Lafcadio Hearn's Japan (11 page)

The pond is inhabited also by many small fish; imori, or newts, with bright red bellies; and multitudes of little water-beetles, called maimaimushi, which pass their whole time in gyrating upon the surface of the water so rapidly that it is almost impossible to distinguish their shape clearly. A man who runs about aimlessly to and fro, under the influence of excitement, is compared to a maimaimushi. And there are some beautiful snails, with yellow stripes on their shells. Japanese children have a charm song which is supposed to have power to make the snail put out its horns:—

Daidaimushi,
²²
daidaimushi, tsuno chitto dashare!
Ame kaze fuku kara tsuno chitto dashare!
²³

The playground of the children of the better classes has always been the family garden, as that of the children of the poor is the temple court. It is in the garden that the little ones first learn something of the wonderful life of plants and the marvels of the insect-world; and there, also, they are first taught those pretty legends and songs about birds and flowers which form so charming a part of Japanese folk-lore. As the home training of the child is left mostly to the mother, lessons of kindness to animals are early inculcated; and the results are strongly marked in after life. It is true, Japanese children are not entirely free from that unconscious tendency to cruelty characteristic of children in all countries, as a survival of primitive instincts. But in this regard the great moral difference between the sexes is strongly marked from the earliest years. The tenderness of the woman-soul appears even in the child. Little Japanese girls who play with insects or small animals rarely hurt them, and generally set them free after they have afforded a reasonable amount of amusement. Little boys are not nearly so good, when out of sight of parents or guardians. But if seen doing anything cruel, a child is made to feel ashamed of the act, and hears the Buddhist warning, “Thy future birth will be unhappy, if thou dost cruel things.”

Somewhere among the rocks in the pond lives a small tortoise,— left in the garden, probably, by the previous tenants of the house. It is very pretty, but manages to remain invisible for weeks at a time. In popular mythology, the tortoise is the servant of the divinity Kompira;
²⁴
and if a pious fisherman finds a tortoise, he writes upon his back characters signifying “Servant of the Deity Kompira,” and then gives it a drink of saké and sets it free. It is supposed to be very fond of saké.

Some say that the land tortoise, or “stone tortoise,” only, is the servant of Kompira, and the sea tortoise, or turtle, the servant of the Dragon Empire beneath the sea. The turtle is said to have the power to create, with its breath, a cloud, a fog, or a magnificent palace. It figures in the beautiful old folk-tale of Urashima.
²⁵
All tortoises are supposed to live for a thousand years, wherefore one of the most frequent symbols of longevity in Japanese art is a tortoise. But the tortoise most commonly represented by native painters and metal-workers has a peculiar tail, or rather a multitude of small tails, extending behind it like the fringes of a straw rain-coat, mino, whence it is called minogamé. Now, some of the tortoises kept in the sacred tanks of Buddhist temples attain a prodigious age, and certain water-plants attach themselves to the creatures' shells and stream behind them when they walk. The myth of the minogamé is supposed to have had its origin in old artistic efforts to represent the appearance of such tortoises with confervæ fastened upon their shells.

X

Early in summer the frogs are surprisingly numerous, and, after dark, are noisy beyond description; but week by week their nightly clamor grows feebler, as their numbers diminish under the attacks of many enemies. A large family of snakes, some fully three feet long, make occasional inroads into the colony. The victims often utter piteous cries, which are promptly responded to, whenever possible, by some inmate of the house, and many a frog has been saved by my servant-girl, who, by a gentle tap with a bamboo rod, compels the snake to let its prey go. These snakes are beautiful swimmers. They make themselves quite free about the garden; but they come out only on hot days; None of my people would think of injuring or killing one of them. Indeed, in Izumo it is said that to kill a snake is unlucky. “If you kill a snake without provocation,” a peasant assured me, “you will afterwards find its head in the komebitsu [the box in which cooked rice is kept] when you take off the lid.”

But the snakes devour comparatively few frogs. Impudent kites and crows are their most implacable destroyers; and there is a very pretty weasel which lives under the kura (godown), and which does not hesitate to take either fish or frogs out of the pond, even when the lord of the manor is watching. There is also a cat which poaches in my preserves, a gaunt outlaw, a master thief, which I have made sundry vain attempts to reclaim from vagabondage. Partly because of the immorality of this cat, and partly because it happens to have a long tail, it has the evil reputation of being a nekomata, or goblin cat.

It is true that in Izumo some kittens are born with long tails; but it is very seldom that they are suffered to grow up with long tails. For the natural tendency of cats is to become goblins; and this tendency to metamorphosis can be checked only by cutting off their tails in kittenhood. Cats are magicians, tails or no tails, and have the power of making corpses dance. Cats are ungrateful. “Feed a dog for three days,” says a Japanese proverb, “and he will remember your kindness for three years; feed a cat for three years and she will forget your kindness in three days.” Cats are mischievous: they tear the mattings, and make holes in the sh
ō
ji, and sharpen their claws upon the pillars of tokonoma. Cats are under a curse: only the cat and the venomous serpent wept not at the death of Buddha; and these shall never enter into the bliss of the Gokuraku. For all these reasons, and others too numerous to relate, cats are not much loved in Izumo, and are compelled to pass the greater part of their lives out of doors.

XI

Not less than eleven varieties of butterflies have visited the neighborhood of the lotus pond within the past few days. The most common variety is snowy white. It is supposed to be especially attracted by the na, or rapeseed plant; and when little girls see it, they sing:—

Ch
ō
-ch
ō
, ch
ō
-ch
ō
, na no ha ni toware;
Na no ha ga iyenara, te ni toware.
²⁶

But the most interesting insects are certainly the semi (cicadæ). These Japanese tree crickets are much more extraordinary singers than even the wonderful cicadæ of the tropics; and they are much less tiresome, for there is a different species of semi, with a totally different song, for almost every month during the whole warm season. There are, I believe, seven kinds; but I have become familiar with only four. The first to be heard in my trees is the natsuzemi, or summer semi: it makes a sound like the Japanese monosyllable ji, beginning wheezily, slowly swelling into a crescendo shrill as the blowing of steam, and dying away in another wheeze. This
j-i-i-iiiiiiiiii
is so deafening that when two or three natsuzemi come close to the window I am obliged to make them go away. Happily the natsuzemi is soon succeeded by the minminzemi, a much finer musician, whose name is derived from its wonderful note. It is said “to chant like a Buddhist priest reciting the ky
ō
;” and certainly, upon hearing it the first time, one can scarcely believe that one is listening to a mere cicadæ. The minminzemi is followed, early in autumn, by a beautiful green semi, the higurashi, which makes a singularly clear sound, like the rapid ringing of a small bell,—
kana-kana-kana-kana-kana
. But the most astonishing visitor of all comes still later, the tsuku-tsukub
ō
shi.
²⁷
I fancy this creature can have no rival in the whole world of cicadæ: its music is exactly like the song of a bird. Its name, like that of the minminzemi, is onomatopoetic; but in Izumo the sounds of its chant are given thus:—

Tsuku-tsuku uisu,
²⁸
Tsuku-tsuki uisu,
Tsuku-tsuku-uisu;—

Ui-
ō
su,
Ui-
ō
su,
Ui-
ō
su,
Ui-
ō
s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-su.

However, the semi are not the only musicians of the garden. Two remarkable creatures aid their orchestra. The first is a beautiful bright green grasshopper, known to the Japanese by the curious name of hotoke-no-uma, or “the horse of the dead.” This insect's head really bears some resemblance in shape to the head of a horse,—hence the fancy. It is a queerly familiar creature, allowing itself to be taken in the hand without struggling, and generally making itself quite at home in the house, which it often enters. It makes a very thin sound, which the Japanese write as a repetition of the syllables
jun-ta;
and the name junta is sometimes given to the grasshopper itself. The other insect is also a green grasshopper, somewhat larger, and much shyer: it is called gisu,
²⁹
on account of its chant:—

Chon,
Gisu;
Chon,
Gisu;
Chon,
Gisu;
Chon . . . (ad libitum).

Several lovely species of dragon-flies
(tomb
ō
)
hover about the pondlet on hot bright days. One variety—the most beautiful creature of the kind I ever saw, gleaming with metallic colors indescribable, and spectrally slender—is called Tenshi-tomb
ō
, “the Emperor's dragon-fly.” There is another, the largest of Japanese dragon-flies, but somewhat rare, which is much sought after by children as a plaything. Of this species it is said that there are many more males than females; and what I can vouch for as true is that, if you catch a female, the male can be almost immediately attracted by exposing the captive. Boys, accordingly, try to secure a female, and when one is captured they tie it with a thread to some branch, and sing a curious little song, of which these are the original words:—

Konna
³⁰
dansh
ō
Korai
ō
Adzuma no met
ō
ni makete
Nigeru wa haji dewa naikai?

Which signifies, “Thou, the male, King of Korea, dost thou not feel shame to flee away from the Queen of the East?” (This taunt is an allusion to the story of the conquest of Korea by the Empress Jin-g
ō
.) And the male comes invariably, and is also caught. In Izumo the first seven words of the original song have been corrupted into
“konna unjo Korai abura no mito;”
and the name of the male dragon-fly, unjo, and that of the female, mito, are derived from two words of the corrupted version.

XII

Of warm nights all sorts of unbidden guests invade the house in multitudes. Two varieties of mosquitoes do their utmost to make life unpleasant, and these have learned the wisdom of not approaching a lamp too closely; but hosts of curious and harmless things cannot be prevented from seeking their death in the flame. The most numerous victims of all, which come thick as a shower of rain, are called Sanemori. At least they are so called in Issue, where they do much damage to growing rice.

Now the name Sanemori is an illustrious one, that of a famous warrior of old times belonging to the Genji clan. There is a legend that while he was fighting with an enemy on horseback his own steed slipped and fell in a rice-field, and he was consequently overpowered and slain by his antagonist. He became a rice-devouring insect, which is still respectfully called, by the peasantry of Izumo, Sanemori-an. They light fires, on certain summer nights, in the rice-fields, to attract the insect, and beat gongs and sound bamboo flutes, chanting the while, “O-Sanemori, augustly deign to come hither!” A kan-nushi performs a religious rite, and a straw figure representing a horse and rider is then either burned or thrown into a neighboring river or canal. By this ceremony it is believed that the fields are cleared of the insect.

This tiny creature is almost exactly the size and color of a rice-husk. The legend concerning it may have arisen from the fact that its body, together with the wings, bears some resemblance to the helmet of a Japanese warrior.
³¹

Next in number among the victims of fire are the moths, some of which are very strange and beautiful. The most remarkable is an enormous creature popularly called okori-ch
ō
ch
ō
, or the “ague moth,” because there is a superstitious belief that it brings intermittent fever into any house it enters. It has a body quite as heavy and almost as powerful as that of the largest humming-bird, and its struggles, when caught in the hand, surprise by their force. It makes a very loud whirring sound while flying. The wings of one which I examined measured, outspread, five inches from tip to tip, yet seemed small in proportion to the heavy body. They were richly mottled with dusky browns and silver grays of various tones.

Many flying night-comers, however, avoid the lamp. Most fantastic of all visitors is the t
ō
r
ō
or kamakiri, called in Izumo kamakaké, a bright green praying mantis, extremely feared by children for its capacity to bite. It is very large. I have seen specimens over six inches long. The eyes of the kamakaké are a brilliant black at night, but by day they appear grass-colored, like the rest of the body. The mantis is very intelligent and surprisingly aggressive. I saw one attacked by a vigorous frog easily put its enemy to flight. It fell a prey subsequently to other inhabitants of the pond, but it required the combined efforts of several frogs to vanquish the monstrous insect, and even then the battle was decided only when the kamakaké had been dragged into the water.