Volume I Part 3 (1/2)

Meanwhile I have related to Akira the story of my disappointments.

'Oh, you can see him to-day,' responds Akira, 'if you will take a walk with me to the Temple of Zotokuin. For this is the Busshoe, the festival of the Birthday of Buddha. But he is very small, only a few inches high.

If you want to see a great Buddha, you must go to Kamakura. There is a Buddha in that place, sitting upon a lotus; and he is fifty feet high.'

So I go forth under the guidance of Akira. He says he may be able to show me 'some curious things.'

Sec. 3

There is a sound of happy voices from the temple, and the steps are crowded with smiling mothers and laughing children. Entering, I find women and babies pressing about a lacquered table in front of the doorway. Upon it is a little tub-shaped vessel of sweet tea--amacha; and standing in the tea is a tiny figure of Buddha, one hand pointing upward and one downward. The women, having made the customary offering, take up some of the tea with a wooden ladle of curious shape, and pour it over the statue, and then, filling the ladle a second time, drink a little, and give a sip to their babies. This is the ceremony of was.h.i.+ng the statue of Buddha.

Near the lacquered stand on which the vessel of sweet tea rests is another and lower stand supporting a temple bell shaped like a great bowl. A priest approaches with a padded mallet in his hand and strikes the bell. But the bell does not sound properly: he starts, looks into it, and stoops to lift out of it a smiling j.a.panese baby. The mother, laughing, runs to relieve him of his burden; and priest, mother, and baby all look at us with a frankness of mirth in which we join.

Akira leaves me a moment to speak with one of the temple attendants, and presently returns with a curious lacquered box, about a foot in length, and four inches wide on each of its four sides. There is only a small hole in one end of it; no appearance of a lid of any sort.

'Now,' says Akira, 'if you wish to pay two sen, we shall learn our future lot according to the will of the G.o.ds.'

I pay the two sen, and Akira shakes the box. Out comes a narrow slip of bamboo, with Chinese characters written thereon.

'Kitsu!' cries Akira. 'Good-fortune. The number is fifty-and-one.'

Again he shakes the box; a second bamboo slip issues from the slit.

'Dai kitsu! great good-fortune. The number is ninety-and-nine.

Once more the box is shaken; once more the oracular bamboo protrudes.

'Kyo!' laughs Akira. 'Evil will befall us. The number is sixty-and- four.'

He returns the box to a priest, and receives three mysterious papers, numbered with numbers corresponding to the numbers of the bamboo slips.

These little bamboo slips, or divining-sticks, are called mikuji.

This, as translated by Akira, is the substance of the text of the paper numbered fifty-and-one:

'He who draweth forth this mikuji, let him live according to the heavenly law and wors.h.i.+p Kwannon. If his trouble be a sickness, it shall pa.s.s from him. If he have lost aught, it shall be found. If he have a suit at law, he shall gain. If he love a woman, he shall surely win her -though he should have to wait. And many happinesses will come to him.'

The dai-kitsu paper reads almost similarly, with the sole differences that, instead of Kwannon, the deities of wealth and prosperity-- Daikoku, Bishamon, and Benten--are to be wors.h.i.+pped, and that the fortunate man will not have to wait at all for the woman loved. But the kyo paper reads thus:

'He who draweth forth this mikuji, it will be well for him to obey the heavenly law and to wors.h.i.+p Kwannon the Merciful. If he have any sickness, even much more sick he shall become. If he have lost aught, it shall never be found. If he have a suit at law, he shall never gain it.

If he love a woman, let him have no more expectation of winning her.

Only by the most diligent piety can he hope to escape the most frightful calamities. And there shall be no felicity in his portion.'

'All the same, we are fortunate,' declares Akira. 'Twice out of three times we have found luck. Now we will go to see another statue of Buddha.' And he guides me, through many curious streets, to the southern verge of the city.

Sec. 4

Before us rises a hill, with a broad flight of stone steps sloping to its summit, between foliage of cedars and maples. We climb; and I see above me the Lions of Buddha waiting--the male yawning menace, the female with mouth closed. Pa.s.sing between them, we enter a large temple court, at whose farther end rises another wooded eminence.

And here is the temple, with roof of blue-painted copper tiles, and tilted eaves and gargoyles and dragons, all weather-stained to one neutral tone. The paper screens are open, but a melancholy rhythmic chant from within tells us that the noonday service is being held: the priests are chanting the syllables of Sanscrit texts transliterated into Chinese--intoning the Sutra called the Sutra of the Lotus of the Good Law. One of those who chant keeps time by tapping with a mallet, cotton- wrapped, some grotesque object shaped like a dolphin's head, all lacquered in scarlet and gold, which gives forth a dull, booming tone-- a mokugyo.

To the right of the temple is a little shrine, filling the air with fragrance of incense-burning. I peer in through the blue smoke that curls up from half a dozen tiny rods planted in a small brazier full of ashes; and far back in the shadow I see a swarthy Buddha, tiara-coiffed, with head bowed and hands joined, just as I see the j.a.panese praying, erect in the sun, before the thresholds of temples. The figure is of wood, rudely wrought and rudely coloured: still the placid face has beauty of suggestion.