JAPAN IN NOVEMBER
Thereis no time when Nature is so approachable as in autumn. That season is like the green room of the actress, when she lays aside her stage attire and in deshabille she is communicative and you gain many a secret into her methods and her ideals and aims!
Her laughter is no longer art, but natural, and she shows her foibles and her whims with a childish abandonment. Kamakura has in resume, the exquisite traits of Japanese scenery. The dominating features of the artistic and the diminutive and then the glimpse, just a glimpse of the grand. The sublime is a note I have never heard touched in Japan, except at Port Arthur.
Kamakura has also the needed accessory of a landscape, i. e., historic background. The center of ecclesiastical domination of Buddhism in the middle ages, the spot where the miracle of Nichiren was performed, that beautiful episode which is so often treated in art and which reminds us of those famous martyr dramas dear to the heart of the Christian.
Heaven has not always interceded to save the sainted, and how the heart leaps, when we read of those rare moments, when it has. Nichiren, we are told, was busy during the whole of his time in exile in “teaching, preaching, and itinerating.”
But like many a Christian saint he did not temper his zeal with discretion and was rearrested.
The story is familiar to all, but it is beautiful, and like that of Joan of Arc or Constantine orSt.Martin and a host of others, will bear repeating.
“Kneeling down on the strand, the saintly bonze calmly uttered his prayers and repeated ‘Namu mio ho ren ye kio’ upon his rosary. The swordsman lifted his blade, but a light blinded his eyes, the sword was broken and the saint was saved and afterward pardoned.”
The surf was dashing in fine shape on the day we visited Kamakura and the soft grey, like the color of a faded tapestry brought to our “inner eye” the old saint and the huge blade broken, and the terror of the evil men. Japan has this touch with the supernatural which raises her in our esteem!
The first glimpse of the Buddha set in the bower of maples was not disappointing. Its vast proportions and its solemn repose fitted into the coloring of red and yellow and the curtain of Nature softly hung in folds of crimson and green, and a veil of mist harmonized the whole into an etherial essence dear to the mystic. The Buddha of Kamakura is the Prince of India, and those Hindoo lines of proud lineage, the arch of the nose and lips and eyebrows, all tell the story of his kingly degree. The hawk-like glance of the sovereigns of the kingdom of princes, is of course subdued in the religionist, but I doubt if it is extinct.
The Buddha is after all a man and the gentleman and the boor still show! We went once in Paris to the cloister where the women of the old noblesse are immured and there in spite of almost inhuman rigidity of demeanor caused by every crucifixion to mind and body “the goddess was known in her walk” still. So difficult is itto warp and contort Nature! So difficult and so futile!
“Consider the lily how it grows” is an injunction that no churchman has ever fathomed. Nor ever will! Only God did that!
It is well that Buddha sits among the maples and the cherry blossoms, for their wisdom may penetrate his bronze heart! The view from “Kwannon temple” is a rare bit of Japan.
There in the tea house we sat and drank it in, with the stimulating beverage.
The cliffs, the village, the ocean, the dainty colors, the aged aspect of it all and the stir of new life, everything toned into an autumn symphony, it only needed Chopin.
But Chopin was far away and there is no music in Japan! How curious that the fickle goddess left that out and set all the harmonies of Nature in the heart of the Philippines! The “Hachiman shrine” is a bit of Saint Marks, with its pigeons, and the avenue of ancient trees and torii which leads up are good and far less distracting than the temple approaches of the cities.
Better than all was Nature’s sanctuary where all is harmony; where no narrow sect nor vulgar stare, nor discourtesy disturbs your thought, and where one can read the word of God uninterpreted by any narrow priest, or any narrow passion, but in “Spirit and in Truth.”
The colors defy all art to reproduce them, the declining year, the memory of the rich hued summer, the pathos of something gone, the hush of stream, the absence of bird notes, the quiet, the intimate quiet of Nature, which is never oppressive, never aught but refreshing, and which leaves no scar nor wound!
The delicacy of the laying away the past and the hopefulnessof it all! We would almost like too, to fade away into the ether, laying off the coarse garment of the flesh and finding what Buddha and every sage has sought!
“Some soft warm place in field, or wood,The mother will be sure to keep,Where we shall lay us down to sleep.”