Shadowings

by Lafcadio Hearn

  He then proceeds to relate the following story about one of the so-called portraits:—

  There was a young scholar of Kyōto whose name was Tokkei. He used to live in the street called Muromachi. One evening, while on his way home after a visit, his attention was attracted by an old single-leaf screen (tsuitaté), exposed for sale before the shop of a dealer in secondhand goods. It was only a paper-covered screen; but there was painted upon it the full-length figure of a girl which caught the young man's fancy. The price asked was very small: Tokkei bought the screen, and took it home with him.

  When he looked again at the screen, in the solitude of his own room, the picture seemed to him much more beautiful than before. Apparently it was a real likeness,—the portrait of a girl fifteen or sixteen years old; and every little detail in the painting of the hair, eyes, eyelashes, mouth, had been executed with a delicacy and a truth beyond praise. The manajiri1 seemed "like a lotos-blossom courting favor"; the lips were "like the smile of a red flower"; the whole young face was inexpressibly sweet. If the real girl so portrayed had been equally lovely, no man could have looked upon her without losing his heart. And Tokkei believed that she must have been thus lovely;—for the figure seemed alive,—ready to reply to anybody who might speak to it.

  Gradually, as he continued to gaze at the picture, he felt himself bewitched by the charm of it. "Can there really have been in this world," he murmured to himself, "so delicious a creature? How gladly would I give my life—nay, a thousand years of life!—to hold her in my arms even for a moment!" (The Japanese author says "for a few seconds.") In short, he became enamoured of the picture,—so much enamoured of it as to feel that he never could love any woman except the person whom it represented. Yet that person, if still alive, could no longer resemble the painting: perhaps she had been buried long before he was born!

  Day by day, nevertheless, this hopeless passion grew upon him. He could not eat; he could not sleep: neither could he occupy his mind with those studies which had formerly delighted him. He would sit for hours before the picture, talking to it,—neglecting or forgetting everything else. And at last he fell sick—so sick that he believed himself going to die.

  Now among the friends of Tokkei there was one venerable scholar who knew many strange things about old pictures and about young hearts. This aged scholar, hearing of Tokkei's illness, came to visit him, and saw the screen, and understood what had happened. Then Tokkei, being questioned, confessed everything to his friend, and declared:—"If I cannot find such a woman, I shall die."

  The old man said:—

  "That picture was painted by Hishigawa Kichibei,—painted from life. The person whom it represented is not now in the world. But it is said that Hishigawa Kichibei painted her mind as well as her form, and that her spirit lives in the picture. So I think that you can win her."

  Tokkei half rose from his bed, and stared eagerly at the speaker.

  "You must give her a name," the old man continued;—"and you must sit before her picture every day, and keep your thoughts constantly fixed upon her, and call her gently by the name which you have given her, until she answers you. . . ."

  "Answers me!" exclaimed the lover, in breathless amazement.

  "Oh, yes," the adviser responded, "she will certainly answer you. But you must be ready, when she answers you, to present her with what I am going to tell you. . . ."

  "I will give her my life!" cried Tokkei.

  "No," said the old man;—" you will present her with a cup of wine that has been bought at one hundred different wine-shops. Then she will come out of the screen to accept the wine. After that, probably she herself will tell you what to do."

  With these words the old man went away. His advice aroused Tokkei from despair. At once he seated himself before the picture, and called it by the name of a girl—(what name the Japanese narrator has forgotten to tell us)—over and over again, very tenderly. That day it made no answer, nor the next day, nor the next. But Tokkei did not lose faith or patience; and after many days it suddenly one evening answered to its name,—

  "Hai!" (Yes.)

  Then quickly, quickly, some of the wine from a hundred different wine-shops was poured out, and reverentially presented in a little cup. And the girl stepped from the screen, and walked upon the matting of the room, and knelt to take the cup from Tokkei's hand,—asking, with a delicious smile:—

  "How could you love me so much?"

  Says the Japanese narrator: "She was much more beautiful than the picture,—beautiful to the tips of her finger-nails,—beautiful also in heart and temper,—lovelier than anybody else in the world." What answer Tokkei made to her question is not recorded: it will have to be imagined.

  "But will you not soon get tired of me?" she asked.

  "Never while I live!" he protested.

  "And after—?" she persisted;—for the Japanese bride is not satisfied with love for one life-time only.

  "Let us pledge ourselves to each other," he entreated, "for the time of seven existences."

  "If you are ever unkind to me," she said, "I will go back to the screen."

  They pledged each other. I suppose that Tokkei was a good boy,—for his bride never returned to the screen. The space that she had occupied upon it remained a blank.

  Exclaims the Japanese author,—

  "How very seldom do such things happen in this world!"

  Footnotes

  1 He died in the eighteenth year of Kyōhō (1733). The painter to whom he refers—better known to collectors as Hishigawa Kichibei Moronobu—flourished during the latter part of the seventeenth century. Beginning his career as a dyer's apprentice, he won his reputation as an artist about 1680, when he may be said to have founded the Ukiyo-yé school of illustration. Hishigawa was especially a delineator of what are called fūryū, ("elegant manners"),—the aspects of life among the upper classes of society.

  1 Also written méjiri,—the exterior canthus of the eye. The Japanese (like the old Greek and the old Arabian poets) have many curious dainty words and similes to express particular beauties of the hair, eyes, eyelids, lips, fingers, etc.

  The Corpse-Rider1

  1 From the Konséki-Monogatari

  The Corpse-Rider

  THE body was cold as ice; the heart had long ceased to beat: yet there were no other signs of death. Nobody even spoke of burying the woman. She had died of grief and anger at having been divorced. It would have been useless to bury her,—because the last undying wish of a dying person for vengeance can burst asunder any tomb and rift the heaviest graveyard stone. People who lived near the house in which she was lying fled from their homes. They knew that she was only waiting for the return of the man who had divorced her.

  At the time of her death he was on a journey. When he came back and was told what had happened, terror seized him. "If I can find no help before dark," he thought to himself, "she will tear me to pieces." It was yet only the Hour of the Dragon;1 but he knew that he had no time to lose.

  He went at once to an inyōshi,2 and begged for succor. The inyōshi knew the story of the dead woman; and he had seen the body. He said to the supplicant:—"A very great danger threatens you. I will try to save you. But you must promise to do whatever I shall tell you to do. There is only one way by which you can be saved. It is a fearful way. But unless you find the courage to attempt it, she will tear you limb from limb. If you can be brave, come to me again in the evening before sunset." The man shuddered; but he promised to do whatever should be required of him.

  At sunset the inyōshi went with him to the house where the body was lying. The inyōshi pushed open the sliding-doors, and told his client to enter. It was rapidly growing dark. "I dare not!" gasped the man, quaking from head to foot;—"I dare not even look at her!" "You will have to do much more than look at her," declared the inyōshi;—"and you promised to obey. Go in!" He forced the trembler into the house and led him to the side of the corpse.

  The dead woman was lying on her face. "Now you must
get astride upon her," said the inyōshi, "and sit firmly on her back, as if you were riding a horse. . . . Come!—you must do it!" The man shivered so that the inyōshi had to support him—shivered horribly; but he obeyed. "Now take her hair in your hands," commanded the inyōshi,—"half in the right hand, half in the left. . . . So!.. . You must grip it like a bridle. Twist your hands in it—both hands—tightly. That is the way! . . . Listen to me! You must stay like that till morning. You will have reason to be afraid in the night—plenty of reason. But whatever may happen, never let go of her hair. If you let go,—even for one second,—she will tear you into gobbets!"

  The inyōshi then whispered some mysterious words into the ear of the body, and said to its rider:—" Now, for my own sake, I must leave you alone with her. . . . Remain as you are! . . . Above all things, remember that you must not let go of her hair." And he went away,—closing the doors behind him.

  Hour after hour the man sat upon the corpse in black fear;—and the hush of the night deepened and deepened about him till he screamed to break it. Instantly the body sprang beneath him, as to cast him off; and the dead woman cried out loudly, "Oh, how heavy it is! Yet I shall bring that fellow here now!"

  Then tall she rose, and leaped to the doors, and flung them open, and rushed into the night,—always bearing the weight of the man. But he, shutting his eyes, kept his hands twisted in her long hair,—tightly, tightly,—though fearing with such a fear that he could not even moan. How far she went, he never knew. He saw nothing: he heard only the sound of her naked feet in the dark,—picha-picha, picha-picha,—and the hiss of her breathing as she ran.

  At last she turned, and ran back into the house, and lay down upon the floor exactly as at first. Under the man she panted and moaned till the cocks began to crow. Thereafter she lay still.

  But the man, with chattering teeth, sat upon her until the inyōshi came at sunrise. "So you did not let go of her hair!"—observed the inyōshi, greatly pleased. "That is well . . . Now you can stand up." He whispered again into the ear of the corpse, and then said to the man:—"You must have passed a fearful night; but nothing else could have saved you. Hereafter you may feel secure from her vengeance."

  The conclusion of this story I do not think to be morally satisfying. It is not recorded that the corpse-rider became insane, or that his hair turned white: we are told only that "he worshipped the inyōshi with tears of gratitude." A note appended to the recital is equally disappointing. "It is reported," the Japanese author says, "that a grandchild of the man [who rode the corpse] still survives, and that a grandson of the inyōshi is at this very time living in a village called Otokunoi-mura [probably pronounced Otonoi-mura]."

  This village-name does not appear in any Japanese directory of to-day. But the names of many towns and villages have been changed since the foregoing story was written.

  Footnotes

  1 Tatsu no Koku, or the Hour of the Dragon, by old Japanese time, began at about eight o'clock in the morning.

  2 Inyōshi, a professor or master of the science of in-yō,—the old Chinese nature-philosophy, based upon the theory of a male and a female principle pervading the universe.

  The Sympathy of Benten1

  1 The original story is in the Otogi-Hyaku-Monogatari

  The Sympathy of Benten

  IN Kyōto there is a famous temple called Amadera. Sadazumi Shinnō, the fifth son of the Emperor Seiwa, passed the greater part of his life there as a priest; and the graves of many celebrated persons are to be seen in the temple-grounds.

  But the present edifice is not the ancient Amadera. The original temple, after the lapse of ten centuries, fell into such decay that it had to be entirely rebuilt in the fourteenth year of Genroku (1701 A. D.).

  A great festival was held to celebrate the rebuilding of the Amadera; and among the thousands of persons who attended that festival there was a young scholar and poet named Hanagaki Baishū. He wandered about the newly-laid-out grounds and gardens, delighted by all that he saw, until he reached the place of a spring at which he had often drunk in former times. He was then surprised to find that the soil about the spring had been dug away, so as to form a square pond, and that at one corner of this pond there had been set up a wooden tablet bearing the words Tanjō-Sui ("Birth-Water").1 He also saw that a small, but very handsome temple of the Goddess Benten had been erected beside the pond. While he was looking at this new temple, a sudden gust of wind blew to his feet a tanzaku,2 on which the following poem had been written:—

  Shirushi aréto

  Iwai zo somuru

  Tama hōki,

  Toruté bakari no

  Chigiri narétomo.

  This poem—a poem on first love (hatsu koi), composed by the famous Shunrei Kyō—was not unfamiliar to him; but it had been written upon the tanzaku by a female hand, and so exquisitely that he could scarcely believe his eyes. Something in the form of the characters,—an indefinite grace,—suggested that period of youth between childhood and womanhood; and the pure rich color of the ink seemed to bespeak the purity and goodness of the writer's heart.1

  Baishū carefully folded up the tanzaku, and took it home with him. When he looked at it again the writing appeared to him even more wonderful than at first. His knowledge in caligraphy assured him only that the poem had been written by some girl who was very young, very intelligent, and probably very gentle-hearted. But this assurance sufficed to shape within his mind the image of a very charming person; and he soon found himself in love with the unknown. Then his first resolve was to seek out the writer of the verses, and, if possible, make her his wife. . . . Yet how was he to find her? Who was she? Where did she live? Certainly he could hope to find her only through the favor of the Gods.

  But presently it occurred to him that the Gods might be very willing to lend their aid. The tanzaku had come to him while he was standing in front of the temple of Benten-Sama; and it was to this divinity in particular that lovers were wont to pray for happy union. This reflection impelled him to beseech the Goddess for assistance. He went at once to the temple of Benten-of-the-Birth-Water (Tanjō-sui-no-Benten) in the grounds of the Amadera; and there, with all the fervor of his heart, he made his petition:—"O Goddess, pity me!—help me to find where the young person lives who wrote the tanzaku!—vouchsafe me but one chance to meet her,—even if only for a moment!" And after having made this prayer, he began to perform a seven days' religious service (nanuka mairi)1 in honor of the Goddess; vowing at the same time to pass the seventh night in ceaseless worship before her shrine.

  Now on the seventh night,—the night of his vigil,—during the hour when the silence is most deep, he heard at the main gateway of the temple-grounds a voice calling for admittance. Another voice from within answered; the gate was opened; and Baishū saw an old man of majestic appearance approaching with slow steps. This venerable person was clad in robes of ceremony; and he wore upon his snow-white head a black cap (eboshi) of the form indicating high rank. Reaching the little temple of Benten, he knelt down in front of it, as if respectfully awaiting some order. Then the outer door of the temple was opened; the hanging curtain of bamboo behind it, concealing the inner sanctuary, was rolled half-way up; and a chigo2 came forward,—a beautiful boy, with long hair tied back in the ancient manner. He stood at the threshold, and said to the old man in a clear loud voice:—

  "There is a person here who has been praying for a love-union not suitable to his present condition, and otherwise difficult to bring about. But as the young man is worthy of Our pity, you have been called to see whether something can be done for him. If there should prove to be any relation between the parties from the period of a former birth, you will introduce them to each other."

  On receiving this command, the old man bowed respectfully to the chigo: then, rising, he drew from the pocket of his long left sleeve a crimson cord. One end of this cord he passed round Baishū's body, as if to bind him with it. The other end he put into the flame of one of the temple-lamps; and while the cord
was there burning, he waved his hand three times, as if to summon somebody out of the dark.

  Immediately, in the direction of the Amadera, a sound of coming steps was heard; and in another moment a girl appeared,—a charming girl, fifteen or sixteen years old. She approached gracefully, but very shyly,—hiding the lower part of her face with a fan; and she knelt down beside Baishū. The chigo then said to Baishū:—

  "Recently you have been suffering much heart-pain; and this desperate love of yours has even impaired your health. We could not allow you to remain in so unhappy a condition; and We therefore summoned the Old-Man-under-the-Moon1 to make you acquainted with the writer of that tanzaku. She is now beside you."

  With these words, the chigo retired behind the bamboo curtain. Then the old man went away as he had come; and the young girl followed him. Simultaneously Baishū heard the great bell of the Amadera sounding the hour of dawn. He prostrated himself in thanksgiving before the shrine of Benten-of-the-Birth-Water, and proceeded homeward,—feeling as if awakened from some delightful dream,—happy at having seen the charming person whom he had so fervently prayed to meet,—unhappy also because of the fear that he might never meet her again.

  But scarcely had he passed from the gateway into the street, when he saw a young girl walking alone in the same direction that he was going; and, even in the dusk of the dawn, he recognized her at once as the person to whom he had been introduced before the temple of Benten. As he quickened his pace to overtake her, she turned and saluted him with a graceful bow. Then for the first time he ventured to speak to her; and she answered him in a voice of which the sweetness filled his heart with joy. Through the yet silent streets they walked on, chatting happily, till they found themselves before the house where Baishū lived. There he paused—spoke to the girl of his hopes and fears. Smiling, she asked:—"Do you not know that I was sent for to become your wife?" And she entered with him.