The Monto Temples and the Daimonji
ing tapers and bowls of food are set before the little household shrines. Alike in the backs of shops, in the humblest abodes, and in villas and noble yashikis, lights, offerings, and fragrant incense welcome back the dead. In the cemeteries the bamboo sticks at each gravestone are daily filled with fresh flowers, and on the night of their return the spirits are guided to their resting-places by the light of lanterns and oil-tapers burning throughout these cities of their silent habitation. This beautiful custom, sanctified by the observance of many centuries, is tinged with little sadness, and the last night of the Festival of the Dead is the great Festival of Lanterns, the most brilliant of the long, gay, fantastic Kioto summer.
We were kindly invited by a Japanese gentleman to witness the illumination from the upper story of a pagoda-like school-house, that rose high above all the roofs in the heart of the city. Two hundred children were chirping and chattering in the open-sided class-rooms of the lower floors, all eager to see the Daimonji, the great signal-fires on the hills. All sat on their heels in orderly rows, and silently bobbed to the mats at sight of us, going on afterwards with their merry babble, which all through the summer evening floated up to us in happy chorus.
As dusk gave way to dark, we beheld a glimmer of light like a waving torch on the side of the mountain that stands like a tower beyond Maruyama. Another and another flash shone out against the dark face of Daimonji-yama’s long slope, until the flames joined and lines of fire ran upward, touched, crossed, and finally blazed out in the gigantic written character Dai, in outline not unlike a capital A. Next a junk appeared in fiery outlines on the slope north of the city; another mystic character glowed on the next hill; and to the north-west a smaller Dai showed, like the reflection of
243
