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GLEANINGS IN BUDDHA-FIELDS

STUDIES OF HAND AND SOUL
IN THE FAR EAST

BY

LAFCADIO HEARN

LECTURER ON ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE
IMPERIAL UNIVERSITY OF JAPAN



BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

1897




CONTENTS

       I. A LIVING GOD
      II. OUT OF THE STREET
     III. NOTES OF A TRIP TO KYŌTO
      IV. DUST
       V. ABOUT FACES EN JAPANESE ART
      VI. NINGYŌ-NO-HAKA
     VII. IN ŌSAKA
    VIII. BUDDHIST ALLUSIONS IN JAPANESE FOLK-SONG
      IX. NIRVANA
       X. THE REBIRTH OF KATSUGORŌ
      XI. WITHIN THE CIRCLE



GLEANINGS IN BUDDHA-FIELDS




I


A LIVING GOD


I


Of whatever dimension, the temples or shrines of pure Shintō are all
built in the same archaic style. The typical shrine is a windowless
oblong building of unpainted timber, with a very steep overhanging
roof; the front is the gable end; and the upper part of the perpetually
closed doors is wooden lattice-work,--usually a grating of bars
closely set and crossing each other at right angles. In most cases
the structure is raised slightly above the ground on wooden pillars;
and the queer peaked façade, with its visor-like apertures and the
fantastic projections of beam-work above its gable-angle, might remind
the European traveler of certain old Gothic forms of dormer. There is
no artificial color. The plain wood[1] soon turns, under the action of
rain and sun, to a natural grey, varying according to surface exposure
from the silvery tone of birch bark to the sombre grey of basalt. So
shaped and so tinted, the isolated country _yashiro_ may seem less like
a work of joinery than a feature of the scenery,--a rural form related
to nature as closely as rocks and trees,--a something that came into
existence only as a manifestation of Ohotsuchi-no-Kami, the Earth-god,
the primeval divinity of the land.

Why certain architectural forms produce in the beholder a feeling of
weirdness is a question about which I should like to theorize some
day: at present I shall venture only to say that Shinto shrines evoke
such a feeling. It grows with familiarity instead of weakening; and a
knowledge of popular beliefs is apt to intensify it. We have no English
words by which these queer shapes can be sufficiently described,--much
less any language able to communicate the peculiar impression which
they make. Those Shinto terms which we loosely render by the words
"temple" and "shrine" are really untranslatable;--I mean that the
Japanese ideas attaching to them cannot be conveyed by translation. The
so-called "august house" of the Kami is not so much a temple, in the
classic meaning of the term, as it is a haunted room, a spirit-chamber,
a ghost-house; many of the lesser divinities being veritably
ghosts,--ghosts of great warriors and heroes and rulers and teachers,
who lived and loved and died hundreds or thousands of years ago. I
fancy that to the Western mind the word "ghost-house" will convey,
better than such terms as "shrine" and "temple," some vague notion of
the strange character of the Shinto _miya_ or _yashiro,_--containing
in its perpetual dusk nothing more substantial than symbols or tokens,
the latter probably of paper. Now the emptiness behind the visored
front is more suggestive than anything material could possibly be;
and when you remember that millions of people during thousands of
years have worshipped