by Arthur Waley
Small children and babies ought to be fat. So ought provincial governors, or one suspects them of being bad-tempered. As regards appearance, it is most essential of all that the boys who feed the carriage-oxen should be presentable. If one’s other servants are not fit to be seen, they can be stowed away behind the carriage. But outriders or the like, who are bound to catch the eye, make a painful impression if they are not perfectly trim. However, if it is too obvious that one’s menservants have been lumped together behind the carriage in order to escape notice, this in itself looks very bad.
It is a mistake to choose slim, elegant youths on purpose that they may look well as footmen, and then let them wear trousers that are grimy at the ends and hunting-cloaks or the like that have seen too much wear. The best that can be hoped is that people will think they are walking beside your carriage by chance and have nothing to do with you.
But it is a great convenience that all one’s servants should be handsome. Then if they should happen to tear their clothes or make themselves in any way shabby or untidy, it is more likely to be overlooked.
Officers of State, who have official attendants allotted to them, sometimes spoil the effect by allowing their page-boys to go about dirty and ill-kempt.
Whether a gentleman is at home or on an official mission or staying with friends he ought always to have round him quantities of handsome page-boys.
For secret meetings summer is best. It is true that the nights are terribly short and it begins to grow light before one has had a wink of sleep. But it is delightful to have all the shutters open, so that the cool air comes in and one can see into the garden. At last comes the time of parting, and just as the lovers are trying to finish offall the small things that remain to be said, they are suddenly startled by a loud noise just outside the window. For a moment they make certain they are betrayed; but it turns out only to be a crow that cried as it flew past.
But it is pleasant, too, on very cold nights to lie with one’s lover, buried under a great pile of bed-clothes. Noises such as the tolling of a bell sound so strange. It seems as though they came up from the bottom of a deep pit. Strange, too, is the first cry of the birds, sounding so muffled and distant that one feels sure their beaks are still tucked under their wings. Then each fresh note gets shriller and nearer.
VERY TIRESOME THINGS
When a poem of one’s own, that one has allowed someone else to use as his, is singled out for praise.
Someone who is going on a long journey wants introductions to people in the various places through which he will pass, and asks you for a letter. You write a really nice letter of recommendation for him to present to one of your friends who lives at some place through which he will pass. But your friend is cross at being bothered and ignores the letter. To be thus shown up as having no influence is very humiliating.
MISCELLANEOUS
There is nothing in the whole world so painful as feeling that one is not liked. It always seems to me that people who hate me must be suffering from some strange form of lunacy. However, it is bound to happen, whether at Court or in one’s home, that some people like one and some don’t, which I find very distressing. Even for a child of the servant-class (and much more for one of good-breeding) it is very painful, after having always been petted at home, to find itself the object of a disapproving stare. If the girl in question has anything to recommend her, one thinks it quite reasonable that she should have been made a fuss of. But if she is without attractions of any kind, she knows that everybody is saying, “Fancy anyone making a pet of a creature like that! Really, parents are very odd!” Yes, at home or at Court the one thing that matters is to be liked by everyone, from their Majesties downward!
Shōnagon elsewhere tells us that she used often to say to the Empress: “I must always come first in people’s affections. Otherwise, I would far rather be hated or even actually mal-treated. In fact, I would rather die than be loved but come second or third.”
Writing is an ordinary enough thing; yet how precious it is! When someone is in a far corner of the world and one is terribly anxious about him, suddenly there comes a letter, and one feels as though the person were actually in the room. It is really very amazing. And, strangely enough, to put down one’s thoughts in a letter, even if one knows that it will probably never reach its destination, is an immense comfort. If writing did not exist, what terrible depressions we should suffer from! And if it is a relief to put down, once and for all, the things that have been weighing on one’s mind, with a vague idea that the person in question may one day read what one has written, it is no exaggeration to say that the arrival of an answer can sometimes work like a real Elixir of Life!
The boys employed by magicians are extraordinarily clever. When their master is sent for to perform a ceremony of purification, these boys are expected to read the invocations,* and no one thinks anything of it. But to see them dash up at exactly the right moment, without a word from their master, and sprinkle cold water on the face of the patient, really makes one envious. I wish I could get hold of boys like that to wait upon me!
If one hears a servant girl say about anyone, “He’s an awfully nice gentleman,” one at once feels a slight contempt for the person in question. One would really think better of him if she abused him. Even a lady can lose by being too much praised in the wrong quarters; and, considering how much one is certain to suffer by being decried, it seems a pity that even the praise one gets should only do one harm!
NARINOBU
Captain Narinobu* is a son of His Highness the Reverend President of the Board of War. He is not only very handsome, but also exceedingly intelligent. How that poor daughter of Kanesuke’s must have suffered at the time he broke with her, and she was obliged to go off with her father to Iyo, where he had been appointed Governor! One imagines her being due to start at dawn, and his coming to say good-bye the night before. I see him wrapped in a Court cloak, standing in the pale moonlight of dawn, as she must then have seen him for the last time.
In old days he used frequently to come and see me. He talked with considerable freedom, never hesitating to say the most disagreeable things about those of whom he disapproved.
There was in those days a certain gentlewoman of her Majesty’s, rather a tiresome person who made a great fuss about her penances, and the like. She was known by her surname, which was Taira or something grand of that sort. But she had really only been adopted by these people, and among the other girls it was considered amusing always to refer to her by her original name.
She was not at all good-looking—this Taira girl—nor had she any other quality to recommend her. But she seemed entirely unaware of her defects and always pushed herself forward when there was company at the Palace, in a way that her Majesty particularly disliked, though no one had the strength of mind to tell her so. . . .
Once, when the Empress said that Shikibu no Omoto and I were to sleep in her apartments instead of going back to our own room, we settled down for the night in the southern ante-room. After a while there was a tremendous banging on our door. We decided it would be a nuisance to have anyone coming in, and pretended to be asleep. But the knocking was followed by violent shouting, and I heard her Majesty say: “Go and wake her up, one of you. She is only pretending to be asleep.” The “Taira” girl then came in and tried to wake me; but she found that I was very fast asleep indeed, and saying that if I would not stir she must open the door herself, she went out and began a conversation with the visitor. I kept on thinking she would come back, but midnight came and still she did not appear. I was fairly certain that the visitor was my lord Narinobu. . . .
Next morning she heard us talking in our ante-room, and joining us, said to me: “I do think that when a man comes through such storms of rain as there were last night, you ought to treat him better. I know that he has been behaving very badly lately, and that you had almost lost sight of him. But I think you ought to forgive anyone who arrives with his clothes as wet as that.”
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sp; I cannot follow that line of argument. It seems to me that if a man who comes regularly every night is not put offeven by a heavy shower of rain, which is something to his credit. But if, after absenting himself for weeks on end, he is fool enough to choose such weather as this for coming back, then all I can say is I would rather he showed more sense and less devotion. But I suppose that is a matter of taste.
The case is this. Narinobu likes sometimes to have dealings with a woman who has observed and reflected sufficiently to acquire a mind of her own. But he has many other attachments to keep up, not to mention his main responsibility, and it would be quite impossible for him to see me often. His object in choosing so atrocious a night for his visit was chiefly that other people might be impressed by his devotion and point out to me how much beholden I ought to feel. However, I suppose if he did not care for me at all, he would not think it worthwhile to indulge even in such stratagems as these.
When it is raining I fall into complete gloom, and even if only a few hours ago the sun was shining brightly I cannot in the least remember what things looked like when it was fine. Everything looks equally disagreeable, so that it makes no difference to me whether I am in the loveliest corner of the Palace arcades or in the most ordinary of houses; so long as it is raining I can think of nothing else but how long the rain is going to last.
But if anyone comes on a night when the moon is up and there is a clear sky, even if it is ten days, twenty days, a month, a year, yes, even seven or eight years since his last visit, I can look back with pleasure on his visit; and even if the place is not very convenient for meeting and one must be prepared for interruption at any moment—even if, at the worst, nothing more happens than a few remarks exchanged at a respectful distance— one feels that next time, if circumstances are favorable, one will allow him to stay the night.
THE STORM
Among “deceptive things” Shōnagon mentions boating excursions and tells the following story: The sun was shining brightly; so calm was the lake that it looked as though it was tightly covered from corner to corner with a sheet of light green, glossy silk. Never can day have seemed safer. We young girls had thrown off our mantles and were helping at the oars (we had brought some lads to wait upon us and manage the boat), and singing one song after another—really the whole excursion was so delightful we wished a thousand times that the Empress or some of her family were with us—when a violent gale sprang up, the lake all of a sudden became terribly rough, and soon our only thought was how to get into shelter as quickly as possible. It seemed impossible that this lake, whose waves now hung over us as we rowed with all our might to the shore, was the same that a little while ago had been so sleepy and harmless.
When one thinks of it, to be in a boat at all is a terrible thing! It is bad enough, even in reasonably shallow water, to trust oneself to such a conveyance; but where the water may be any depth—perhaps a thousand fathoms—to embark upon a thing loaded up with goods and baggage of all kinds, with only an inch or two of wood between oneself and the water! However, the low-class people who manage the boat do not seem to be in the least frightened, but run up and down unconcernedly in places where a single false step would lose them their lives.
Even the loading of a ship, when they bang down into the hold huge pine-trees two or three feet in circumference, sometimes half a dozen of them at a time, is an amazing thing. Rich people of course go in ships with cabins, and those who are lucky enough to be in the middle of the ship do not get on so badly. But those who are near the sides get very dizzy. It is extraordinary how little strength there looks to be in those things they call thongs, which keep the oars in place. If one of those were to snap, the oarsman would be drowned in a minute; yet they are always quite thin.
Our cabin was a very lovely one, with fringed curtains, double doors, and sliding shutters. Of course, it would not have done for it to be so heavy as the cabins on ships such as I have been talking about; but all the same, it was like a complete little house. What frightened me most was looking at the other ships. Those in the distance, scattered here and there across the waters, looked like the bamboo leaves that one sometimes makes into toy boats. When at last we got back into the harbor it was full of ships with lighted torches on board, a wonderful sight. How sorry one was for the people whom one saw toiling along in those very small rowing boats that they call hashi ! ... I can understand why it is that some quite ordinary people absolutely refuse to go in boats. It is true that traveling on land is also very dangerous; but, whatever may happen, it is always some comfort to have firm ground under one’s feet.
PILGRIMAGE TO THE HASEDERA*
While they were seeing about our rooms, the carriage (from which the oxen had been unyoked) was pulled up to the foot of the log stairway by which one climbs up to the temple. Young priests, with nothing but body-belts under their cassocks, and those clogs they call ashida on their feet, were all the while hurrying up and down the stairway without seeming to take any notice where they stepped, and reciting, as they went, scraps of the Sūtras or stray verses from the rhythmic portion of the Abhidharma Kosa,† in a manner pleasantly appropriate to such a place. Our own ascent of the steps was very much less secure; indeed, we crept up at the side, never daring to let go of the railings, in places where these young priests walked as comfortably as on a board-floor.
“Your rooms are ready; you can come at once,” someone said to us, and providing overshoes for the whole party he led us in. The place was already full of pilgrims; some, too poor to buy new coats, were wearing them with the lining outside, others in Court robes and cloaks of Chinese brocade were decked out with almost too obtrusive a splendor. The sight of so many soft-boots* and slippers shuffling along the corridor was very amusing, and indeed reminded me of the Emperor’s apartments in the Palace.
Several young men who seemed thoroughly at home in the place (probably retainers attached to the temple) accompanied us, saying, “Now up a few steps,” “Now down!” and so on, to prevent us falling in the dark. There was another party (I don’t know who they were) close behind us. Some of them tried to push past, but our guides asked them to stand back, saying we were a party from the Palace and they must keep clear of us. Most of them said “Indeed!” and at once drew back. But there were others who took no notice and rushed on as though all they had come for was to see who could get to the chapel first. On the way to our rooms we had to pass between rows of people, and it was not very pleasant. But once arrived, we got a view right up to the center of the altar.† The sight was so strangely moving that I wondered why I had allowed so many months to go by without once coming here; the old feeling had woken again within me.
The altar was not lit by the ordinary lamps of the outer chapel, but by lamps that pilgrims had laid as offerings within the shrine itself; and in this terrifying furnace of light the Buddha flashed and sparkled with the most magnificent effect. Priest after priest came up to the lectern in front of the altar and, holding up his scroll in both hands, read out his prayer.‡ But so many people were moving about that it was impossible to make out what any particular priest was saying. All we could catch was an occasional phrase, when one voice for a moment pressed up from among the rest, such as “These thousand lamps . . . offered on behalf of. . .;” but the names one could not make out. While with the streamers of my dress hung back over my shoulders I was prostrating myself towards the altar, a priest came up, saying “I have brought you these,” and I saw that he was carrying a bough of anise,* a courtesy which though merely pious in intention was very agreeable. Presently another priest came from the direction of the altar and said he had recited our prayers for us “very well,” and wanted to know how long we were staying. We got him to tell us the names of some of the other people who were in retreat at the temple, and hardly had he left us when another priest came with braziers, food, and so on. Our washing-water was in a pot with a spout and our washing-tub had no handles! “I have given your servants that cell over there,” the priest said
; and he called them up one at a time to show them where they had been quartered. A recitation of the Scriptures was about to begin, and the temple bell was ringing. “Ringing for our good,” so we felt, which gave us a great sense of security.†
Next door to us was an ordinary sort of man who all the while was quietly prostrating himself till his head bumped against the floor. I thought at first that he must be doing it for show. But it soon became apparent that he was completely absorbed in his devotions. How wonderful that anyone can go on like this hour after hour without falling asleep! When for a short time he rested from these devotions, we heard him reciting the Sūtras in a low voice, so that we could not hear what he was reading, but with a very solemn intonation. We were just wishing he would read a little louder, when he broke off, and we heard him sniffing, not loudly enough to be disagreeable, but gently and secretly. I wondered what sort of trouble he was in and longed that his prayers might be answered.
When we had been at the temple several days, the mornings became very quiet and uneventful. The gentlemen and boys in attendance upon us usually went offto visit one or other of the priests in his cell, and we were left with very little to amuse us. Then suddenly, from quite close at hand would come the sound of the conch-shell,* taking us always completely by surprise. Or a messenger would come bringing an elegant tatebumi† or stuffs in payment for some ritual or service, and laying the things down, would shout for the temple-servants to come and take them away, shriller and shriller, till his voice echoed among the hills. Sometimes the din of the temple gongs would suddenly rise to an unwonted pitch, and in answer to our question as to what was afoot, they would mention the name of some great mansion, saying “It is a service* for her Ladyship’s safe delivery.” An anxious time for my Lord. No wonder he could not rest content till the priests were at their task!
