. And the aged patriarch about to pass away knows that loving lips will nightly murmur to the memory of him before the household shrine; that faithful hearts will beseech him in their pain and bless him in their joy; that gentle hands will place before his ihai pure offerings of fruits and flowers, and dainty repasts of the things which he was wont to like; and will pour out for him, into the little cup of ghosts and gods, the fragrant tea of guests or the amber rice-wine. Strange changes are coming upon the land: old customs are vanishing; old beliefs are weakening; the thoughts of today will not be the thoughts of another age—but of all this he knows happily nothing in his own quaint, simple, beautiful Izumo. He dreams that for him, as for his fathers, the little lamp will burn on through the generations; he sees, in softest fancy, the yet unborn—the children of his children's children—clapping their tiny hands in Shinto prayer, and making filial obeisance before the little dusty tablet that bears his unforgotten name.
Sec. 1 THE hair of the younger daughter of the family is very long; and it is a spectacle of no small interest to see it dressed. It is dressed once in every three days; and the operation, which costs four sen, is acknowledged to require one hour. As a matter of fact it requires nearly two. The hairdresser (kamiyui) first sends her maiden apprentice, who cleans the hair, washes it, perfumes it, and combs it with extraordinary combs of at least five different kinds. So thoroughly is the hair cleansed that it remains for three days, or even four, immaculate beyond our Occidental conception of things. In the morning, during the dusting time, it is carefully covered with a handkerchief or a little blue towel; and the curious Japanese wooden pillow, which supports the neck, not the head, renders it possible to sleep at ease without disarranging the marvellous structure. [1]
After the apprentice has finished her part of the work, the hairdresser herself appears, and begins to build the coiffure. For this task she uses, besides the extraordinary variety of combs, fine loops of gilt thread or coloured paper twine, dainty bits of deliciously tinted crape- silk, delicate steel springs, and curious little basket-shaped things over which the hair is moulded into the required forms before being fixed in place.
The kamiyui also brings razors with her; for the Japanese girl is shaved—cheeks, ears, brows, chin, even nose! What is here to shave? Only that peachy floss which is the velvet of the finest human skin, but which Japanese taste removes. There is, however, another use for the razor. All maidens bear the signs of their maidenhood in the form of a little round spot, about an inch in diameter, shaven clean upon the very top of the head. This is only partially concealed by a band of hair brought back from the forehead across it, and fastened to the back hair. The girl-baby's head is totally shaved. When a few years old the little creature's hair is allowed to grow except at the top of the head, where a large tonsure is maintained. But the size of the tonsure diminishes year by year, until it shrinks after childhood to the small spot above described; and this, too, vanishes after marriage, when a still more complicated fashion of wearing the hair is adopted.
Sec. 2
Such absolutely straight dark hair as that of most Japanese women might seem, to Occidental ideas at least, ill-suited to the highest possibilities of the art of the coiffeuse. [2] But the skill of the kamiyui has made it tractable to every aesthetic whim. Ringlets, indeed, are unknown, and curling irons. But what wonderful and beautiful shapes the hair of the girl is made to assume: volutes, jets, whirls, eddyings, foliations, each passing into the other blandly as a linking of brush- strokes in the writing of a Chinese master! Far beyond the skill of the Parisian coiffeuse is the art of the kamiyui. From the mythical era [3] of the race, Japanese ingenuity has exhausted itself in the invention and the improvement of pretty devices for the dressing of woman's hair; and probably there have never been so many beautiful fashions of wearing it in any other country as there have been in Japan. These have changed through the centuries; sometimes becoming wondrously intricate of design, sometimes exquisitely simple—as in that gracious custom, recorded for us in so many quaint drawings, of allowing the long black tresses to flow unconfined below the waist. [4] But every mode of which we have any pictorial record had its own striking charm. Indian, Chinese, Malayan, Korean ideas of beauty found their way to the Land of the Gods, and were appropriated and transfigured by the finer native conceptions of comeliness. Buddhism, too, which so profoundly influenced all Japanese art and thought, may possibly have influenced fashions of wearing the hair; for its female divinities appear with the most beautiful coiffures. Notice the hair of a Kwannon or a Benten, and the tresses of the Tennin—those angel-maidens who float in azure upon the ceilings of the great temples.
Sec. 3
The particular attractiveness of the modern styles is the way in which the hair is made to serve as an elaborate nimbus for the features, giving delightful relief to whatever of fairness or sweetness the young face may possess. Then behind this charming black aureole is a riddle of graceful loopings and weavings whereof neither the beginning nor the ending can possibly be discerned. Only the kantiyui knows the key to that riddle. And the whole is held in place with curious ornamental combs, and shot through with long fine pins of gold, silver, nacre, transparent tortoise-shell, or lacquered wood, with cunningly carven heads. [5]
Sec. 4
Not less than fourteen different ways of dressing the hair are practised by the coiffeuses of Izumo; but doubtless in the capital, and in some of the larger cities of eastern Japan, the art is much more elaborately developed. The hairdressers (kamiyui) go from house to house to exercise their calling, visiting their clients upon fixed days at certain regular hours. The hair of little girls from seven to eight years old is in Matsue dressed usually after the style called O-tabako-bon, unless it be simply 'banged.' In the O-tabako-bon ('honourable smoking-box' style) the hair is cut to the length of about four inches all round except above the forehead, where it is clipped a little shorter; and on the summit of the head it is allowed to grow longer and is gathered up into a peculiarly shaped knot, which justifies the curious name of the coiffure. As soon as the girl becomes old enough to go to a female public day-school, her hair is dressed in the pretty, simple style called katsurashita, or perhaps in the new, ugly, semi-foreign 'bundle- style' called sokuhatsu, which has become the regulation fashion in boarding-schools. For the daughters of the poor, and even for most of those of the middle classes, the public-school period is rather brief; their studies usually cease a few years before they are marriageable, and girls marry very early in Japan. The maiden's first elaborate coiffure is arranged for her when she reaches the age of fourteen or fifteen, at earliest. From twelve to fourteen her hair is dressed in the fashion called Omoyedzuki; then the style is changed to the beautiful coiffure called jorowage. There are various forms of this style, more or less complex. A couple of years later, the jorowage yields in the turn to the shinjocho [6] '('new-butterfly' style), or the shimada, also called takawage. The shimjocho style is common, is worn by women of various ages, and is not considered very genteel. The shimada, exquisitely elaborate, is; but the more respectable the family, the smaller the form of this coiffure; geisha and joro wear a larger and loftier variety of it, which properly answers to the name takawage, or 'high coiffure.' Between eighteen and twenty years of age the maiden again exchanges this style for another termed Tenjin-gaeshi; between twenty and twenty-four years of age she adopts the fashion called mitsuwage, or the 'triple coiffure' of three loops; and a somewhat similar but still more complicated coiffure, called mitsuwakudzushi, is worn by young women of from twenty-five to twenty-eight. Up to that age every change in the fashion of wearing the hair has been in the direction of elaborateness and complexity. But after twenty-eight a Japanese woman is no longer considered young, and there is only one more coiffure for her—the mochiriwage or bobai, tine simple and rather ugly style adopted by old women.
But the girl who marries wears her hair in a fashion quite different from any of the preceding. The most beautiful, the most elaborate, and the most costly of all modes is the bride's coiffure, called hanayome; a word literally signifying 'flower-wife.' The structure is dainty as its name, and must be seen to be artistically appreciated. Afterwards the wife wears her hair in the styles called kumesa or maruwage, another name for which is katsuyama. The kumesa style is not genteel, and is the coiffure of the poor; the maruwage or katsuyama is refined. In former times the samurai women wore their hair in two particular styles: the maiden's coiffure was ichogaeshi, and that of the married folk katahajishi. It is still possible to see in Matsue a few katahajishi coiffures.
Sec. 5
The family kamiyui, O-Koto-San, the most skilful of her craft in Izumo, is a little woman of about thirty, still quite attractive. About her neck there are three soft pretty lines, forming what connoisseurs of beauty term 'the necklace of Venus.' This is a rare charm; but it once nearly proved the ruin of Koto. The story is a curious one.
Koto had a rival at the beginning of her professional career—a woman of considerable skill as a coiffeuse, but of malignant disposition, named Jin. Jin gradually lost all her respectable custom, and little Koto became the fashionable hairdresser. But her old rival, filled with jealous hate, invented a wicked story about Koto, and the story found root in the rich soil of old Izumo superstition, and grew fantastically. The idea of it had been suggested to Jin's cunning mind by those three soft lines about Koto's neck. She declared that Koto had a NUKE-KUBI.
What is a nuke-kubi? 'Kubi' signifies either the neck or head. 'Nukeru' means to creep, to skulk, to prowl, to slip away stealthily. To have a nuke-kubi is to have a head that detaches itself from the body, and prowls about at night—by itself.
Koto has been twice married, and her second match was a happy one. But her first husband caused her much trouble, and ran away from her at last, in company with some worthless woman. Nothing was ever heard of him afterward—so that Jin thought it quite safe to invent a nightmare- story to account for his disappearance. She said that he abandoned Koto because, on awaking one night, he saw his young wife's head rise from the pillow, and her neck lengthen like a great white serpent, while the rest of her body remained motionless. He saw the head, supported by the ever-lengthening neck, enter the farther apartment and drink all the oil in the lamps, and then return to the pillow slowly—the neck simultaneously contracting. 'Then he rose up and fled away from the house in great fear,' said Jin.
As one story begets another, all sorts of queer rumours soon began to circulate about poor Koto. There was a tale that some police-officer, late at night, saw a woman's head without a body, nibbling fruit from a tree overhanging some garden-wall; and that, knowing it to be a nuke- kubi, he struck it with the flat of his sword. It shrank away as swiftly as a bat flies, but not before he had been able to recognize the face of the kamiyui. 'Oh! it is quite true!' declared Jin, the morning after the alleged occurrence; 'and if you don't believe it, send word to Koto that you want to see her. She can't go out: her face is all swelled up.' Now the last statement was fact—for Koto had a very severe toothache at that time—and the fact helped the falsehood. And the story found its way to the local newspaper, which published it—only as a strange example of popular credulity; and Jin said, 'Am I a teller of the truth? See, the paper has printed it!'
Wherefore crowds of curious people gathered before Koto's little house, and made her life such a burden to her that her husband had to watch her constantly to keep her from killing herself. Fortunately she had good friends in the family of the Governor, where she had been employed for years as coiffeuse; and the Governor, hearing of the wickedness, wrote a public denunciation of it, and set his name to it, and printed it. Now the people of Matsue reverenced their old samurai Governor as if he were a god, and believed his least word; and seeing what he had written, they became ashamed, and also denounced the lie and the liar; and the little hairdresser soon became more prosperous than before through popular sympathy.
Some of the most extraordinary beliefs of old days are kept alive in Izumo and elsewhere by what are called in America travelling side- shows'; and the inexperienced foreigner could never imagine the possibilities of a Japanese side-show. On certain great holidays the showmen make their appearance, put up their ephemeral theatres of rush- matting and bamboos in some temple court, surfeit expectation by the most incredible surprises, and then vanish as suddenly as they came. The Skeleton of a Devil, the Claws of a Goblin, and 'a Rat as large as a sheep,' were some of the least extraordinary displays which I saw. The Goblin's Claws were remarkably fine shark's teeth; the Devil's Skeleton had belonged to an orang-outang—all except the horns ingeniously attached to the skull; and the wondrous Rat I discovered to be a tame kangaroo. What I could not fully understand was the exhibition of a nuke-kubi, in which a young woman stretched her neck, apparently, to a length of about two feet, making ghastly faces during the performance.
Sec. 6
There are also some strange old superstitions about women's hair.
The myth of Medusa has many a counterpart in Japanese folk-lore: the subject of such tales being always some wondrously beautiful girl, whose hair turns to snakes only at night; and who is discovered at last to be either a dragon or a dragon's daughter. But in ancient times it was believed that the hair of any young woman might, under certain trying circumstances, change into serpents. For instance: under the influence of long-repressed jealousy.
There were many men of wealth who, in the days of Old Japan, kept their concubines (mekake or aisho) under the same roof with their legitimate wives (okusama). And it is told that, although the severest patriarchal discipline might compel the mekake and the okusama to live together in perfect seeming harmony by day, their secret hate would reveal itself by night in the transformation of their hair. The long black tresses of each would uncoil and hiss and strive to devour those of the other—and even the mirrors of the sleepers would dash themselves together—for, saith an ancient proverb, kagami onna-no tamashii—'a Mirror is the Soul of a Woman.' [7] And there is a famous tradition of one Kato Sayemon Shigenji, who beheld in the night the hair of his wife and the hair of his concubine, changed into vipers, writhing together and hissing and biting. Then Kato Sayemon grieved much for that secret bitterness of hatred which thus existed through his fault; and he shaved his head and became a priest in the great Buddhist monastery of Koya-San, where he dwelt until the day of his death under the name of Karukaya.
Sec. 7
The hair of dead women is arranged in the manner called tabanegami, somewhat resembling the shimada extremely simplified, and without ornaments of any kind. The name tabanegami signifies hair tied into a bunch, like a sheaf of rice. This style must also be worn by women during the period of mourning.
Ghosts, nevertheless, are represented with hair loose and long, falling weirdly over the face. And no doubt because of the melancholy suggestiveness of its drooping branches, the willow is believed to be the favourite tree of ghosts. Thereunder, 'tis said, they mourn in the night, mingling their shadowy hair with the long dishevelled tresses of the tree.
Tradition says that Okyo Maruyama was the first Japanese artist who drew a ghost. The Shogun, having invited him to his palace, said: 'Make a picture of a ghost for me.' Okyo promised to do so; but he was puzzled how to execute the order satisfactorily. A few days later, hearing that one of his aunts was very ill, he visited her. She was so emaciated that she looked like one already long dead. As he watched by her bedside, a ghastly inspiration came to him: he drew the fleshless face and long dishevelled hair, and created from that hasty sketch a ghost that surpassed all the Shogun's expectations. Afterwards Okyo became very famous as a painter of ghosts.
Japanese ghosts are always represented as diaphanous, and preternaturally tall—only the upper part of the figure being distinctly outlined, and the lower part fading utterly away. As the Japanese say, 'a ghost has no feet': its appearance is like an exhalation, which becomes visible only at a certain distance above the ground; and it wavers arid lengthens and undulates in the conceptions of artists, like a vapour moved by wind. Occasionally phantom women figure in picture.- books in the likeness of living women; but these are riot true ghosts. They are fox-women or other goblins; and their supernatural character is suggested by a peculiar expression of the eyes arid a certain impossible elfish grace.
Little children in Japan, like little children in all countries keenly enjoy the pleasure of fear; and they have many games in which such pleasure forms the chief attraction. Among these is 0-bake-goto, or Ghost-play. Some nurse-girl or elder sister loosens her hair in front, so as to let it fall over her face, and pursues the little folk with moans and weird gestures, miming all the attitudes of the ghosts of the picture-books.
Sec. 8
As the hair of the Japanese woman is her richest ornament, it is of all her possessions that which she would most suffer to lose; and in other days the man too manly to kill an erring wife deemed it vengeance enough to turn her away with all her hair shorn off. Only the greatest faith or the deepest love can prompt a woman to the voluntary sacrifice of her entire chevelure, though partial sacrifices, offerings of one or two long thick cuttings, may be seen suspended before many an Izumo shrine.
What faith can do in the way of such sacrifice, he best knows who has seen the great cables, woven of women's hair, that hang in the vast Hongwanji temple at Kyoto. And love is stronger than faith, though much less demonstrative. According to ancient custom a wife bereaved sacrifices a portion of her hair to be placed in the coffin of her husband, and buried with him. The quantity is not fixed: in the majority of cases it is very small, so that the appearance of the coiffure is thereby nowise affected. But she who resolves to remain for ever loyal to the memory of the lost yields up all. With her own hand she cuts off her hair, and lays the whole glossy sacrifice—emblem of her youth and beauty—upon the knees of the dead.
It is never suffered to grow again.
Sec. 1
MATSUE, September 2, 1890.
I AM under contract to serve as English teacher in the Jinjo Chugakko, or Ordinary Middle School, and also in the ShihanGakko, or Normal School, of Matsue, Izumo, for the term of one year.
The Jinjo Chugakko is an immense two-story wooden building in European style, painted a dark grey-blue. It has accommodations for nearly three hundred day scholars. It is situated in one corner of a great square of ground, bounded on two sides by canals, and on the other two by very quiet streets. This site is very near the ancient castle.
The Normal School is a much larger building occupying the opposite angle of the square. It is also much handsomer, is painted snowy white, and has a little cupola upon its summit. There are only about one hundred and fifty students in the Shihan-Gakko, but they are boarders.
Between these two schools are other educational buildings, which I shall learn more about later.
It is my first day at the schools. Nishida Sentaro, the Japanese teacher of English, has taken me through the buildings, introduced me to the Directors, and to all my future colleagues, given me all necessary instructions about hours and about textbooks, and furnished my desk with all things necessary. Before teaching begins, however, I must be introduced to the Governor of the Province, Koteda Yasusada, with whom my contract has been made, through the medium of his secretary. So Nishida leads the way to the Kencho, or Prefectural office, situated in another foreign-looking edifice across the street.
We enter it, ascend a wide stairway, and enter a spacious .room carpeted in European fashion—a room with bay windows and cushioned chairs. One person is seated at a small round table, and about him are standing half a dozen others: all are in full Japanese costume, ceremonial costume— splendid silken hakama, or Chinese trousers, silken robes, silken haori or overdress, marked with their mon or family crests: rich and dignified attire which makes me ashamed of my commonplace Western garb. These are officials of the Kencho, and teachers: the person seated is the Governor. He rises to greet me, gives me the hand-grasp of a giant: and as I look into his eyes, I feel I shall love that man to the day of my death. A face fresh and frank as a boy's, expressing much placid force and large-hearted kindness—all the calm of a Buddha. Beside him, the other officials look very small: indeed the first impression of him is that of a man of another race. While I am wondering whether the old Japanese heroes were cast in a similar mould, he signs to me to take a seat, and questions my guide in a mellow basso. There is a charm in the fluent depth of the voice pleasantly confirming the idea suggested by the face. An attendant brings tea.
'The Governor asks,' interprets Nishida, 'if you know the old history ofIzumo.'
I reply that I have read the Kojiki, translated by Professor Chamberlain, and have therefore some knowledge of the story of Japan's most ancient province. Some converse in Japanese follows. Nishida tells the Governor that I came to Japan to study the ancient religion and customs, and that I am particularly interested in Shinto and the traditions of Izumo. The Governor suggests that I make visits to the celebrated shrines of Kitzuki, Yaegaki, and Kumano, and then asks:
'Does he know the tradition of the origin of the clapping of hands before a Shinto shrine?'
I reply in the negative; and the Governor says the tradition is given in a commentary upon the Kojiki.
'It is in the thirty-second section of the fourteenth volume, where it is written that Ya-he-Koto-Shiro-nushi-no-Kami clapped his hands.'
I thank the Governor for his kind suggestions and his citation. After a brief silence I am graciously dismissed with another genuine hand-grasp; and we return to the school.
Sec. 2
I have been teaching for three hours in the Middle School, and teaching Japanese boys turns out to be a much more agreeable task than I had imagined. Each class has been so well prepared for me beforehand by Nishida that my utter ignorance of Japanese makes no difficulty in regard to teaching: moreover, although the lads cannot understand my words always when I speak, they can understand whatever I write upon the blackboard with chalk. Most of them have already been studying English from childhood, with Japanese teachers. All are wonderfully docile' and patient. According to old custom, when the teacher enters, the whole class rises and bows to him. He returns the bow, and calls the roll.
Nishida is only too kind. He helps me in every way he possibly can, and is constantly regretting that he cannot help me more. There are, of course, some difficulties to overcome. For instance, it will take me a very, very long time to learn the names of the boys—most of which names I cannot even pronounce, with the class-roll before me. And although the names of the different classes have been painted upon the doors of their respective rooms in English letters, for the benefit of the foreign teacher, it will take me some weeks at least to become quite familiar with them. For the time being Nishida always guides me to the rooms. He also shows me the way, through long corridors, to the Normal School, and introduces me to the teacher Nakayama who is to act there as my guide.
I have been engaged to teach only four times a week at the Normal School; but I am furnished there also with a handsome desk in the teachers' apartment, and am made to feel at home almost immediately. Nakayama shows me everything of interest in the building before introducing me to my future pupils. The introduction is pleasant and novel as a school experience. I am conducted along a corridor, and ushered into a large luminous whitewashed room full of young men in dark blue military uniform. Each sits at a very small desk, sup-ported by a single leg, with three feet. At the end of the room is a platform with a high desk and a chair for the teacher. As I take my place at the desk, a voice rings out in English: 'Stand up!' And all rise with a springy movement as if moved by machinery. 'Bow down!' the same voice again commands—the voice of a young student wearing a captain's stripes upon his sleeve; and all salute me. I bow in return; we take our seats; and the lesson begins.
All teachers at the Normal School are saluted in the same military fashion before each class-hour—only the command is given in Japanese. For my sake only, it is given in English.
Sec. 3
September 22, 1890.
The Normal School is a State institution. Students are admitted upon examination and production of testimony as to good character; but the number is, of course, limited. The young men pay no fees, no boarding money, nothing even for books, college-outfits, or wearing apparel. They are lodged, clothed, fed, and educated by the State; but they are required in return, after their graduation, to serve the State as teachers for the space of five years. Admission, however, by no means assures graduation. There are three or four examinations each year; and the students who fail to obtain a certain high average of examination marks must leave the school, however exemplary their conduct or earnest their study. No leniency can be shown where the educational needs of the State are concerned, and these call for natural ability and a high standard of its proof.
The discipline is military and severe. Indeed, it is so thorough that the graduate of a Normal School is exempted by military law from more than a year's service in the army: he leaves college a trained soldier. Deportment is also a requisite: special marks are given for it; and however gawky a freshman may prove at the time of his admission, he cannot remain so. A spirit of manliness is cultivated, which excludes roughness but develops self-reliance and self-control. The student is required, when speaking, to look his teacher in the face, and to utter his words not only distinctly, but sonorously. Demeanour in class is partly enforced by the class-room fittings themselves. The tiny tables are too narrow to allow of being used as supports for the elbows; the seats have no backs against which to lean, and the student must hold himself rigidly erect as he studies. He must also keep himself faultlessly neat and clean. Whenever and wherever he encounters one of his teachers he must halt, bring his feet together, draw himself erect, and give the military salute. And this is done with a swift grace difficult to describe.
The demeanour of a class during study hours is if anything too faultless. Never a whisper is heard; never is a head raised from the book without permission. But when the teacher addresses a student by name, the youth rises instantly, and replies in a tone of such vigour as would seem to unaccustomed ears almost startling by contrast with the stillness and self-repression of the others.
The female department of the Normal School, where about fifty young women are being trained as teachers, is a separate two-story quadrangle of buildings, large, airy, and so situated, together with its gardens, as to be totally isolated from all other buildings and invisible from the street. The girls are not only taught European science by the most advanced methods, but are trained as well in Japanese arts—the arts of embroidery, of decoration, of painting, and of arranging flowers. European drawing is also taught, and beautifully taught, not only here, but in all the schools. It is taught, however, in combination with Japanese methods; and the results of this blending may certainly be expected to have some charming influence upon future art-production. The average capacity of the Japanese student in drawing is, I think, at least fifty per cent, higher than that of European students. The soul of the race is essentially artistic; and the extremely difficult art of learning to write the Chinese characters, in which all are trained from early childhood, has already disciplined the hand and the eye to a marvellous degree—a degree undreamed of in the Occident—long before the drawing-master begins his lessons of perspective.
Attached to the great Normal School, and connected by a corridor with the Jinjo Chugakko likewise, is a large elementary school for little boys and girls: its teachers are male and female students of the graduating classes, who are thus practically trained for their profession before entering the service of the State. Nothing could be more interesting as an educational spectacle to any sympathetic foreigner than some of this elementary teaching. In the first room which I visit a class of very little girls and boys—some as quaintly pretty as their own dolls—are bending at their desks over sheets of coal-black paper which you would think they were trying to make still blacker by energetic use of writing-brushes and what we call Indian-ink. They are really learning to write Chinese and Japanese characters, stroke by stroke. Until one stroke has been well learned, they are not suffered to attempt another—much less a combination. Long before the first lesson is thoroughly mastered, the white paper has become all evenly black under the multitude of tyro brush-strokes. But the same sheet is still used; for the wet ink makes a yet blacker mark upon the dry, so that it can easily be seen.
In a room adjoining, I see another child-class learning to use scissors —Japanese scissors, which, being formed in one piece, shaped something like the letter U, are much less easy to manage than ours. The little folk are being taught to cut out patterns, and shapes of special objects or symbols to be studied. Flower-forms are the most ordinary patterns; sometimes certain ideographs are given as subjects.
And in another room a third small class is learning to sing; the teacher writing the music notes (do, re, mi) with chalk upon a blackboard, and accompanying the song with an accordion. The little ones have learned the Japanese national anthem (Kimi ga yo wa) and two native songs set to Scotch airs—one of which calls back to me, even in this remote corner of the Orient, many a charming memory: Auld Lang Syne.
No uniform is worn in this elementary school: all are in Japanese dress —the boys in dark blue kimono, the little girls in robes of all tints, radiant as butterflies. But in addition to their robes, the girls wear hakama, [1] and these are of a vivid, warm sky-blue.
Between the hours of teaching, ten minutes are allowed for play or rest. The little boys play at Demon-Shadows or at blind-man's-buff or at some other funny game: they laugh, leap, shout, race, and wrestle, but, unlike European children, never quarrel or fight. As for the little girls, they get by themselves, and either play at hand-ball, or form into circles to play at some round game, accompanied by song. Indescribably soft and sweet the chorus of those little voices in the round:
Kango-kango sho-ya,Naka yoni sho-ya,Don-don to kundeJizo-San no midzu woMatsuba no midzu irete,Makkuri kadso. [2]
I notice that the young men, as well as the young women, who teach these little folk, are extremely tender to their charges. A child whose kimono is out of order, or dirtied by play, is taken aside and brushed and arranged as carefully as by an elder brother.
Besides being trained for their future profession by teaching the children of the elementary school, the girl students of the Shihan-Gakko are also trained to teach in the neighbouring kindergarten. A delightful kindergarten it is, with big cheerful sunny rooms, where stocks of the most ingenious educational toys are piled upon shelves for daily use.
Since the above was written I have had two years' experience as a teacher in various large Japanese schools; and I have never had personal knowledge of any serious quarrel between students, and have never even heard of a fight among my pupils. And I have taught some eight hundred boys and young men.
Sec. 4
October 1 1890. Nevertheless I am destined to see little of the Normal School. Strictly speaking, I do not belong to its staff: my services being only lent by the Middle School, to which I give most of my time. I see the Normal School students in their class-rooms only, for they are not allowed to go out to visit their teachers' homes in the town. So I can never hope to become as familiar with them as with the students of the Chugakko, who are beginning to call me 'Teacher' instead of 'Sir,' and to treat me as a sort of elder brother. (I objected to the word 'master,' for in Japan the teacher has no need of being masterful.) And I feel less at home in the large, bright, comfortable apartments of the Normal School teachers than in our dingy, chilly teachers' room at the Chugakko, where my desk is next to that of Nishida.
On the walls there are maps, crowded with Japanese ideographs; a few large charts representing zoological facts in the light of evolutional science; and an immense frame filled with little black lacquered wooden tablets, so neatly fitted together that the entire surface is uniform as that of a blackboard. On these are written, or rather painted, in white, names of teachers, subjects, classes, and order of teaching hours; and by the ingenious tablet arrangement any change of hours can be represented by simply changing the places of the tablets. As all this is written in Chinese and Japanese characters, it remains to me a mystery, except in so far as the general plan and purpose are concerned. I have learned only to recognize the letters of my own name, and the simpler form of numerals.
On every teacher's desk there is a small hibachi of glazed blue-and- white ware, containing a few lumps of glowing charcoal in a bed of ashes. During the brief intervals between classes each teacher smokes his tiny Japanese pipe of brass, iron, or silver. The hibachi and a cup of hot tea are our consolations for the fatigues of the class-room.
Nishida and one or two other teachers know a good deal of English, and we chat together sometimes between classes. But more often no one speaks. All are tired after the teaching hour, and prefer to smoke in silence. At such times the only sounds within the room are the ticking of the clock, and the sharp clang of the little pipes being rapped upon the edges of the hibachi to empty out the ashes.
Sec. 5
October 15, 1890. To-day I witnessed the annual athletic contests (undo- kwai) of all the schools in Shimane Ken. These games were celebrated in the broad castle grounds of Ninomaru. Yesterday a circular race-track had been staked off, hurdles erected for leaping, thousands of wooden seats prepared for invited or privileged spectators, and a grand lodge built for the Governor, all before sunset. The place looked like a vast circus, with its tiers of plank seats rising one above the other, and the Governor's lodge magnificent with wreaths and flags. School children from all the villages and towns within twenty-five miles had arrived in surprising multitude. Nearly six thousand boys and girls were entered to take part in the contests. Their parents and relatives and teachers made an imposing assembly upon the benches and within the gates. And on the ramparts overlooking the huge inclosure a much larger crowd had gathered, representing perhaps one-third of the population of the city.
The signal to begin or to end a contest was a pistol-shot. Four different kinds of games were performed in different parts of the grounds at the same time, as there was room enough for an army; and prizes were awarded to the winners of each contest by the hand of the Governor himself.
There were races between the best runners in each class of the different schools; and the best runner of all proved to be Sakane, of our own fifth class, who came in first by nearly forty yards without seeming even to make an effort. He is our champion athlete, and as good as he is strong—so that it made me very happy to see him with his arms full of prize books. He won also a fencing contest decided by the breaking of a little earthenware saucer tied to the left arm of each combatant. And he also won a leaping match between our older boys.
But many hundreds of other winners there were too, and many hundreds of prizes were given away. There were races in which the runners were tied together in pairs, the left leg of one to the right leg of the other. There were equally funny races, the winning of which depended on the runner's ability not only to run, but to crawl, to climb, to vault, and to jump alternately. There were races also for the little girls—pretty as butterflies they seemed in their sky-blue hakama and many coloured robes—races in which the contestants had each to pick up as they ran three balls of three different colours out of a number scattered over the turf. Besides this, the little girls had what is called a flag-race, and a contest with battledores and shuttlecocks.
Then came the tug-of-war. A magnificent tug-of-war, too—one hundred students at one end of a rope, and another hundred at the other. But the most wonderful spectacles of the day were the dumb-bell exercises. Six thousand boys and girls, massed in ranks about five hundred deep; six thousand pairs of arms rising and falling exactly together; six thousand pairs of sandalled feet advancing or retreating together, at the signal of the masters of gymnastics, directing all from the tops of various little wooden towers; six thousand voices chanting at once the 'one, two, three,' of the dumb-bell drill: 'Ichi, ni,—san, shi,—go, roku,— shichi, hachi.'