Out of the East Page 9

  "Aa! as if one should be in Jigoku, so hot this water is!"

  (The word "Jigoku" signifies the Buddhist hell; but, in common parlance, it also signifies a prison,—this time an unfortunate coincidence.)

  Kasaku (terribly angry). "A raw baby, you, to seek a hard quarrel! What do you not like?"

  Ichirō (surprised and alarmed, but rallying against the tone of Kasaku). "Nay! What? That I said need not by you be explained. Though I said the water was hot, your help to make it hotter was not asked."

  Kasaku (now dangerous). "Though for my own fault, not once, but twice in the hell of prison I had been, what should there be wonderful in it? Either an idiot child or a low scoundrel you must be! "

  (Each eyes the other for a spring, but each hesitates, although things no Japanese should suffer himself to say have been said. They are too evenly matched, the old and the young.)

  Kasaku (growing cooler as Ichirō becomes angrier). "A child, a raw child, to quarrel with me! What should a baby do with a wife? Your wife is my blood, mine,—the blood of the man from hell! Give her back to my house."

  Ichirō (desperately, now fully assured Kasaku is physically the better man). "Return my wife? You say to return her? Right quickly shall she be returned, at once!"

  So far everything is clear enough. Then Ichirō hurries home, caresses his wife, assures her of his love, tells her all, and sends her, not to Kasaku's house, but to that of her brother. Two days later, a little after dark, O-Noto is called to the door by her husband, and the two disappear in the night.

  ACT II. Night scene. Hcmse of Kasaku closed: light appears through chinks of sliding shutters. Shadow of a woman approaches. Sound of knocking. Shutters slide back.

  Wife of Kasaku (recognizing O-Noto). "Aa! aa! Joyful it is to see you! Deign to enter, and some honorable tea to take."

  O-Noto (speaking very sweetly). "Thanks indeed. But where is Kasaku San?"

  Wife of Kasaku. "To the other village he has gone, but must soon return. Deign to come in and wait for him."

  O-Noto (still more sweetly). "Very great thanks. A little, and I come. But first I must tell my brother."

  (Bows, and slips off into the darkness, and becomes a shadow again, which joins another shadow. The two shadows remain motionless.)

  ACT III. Scene: Bank of a river at night, fringed by pines. Silhouette of the house of Kasaku far away. O-Noto and Ichirō under the trees, Ichirō with a lantern. Both have white towels tightly bound round their heads ; their robes are girded well up, and their sleeves caught back with tasuki cords, to leave the arms free. Each carries a long sword.

  It is the hour, as the Japanese most expressively say, "when the sound of the river is loudest." There is no other sound but a long occasional humming of wind in the needles of the pines; for it is late autumn, and the frogs are silent. The two shadows do not speak, and the sound of the river grows louder.

  Suddenly there is the noise of a plash far off,—somebody crossing the shallow stream; then an echo of wooden sandals,—irregular, staggering,—the footsteps of a drunkard, coming nearer and nearer. The drunkard lifts up his voice: it is Kasaku's voice. He sings,—

  "Suita okata ni suir arete;

  Ya-ton-ton I"1

  —a song of love and wine.

  Immediately the two shadows start toward the singer at a run,—a noiseless flitting, for their Feet are shod with waraji. Kasaku still sings. Suddenly a loose stone turns under him; he wrenches his ankle, and utters a growl of anger. Almost in the same instant a lantern is held close to his face. Perhaps for thirty seconds it remains there. No one speaks. The yellow light shows three strangely inexpressive masks rather than visages. Kasaku sobers at once,—recognizing the faces, remembering the incident of the bathhouse, and seeing the swords. But he is not afraid, and presently bursts into a mocking laugh.

  "He! he! The Ichirō pair! And so you take me, too, for a baby? What are you doing with such things in your hands? Let me show you how to use them."

  But Ichirō, who has dropped the lantern, suddenly delivers, with the full swing of both hands, a sword-slash that nearly severs Kasaku's right arm from the shoulder; and as the victim staggers, the sword of the woman cleaves through his left shoulder. He falls with one Fearful cry, "Hitogoroshi!" which means "murder." But he does not cry again. For ten whole minutes the swords are busy with him. The lantern, still glowing, lights the ghastliness. Two belated pedestrians approach, hear, see, drop their wooden sandals from their Feet, and flee back into the darkness without a word. Ichirō and O-Noto sit down by the lantern to take breath, for the work was hard.

  The son of Kasaku, a boy of fourteen, comes running to find his father. He has heard the song, then the cry; but he has not yet learned Fear. The two suffer him to approach. As he nears O-Noto, the woman seizes him, flings him down, twists his slender arms under her knees, and clutches the sword. But Ichirō, still panting, cries, "No! no! Not the boy! He did us no wrong! "O-Noto releases him. He is too stupefied to move. She slaps his face terribly, crying, "Go!" He runs,—not daring to shriek.

  Ichirō and O-Noto leave the chopped mass, walk to the house of Kasaku, and call loudly. There is no reply;—only the pathetic, crouching silence of women and children waiting death. But they are bidden not to Fear. Then Ichird cries:—

  "Honorable funeral prepare! Kasaku by my hand is now dead!"

  "And by mine!" shrills O-Noto.

  Then the footsteps recede.

  ACT IV. Scene: Interior of Ichirō's house. Three persons kneeling in the guestroom : Ichirō, his wife, and an aged woman, who is weeping.

  Ichird. "And now, mother, to leave you alone in this world, though you have no other son, is indeed an evil thing. I can only pray your forgiveness. But my uncle will always care for you, and to his house you must go at once, since it is time we two should die. No common, vulgar death shall we have, but an elegant, splendid death,—Rippana! And you must not see it. Now go."

  She passes away, with a wail The doors are solidly barred behind her. All is ready.

  O-Noto thrusts the point of the sword into her throat. But she still struggles. With a last kind word Ichirō ends her pain by a stroke that severs the head.

  And then?

  Then he takes his writing-box, prepares the inkstone, grinds some ink, chooses a good brush, and, on carefully selected paper, composes five poems, of which this is the last:—

  "Meido yori

  Tu Dempō ga

  Aru naraba,

  Hayaku an chaku

  Mōshi okuran."1

  Then he cuts his own throat perfectly well.

  Now, it was clearly shown, during the official investigation of these facts, that Ichird and his wife had been universally liked, and had been from their childhood noted for amiability.

  The scientific problem of the origin of the Japanese has never yet been solved. But sometimes it seems to me that those who argue in favor of a partly Malay origin have some psychological evidence in their favor. Under the submissive sweetness of the gentlest Japanese woman—a sweetness of which the Occidental can scarcely form any idea—there exist possibilities of hardness absolutely inconceivable without ocular evidence. A thousand times she can forgive, can sacrifice herself in a thousand ways unutterably touching; but let one particular soul-nerve be stung, and fire shall forgive sooner than she. Then there may suddenly appear in that frail-seeming woman an incredible courage, an appalling, measured, tireless purpose of honest vengeance. Under all the amazing self-control and patience of the man there exists an adamantine something very dangerous to reach. Touch it wantonly, and there can be no pardon. But resentment is seldom likely to be excited by mere hazard. Motives are keenly judged. An error can be forgiven; deliberate malice never.

  In the house of any rich family the guest is likely to be shown some of the heirlooms. Among these are almost sure to be certain articles belonging to those elaborate tea ceremonies peculiar to Japan. A pretty little box, perhaps, will be set before you. Opening it, you see only a b
eautiful silk bag, closed with a silk running-cord decked with tiny tassels. Very soft and choice the silk is, and elaborately figured. What marvel can be hidden under such a covering? You open the bag, and see within another bag, of a different quality of silk, but very fine. Open that, and lo! a third, which contains a fourth, which contains a fifth, which contains a sixth, which contains a seventh bag, which contains the strangest, roughest, hardest vessel of Chinese clay that you ever beheld. Yet it is not only curious but precious: it may be more than a thousand years old.

  Even thus have centuries of the highest social culture wrapped the Japanese character about with many priceless soft coverings of courtesy, of delicacy, of patience, of sweetness, of moral sentiment. But underneath these charming multiple coverings there remains the primitive clay, hard as iron;—kneaded perhaps with all the mettle of the Mongol,—all the dangerous suppleness of the Malay.

  VII

  December 28. Beyond the high Fence inclosing my garden in the rear rise the thatched roofs of some very small houses occupied by families of the poorest class. From one of these little dwellings there continually issues a sound of groaning,—the deep groaning of a man in pain. I have heard it for more than a week, both night and day, but latterly the sounds have been growing longer and louder, as if every breath were an agony. "Somebody there is very sick," says Manyemon, my old interpreter, with an expression of extreme sympathy.

  The sounds have begun to make me nervous. I reply, rather brutally, "I think it would be better for all concerned if that somebody were dead."

  Manyemon makes three times a quick, sudden gesture with both hands, as if to throw off the influence of my wicked words, mutters a little Buddhist prayer, and leaves me with a look of reproach. Then, conscience-stricken, I send a servant to inqure if the sick person has a doctor, and whether any aid can be given. Presently the servant returns with the information that a doctor is regularly attending the sufferer, and that nothing else can be done.

  I notice, however, that, in spite of his cobwebby gestures, Manyemon's patient nerves have also become affected by those sounds. He has even confessed that he wants to stay in the little front room, near the street, so as to be away from them as far as possible. I can neither write nor read. My study being in the extreme rear, the groaning is there almost as audible as if the sick man were in the room itself. There is always in such utterances of suffering a certain ghastly timbre by which the intensity of the suffering can be estimated; and I keep asking myself, How can it be possible for the human being making those sounds by which I am tortured, to endure much longer?

  It is a positive relief, later in the morning, to hear the moaning drowned by the beating of a little Buddhist drum in the sick man's room, and the chanting of the Namu Myō ho renge Kyō by a multitude of voices. Evidently there is a gathering of priests and relatives in the house. "Somebody is going to die," Manyemon says. And he also repeats the holy words of praise to the Lotus of the Good Law.

  The chanting and the tapping of the drum continue for several hours. As they cease, the groaning is heard again. Every breath a groan! Toward evening it grows worse—horrible. Then it suddenly stops. There is a dead silence of minutes. And then we hear a passionate burst of weeping,—the weeping of a woman.—and voices calling a name. "Ah! somebody is dead!" Manyemon says.

  We hold council. Manyemon has found out that the people are miserably poor; and I, because my conscience smites me, propose to send them the amount of the funeral expenses, a very small sum. Manyemon thinks I wish to do this out of pure benevolence, and says pretty things. We send the servant with a kind message, and instructions to learn if possible the history of the dead man. I cannot help suspecting some sort of tragedy; and a Japanese tragedy is generally interesting.

  December 29. As I had surmised, the story of the dead man was worth learning. The family consisted of four,—the father and mother, both very old and Feeble, and two sons. It was the eldest son, a man of thirty-four, who had died. He had been sick for seven years. The younger brother, a kurumaya, had been the sole support of the whole family. He had no vehicle of his own, but hired one, paying five sen a day for the use of it. Though strong and a swift runner, he could earn little: there is in these days too much competition for the business to be profitable. It taxed all his powers to support his parents and his ailing brother; nor could he have done it without unfailing self-denial. He never indulged himself even to the extent of a cup of sake ; he remained unmarried; he lived only for his filial and fraternal duty.

  This was the story of the dead brother: When about twenty years of age, and following the occupation of a fish-seller, he had fallen in love with a pretty servant at an inn. The girl returned his affection. They pledged themselves to each other. But difficulties arose in the way of their marriage. The girl was pretty enough to have attracted the attention of a man of some means, who demanded her hand in the customary way. She disliked him; but the conditions he was able to offer decided her parents in his favor. Despairing of union, the two lovers resolved to perform Jōshi. Somewhere or other they met at night, renewed their pledge in wine, and bade farewell to the world. The young man then killed his sweetheart with one blow of a sword, and immediately afterward cut his own throat with the same weapon. But people rushed into the room before he had expired, took away the sword, sent for the police, and summoned a military surgeon from the garrison. The would-be suicide was removed to the hospital, skillfully nursed back to health, and after some months of convalescence was put on trial for murder.

  What sentence was passed I could not fully learn. In those days, Japanese judges used a good deal of personal discretion when dealing with emotional crime; and their exercise of pity had not yet been restricted by codes framed upon Western models. Perhaps in this case they thought that to have survived a Jōshi was in itself a severe punishment. Public opinion is less merciful, in such instances, than law. After a term of imprisonment the miserable man was allowed to return to his family, but was placed under perpetual police surveillance. The people shrank from him. He made the mistake of living on. Only his parents and brother remained to him. And soon he became a victim of unspeakable physical suffering; yet he clung to life.

  The old wound in his throat, although treated at the time as skillfully as circumstances permitted, began to cause terrible pain. After its apparent healing, some slow cancerous growth commenced to spread from it, reaching into the breathing-passages above and below where the sword-blade had passed. The surgeon's knife, the torture of the cautery, could only delay the end. But the man lingered through seven years of continually increasing agony. There are dark beliefs about the results of betraying the dead,—of breaking the mutual promise to travel together to the Meido. Men said that the hand of the murdered girl always reopened the wound,—undid by night all that the surgeon could accomplish by day. For at night the pain invariably increased, becoming most terrible at the precise hour of the attempted Shinjū!

  Meanwhile, through abstemiousness and extraordinary self-denial, the family found means to pay for medicines, for attendance, and for more nourishing food than they themselves ever indulged in. They prolonged by all possible means the life that was their shame, their poverty, their burden. And now that death has taken away that burden, they weep!

  Perhaps all of us learn to love that which we train ourselves to make sacrifices for, whatever pain it may cause. Indeed, the question might be asked whether we do not love most that which causes us most pain.

  Footnotes

  1 A sort of small silver carp.

  1 A hollow wooden block shaped like a dolphin's head. It is tapped in accompaniment to the chanting of the Buddhist sutras.

  1 At the great temple of Tennōji, at Osaka, all such bones are dropped into a vault; and according to the sound each makes in falling, further evidence about the Gōsho is said to be obtained. After a hundred years from the time of beginning this curious collection, all these bones are to be ground into a kind of paste, out of which a colossal
statue of Buddha is to be made.

  1 "Thy previous life as for,—what was it? Honorably look [or, please look] and tell."

  1 The meaning is, "Give to the beloved one a little more [wine]." The "Ya-ton-ton" is only a burden, without exact meaning, like our own " With a hey! and a ho! " etc.

  1 The meaning is abont as follows : "If from the Meido it be possible to send letters or telegrams, I shall write and forward news of our speedy safe arrival there."

  VI

  THE STONE BUDDHA

  I

  ON the ridge of the hill behind the Government College,—above a succession of tiny farm fields ascending the slope by terraces,—there is an ancient village cemetery. It is no longer used: the people of Kurogamimura now bury their dead in a more secluded spot; and I think their fields are beginning already to encroach upon the limits of the old graveyard.

  Having an idle hour to pass between two classes, I resolve to pay the ridge a visit. Harmless thin black snakes wiggle across the way as I climb; and immense grasshoppers, exactly the color of parched leaves, whirr away from my shadow. The little field path vanishes altogether under coarse grass before reaching the broken steps at the cemetery gate; and in the cemetery itself there is no path at all—only weeds and stones. But there is a fine view from the ridge 2 the vast green Plain of Higo, and beyond it bright blue hills in a half-ring against the horizon light, and even beyond them the cone of Aso smoking forever.