Lafcadio Hearn's Japan (26 page)

Some grim old samurai show their feelings about the occurrence in a less gentle manner. The high official intrusted with the safety of the Czarevitch at Otsu receives, by express, a fine sword and a stern letter bidding him prove his manhood and his regret like a samurai, by performing harakiri immediately.

For this people, like its own Shint
ō
gods, has various souls: it has its Nigi-mi-tama and its Ara-mi-tama, its Gentle and its Rough Spirit. The Gentle Spirit seeks only to make reparation; but the Rough Spirit demands expiation. And now through the darkening atmosphere of the popular life, everywhere is felt the strange thrilling of these opposing impulses, as of two electricities.

Far away in Kanagawa, in the dwelling of a wealthy family, there is a young girl, a serving-maid, named Yuko, a samurai name of other days, signifying “valiant.”

Forty millions are sorrowing, but she more than all the rest. How and why no Western mind could fully know. Her being is ruled by emotions and by impulses of which we can guess the nature only in the vaguest possible way. Something of the soul of a good Japanese girl we can know. Love is there—potentially, very deep and still. Innocence also, insusceptible of taint—that whose Buddhist symbol is the lotus-flower. Sensitiveness likewise, delicate as the earliest snow of plum-blossoms. Fine scorn of death is there—her samurai inheritance—hidden under a gentleness soft as music. Religion is there, very real and very simple,—a faith of the heart, holding the Buddhas and the Gods for friends, and unafraid to ask them for anything of which Japanese courtesy allows the asking. But these, and many other feelings, are supremely dominated by one emotion impossible to express in any Western tongue—something for which the word “loyalty” were an utterly dead rendering, something akin rather to that which we call mystical exaltation: a sense of uttermost reverence and devotion to the Tenshi-Sama. Now this is much more than any individual feeling. It is the moral power and will undying of a ghostly multitude whose procession stretches back out of her life into the absolute night of forgotten time. She herself is but a spirit-chamber, haunted by a past utterly unlike our own,—a past in which, through centuries uncounted, all lived and felt and thought as one, in ways which never were as our ways.

“Tenshi-Sama go-shimpai.”
A burning shock of desire to give was the instant response of the girl's heart—desire overpowering, yet hopeless, since she owned nothing, unless the veriest trifle saved from her wages. But the longing remains, leaves her no rest. In the night she thinks; asks herself questions which the dead answer for her. “What can I give that the sorrow of the August may cease?” “Thyself,” respond voices without sound. “But can I?” she queries wonderingly. “Thou hast no living parent,” they reply; “neither does it belong to thee to make the offerings. Be thou our sacrifice. To give life for the August One is the highest duty, the highest joy.” “And in what place?” she asks. “Saiky
ō
,” answer the silent voices; “in the gateway of those who by ancient custom should have died.”

Dawn breaks; and Yuko rises to make obeisance to the sun. She fulfills her first morning duties; she requests and obtains leave of absence. Then she puts on her prettiest robe, her brightest girdle, her whitest tabi, that she may look worthy to give her life for the Tenshi-Sama. And in another hour she is journeying to Ky
ō
to. From the train window she watches the gliding of the landscapes. Very sweet the day is;—all distances, blue-toned with drowsy vapors of spring, are good to look upon. She sees the loveliness of the land as her fathers saw it, but as no Western eyes can see it, save in the weird, queer charm of the old Japanese picture-books. She feels the delight of life, but dreams not at all of the possible future preciousness of that life for herself. No sorrow follows the thought that after her passing the world will remain as beautiful as before. No Buddhist melancholy weighs upon her: she trusts herself utterly to the ancient gods. They smile upon her from the dusk of their holy groves, from their immemorial shrines upon the backward fleeing hills. And one, perhaps, is with her: he who makes the grave seem fairer than the palace to those who fear not; he whom the people call Shinigami, the lord of death-desire. For her the future holds no blackness. Always she will see the rising of the holy Sun above the peaks, the smile of the Lady-Moon upon the waters, the eternal magic of the Seasons. She will haunt the places of beauty, beyond the folding of the mists, in the sleep of the cedar-shadows, through circling of innumerable years. She will know a subtler life, in the faint winds that stir the snow of the flowers of the cherry, in the laughter of playing waters, in every happy whisper of the vast green silences. But first she will greet her kindred, somewhere in shadowy halls awaiting her coming to say to her:
“Thou hast done well,—like a daughter of samurai. Enter, child! because of thee tonight we sup with the Gods!”

It is daylight when the girl reaches Ky
ō
to. She finds a lodging, and seeks the house of a skillful female hairdresser.

“Please to make it very sharp,” says Yuko, giving the kamiyui a very small razor (article indispensable of a lady's toilet); “and I shall wait here till it is ready.” She unfolds a freshly bought newspaper and looks for the latest news from the capital; while the shop-folk gaze curiously, wondering at the serious pretty manner which forbids familiarity. Her face is placid like a child's; but old ghosts stir restlessly in her heart, as she reads again of the Imperial sorrow. “I also wish it were the hour,” is her answering thought. “But we must wait.” At last she receives the tiny blade in faultless order, pays the trifle asked, and returns to her inn.

There she writes two letters: a farewell to her brother, an irreproachable appeal to the high officials of the City of Emperors, praying that the Tenshi-Sama may be petitioned to cease from sorrowing, seeing that a young life, even though unworthy, has been given in voluntary expiation of the wrong.

When she goes out again it is that hour of heaviest darkness which precedes the dawn; and there is a silence as of cemeteries. Few and faint are the lamps; strangely loud the sound of her little geta. Only the stars look upon her.

Soon the deep gate of the Government edifice is before her. Into the hollow shadow she slips, whispers a prayer, and kneels. Then, according to ancient rule, she takes off her long under-girdle of strong soft silk, and with it binds her robes tightly about her, making the knot just above her knees. For no matter what might happen in the instant of blind agony, the daughter of a samurai must be found in death with limbs decently composed. And then, with steady precision, she makes in her throat a gash, out of which the blood leaps in a pulsing jet. A samurai girl does not blunder in these matters: she knows the place of the arteries and the veins.

At sunrise the police find her, quite cold, and the two letters, and a poor little purse containing five yen and a few sen (enough, she had hoped, for her burial); and they take her and all her small belongings away.

Then by lightning the story is told at once to a hundred cities. The great newspapers of the capital receive it; and cynical journalists imagine vain things, and try to discover common motives for that sacrifice: a secret shame, a family sorrow, some disappointed love. But no; in all her simple life there had been nothing hidden, nothing weak, nothing unworthy; the bud of the lotus unfolded were less virgin. So the cynics write about her only noble things, befitting the daughter of a samurai.

The Son of Heaven hears, and knows how his people love him, and augustly ceases to mourn.

The Ministers hear, and whisper to one another, within the shadow of the Throne: “All else will change; but the heart of the nation will not change.”

Nevertheless, for high reasons of State, the State pretends not to know.

On a Bridge

My old kurumaya, Heishichi, was taking me to a famous temple in the neighborhood of Kumamoto.

We came to a humped and venerable bridge over the Shirakawa; and I told Heishichi to halt on the bridge, so that I could enjoy the view for a moment. Under the summer sky, and steeped in a flood of sunshine electrically white, the colors of the land seemed almost unreally beautiful. Below us the shallow river laughed and gurgled over its bed of grey stones, overshadowed by verdure of a hundred tints. Before us the reddish white road alternately vanished and reappeared as it wound away, through grove or hamlet, toward the high blue ring of peaks encircling the vast Plain of Higo. Behind us lay Kumamoto,—a far bluish confusion of myriad roofs;—only the fine grey lines of its castle showing sharp against the green of further wooded hills. . . . Seen from within, Kumamoto is a shabby place; but seen as I beheld it that summer day, it is a fairy-city, built out of mist and dreams. . . .

“Twenty-two years ago,” said Heishichi, wiping his forehead—“no, twenty-three years ago,—I stood here, and saw the city burn.”

“At night?” I queried.

“No,” said the old man, “it was in the afternoon—a wet day. . . . They were fighting; and the city was on fire.”

“Who were fighting?”

“The soldiers in the castle were fighting with the Satsuma men. We dug holes in the ground and sat in them, to escape the balls. The Satsuma men had cannons on the hill; and the soldiers in the castle were shooting at them over our heads. The whole city was burned.”

“But how did you happen to be here?”

“I ran away. I ran as far as this bridge,—all by myself. I thought that I could get to my brother's farm—about seven miles from here. But they stopped me.”

“Who stopped you?”

“Satsuma men,—I don't know who they were. As I got to the bridge I saw three peasants—I thought they were peasants—leaning over the railing: men wearing big straw hats and straw rain-cloaks and straw sandals. I spoke to them politely; and one of them turned his head round, and said to me, ‘You stay here!' That was all he said: the others did not say anything. Then I saw that they were not peasants; and I was afraid.”

“How did you know that they were not peasants?”

“They had long swords hidden under their rain-cloaks,—very long swords. They were very tall men. They leaned over the bridge, looking down into the river. I stood beside them,—just there, by the third post to the left, and did as they did. I knew that they would kill me if I moved from there. None of them spoke. And we four stood leaning over the railing for a long time.”

“How long?”

“I do not know exactly—it must have been a long time. I saw the city burning. All that while none of the men spoke to me or looked at me: they kept their eyes upon the water. Then I heard a horse; and I saw a cavalry officer coming at a trot,—looking all about him as he came. . . .”

“From the city?”

“Yes,—along that road behind you. . . . The three men watched him from under their big straw hats; but they did not turn their heads;—they pretended to be looking down into the river. But, the moment that the horse got on the bridge, the three men turned and leaped;—and one caught the horse's bridle; and another gripped the officer's arm; and the third cut off his head—all in a moment. . . .”

“The officer's head?”

“Yes—he did not even have time to shout before his head was off. . . . I never saw anything done so quickly. Not one of the three men uttered a word.”

“And then?”

“Then they pitched the body over the railing into the river; and one of them struck the horse,—hard; and the horse ran away. . . .”

“Back to the town?”

“No—the horse was driven straight out over the bridge, into the country. . . . The head was not thrown into the river: one of the Satsuma men kept it—under his straw cloak. . . . Then all of us leaned over the railing, as before,—looking down. My knees were shaking. The three samurai did not speak a single word. I could not even hear them breathing. I was afraid to look at their faces;—I kept looking down into the river. . . . After a little while I heard another horse,—and my heart jumped so that I felt sick;—and I looked up, and saw a cavalry-soldier coming along the road, riding very fast. No one stirred till he was on the bridge: then—in one second—his head was off! The body was thrown into the river, and the horse driven away—exactly as before. Three men were killed like that. Then the samurai left the bridge.”