Part 2
But Hamaguchi did not answer: he had no time to explain; he was thinking only of the four hundred lives in peril. For a while the child stared wildly at the blazing rice; then burst into tears, and ran back to the house, feeling sure that his grandfather had gone mad. Hamaguchi went on firing stack after stack, till he had reached the limit of his field; then he threw down his torch, and waited. The acolyte of the hill-temple, observing the blaze, set the big bell booming; and the people responded to the double appeal. Hamaguchi watched them hurrying in from the sands and over the beach and up from the village, like a swarming of ants, and, to his anxious eyes, scarcely faster; for the moments seemed terribly long to him. The sun was going down; the wrinkled bed of the bay, and a vast sallow speckled expanse beyond it, lay naked to the last orange glow; and still the sea was fleeing toward the horizon.
Really, however, Hamaguchi did not have very long to wait before the first party of succor arrived,--a score of agile young peasants, who wanted to attack the fire at once. But the Chōja, holding out both arms, stopped them.
"Let it burn, lads!" he commanded, "let it be! I want the whole _mura_ here. There is a great danger,--_taihen da!_"
The whole village was coming; and Hamaguchi counted. All the young men and boys were soon on the spot, and not a few of the more active women and girls; then came most of the older folk, and mothers with babies at their backs, and even children,--for children could help to pass water; and the elders too feeble to keep up with the first rush could be seen well on their way up the steep ascent. The growing multitude, still knowing nothing, looked alternately, in sorrowful wonder, at the flaming fields and at the impassive face of their Chōja. And the sun went down.
"Grandfather is mad,--I am afraid of him!" sobbed Tada, in answer to a number of questions. "He is mad. He set fire to the rice on purpose: I saw him do it!"
"As for the rice," cried Hamaguchi, "the child tells the truth. I set fire to the rice. ... Are all the people here?"
The Kumi-chō and the heads of families looked about them, and down the hill, and made reply: "All are here, or very soon will be.... _We_ cannot understand this thing."
_"Kita!_" shouted the old man at the top of his voice, pointing to the open. "Say now if I be mad!"
Through the twilight eastward all looked, and saw at the edge of the dusky horizon a long, lean, dim line like the shadowing of a coast where no coast ever was,--a line that thickened as they gazed, that broadened as a coast-line broadens to the eyes of one approaching it, yet incomparably more quickly. For that long darkness was the returning sea, towering like a cliff, and coursing more swiftly than the kite flies.
"_Tsunami!_" shrieked the people; and then all shrieks and all sounds and all power to hear sounds were annihilated by a nameless shock heavier than any thunder, as the colossal swell smote the shore with a weight that sent a shudder through the hills, and with a foam-burst like a blaze of sheet-lightning. Then for an instant nothing was visible but a storm of spray rushing up the slope like a cloud; and the people scattered back in panic from the mere menace of it. When they looked again, they saw a white horror of sea raving over the place of their homes. It drew back roaring, and tearing out the bowels of the land as it went. Twice, thrice, five times the sea struck and ebbed, but each time with lesser surges: then it returned to its ancient bed and stayed,--still raging, as after a typhoon.
On the plateau for a time there was no word spoken. All stared speechlessly at the desolation beneath,--the ghastliness of hurled rock and naked riven cliff, the bewilderment of scooped-up deep-sea wrack and shingle shot over the empty site of dwelling and temple. The village was not; the greater part of the fields were not; even the terraces had ceased to exist; and of all the homes that had been about the bay there remained nothing recognizable except two straw roofs tossing madly in the offing. The after-terror of the death escaped and the stupefaction of the general loss kept all lips dumb, until the voice of Hamaguchi was heard again, observing gently,--
_"That was why I set fire to the rice."_
He, their Chōja, now stood among them almost as poor as the poorest; for his wealth was gone--but he had saved four hundred lives by the sacrifice. Little Tada ran to him, and caught his hand, and asked forgiveness for having said naughty things. Whereupon the people woke up to the knowledge of why they were alive, and began to wonder at the simple, unselfish foresight that had saved them; and the headmen prostrated themselves in the dust before Hamaguchi Gohei, and the people after them.
Then the old man wept a little, partly because he was happy, and partly because he was aged and weak and had been sorely tried.
"My house remains," he said, as soon as he could find words, automatically caressing Tada's brown cheeks; "and there is room for many. Also the temple on the hill stands; and there is shelter there for the others."
Then he led the way to his house; and the people cried and shouted.
*
The period of distress was long, because in those days there were no means of quick communication between district and district, and the help needed had to be sent from far away. But when better times came, the people did not forget their debt to Hamaguchi Gohei. They could not make him rich; nor would he have suffered them to do so, even had it been possible. Moreover, gifts could never have sufficed as an expression of their reverential feeling towards him; for they believed that the ghost within him was divine. So they declared him a god, and thereafter called him Hamaguchi DAIMYŌJIN, thinking they could give him no greater honor;--and truly no greater honor in any country could be given to mortal man. And when they rebuilt the village, they built a temple to the spirit of him, and fixed above the front of it a tablet bearing his name in Chinese text of gold; and they worshiped him there, with prayer and with offerings. How he felt about it I cannot say;--I know only that he continued to live in his old thatched home upon the hill, with his children and his children's children, just as humanly and simply as before, while his soul was being worshiped in the shrine below. A hundred years and more he has been dead; but his temple, they tell me, still stands, and the people still pray to the ghost of the good old farmer to help them in time of fear or trouble.
* * * * * * * * * * *
I asked a Japanese philosopher and friend to explain to me how the peasants could rationally imagine the spirit of Hamaguchi in one place while his living body was in another. Also I inquired whether it was only one of his souls which they had worshiped during his life, and whether they imagined that particular soul to have detached itself from the rest to receive homage.
"The peasants," my friend answered, "think of the mind or spirit of a person as something which, even during life, can be in many places at the same instant.... Such an idea is, of course, quite different from Western ideas about the soul."
"Any more rational?" I mischievously asked.
"Well," he responded, with a Buddhist smile, "if we accept the doctrine of the unity of all mind, the idea of the Japanese peasant would appear to contain at least some adumbration of truth. I could not say so much for your Western notions about the soul."
[Footnote 1: Shinto parish temple.]
II
OUT OF THE STREET
I
"These," said Manyemon, putting on the table a roll of wonderfully written Japanese manuscript, "are Vulgar Songs. If they are to be spoken of in some honorable book, perhaps it will be good to say that they are Vulgar, so that Western people may not be deceived."
*
Next to my house there is a vacant lot, where washermen _(sentukaya)_ work in the ancient manner,--singing as they work, and whipping the wet garments upon big flat stones. Every morning at daybreak their singing wakens me; and I like to listen to it, though I cannot often catch the words. It is full of long, queer, plaintive modulations. Yesterday, the apprentice--a lad of fifteen--and the master of the washermen were singing alternately, as if answering each other; the contrast between the tones of the man, sonorous as if boomed through a conch, and the clarion alto of the boy, being very pleasant to hear. Whereupon I called Manyemon and asked him what the singing was about.
"The song of the boy," he said, "is an old song:--
_Things never changed since the Time of the Gods:_ _The flowing of water, the Way of Love._
I heard it often when I was myself a boy."
"And the other song?"
"The other song is probably new:--
_Three years thought of her,_ _Five years sought for her;_ _Only for one night held her in my arms._
A very foolish song!"
"I don't know," I said. "There are famous Western romances containing nothing wiser. And what is the rest of the song?"
"There is no more: that is the whole of the song. If it be honorably desired, I can write down the songs of the washermen, and the songs which are sung in this street by the smiths and the carpenters and the bamboo-weavers and the rice-cleaners. But they are all nearly the same."
Thus came it to pass that Manyemon made for me a collection of Vulgar Songs.
*
By "vulgar" Manyemon meant written in the speech of the common people. He is himself an adept at classical verse, and despises the _hayari-uta,_ or ditties of the day; it requires something very delicate to please him. And what pleases him I am not qualified to write about; for one must be a very good Japanese scholar to meddle with the superior varieties of Japanese poetry. If you care to know how difficult the subject is, just study the chapter on prosody in Aston's Grammar of the Japanese Written Language, or the introduction to Professor Chamberlain's Classical Poetry of the Japanese. Her poetry is the one original art which Japan has certainly not borrowed either from China or from any other country; and its most refined charm is the essence, irreproducible, of the very flower of the language itself: hence the difficulty of representing, even partially, in any Western tongue, its subtler delicacies of sentiment, allusion, and color. But to understand the compositions of the people no scholarship is needed: they are characterized by the greatest possible simplicity, directness, and sincerity.
The real art of them, in short, is their absolute artlessness. That was why I wanted them. Springing straight from the heart of the eternal youth of the race, these little gushes of song, like the untaught poetry of every people, utter what belongs to all human experience rather than to the limited life of a class or a time; and even in their melodies still resound the fresh and powerful pulsings of their primal source.
*
Manyemon had written down forty-seven songs; and with his help I made free renderings of the best. They were very brief, varying from seventeen to thirty-one syllables in length. Nearly all Japanese poetical metre consists of simple alternations of lines of five and seven syllables; the frequent exceptions which popular songs offer to this rule being merely irregularities such as the singer can smooth over either by slurring or by prolonging certain vowel sounds. Most of the songs which Manyemon had collected were of twenty-six syllables only; being composed of three successive lines of seven syllables each, followed by one of five, thus:--
Ka-mi-yo ko-no-ka-ta Ka-wa-ra-nu mo-no wa: Mi-dzu no na-ga-ré to Ko-i no mi-chi.[1]
Among various deviations from this construction I found 7-7-7-7-5, and 5-7-7-7-5, and 7-5-7-5, and 5-7-5; but the classical five-line form (_tanka,_) represented by 5-7-5-7-7, was entirely absent.
Terms indicating gender were likewise absent; even the expressions corresponding to "I" and "you" being seldom used, and the words signifying "beloved" applying equally to either sex. Only by the conventional value of some comparison, the use of a particular emotional tone, or the mention of some detail of costume, was the sex of the speaker suggested, as in this verse:--
_I am the water-weed drifting,--finding no place of attachment:_ _Where, I wonder, and when, shall my flower begin to bloom?_
Evidently the speaker is a girl who wishes for a lover: the same simile uttered by masculine lips would sound in Japanese ears much as would sound in English ears a man's comparison of himself to a violet or to a rose. For the like reason, one knows that in the following song the speaker is not a woman:--
_Flowers in both my hands,--flowers of plum and cherry:_ _Which will be, I wonder, the flower to give me fruit?_
Womanly charm is compared to the cherry flower and also to the plum flower; but the quality symbolized by the plum flower is moral always rather than physical.[2] The verse represents a man strongly attracted by two girls: one, perhaps a dancer, very fair to look upon; the other beautiful in character. Which shall he choose to be his companion for life? One more example:--
_Too long, with pen in hand, idling, fearing, and doubting,_ _I cast my silver pin for the test of the tatamizan._
Here we know from the mention of the hairpin that the speaker is a woman, and we can also suppose that she is a _geisha;_ the sort of divination called _tatamizan_ being especially popular with dancing-girls. The rush covering of floor-mats (_tatami,_) woven over a frame of thin strings, shows on its upper surface a regular series of lines about three fourths of an inch apart. The girl throws her pin upon a mat, and then counts the lines it touches. According to their number she deems herself lucky or unlucky. Sometimes a little pipe--geishas' pipes are usually of silver--is used instead of the hairpin.
*
The theme of all the songs was love, as indeed it is of the vast majority of the Japanese _chansons des rues et des bois;_ even songs about celebrated places usually containing some amatory suggestion. I noticed that almost every simple phase of the emotion, from its earliest budding to its uttermost ripening, was represented in the collection; and I therefore tried to arrange the pieces according to the natural passional sequence. The result had some dramatic suggestiveness.
[Footnote 1: Literally, "_God-Age-since not-changed-things as-for: water of flowing and love-of way._"]
[Footnote 2: See _Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan,_ ii. 357.]
II
The songs really form three distinct groups, each corresponding to a
## particular period of that emotional experience which is the subject of
all. In the first group of seven the surprise and pain and weakness of passion find utterance; beginning with a plaintive cry of reproach and closing with a whisper of trust.
I
_You, by all others disliked!--oh, why must my heart thus like you?_
II
_This pain which I cannot speak of to any one in the world:_ _Tell me who has made it,--whose do you think the fault?_
III
_Will it be night forever?--I lose my way in this darkness:_ _Who goes by the path of Love must always go astray!_
IV
_Even the brightest lamp, even the light electric,_ _Cannot lighten at all the dusk of the Way of Love._
V
_Always the more I love, the more it is hard to say so:_ _Oh! how happy I were should the loved one say it first!_
VI
_Such a little word!--only to say, "I love you"!_ _Why, oh, why do I find it hard to say like this?_[1]
[Footnote 1: Inimitably simple in the original:--
Horeta wai na to Sukoshi no koto ga: Nazé ni kono yō ni Iinikui? ]
VII
_Clicked-to[2] the locks of our hearts; let the keys remain in our bosoms._
After which mutual confidence the illusion naturally deepens; suffering yields to a joy that cannot disguise itself, and the keys of the heart are thrown away: this is the second stage.
[Footnote 2: In the original this is expressed by an onomatope, _pinto,_ imitating the sound of the fastening of the lock of a _tansu,_ or chest of drawers:--
Pinto kokoro ni Jōmai oroshi: Kagi wa tagai no Muné ni aru. ]
I
_The person who said before, "I hate my life since I saw you,"_ _Now after union prays to live for a thousand years._
II
_You and I together--lilies that grow in a valley:_ _This is our blossoming-time--but nobody knows the fact._
III
_Receiving from his hand the cup of the wine of greeting,_ _Even before I drink, I feel that my face grows red._
IV
_I cannot hide in my heart the happy knowledge that fills it;_ _Asking each not to tell, I spread the news all round._[5]
[Footnote 3: Much simpler in the original:--
Muné ni tsutsumenu Uréshii koto wa;-- Kuchidomé shinagara Furéaruku. ]
V
_All crows alike are black, everywhere under heaven._ _The person that others like, why should not I like too?_
VI
_Going to see the beloved, a thousand ri are as one ri;_[4] _Returning without having seen, one ri is a thousand ri._
[Footnote 4: One _ri_ is equal to about two and a half English miles.]
VII
_Going to see the beloved, even the water of rice-fields_[5] _Ever becomes, as I drink, nectar of gods[6] to the taste._
[Footnote 5: In the original _dorota;_ literally "mud rice-fields,"-- meaning rice-fields during the time of flushing, before the grain has fairly grown up. The whole verse reads:--
Horeté kayoyeba Dorota no midzu mo Noméba kanro no Aji ga suru. ]
[Footnote 6: _Kanro,_ a Buddhist word, properly written with two Chinese characters signifying "sweet dew." The real meaning is _amrita,_ the drink of the gods.]
VIII
_You, till a hundred years; I, until nine and ninety;_ _Together we still shall be in the time when the hair turns white._
IX
_Seeing the face, at once the folly I wanted to utter_ _All melts out of my thought, and somehow the tears come first!_[7]
[Footnote 7:
Iitai guchi sayé Kao miriya kiyété Tokakii namida ga Saki ni deru.
The use of _tokaku_ ("somehow," for "some reason or other") gives a peculiar pathos to the utterance.]
X
_Crying for joy made wet my sleeve that dries too quickly;_ _'T is not the same with the heart,--that cannot dry so soon!_
XI
_To Heaven with all my soul I prayed to prevent your going;_ _Already, to keep you with me, answers the blessed rain._
So passes the period of illusion. The rest is doubt and pain; only the love remains to challenge even death:--
I
_Parted from you, my beloved, I go alone to the pine-field;_ _There is dew of night on the leaves; there is also dew of tears._
II
_Even to see the birds flying freely above me_ _Only deepens my sorrow,--makes me thoughtful the more._
III
_Coming? or coming not? Far down the river gazing,_ _--Only yomogi shadows[8] astir in the bed of the stream._
[Footnote 8: The plant _yomogi_ (_Artemisia vulgaris_) grows wild in many of the half-dry beds of the Japanese rivers.]
IV
_Letters come by the post; photographs give me the shadow!_ _Only one thing remains which I cannot hope to gain._
V
_If I may not see the face, but only look at the letter,_ _Then it were better far only in dreams to see._
VI
_Though his body were broken to pieces, though his bones on the shore were bleaching,_ _I would find my way to rejoin him, after gathering up the bones._[9]
[Footnote 9:
Mi wa kuda kuda ni Honé we isobé ni Sarasoto mama yo Hiroi atsumété Sôté misho.
The only song of this form in the collection. The use of the verb _soi_ implies union as husband and wife.]
III
Thus was it that these little songs, composed in different generations and in different parts of Japan by various persons, seemed to shape themselves for me into the ghost of a romance,--into the shadow of a story needing no name of time or place or person, because eternally the same, in all times and places.
*
Manyemon asks which of the songs I like best; and I turn over his manuscript again to see if I can make a choice. Without, in the bright spring air, the washers are working; and I hear the heavy _pon-pon_ of the beating of wet robes, regular as the beating of a heart. Suddenly, as I muse, the voice of the boy soars up in one long, clear, shrill, splendid rocket-tone,--and breaks,--and softly trembles down in coruscations of fractional notes; singing the song that Manyemon remembers hearing when he himself was a boy:--
_Things never changed since the Time of the Gods:_ _The flowing of water, the Way of Love._
"I think that is the best," I said. "It is the soul of all the rest."
"Hin no nusubito, koi no uta," interpretatively murmurs Manyemon. "Even as out of poverty comes the thief, so out of love the song!"
III
NOTES OF A TRIP TO KYŌTO
I
It had been intended to celebrate in spring the eleven hundredth anniversary of the foundation of Kyōto; but the outbreak of pestilence caused postponement of the festival to the autumn, and the celebration began on the 15th of the tenth month. Little festival medals of nickel, made to be pinned to the breast, like military decorations, were for sale at half a yen each. These medals entitled the wearers to special cheap fares on all the Japanese railroad and steamship lines, and to other desirable privileges, such as free entrance to wonderful palaces, gardens, and temples. On the 23d of October I found myself in possession of a medal, and journeying to Kyoto by the first morning train, which was over-crowded with people eager to witness the great historical processions announced for the 24th and 25th. Many had to travel standing, but the crowd was good-natured and merry. A number of my fellow-passengers were Osaka geisha going to the festival. They diverted themselves by singing songs and by playing ken with some male acquaintances, and their kittenish pranks and funny cries kept everybody amused. One had an extraordinary voice, with which she could twitter like a sparrow.