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

hands to its eyes. The devil appears to sneer. Other children
also are weeping near by. But, lo! Jizo comes, all light and sweetness,
with a glory moving behind him like a great full moon; and he holds out
his shakujo, his strong and holy staff, and the little ghosts catch it
and cling to it, and are drawn into the circle of his protection. And
other infants have caught his great sleeves, and one has been lifted to
the bosom of the god.
    Below this Sai-no-Kawara scene appears yet another shadow-world, a
wilderness of bamboos! Only white-robed shapes of women appear in it.
They are weeping; the fingers of all are bleeding. With finger-nails
plucked out must they continue through centuries to pick the sharp-edged
bamboo-grass.
    Fourth kakemono:
    Floating in glory, Dai-Nichi-Nyorai, Kwannon-Sama, Amida Buddha. Far
below them as hell from heaven surges a lake of blood, in which souls
float. The shores of this lake are precipices studded with sword-blades
thickly set as teeth in the jaws of a shark; and demons are driving
naked ghosts up the frightful slopes. But out of the crimson lake
something crystalline rises, like a beautiful, clear water-spout; the
stem of a flower,—a miraculous lotus, hearing up a soul to the feet of
a priest standing above the verge of the abyss. By virtue of his prayer
was shaped the lotus which thus lifted up and saved a sufferer.
    Alas! there are no other kakemonos. There were several others: they have
been lost!
    No: I am happily mistaken; the priest has found, in some mysterious
recess, one more kakemono, a very large one, which he unrolls and
suspends beside the others. A vision of beauty, indeed! but what has
this to do with faith or ghosts? In the foreground a garden by the
waters of the sea, of some vast blue lake,—a garden like that at
Kanagawa, full of exquisite miniature landscape-work: cascades,
grottoes, lily-ponds, carved bridges, and trees snowy with blossom, and
dainty pavilions out-jutting over the placid azure water. Long, bright,
soft bands of clouds swim athwart the background. Beyond and above them
rises a fairy magnificence of palatial structures, roof above roof,
through an aureate haze like summer vapour: creations aerial, blue,
light as dreams. And there are guests in these gardens, lovely beings,
Japanese maidens. But they wear aureoles, star-shining: they are
spirits!
    For this is Paradise, the Gokuraku; and all those divine shapes are
Bosatsu. And now, looking closer, I perceive beautiful weird things
which at first escaped my notice.
    They are gardening, these charming beings!—they are caressing the
lotus-buds, sprinkling their petals with something celestial, helping
them to blossom. And what lotus-buds with colours not of this world.
Some have burst open; and in their luminous hearts, in a radiance like
that of dawn, tiny naked infants are seated, each with a tiny halo.
These are Souls, new Buddhas, hotoke born into bliss. Some are very,
very small; others larger; all seem to be growing visibly, for their
lovely nurses are feeding them with something ambrosial. I see one which
has left its lotus-cradle, being conducted by a celestial Jizo toward
the higher splendours far away.
    Above, in the loftiest blue, are floating tennin, angels of the Buddhist
heaven, maidens with phoenix wings. One is playing with an ivory
plectrum upon some stringed instrument, just as a dancing-girl plays her
samisen; and others are sounding those curious Chinese flutes, composed
of seventeen tubes, which are used still in sacred concerts at the great
temples.
    Akira says this heaven is too much like earth. The gardens, he declares,
are like the gardens of temples, in spite of the celestial lotus-
flowers; and in the blue roofs of the celestial mansions he discovers
memories of the tea-houses of the city of Saikyo.
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    Well, what after all is the heaven of any faith but ideal reiteration
and prolongation of happy experiences remembered—the dream of dead
days resurrected for us, and made