‘Do not fear, my son,’ said the Bodhisattva, guiding: ‘danger there is none, though the way be grim.’
Under the stars they climbed – fast, fast – mounting by help of power superhuman. High zones of mist they passed; and they saw below them, ever widening as they climbed, a soundless flood of cloud, like the tide of a milky sea.
Hour after hour they climbed; and forms invisible yielded to their tread with dull soft crashings; and faint cold fires lighted and died at every breaking.
And once the pilgrim-youth laid hand on a something smooth that was not stone – and lifted it – and dimly saw the cheekless gibe of death.
‘Linger not thus, my son!’ urged the voice of the teacher; ‘the summit that we must gain is very far away!’
On through the dark they climbed – and felt continually beneath them the soft strange breakings – and saw the icy fires worm and die – till the rim of the night turned grey, and the stars began to fail, and the east began to bloom.
Yet still they climbed – fast, fast – mounting by help of power superhuman. About them now was frigidness of death – and silence tremendous … A gold flame kindled in the east.
Then first to the pilgrim’s gaze the steeps revealed their nakedness; and a trembling seized him – and a ghastly fear. For there was not any ground – neither beneath him nor about him nor above him – but a heaping only, monstrous and measureless, of skulls and fragments of skulls and dust of bone – with a shimmer of shed teeth strown through the drift of it, like the shimmer of scrags of shell in the wrack of a tide.
‘Do not fear, my son!’ cried the voice of the Bodhisattva; ‘only the strong of heart can win to the place of the Vision!’
Behind them the world had vanished. Nothing remained but the clouds beneath, and the sky above, and the heaping of skulls between – upslanting out of sight.
Then the sun climbed with the climbers; and there was no warmth in the light of him, but coldness sharp as a sword. And the horror of stupendous height, and the nightmare of stupendous depth, and the terror of silence, ever grew and grew, and weighed upon the pilgrim, and held his feet – so that suddenly all power departed from him, and he moaned like a sleeper in dreams.
‘Hasten, hasten, my son!’ cried the Bodhisattva: ‘the day is brief, and the summit is very far away.’
But the pilgrim shrieked,
‘I fear! I fear unspeakably! – and the power has departed from me!’
‘The power will return, my son,’ made answer the Bodhisattva … ‘Look now below you and above you and about you, and tell me what you see.’
‘I cannot,’ cried the pilgrim, trembling and clinging; ‘I dare not look beneath! Before me and about me there is nothing but skulls of men.’
‘And yet, my son,’ said the Bodhisattva, laughing softly – ‘and yet you do not know of what this mountain is made.’
The other, shuddering, repeated:
‘I fear! – unutterably I fear! … there is nothing but skulls of men!’
‘A mountain of skulls it is,’ responded the Bodhisattva. ‘But know, my son, that all of them ARE YOUR OWN! Each has at some time been the nest of your dreams and delusions and desires. Not even one of them is the skull of any other being. All – all without exception – have been yours, in the billions of your former lives.’
A Passional Karma
One of the never-failing attractions of the Tōkyō stage is the performance, by the famous Kikugorō1 and his company, of the Botan-Dōrō, or ‘Peony-Lantern’.2 This weird play, of which the scenes are laid in the middle of the last century, is the dramatization of a romance by the novelist Enchō,3 written in colloquial Japanese, and purely Japanese in local color, though inspired by a Chinese tale. I went to see the play; and Kikugorō made me familiar with a new variety of the pleasure of fear.
‘Why not give English readers the ghostly part of the story?’ – asked a friend who guides me betimes through the mazes of Eastern philosophy. ‘It would serve to explain some popular ideas of the supernatural which Western people know very little about. And I could help you with the translation.’
I gladly accepted the suggestion; and we composed the following summary of the more extraordinary portion of Enchō’s romance. Here and there we found it necessary to condense the original narrative; and we tried to keep close to the text only in the conversational passages – some of which happen to possess a particular quality of psychological interest.
* * *
This is the story of the Ghosts in the Romance of the Peony-Lantern:
I
There once lived in the district of Ushigomé, in Yedo, a hatamotofn1 called Iijima Heizayémon, whose only daughter, Tsuyu, was beautiful as her name, which signifies ‘Morning Dew’. Iijima took a second wife when his daughter was about sixteen; and, finding that O-Tsuyu4 could not be happy with her mother-in-law [sic], he had a pretty villa built for the girl at Yanagijima, as a separate residence, and gave her an excellent maidservant, called O-Yoné, to wait upon her.
O-Tsuyu lived happily enough in her new home until one day when the family physician, Yamamoto Shijō, paid her a visit in company with a young samurai named Hagiwara Shinzaburō, who resided in the Nedzu quarter. Shinzaburō was an unusually handsome lad, and very gentle; and the two young people fell in love with each other at sight. Even before the brief visit was over, they contrived – unheard by the old doctor – to pledge themselves to each other for life. And, at parting, O-Tsuyu whispered to the youth, ‘Remember! if you do not come to see me again, I shall certainly die!’
Shinzaburō never forgot those words; and he was only too eager to see more of O-Tsuyu. But etiquette forbade him to make the visit alone: he was obliged to wait for some other chance to accompany the doctor, who had promised to take him to the villa a second time. Unfortunately the old man did not keep this promise. He had perceived the sudden affection of O-Tsuyu; and he feared that her father would hold him responsible for any serious results. Iijima Heizayémon had a reputation for cutting off heads. And the more Shijō thought about the possible consequences of his introduction of Shinzaburō at the Iijima villa, the more he became afraid. Therefore he purposely abstained from calling upon his young friend.
Months passed; and O-Tsuyu, little imagining the true cause of Shinzaburō’s neglect, believed that her love had been scorned. Then she pined away, and died. Soon afterwards, the faithful servant O-Yoné also died, through grief at the loss of her mistress; and the two were buried side by side in the cemetery of Shin-Banzui-In – a temple which still stands in the neighborhood of Dango-Zaka, where the famous chrysanthemum-shows are yearly held.
II
Shinzaburō knew nothing of what had happened; but his disappointment and his anxiety had resulted in a prolonged illness. He was slowly recovering, but still very weak, when he unexpectedly received another visit from Yamamoto Shijō. The old man made a number of plausible excuses for his apparent neglect. Shinzaburō said to him:
‘I have been sick ever since the beginning of spring; even now I cannot eat anything … Was it not rather unkind of you never to call? I thought that we were to make another visit together to the house of the Lady Iijima; and I wanted to take to her some little present as a return for our kind reception. Of course I could not go by myself.’
Shijō gravely responded, ‘I am very sorry to tell you that the young lady is dead.’
‘Dead!’ repeated Shinzaburō, turning white – ‘did you say that she is dead?’
The doctor remained silent for a moment, as if collecting himself: then he resumed, in the quick light tone of a man resolved not to take trouble seriously:
‘My great mistake was in having introduced you to her; for it seems that she fell in love with you at once. I am afraid that you must have said something to encourage this affection – when you were in that little room together. At all events, I saw how she felt towards you; and then I became uneasy – fearing that her father might come to hear of the matter, and lay the
whole blame upon me. So – to be quite frank with you – I decided that it would be better not to call upon you; and I purposely stayed away for a long time. But, only a few days ago, happening to visit Iijima’s house, I heard, to my great surprise, that his daughter had died, and that her servant O-Yoné had also died. Then, remembering all that had taken place, I knew that the young lady must have died of love for you … [Laughing] Ah, you are really a sinful fellow! Yes, you are! [Laughing] Isn’t it a sin to have been born so handsome that the girls die for love of you?fn2 … [Seriously] Well, we must leave the dead to the dead. It is no use to talk further about the matter; all that you now can do for her is to repeat the Nembutsu.fn3 … Good-bye.’
And the old man retired hastily – anxious to avoid further converse about the painful event for which he felt himself to have been unwittingly responsible.
III
Shinzaburō long remained stupefied with grief by the news of O-Tsuyu’s death. But as soon as he found himself again able to think clearly, he inscribed the dead girl’s name upon a mortuary tablet, and placed the tablet in the Buddhist shrine of his house, and set offerings before it, and recited prayers. Every day thereafter he presented offerings, and repeated the Nembutsu; and the memory of O-Tsuyu was never absent from his thought.
Nothing occurred to change the monotony of his solitude before the time of the Bon – the great Festival of the Dead – which begins upon the thirteenth day of the seventh month. Then he decorated his house, and prepared everything for the festival; hanging out the lanterns that guide the returning spirits, and setting the food of ghosts on the shōryōdana, or Shelf of Souls. And on the first evening of the Bon, after sundown, he kindled a small lamp before the tablet of O-Tsuyu, and lighted the lanterns.
The night was clear, with a great moon – and windless, and very warm. Shinzaburō sought the coolness of his veranda. Clad only in a light summer-robe, he sat there thinking, dreaming, sorrowing; sometimes fanning himself; sometimes making a little smoke to drive the mosquitoes away. Everything was quiet. It was a lonesome neighborhood, and there were few passers-by. He could hear only the soft rushing of a neighboring stream, and the shrilling of night-insects.
But all at once this stillness was broken by a sound of women’s getafn4 approaching – kara-kon, kara-kon; and the sound drew nearer and nearer, quickly, till it reached the live-hedge surrounding the garden. Then Shinzaburō, feeling curious, stood on tiptoe, so as to look over the hedge; and he saw two women passing. One, who was carrying a beautiful lantern decorated with peony-flowers,fn5 appeared to be a servant; the other was a slender girl of about seventeen, wearing a long-sleeved robe embroidered with designs of autumn-blossoms. Almost at the same instant both women turned their faces toward Shinzaburō; and to his utter astonishment, he recognized O-Tsuyu and her servant O-Yoné.
They stopped immediately; and the girl cried out – ‘Oh, how strange! … Hagiwara Sama!’5
Shinzaburō simultaneously called to the maid:
‘O-Yoné! Ah, you are O-Yoné! – I remember you very well.’
‘Hagiwara Sama!’ exclaimed O-Yoné in a tone of supreme amazement. ‘Never could I have believed it possible! … Sir, we were told that you had died.’
‘How extraordinary!’ cried Shinzaburō. ‘Why, I was told that both of you were dead!’
‘Ah, what a hateful story!’ returned O-Yoné. ‘Why repeat such unlucky words? … Who told you?’
‘Please to come in,’ said Shinzaburō; ‘here we can talk better. The garden-gate is open.’
So they entered, and exchanged greeting; and when Shinzaburō had made them comfortable, he said:
‘I trust that you will pardon my discourtesy in not having called upon you for so long a time. But Shijō, the doctor, about a month ago, told me that you had both died.’
‘So it was he who told you?’ exclaimed O-Yoné. ‘It was very wicked of him to say such a thing. Well, it was also Shijō who told us that you were dead. I think that he wanted to deceive you – which was not a difficult thing to do, because you are so confiding and trustful. Possibly my mistress betrayed her liking for you in some words which found their way to her father’s ears; and, in that case, O-Kuni – the new wife – might have planned to make the doctor tell you that we were dead, so as to bring about a separation. Anyhow, when my mistress heard that you had died, she wanted to cut off her hair immediately, and to become a nun. But I was able to prevent her from cutting off her hair; and I persuaded her at last to become a nun only in her heart. Afterwards her father wished her to marry a certain young man; and she refused. Then there was a great deal of trouble – chiefly caused by O-Kuni; and we went away from the villa, and found a very small house in Yanaka-no-Sasaki. There we are now just barely able to live, by doing a little private work … My mistress has been constantly repeating the Nembutsu for your sake. Today, being the first day of the Bon, we went to visit the temples; and we were on our way home – thus late – when this strange meeting happened.’
‘Oh, how extraordinary!’ cried Shinzaburō. ‘Can it be true? – or is it only a dream? Here I, too, have been constantly reciting the Nembutsu before a tablet with her name upon it! Look!’ And he showed them O-Tsuyu’s tablet in its place upon the Shelf of Souls.
‘We are more than grateful for your kind remembrance,’ returned O-Yoné, smiling … ‘Now as for my mistress’ – she continued, turning towards O-Tsuyu, who had all the while remained demure and silent, half-hiding her face with her sleeve – ‘as for my mistress, she actually says that she would not mind being disowned by her father for the time of seven existences,fn6 or even being killed by him, for your sake! … Come! will you not allow her to stay here to-night?’
Shinzaburō turned pale for joy. He answered in a voice trembling with emotion:
‘Please remain; but do not speak loud – because there is a troublesome fellow living close by – a ninsomifn7 called Hakuōdō Yusai, who tells people’s fortunes by looking at their faces. He is inclined to be curious; and it is better that he should not know.’
The two women remained that night in the house of the young samurai, and returned to their own home a little before daybreak. And after that night they came every night for seven nights – whether the weather were foul or fair – always at the same hour. And Shinzaburō became more and more attached to the girl; and the twain were fettered, each to each, by that bond of illusion which is stronger than bands of iron.
IV
Now there was a man called Tomozō, who lived in a small cottage adjoining Shinzaburō’s residence. Tomozō and his wife O-Miné were both employed by Shinzaburō as servants. Both seemed to be devoted to their young master; and by his help they were able to live in comparative comfort.
One night, at a very late hour, Tomozō heard the voice of a woman in his master’s apartment; and this made him uneasy. He feared that Shinzaburō, being very gentle and affectionate, might be made the dupe of some cunning wanton – in which event the domestics would be the first to suffer. He therefore resolved to watch; and on the following night he stole on tiptoe to Shinzaburō’s dwelling, and looked through a chink in one of the sliding shutters. By the glow of a night-lantern within the sleeping-room, he was able to perceive that his master and a strange woman were talking together under the mosquito-net. At first he could not see the woman distinctly. Her back was turned to him; he only observed that she was very slim, and that she appeared to be very young – judging from the fashion of her dress and hair.fn8 Putting his ear to the chink, he could hear the conversation plainly. The woman said:
‘And if I should be disowned by my father, would you then let me come and live with you?’
Shinzaburō answered:
‘Most assuredly I would – nay, I should be glad of the chance. But there is no reason to fear that you will ever be disowned by your father; for you are his only daughter, and he loves you very much. What I do fear is that some day we shall be cruelly separated.’
She responded softly
:
‘Never, never could I even think of accepting any other man for my husband. Even if our secret were to become known, and my father were to kill me for what I have done, still – after death itself – I could never cease to think of you. And I am now quite sure that you yourself would not be able to live very long without me.’ … Then clinging closely to him, with her lips at his neck, she caressed him; and he returned her caresses.
Tomozō wondered as he listened – because the language of the woman was not the language of a common woman, but the language of a lady of rank.fn9 Then he determined at all hazards to get one glimpse of her face; and he crept round the house, backwards and forwards, peering through every crack and chink. And at last he was able to see; but therewith an icy trembling seized him; and the hair of his head stood up.
For the face was the face of a woman long dead – and the fingers caressing were fingers of naked bone – and of the body below the waist there was not anything: it melted off into thinnest trailing shadow. Where the eyes of the lover deluded saw youth and grace and beauty, there appeared to the eyes of the watcher horror only, and the emptiness of death. Simultaneously another woman’s figure, and a weirder, rose up from within the chamber, and swiftly made toward the watcher, as if discerning his presence. Then, in uttermost terror, he fled to the dwelling of Hakuōdō Yusai, and, knocking frantically at the doors, succeeded in arousing him.
V
Hakuōdō Yusai, the ninsomi, was a very old man; but in his time he had travelled much, and he had heard and seen so many things that he could not be easily surprised. Yet the story of the terrified Tomozō both alarmed and amazed him. He had read in ancient Chinese books of love between the living and the dead; but he had never believed it possible. Now, however, he felt convinced that the statement of Tomozō was not a falsehood, and that something very strange was really going on in the house of Hagiwara. Should the truth prove to be what Tomozō imagined, then the young samurai was a doomed man.
Japanese Ghost Stories Page 8