Read Online Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan by Lafcadio Hearn - Free Book Online

and mourners kneeling before tombs. All under the soft blue
light of Japanese day.
    Underneath is the world of ghosts. Down through the earth-crust souls
are descending. Here they are flitting all white through inky
darknesses; here farther on, through weird twilight, they are wading the
flood of the phantom River of the Three Roads, Sanzu-no-Kawa. And here
on the right is waiting for them Sodzu-Baba, the Old Woman of the Three
Roads, ghastly and grey, and tall as a nightmare. From some she is
taking their garments;—the trees about her are heavily hung with the
garments of others gone before.
    Farther down I see fleeing souls overtaken by demons—hideous blood-red
demons, with feet like lions, with faces half human, half bovine, the
physiognomy of minotaurs in fury. One is rending a soul asunder. Another
demon is forcing souls to reincarnate themselves in bodies of horses, of
dogs, of swine. And as they are thus reincarnated they flee away into
shadow.
    Second kakemono:
    Such a gloom as the diver sees in deep-sea water, a lurid twilight. In
the midst a throne, ebon-coloured, and upon it an awful figure seated—
Emma Dai-O, Lord of Death and Judge of Souls, unpitying, tremendous.
Frightful guardian spirits hover about him—armed goblins. On the left,
in the foreground below the throne, stands the wondrous Mirror,
Tabarino-Kagami, reflecting the state of souls and all the happenings of
the world. A landscape now shadows its surface,—a landscape of cliffs
and sand and sea, with ships in the offing. Upon the sand a dead man is
lying, slain by a sword slash; the murderer is running away. Before this
mirror a terrified soul stands, in the grasp of a demon, who compels him
to look, and to recognise in the murderer's features his own face. To
the right of the throne, upon a tall-stemmed flat stand, such as
offerings to the gods are placed upon in the temples, a monstrous shape
appears, like a double-faced head freshly cut off, and set upright upon
the stump of the neck. The two faces are the Witnesses: the face of the
Woman (Mirume) sees all that goes on in the Shaba; the other face is the
face of a bearded man, the face of Kaguhana, who smells all odours, and
by them is aware of all that human beings do. Close to them, upon a
reading-stand, a great book is open, the record-book of deeds. And
between the Mirror and the Witnesses white shuddering souls await
judgment.
    Farther down I see the sufferings of souls already sentenced. One, in
lifetime a liar, is having his tongue torn out by a demon armed with
heated pincers. Other souls, flung by scores into fiery carts, are being
dragged away to torment. The carts are of iron, but resemble in form
certain hand-wagons which one sees every day being pulled and pushed
through the streets by bare-limbed Japanese labourers, chanting always
the same melancholy alternating chorus, Haidak! hei! haidah hei! But
these demon-wagoners—naked, blood-coloured, having the feet of lions
and the heads of bulls—move with their flaming wagons at a run, like
jinricksha-men.
    All the souls so far represented are souls of adults.
    Third kakemono:
    A furnace, with souls for fuel, blazing up into darkness. Demons stir
the fire with poles of iron. Down through the upper blackness other
souls are falling head downward into the flames.
    Below this scene opens a shadowy landscape—a faint-blue and faint-grey
world of hills and vales, through which a river serpentines—the Sai-
no-Kawara. Thronging the banks of the pale river are ghosts of little
children, trying to pile up stones. They are very, very pretty, the
child-souls, pretty as real Japanese children are (it is astonishing how
well is child-beauty felt and expressed by the artists of Japan). Each
child has one little short white dress.
    In the foreground a horrible devil with an iron club has just dashed
down and scattered a pile of stones built by one of the children. The
little ghost, seated by the ruin of its work, is crying, with both
pretty