“After a little time the calling ceased; and I heard only the sea and the wind and the rain. It was so dark that one could see the waves only at the moment they went by,—high black shadows,—each with a great pull. By the pull of them I guessed how to direct myself. The rain kept them from breaking much;—had it not been for the rain, no man could have lived long in such a sea. And hour after hour the wind became worse, and the swells grew higher;—and I prayed for help to Jizō-Sama of Ogawa all that night. . . . Lights?—yes, there were lights in the water, but not many: the large kind, that shine like candles. . . .
“At dawn the sea looked ugly,—a muddy green; and the waves were like hills; and the wind was terrible. Rain and spray made a fog over the water; and there was no horizon. But even if there had been land in sight I could have done nothing except try to keep afloat. I felt hungry,—very hungry; and the pain of the hunger soon became hard to bear. All that day l went up and down with the great waves,— drifting under the wind and the rain; and there was no sign of land. I did not know where I was going: under that sky one could not tell east from west.
“After dark the wind lulled; but the rain still poured, and all was black. The pain of the hunger passed; but I felt weak,—so weak that I thought I must go under. Then I heard the voices calling me,—just as they had called me the night before:— ‘Kocchi é koi!—kocchi é koi!’
. . . And, all at once, I saw the four men of the Fukuju Maru, —not swimming, but standing by me,—Terao Kankichi, and Terao Minosuké, and Washino Otokichi, and the man Matsushirō. All looked at me with angry faces; and the boy Minosuké cried out, as in reproach:—‘Here I have to fix the helm; and you, Jinsuké, do nothing but sleep!’ Then Terao Kankichi—the one to whom I had offered the plank—bent over me with a kakémono in his hands, and half-unrolled it, and said:—‘Jinyō! here I have a picture of Amida Buddha—see! Now indeed you must repeat the Nembutsu! ’ He spoke strangely, in a way that made me afraid: I looked at the figure of the Buddha; and I repeated the prayer in great fear,— Namu Amida Butsu!—namu Amida Butsu! ’ 4 In the same moment a pain, like the pain of fire, stung through my thighs and hips; and I found that I had rolled off the plank into the sea. The pain had been caused by a great katsuo no-éboshi. . . . You never saw a katsuo-no-éboshi? It is a jelly-fish shaped like the éboshi, or cap, of a Shinto priest; and we call it the katsuo-no-éboshi because the katsuo -fish [bonito] feed upon it. When that thing appears anywhere, the fishermen expect to catch many katsuo . The body is clear like glass; but underneath there is a kind of purple fringe, and long purple strings; and when those strings touch you, the pain is very great, and lasts for a long time. . . . That pain revived me; if I had not been stung I might never have awakened. I got on the plank again, and prayed to Jizō-Sama of Ogawa, and to Kompira-Sama; and I was able to keep awake until morning.
“Before daylight the rain stopped, and the sky began to clear; for I could see some stars. At dawn I got drowsy again; and I was awakened by a blow on the head. A large sea-bird had struck me. The sun was rising behind clouds; and the waves had become gentle. Presently a small brown bird flew by my face,—a coast-bird (I do not know its real name); and I thought that there must be land in sight. I looked behind me, and I saw mountains. I did not recognize the shapes of them: they were blue,—seemed to be nine or ten ri distant. I made up my mind to paddle towards them,—though I had little hope of getting to shore. I was feeling hungry again,—terribly hungry!
“I paddled towards the mountains, hour after hour. Once more I fell asleep; and once again a sea-bird struck me. All day I paddled. Towards evening I could tell, from the look of the mountains, that I was approaching them; but I knew that it would take me two days to reach the shore. I had almost ceased to hope when I caught sight of a ship,—a big junk. She was sailing towards me; but I saw that, unless I could swim faster, she would pass me at a great distance. It was my last chance: so I dropped the plank, and swam as fast as I could. I did get within about two chō of her: then I shouted. But I could see nobody on deck; and I got no answer. In another minute she had passed beyond me. The sun was setting; and I despaired. All of a sudden a man came on deck, and shouted to me:—‘Don’t try to swim! don’t tire yourself!—we are going to send a boat!’ I saw the sail lowered at the same time; and I felt so glad that new strength seemed to come to me;—I swam on fast. Then the junk dropped a little boat; and as the boat came towards me, a man called out:—‘Is there anybody else?—have you dropped anything?’ I answered:—‘I had nothing but a plank.’ . . . In the same instant all my strength was gone: I felt the men in the boat pulling me up; but I could neither speak nor move, and everything became dark.
“After a time I heard the voices again,—the voices of the men of the Fukuju Maru: —‘Jinyō! Jinyō!’—and I was frightened. Then somebody shook me, and said:— ‘Oi! oi!’ 5 it is only a dream!’—and I saw that I was lying in the junk, under a hanging lantern (for it was night);—and beside me an old man, a stranger, was kneeling, with a cup of boiled rice in his hand. ‘Try to eat a little,’ he said, very kindly. I wanted to sit up, but could not: then he fed me himself, out of the cup. When it was empty I asked for more; but the old man answered:—‘Not now;—you must sleep first.’ I heard him say to someone else:—‘Give him nothing more until I tell you: if you let him eat much, he will die.’ I slept again; and twice more that night I was given rice—soft-boiled rice—one small cupful at a time.
“In the morning I felt much better; and the old man, who had brought me the rice, came and questioned me. When he heard about the loss of our ship, and the time that I had been in the water, he expressed great pity for me. He told me that I had drifted, in those two nights and days, more than twenty-five ri 6 . ‘We went after your plank,’ he said, ‘and picked it up. Perhaps you would like to present it some day to the temple of Kompira-Sama.’ I thanked him, but answered that I wanted to offer it to the temple of Jizō-Sama of Ogawa, at Yaidzu; for it was to Jizō-Sama of Ogawa that I had most often prayed for help.
“The kind old man was the captain, and also the owner, of the junk. She was a Banshū ship, and was bound for the port of Kuki, in Kishū. . . . You write the name, Ku-ki, with the character for ‘demon,’—so that it means the Nine Demons. . . . All the men of the ship were very good to me. I was naked, except for a loincloth, when I came on board; and they found clothes for me. One gave me an under-robe, and another an upper-robe, and another a girdle;—several gave me towels and sandals;—and all of them together made up a gift of money for me, amounting to between six and seven ryō.
“When we reached Kuki—a nice little place, though it has a queer name—the captain took me to a good inn; and after a few days’ rest I got strong again. Then the governor of the district, the Jitō, as we called him in those days,—sent for me, and heard my story, and had it written down. He told me that he would have to send a report of the matter to the Jitō of the Yaidzu district, after which he would find means to send me home. But the Banshū captain, who had saved me, offered to take me home in his own ship, and also to act as messenger for the Jitō; and there was much argument between the two. At that time we had no telegraph and no post; and to send a special messenger (hikyaku), from Kuki to Yaidzu, 7 would have cost at least fifty ryō. But, on the other hand, there were particular laws and customs about such matters,—laws very different from those of to-day. Meanwhile a Yaidzu ship came to the neighboring port of Arasha; and a woman of Kuki, who happened to be at Arasha, told the Yaidzu captain that I was at Kuki. The Yaidzu ship then came to Kuki; and the Jitō decided to send me home in charge of the Yaidzu captain,— giving him a written order.
“Altogether, it was about a month from the time of the loss of the Fukuju Maru when I returned to Yaidzu. We reached the harbor at night; and I did not go home at once: it would have frightened my people. Although no certain news of the loss of our ship had then been received at Yaidzu, several things belonging to her had been picked up by fishing-craft; and as the typhoo
n had come very suddenly, with a terrible sea, it was generally believed that the Fukuju Maru had gone down, and that all of us had been drowned. . . . None of the other men were ever heard of again. . . . I went that night to the house of a friend; and in the morning I sent word to my parents and brother; and they came for me. . . .
“Once every year I go to the temple of Kompira in Sanuki: all who have been saved from shipwreck go there to give thanks. And I often go to the temple of Jizō-Sama of Ogawa. If you will come with me there to-morrow, I will show you that plank.”
Diplomacy
It had been ordered that the execution should take place in the garden of the yashiki . So the man was taken there, and made to kneel down in a wide sanded space crossed by a line of tobi-ishi, or stepping-stones, such as you may still see in Japanese landscape-gardens. His arms were bound behind him. Retainers brought water in buckets, and rice-bags filled with pebbles; and they packed the rice-bags round the kneeling man,—so wedging him in that he could not move. The master came, and observed the arrangements. He found them satisfactory, and made no remarks.
Suddenly the condemned man cried out to him:—
“Honored Sir, the fault for which I have been doomed I did not wittingly commit. It was only my very great stupidity which caused the fault. Having been born stupid, by reason of my Karma, I could not always help making mistakes. But to kill a man for being stupid is wrong,—and that wrong will be repaid. So surely as you kill me, so surely shall I be avenged;—out of the resentment that you provoke will come the vengeance; and evil will be rendered for evil.” . . .
If any person be killed while feeling strong resentment, the ghost of that person will be able to take vengeance upon the killer. This the samurai knew. He replied very gently,—almost caressingly:—
“We shall allow you to frighten us as much as you please—after you are dead. But it is difficult to believe that you mean what you say. Will you try to give us some sign of your great resentment—after your head has been cut off?”
“Assuredly I will,” answered the man.
“Very well,” said the samurai, drawing his long sword;—“I am now going to cut off your head. Directly in front of you there is a stepping-stone. After your head has been cut off, try to bite the stepping-stone. If your angry ghost can help you to do that, some of us may be frightened. . . . Will you try to bite the stone?”
“I will bite it!” cried the man, in great anger,—“I will bite it!—I will bite”—
There was a flash, a swish, a crunching thud: the bound body bowed over the rice sacks,—two long blood-jets pumping from the shorn neck;—and the head rolled upon the sand. Heavily toward the stepping-stone it rolled: then, suddenly bounding, it caught the upper edge of the stone between its teeth, clung desperately for a moment, and dropped inert.
None spoke; but the retainers stared in horror at their master. He seemed to be quite unconcerned. He merely held out his sword to the nearest attendant, who, with a wooden dipper, poured water over the blade from haft to point, and then carefully wiped the steel several times with sheets of soft paper. . . . And thus ended the ceremonial part of the incident.
For months thereafter, the retainers and the domestics lived in ceaseless fear of ghostly visitation. None of them doubted that the promised vengeance would come; and their constant terror caused them to hear and to see much that did not exist. They became afraid of the sound of the wind in the bamboos,—afraid even of the stirring of shadows in the garden. At last, after taking counsel together, they decided to petition their master to have a Ségaki -service performed on behalf of the vengeful spirit.
“Quite unnecessary,” the samurai said, when his chief retainer had uttered the general wish. . . . “I understand that the desire of a dying man for revenge may be a cause for fear. But in this case there is nothing to fear.”
The retainer looked at his master beseechingly, but hesitated to ask the reason of this alarming confidence.
“Oh, the reason is simple enough,” declared the samurai, divining the unspoken doubt. “Only the very last intention of that fellow could have been dangerous; and when I challenged him to give me the sign, I diverted his mind from the desire of revenge. He died with the set purpose of biting the stepping stone; and that purpose he was able to accomplish, but nothing else. All the rest he must have forgotten. . . . So you need not feel any further anxiety about the matter.”
—And indeed the dead man gave no more trouble. Nothing at all happened.
A Passional Karma
One of the never-failing attractions of the Tōkyō stage is the performance, by the famous Kikugorō and his company, of the Botan-Dōrō, or “Peony-Lantern.” 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, 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 hatamoto 1 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-Tsuyu could not be happy with her mother-in-law, 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 unexpect
edly 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:—
Lafcadio Hearn's Japan Page 20