Jinrikisha Days in Japan/Chapter 31
CHAPTER XXXI
THROUGH UJI TO NARA
An early morning start, with many jinrikishas and tandems of coolies; a wild spin through the streets, past shops, temple gates and walls; by the innumerable toriis and lanterns forming arches and vistas in the groves of
PICKING TEA
Groups of bobbing hats beside the tea-bushes, carts loaded with sacks and baskets of tea-leaves; trays of toasting tea-leaves within every door-way, a delicate rose-like fragrance in the air; women and children sorting the crop in every village; and this was the tea season in its height. Here were bushes two and three hundred years old yielding every year their certain harvest, and whole hill-sides covered with matted awnings to keep from scorching or toughening in the hot sun those delicate young leaves, which are destined to become the costly and exquisite teas chosen by the sovereign and his richest subjects.
Then we toiled up bush-covered steeps to cross elevated river-beds; rode through towered floodgates of dry watercourses, down to the green plain their lost waters had fed; through village streets, and past many a picturesque tateba, in one of which stood a little yellow Cupid in the sunshine that filtered through a wistaria trellis; and so on through ever-changing country scenes to the famous view of Nara’s temples, trees, and pagodas.
Nara! A mountain-side covered with giant trees bound together by vines and old creepers; an ancient forest seamed with broad avenues, where the sunlight falls in patches and deer lie drowsing in the fern; double and triple lines of moss-covered stone lanterns massing themselves together, their green tops dim in the dense shadow; temples twelve centuries old; the booming of bells, and the music of running water.
Nara! The ancient capital, the cradle of Buddhism, and still the holy place of pilgrimages; its forest paths echoing the jingle of the devotees’ ringed staffs, the mutter of their prayers, and the clink of their copper offerings at the temple gates. A place of stillness and dreams; an Arcadia, where the little children and the fawns play together, and the antlered deer eat from one's hand, and look up fearlessly with their soft human eyes. Old Shinto temples, where the priestesses dance the sacred measures of Suzume before the Sun Goddess’s cave; temples where Buddha and Kwannon sit in gilded glory on the lotus, and lights, incense, and bells accompany the splendid ceremonies of that faith.
The great antiquity of Nara makes the magnificence of Nikko, with its Shogun’s tombs, seem almost parvenu. It is the good-fortune of the older fane that its distance from the railroad—twenty-six miles—saves it from the rush of progress and the stream of tourists.
The founder of Nara rode up to the mountain on a deer to choose a residence for himself, and ever since the deer have been petted and protected. Groups of them, lying under the trees, permit themselves to be admired, and feeding parties turn their pretty pointed heads to look after the visitor. The does and fawns, however, hide in the dark fern-covered ravines. All through the forest and temple grounds are little thatched houses, where tea for man and corn-meal for deer are sold, together with the little carved images and deer-horn toys for which Nara is famous. It is a pity that the Japanese name for deer is such a harsh, unmusical word as shika, which even the little children, who toddle after the pretty creatures with out stretched hands, cannot make musical. Plump little country maids, with their tied-up sleeves, are heard from sunrise until dusk calling up the deer to be fed—“Ko! ko! ko! ko!” (Come! come! come! come!) and at the word “Ko” even the fattest and heaviest stag lumbers forward and nibbles from their hands. Moving at leisure, these deer have a stiff, wooden gait, and seem badly-proportioned animals. It is when one leaps and bounds down some avenue, or across a clearing, that it shows its grace. The gentleness of these Nara pets is due, of course, to the long immunity from violence enjoyed by their race, beloved and protected by gods and men. Only once have they ever been harmed, and that blow was dealt by a young Japanese convert to Christianity, who struck at them as emblems of heathenism!
The atmosphere of Nara is serene and gentle—the true atmosphere of Japan. The priests are quiet, courteous old men, and the little priestesses, soft-footed and tranquil, dance in a slow succession of dignified poses. The Kasuga temple is a very cathedral of Shintoism, a place of many court-yards, surrounded by gates, and buildings painted bright Shinto red, with sacred straw ropes and symbolical bits of rice-paper hanging before the open doors. Venerable cryptomeria-trees, worthy of a California grove, stretch the great buttresses of their roots over the ground of the court-yard, and one thatched roof lovingly embraces the trunk of a crooked old tree that almost rests on it. Wistaria vines, thick, gnarled, and lichen-covered with the growth of years, hang in giant festoons from the trees, roll in curves and loops over the ground, and, climbing to the top of the tallest pines, hang their clusters of pale-green leaves like blossoms against the dark evergreens. A giant trunk, from which grow branches of the camellia, cherry, plum, wild ivy, wistaria and nandina, is a perpetual marvel. All through the woods the wistaria runs wild, leaps from tree to tree, and ties and knots itself in titanic coils.
In such lovely scenes the Kasuga priests lead an ideal existence. They marry, they raise families; their little daughters perform the sacred dance in the temple for a certain number of years, and they may leave the priesthood if they wish. All the brotherhood wear the loose, flowing purple trousers, white gauze coats, and black, helmet-shaped caps prescribed by the Shinto rules; and besides making the morning and evening offerings to the gods, and conducting special ceremonies on the two purification days of the year, they play the ancient flute and drum, and chant a hymn while the sacred dance is given. For a poetic, philosophical, meditative, or lazy man nothing could be more congenial than this life. Hurry, novelty, and the rush of events come not near Nara, which is in the land “wherein it seemed always afternoon.”
The pilgrims, who trudge from the most distant provinces with bell and beads and staff, make up the greater number of visitors, and their white garments, straw sandals, cloaks, and hats, are of a fashion centuries old. Bands of these votaries go through the temple courts, in charge of voluble guides, who intone a description of the places in the way of their craft the world over. One or two old men seem always to be sauntering up the long avenue, stopping frequently to rest, praying at every shrine, and muttering to themselves praises of the sacred place. Their wrinkled faces glow with pleasure, and they delight in watching the deer, to whom the tinkle of a pilgrim’s bell or iron-ringed staff is always a promise of cakes.
To the antiquarian, Nara is full of interest. The temples, founded in the seventh and eighth centuries, were the first Buddhist sanctuaries in Japan; Buddhism, coming from India by way of China and Korea, having found its first home here when Nara was the imperial capital. Four empresses and three emperors held the sceptre between 708 and 782, and all the region is historic ground. The great city, that covered the plain for centuries after that imperial day, has shrunken to a small provincial town, still eloquent of the past. The Shinto temples, as their rules provide, have been rebuilt every twenty years, the original buildings being exactly duplicated each time, so that, in their freshness and perfect repair, they look now as they did a thousand years ago. The Buddhist shrines have been burned, rebuilt, half abandoned at times; and in recent years, since their lands were taken from them and their revenues withheld, have suffered seriously. The largest image of Buddha is the Nara Dai Butsu. The seated deity, 63 feet in height, was set upon his lotus pedestal in 749, and once the head of the statue fell off and was broken, and twice the temple burned and melted it. The temple enshrining the bronze deity is now dilapidated, and the huge corner beams and brackets of the roof are braced with timbers, so that an earthquake would be likely to overset the holy place.
The great two-storied gate way of the Dai Butsu temple has stood for eleven centuries and more, and is a picturesque, weather-beaten old structure, apparently strong enough to resist the assaults of another thousand years. Colossal Nio, with hideous countenances, stand on guard in niches, and within is a large green court-yard, and a closed gallery on the two sides that connect the gate-way with the temple—the cloister of a European cathedral. A huge bronze lantern, one of the earliest examples of such work, is said to have long contained the sacred fire brought from Ceylon. The great Buddha itself is disappointing, because seen too near. The face is sixteen feet long and over nine feet wide, and the expression is not calm, soulful, and meditative, as Buddha in Nirvana should be, but heavy and stolid, with a hard, unmeditative stare. The gilding with which the statue was once covered has worn away with time, leaving it as dark and blackened as befits its Hottentot countenance. On the great halo are images six and eight feet high that look like pygmies.
Behind the Buddha is a museum of antiquities connected in some way with the temple and its founders and patrons. Here are kept the carpenters’ tools with which the first temple was built, and prehistoric-looking fragments of bronze and iron to which the stranger finds no clew. A door of the palace whereon Kusunoki, the Chevalier Bayard of Japan, wrote a farewell message with his arrow when he went away to his last battle, images, carvings, old armor, weapons, and trappings, afford the Japanese visitor much delight. But the real treasures of Dai Butsu are the relics left to it by one of the Nara Emperors, who built a substantial log storehouse in the enclosure, and bequeathed to the temple everything his palace contained. Palaces were small in those days, and their furnishings scanty; but the clothing, household effects, and ornaments of the dead benefactor were brought to this storehouse and carefully sealed up. Every summer, after the rainy season ends, the treasures are aired, the inventory verified, and the place sealed up again. Three of the greatest nobles of the empire are associated with the high-priest in the care of these Nara relics, and the storehouse can only be opened by an imperial order transmitted in the handwriting of the emperor. Only royal or greatly distinguished visitors may ask this privilege, as it is a great trouble and expense to get the guardians together. Its value as a collection and as a picture of the life of the eighth century is hardly appreciated by the Japanese, who chiefly reverence its sacredness as connected with the person of an early Emperor. An imperial commission, made up of officers of the imperial household and of art connoisseurs, examined, classified, and catalogued the treasures of the Nara and Kioto temples in 1888. Mr. Kuki, late Japanese minister to the United States, and president of this commission, had even this imperial treasure-house opened and the precious relics photographed. The commission and its staff numbered over twenty people, and the old guardians of the storehouse were much disturbed by this invasion of their carefully closed domain, which they would have resisted if they could.
On the hill above the Dai Butsu temple are other Buddhist sanctuaries; the Nigwatsudo and the Hachiman being devoted respectively to the goddess Kwannon and to Hachiman, god of war. Both are resorts for the summer pilgrims, and the droning of prayers, the clapping of hands and rattle of coins, are heard all day long. Stone terraces and staircases, mossy stone lanterns and green drinking-fountains make the old places picturesque, and the platforms afford magnificent views across to the bold mountain-wall in the west that divides Nara from Osaka's fertile rice plain. In the court-yards are sold maps, wood-cuts, and bunches of little cinnamon twigs that the pilgrims find refreshing, and there do captive monkeys perform grotesque antics. One may often see here the Hiyokudo (the hundred times going) performed by faithful pilgrims, who walk a hundred times around in the fulfilment of a vow.
Between these Buddhist temples and the Shinto shrines, hidden in their forest park, there intervenes a smooth, grassy mountain, called the Mikasayama, or “Three-hat hill,” because of its three ridges. Every devout pilgrim climbs the delusive, velvety-looking slope to the stone at the third summit to look out upon the rich province of Yamato, “the heart of Japan,” and the scene of so many battles, wars and sieges as to be also called “the cockpit of Japan.”
Far as the eye can reach the valley is levelled off in rice fields. Tea-bushes stripe the more rolling country with their regular lines of thick, dark foliage; bamboo groves add a softer, more delicate green, and deepest of all are the tones of the pines.
Near the base of the hill, but high enough to command a wide prospect, runs a narrow road lined with little tea-houses and toy-shops where souvenirs are sold. Nara is famous for its cutlery and its India ink, and swords, daggers, knives and scissors are sold by shopmen who perform extraordinary feats to test the temper of their blades. India ink pressed into fantastic shapes, and writing-brushes made of deer’s hair, are carefully tied up in the pilgrim’s wallets, with the famous little Nara ningio, or images carved in wood. The Nara ningios always represent the legendary priests and people who founded Nara, and in these carvings the rural artists display great talent, giving wonderful expression to the tiny faces that are left rough faceted as first chipped off with the knife.
These tea-houses and shops interpose a neutral and worldly barrier between the cluster of Buddhist establishments at the one side and the region of Shintoism beyond. From the tea-house gates the road makes a curve off into the wistaria-tangled forest to conduct jinrikishas to the lower level, but the pilgrims descend, instead, four long flights of rough stone steps, that are wonderfully picturesque with these quaint moving figures and the queer little shops that hang to the borders of the stairs, climbing up and down the hill with them.
At the foot of the steps the road reappears, crossing a narrow creek-bed on a high bridge that gives one beautiful views of a dark little ravine, across which the trees nearly meet and the ancient creepers are looped and knotted. A little red shrine and a path lined with stone lanterns mark the beginning of the temple enclosure, dense woods rising at one side of the stone lanterns lighting the path to the ancient Shinto sanctuary of Kasuga, and open glades stretching out at the other. A few shops and tea-booths break the line of lanterns on one side; the road is canopied with a great wistaria trellis, and a spring bubbles up in a stone basin in the midst of rock-work almost hidden in shade and moss. Weary pilgrims stop in this grateful shade to drink and to rest themselves at any hour of the day.
Passing the stall for the sacred white pony of the gods and some brightly-painted red wooden buildings, one enters a great court-yard with lanterns hanging from the eaves of the buildings and galleries surrounding its four sides, through whose doors are visible only a mirror and many-folded papers pendent from a straw rope. This symbolism suffices the believers, who kneel devoutly before it and toss in their coppers as a prelude to their prayers. Beside the shrine is the treasury of the temple. containing famous swords, the gold-mounted armor and helmets of great heroes, and lacquer-boxes holding precious writings and paintings. The queer saddles worn by the deer at the old matsuris are preserved, and yards of panoramic paintings on silk, depicting those splendid pageants of the old days, when the Emperor sent his representative down to witness the parade, and even the deer took part. The closed shrines, scattered through the forest, are quite as impressive as the holy of holies in this temple, and here the bareness and emptiness of Shinto worship strike the beholder. Each of the four little red chapels in a row has a fine bamboo curtain concealing the interior, and the middle chapel into which the pilgrims may look as they pay and pray, presents to their gaze only a screen painted with mythical beasts. A large covered pavilion in the court-yard was provided for the convenience of praying daimios in the time when piety was spectacular, and when the whole retinue of a great man assisted at his devotions. In another pavilion the towns-people burn beans and sow them abroad every winter to drive away evil spirits.
Every twentieth year the priests plant trees to furnish further timbers, but in Kasuga’s court are two famous old cryptomeria, now too sacred to be felled even for such purposes, and one, enmeshed in the coils of a wistaria, is a marvel even in Nara. Without the square, heavy-timbered, red gate-way of the court two avenues meet, both lined with rows and rows of tall stone lanterns covered with moss and overhung with the dense foliage of the meeting trees. One avenue leads to a smaller temple, and the other, dropping by a flight of stone steps, turns to the right and descends in a long slope, bordered with regiments of stone lanterns, to a large red torii. Thence it pursues its way, bordered still with massive lanterns, for three-quarters of a mile to the greater torii, marking the limit of the sacred grounds and the beginning of the village streets. Other lantern lines, paths, and staircases join it, and a bronze deer, sitting among rough, mossy bowlders under a dense canopy of trees and creepers, pours a stream of pure spring-water into a granite basin. There are more than three thousand of these stone lanterns along the Kasuga approaches, all of them gifts from daimios, nobles, and rich believers; and in days when the temples were rich and faith prosperous, they were lighted every night. At present it is only during great festivals that wicks and saucers of oil are set in all the lanterns, but some sixty points of flame flicker nightly in the dense shadows by the Kasuga gate, giving most weird effects.
From Kasuga gate the upper avenue of lanterns leads to the Wakamiya shrine, dedicated to the early gods of the Shinto religion. Here the old custom of the sacred dance is kept up, and a group of young priestesses is in waiting to repeat the measures danced by Suzume before the Sun Goddess's cave in prehistoric times. The little ministrants are all between the ages of nine and twelve, timid, gentle, and harmless as the deer that often stray in and watch them. Their dress is the old costume of the imperial court—a picturesque lower garment or 
IN THE KASUGA TEMPLE GROUNDS
One may have as many sacred dancers and as long a dance as he will pay for, and as soon as the money is received the two priests get into their ceremonial white gowns and high black hats, and, sitting before the ancient drums, chant, pound, and blow on doleful pipes an accompaniment for the little dancers. The sacred dance is solemn enough, and each dancer has a fan and a bunch of bells, from which hang long strips of bright-colored silks. They advance, retreat, glide to right and left, raise their fans, shake their sacred baby-rattles, and, with few changes in the measure, repeat the same figures and movements for a certain length of time. If one pays more money they repeat the same thing, and the priests can wail the endless accompaniment by the hour. To us the dance was simply a curious custom; but the devout old pilgrims, who have hoarded up their money for the journey for months and often years, feel it to be a solemn and sanctified service. It is pathetic to see their faces glowing and their eyes filled with tears at the fine spectacle that is so rare an event in their lives, and which crowns their summer pilgrimage to the old shrines of their faith.