Kwaidan Read online

  "Now, in this spring season, while you sportively dance through the gardens of the wealthy, or hover among the beautiful alleys of cherry-trees in blossom, you say to yourself: 'Nobody in the world has such pleasure as I, or such excellent friends. And, in spite of all that people may say, I most love the peony, — and the golden yellow rose is my own darling, and I will obey her every least behest; for that is my pride and my delight.' ... So you say. But the opulent and elegant season of flowers is very short: soon they will fade and fall. Then, in the time of summer heat, there will be green leaves only; and presently the winds of autumn will blow, when even the leaves themselves will shower down like rain, parari-parari. And your fate will then be as the fate of the unlucky in the proverb, Tanomi ki no shita ni amé furu [Even through the tree on which I relied for shelter the rain leaks down]. For you will seek out your old friend, the root-cutting insect, the grub, and beg him to let you return into your oldtime hole; — but now having wings, you will not be able to enter the hole because of them, and you will not be able to shelter your body anywhere between heaven and earth, and all the moor-grass will then have withered, and you will not have even one drop of dew with which to moisten your tongue, — and there will be nothing left for you to do but to lie down and die. All because of your light and frivolous heart — but, ah! how lamentable an end!" . . .

  III

  Most of the Japanese stories about butterflies appear, as I have said, to be of Chinese origin. But I have one which is probably indigenous; and it seems to me worth telling for the benefit of persons who believe that there is no "romantic love " in the Far East.

  Behind the cemetery of the temple of Sōzanji, in the suburbs of the capital, there long stood a solitary cottage, occupied by an old man named Takahama. He was liked in the neighborhood, by reason of his amiable ways; but almost everybody supposed him to be a little mad. Unless a man take the Buddhist vows, he is expected to marry, and to bring up a family. But Takahama did not belong to the religious life; and he could not be persuaded to marry. Neither had he ever been known to enter into a love-relation with any woman. For more than fifty years he had lived entirely alone.

  One summer he fell sick, and knew that he had not long to live. He then sent for his sister-in-law, a widow, and for her only son, — a lad of about twenty years old, to whom he was much attached. Both promptly came, and did whatever they could to soothe the old man's last hours.

  One sultry afternoon, while the widow and her son were watching at his bedside, Takahama fell asleep. At the same moment a very large white butterfly entered the room, and perched upon the sick man's pillow. The nephew drove it away with a fan; but it returned immediately to the pillow, and was again driven away, only to come back a third time. Then the nephew chased it into the garden, and across the garden, through an open gate, into the cemetery of the neighboring temple. But it continued to flutter before him as if unwilling to be driven further, and acted so queerly that he began to wonder whether it was really a butterfly, or a ma.1 He again chased it, and followed it far into the cemetery, until he saw it fly against a tomb, — a woman's tomb. There it unaccountably disappeared; and he searched for it in vain. He then examined the monument. It bore the personal name "Akiko," together with an unfamiliar family name, and an inscription stating that Akiko had died at the age of eighteen. Apparently the tomb had been erected about fifty years previously: moss had begun to gather upon it. But it had been well cared for: there were fresh flowers before it; and the water-tank had recently been filled.

  On returning to the sick room, the young man was shocked by the announcement that his uncle had ceased to breathe. Death had come to the sleeper painlessly; and the dead face smiled.

  The young man told his mother of what he had seen in the cemetery.

  "Ah!" exclaimed the widow, "then it must have been Akiko!" . . .

  "But who was Akiko, mother?" the nephew asked.

  The widow answered:—

  "When your good uncle was young he was betrothed to a charming girl called Akiko, the daughter of a neighbor. Akiko died of consumption, only a little before the day appointed for the wedding; and her promised husband sorrowed greatly. After Akiko had been buried, he made a vow never to marry; and he built this little house beside the cemetery, so that he might be always near her grave. All this happened more than fifty years ago. And every day of those fifty years — winter and summer alike — your uncle went to the cemetery, and prayed at the grave, and swept the tomb, and set offerings before it. But he did not like to have any mention made of the matter; and he never spoke of it. . . . So, at last, Akiko came for him : the white butterfly was her soul."

  IV

  I had almost forgotten to mention an ancient Japanese dance, called the Butterfly Dance (Kochō-Mai), which used to be performed in the Imperial Palace, by dancers costumed as butterflies. Whether it is danced occasionally nowadays I do not know. It is said to be very difficult to learn. Six dancers are required for the proper performance of it; and they must move in particular figures, — obeying traditional rules for every step, pose, or gesture, — and circling about each other very slowly to the sound of hand-drums and great drums, small flutes and great flutes, and pandean pipes of a form unknown to Western Pan.

  Footnotes

  1 "The modest nymph beheld her God, and blushed." (Or, in a more familiar rendering: "The modest water saw its God, and blushed.") In this line the double value of the word nympha — used by classical poets both in the meaning of fountain and in that of the divinity of a fountain, or spring — reminds one of that graceful playing with words which Japanese poets practice.

  1 More usually written nugi-kakéru, which means either "to take off and hang up," or "to begin to take off," — as in the above poem. More loosely, but more effectively, the verses might thus be rendered: "Like a woman slipping off her haori—that is the appearance of a butterfly." One must have seen the Japanese garment described, to appreciate the comparison. The haori is a silk upper-dress, — a kind of sleeved cloak, — worn by both sexes; but the poem suggests a woman's haori, which is usually of richer color or material. The sleeves are wide; and the lining is usually of brightly-colored silk, often beautifully variegated. In taking off the haori, the brilliant lining is displayed, — and at such an instant the fluttering splendor might well be likened to the appearance of a butterfly in motion.

  1 The bird-catcher's pole is smeared with bird-lime; and the verses suggest that the insect is preventing the man from using his pole, by persistently getting in the way of it, — as the birds might take warning from seeing the butterfly limed. Jama suru means "to hinder" or "prevent."

  2 Even while it is resting, the wings of the butterfly may be seen to quiver at moments, — as if the creature were dreaming of flight.

  3 A little poem by Bashō, greatest of all Japanese composers of hokku. The verses are intended to suggest the joyous feeling of spring-time.

  1 Literally, "a windless day;" but two negatives in Japanese poetry do not necessarily imply an affirmative, as in English. The meaning is, that although there is no wind, the fluttering motion of the butterflies suggests, to the eyes at least, that a strong breeze is playing.

  2 Alluding to the Buddhist proverb: Rakkwa éda ni kaërazu; ha-kyō futatabi terasazu ("The fallen flower returns not to the branch; the broken mirror never again reflects.") So says the proverb — yet it seemed to me that I saw a fallen flower return to the branch. . . . No: it was only a butterfly.

  1 Alluding probably to the light fluttering motion of falling cherry-petals.

  1 That is to say, the grace of their motion makes one think of the grace of young girls, daintily costumed, in robes with long fluttering sleeves. . . . An old Japanese proverb declares that even a devil is pretty at eighteen: Oni mo jiuhachi azami no hana: "Even a devil at eighteen, flower-of-the-thistle."

  1 Or perhaps the verses might be more effectively rendered thus : "Happy together, do you say? Yes — if we should be reborn as field-butterflies in
some future life: then we might accord!" This poem was composed by the celebrated poet Issa, on the occasion of divorcing his wife.

  2 Or, Taré no tama?

  1 Literally, "Butterfly-pursuing heart I wish to have always;" —i,e., I would that I might always be able to find pleasure in simple things, like a happy child.

  1 An old popular error, — probably imported from China.

  1 A name suggested by the resemblance of the larva's artificial covering to the mino, or straw-raincoat, worn by Japanese peasants. I am not sure whether the dictionary rendering, "basket-worm," is quite correct; — but the larva commonly called minomushi does really construct for itself something much like the covering of the basket-worm.

  1 Pyrus spectabilis.

  1 An evil spirit.

  MOSQUITOES

  MOSQUITOES

  WITH a view to self-protection I have been reading Dr. Howard's book, " Mosquitoes." I am persecuted by mosquitoes. There are several species in my neighborhood; but only one of them is a serious torment, — a tiny needly thing, all silver-speckled and silver-streaked. The puncture of it is sharp as an electric burn; and the mere hum of it has a lancinating quality of tone which foretells the quality of the pain about to come, — much in the same way that a particular smell suggests a particular taste. I find that this mosquito much resembles the creature which Dr. Howard calls Stegomyia fas data, or Culex fasciatus: and that its habits are the same as those of the Stegomyia. For example, it is diurnal rather than nocturnal, and becomes most troublesome during the afternoon. And I have discovered that it comes from the Buddhist cemetery, — a very old cemetery, — in the rear of my garden.

  Dr. Howard's book declares that, in order to rid a neighborhood of mosquitoes, it is only necessary to pour a little petroleum, or kerosene oil, into the stagnant water where they breed. Once a week the oil should be used, " at the rate of one ounce for every fifteen square feet of water-surface, and a proportionate quantity for any less surface." . . . But please to consider the conditions in my neighborhood!

  I have said that my tormentors come from the Buddhist cemetery. Before nearly every tomb in that old cemetery there is a water-receptacle, or cistern, called mizutamé . In the majority of cases this mizutamé is simply an oblong cavity chiseled in the broad pedestal supporting the monument; but before tombs of a costly kind, having no pedestal-tank, a larger separate tank is placed, cut out of a single block of stone, and decorated with a family crest, or with symbolic carvings. In front of a tomb of the humblest class, having no mizutamé water is placed in cups or other vessels, — for the dead must have water. Flowers also must be offered to them; and before every tomb you will find a pair of bamboo cups, or other flower-vessels; and these, of course, contain water. There is a well in the cemetery to supply water for the graves. Whenever the tombs are visited by relatives and friends of the dead, fresh water is poured into the tanks and cups. But as an old cemetery of this kind contains thousands of mizutamé, and tens of thousands of flower-vessels, the water in all of these cannot be renewed every day. It becomes stagnant and populous. The deeper tanks seldom get dry; — the rainfall at Tōkyō being heavy enough to keep them partly filled during nine months out of the twelve.

  Well, it is in these tanks and flower-vessels that mine enemies are born: they rise by millions from the water of the dead; — and, according to Buddhist doctrine, some of them may be reincarnations of those very dead, condemned by the error of former lives to the condition of Jiki-ketsu-gaki, or blood-drinking pretas. . . . Anyhow the malevolence of the Culex fasciatus would justify the suspicion that some wicked human soul had been compressed into that wailing speck of a body. . . .

  Now, to return to the subject of kerosene-oil, you can exterminate the mosquitoes of any locality by covering with a film of kerosene all stagnant water surfaces therein. The larvae die on rising to breathe; and the adult females perish when they approach the water to launch their rafts of eggs. And I read, in Dr. Howard's book, that the actual cost of freeing from mosquitoes one American town of fifty thousand inhabitants, does not exceed three hundred dollars! . . .

  I wonder what would be said if the city-government of Tōkyō — which is aggressively scientific and progressive — were suddenly to command that all water-surfaces in the Buddhist cemeteries should be covered, at regular intervals, with a film of kerosene oil! How could the religion which prohibits the taking of any life — even of invisible life — yield to such a mandate? Would filial piety even dream of consenting to obey such an order? And then to think of the cost, in labor and time, of putting kerosene oil, every seven days, into the millions of mizutamé, and the tens of millions of bamboo flower-cups, in the Tōkyō graveyards! . . . Impossible! To free the city from mosquitoes it would be necessary to demolish the ancient graveyards; — and that would signify the ruin of the Buddhist temples attached to them; — and that would mean the disparition of so many charming gardens, with their lotus-ponds and Sanscrit-lettered monuments and humpy bridges and holy groves and weirdly-smiling Buddhas! So the extermination of the Culex fasciatus would involve the destruction of the poetry of the ancestral cult, — surely too great a price to pay! . . .

  Besides, I should like, when my time comes, to be laid away in some Buddhist graveyard of the ancient kind, — so that my ghostly company should be ancient, caring nothing for the fashions and the changes and the disintegrations of Meiji. That old cemetery behind my garden would be a suitable place. Everything there is beautiful with a beauty of exceeding and startling queerness; each tree and stone has been shaped by some old, old ideal which no longer exists in any living brain; even the shadows are not of this time and sun, but of a world forgotten, that never knew steam or electricity or magnetism or — kerosene oil! Also in the boom of the big bell there is a quaintness of tone which wakens feelings, so strangely far-away from all the nineteenth-century part of me, that the faint blind stirrings of them make me afraid, — deliciously afraid. Never do I hear that billowing peal but I become aware of a striving and a fluttering in the abyssal part of my ghost, — a sensation as of memories struggling to reach the light beyond the obscurations of a million million deaths and births. I hope to remain within hearing of that bell. . . . And, considering the possibility of being doomed to the state of a Jiki-ketsu-gaki, I want to have my chance of being reborn in some bamboo flower-cup, or mizutamé whence I might issue softly, singing my thin and pungent song, to bite some people that I know.

  ANTS

  ANTS

  I

  THIS morning sky, after the night's tempest, is a pure and dazzling blue. The air — the delicious air! — is full of sweet resinous odors, shed from the countless pine-boughs broken and strewn by the gale. In the neighboring bamboo-grove I hear the flute-call of the bird that praises the Sûtra of the Lotos; and the land is very still by reason of the south wind. Now the summer, long delayed, is truly with us: butterflies of queer Japanese colors are flickering about; semi are wheezing; wasps are humming; gnats are dancing in the sun; and the ants are busy repairing their damaged habitations. ... I bethink me of a Japanese poem: —

  Yuku é naki:

  Ari no sumai ya!

  Go-getsu amé.

  [Now the poor creature has nowhere to go! . . . Alas for the dwellings of the ants in this rain of thefifth month!]

  But those big black ants in my garden do not seem to need any sympathy. They have weathered the storm in some unimaginable way, while great trees were being uprooted, and houses blown to fragments, and roads washed out of existence. Yet, before the typhoon, they took no other visible precaution than to block up the gates of their subterranean town. And the spectacle of their triumphant toil today impels me to attempt an essay on Ants.

  I should have liked to preface my disquisitions with something from the old Japanese literature, — something emotional or metaphysical. But all that my Japanese friends were able to find for me on the subject, — excepting some verses of little worth, — was Chinese. This Chinese material consiste
d chiefly of strange stories; and one of them seems to me worth quoting, — faute de mieux.

  In the province of Taishū, in China, there was a pious man who, every day, during many years, fervently worshiped a certain goddess. One morning, while he was engaged in his devotions, a beautiful woman, wearing a yellow robe, came into his chamber and stood before him. He, greatly surprised, asked her what she wanted, and why she had entered unannounced. She answered: "I am not a woman: I am the goddess whom you have so long and so faithfully worshiped; and I have now come to prove to you that your devotion has not been in vain. . . . Are you acquainted with the language of Ants?" The worshiper replied: "I am only a low-born and ignorant person, — not a scholar; and even of the language of superior men I know nothing." At these words the goddess smiled, and drew from her bosom a little box, shaped like an incense box. She opened the box, dipped a finger into it, and took therefrom some kind of ointment with which she anointed the ears of the man. "Now," she said to him, " try to find some Ants, and when you find any, stoop down, and listen carefully to their talk. You will be able to understand it; and you will hear of something to your advantage. . . . Only remember that you must not frighten or vex the Ants." Then the goddess vanished away.