FROM THE REV. DR. WILLIAM ELLIOT GRIFFIS.
No American scholar is better fitted than the Rev. Dr. William Elliot Griffis to speak of Japanese manners and customs, and of the religions and modes of thought of the people of Japan. After an extended residence in that country in connection with the Imperial University of Tokio, he has studied and written of it and of its inhabitants. “The Mikado’s Empire,” “The Religions of Japan,” “Japan in History, Folk Lore, and Art,” are among the best known and most valuable of his works in that field. Of “The Threshold Covenant” he says heartily, after an examination of its pages:
“Your general theory is abundantly confirmed in the early life and customs of Chinese Asia, and especially in the history of early Japan. I should, of course, be glad to call together a council of native Japanese friends, and some of my returned countrymen, and talk over your book, but this is impossible at present, and press of many duties prevents me from doing justice to the work, as I should like to do. Such observations as I may throw out, though imperfect, will, I trust, be suggestive. I have read the book twice, and consider it a work of the first order of value.
“In mediæval and modern Japan, it must be remembered, many of the ancient customs and primitive native ideas have been not only changed, but obliterated, by Buddhism, which, by its excessive reverence for life, put an end to those customs which had in them the shedding of blood, or the taking of life. In ancient days it was the pretty nearly universal custom to build human beings alive in the walls of castles or strongholds, and the piers or foundations of bridges. Many are the places rich in traditions of the hito-gashira, or human pillars, who were lowered into the sea to be drowned (to appease the dragon, etc.), or made, as it were, cement for the foundation-stone,–to which I have alluded in my ‘Religions of Japan.’
“What may be called the ‘gate etiquette’ in Japan is elaborate and detailed. More than once have the foreign teachers, denizens, and tourists, had quarrels with the Japanese school, municipal, and national authorities, because they unwittingly often violated ancient Japanese traditions and customs. I myself remember how the mom-ban, or gate-keeper, used to refuse admittance to my jin-riki-sha because I had sitting with me a Japanese student or lad, who could not, in native ideas of propriety, share with me (a guest) the honor of riding inside the chief gate of mansion or college. Concerning troubles with native servants and others, who were inclined to shelter themselves under the foreigners’ prestige and privilege, I need not speak in detail. The term ‘Mikado,’ as you may know, is literally Sublime Porte, Awful Gate, or Portal of Majesty. I believe there is profound significance in the idea of having the gateway to a Buddhist temple a structure which is in many cases almost as imposing as the sacred edifice itself. Each Shintō shrine has before it, at some distance, a tori-i; and every little wayside shrine, in size from a doll-house to a one-room cottage, has almost invariably a little tori-i, or gateway, before it.
“The most elaborate ceremonies and gradations of honor are connected with the threshold of the Imperial Palace, and for a thousand years or more were rigorously observed in Kioto, and doubtless to great extent are yet in the new palace in Tokio.
“In a Japanese marriage, when conducted on the old order of ceremonies, the origin of which goes back into primeval twilight, the bride goes from her own home always to be married in her husband’s home and to become a part of it. As she approaches her new home, fires are lighted on either side of the threshold or door of entrance of the bridegroom’s house. The name of these fires is ‘garden torches.’ As she proceeds up the corridor, inside the house, two pairs of men and women, one on each side, have mortars in which they pound rice. As the palanquin passes, the two mortars are moved together, and the meal from the two is mixed so as to become one mess. During the same time two candles have been lighted on either side of the passage way, and after the passing of the palanquin, the two flames are first joined in one and then blown out. Of course, these ceremonies are now used only among the higher classes.
“In all the Buddhist temples beside the great gateway and the ordinary temple entrance there is a distinctly marked sill, behind which is the altar, and over which the worshiper must not come.
“I am very much inclined to believe that there is a significance which allies itself to ‘The Threshold Covenant’ in the ye-bumi or ‘trampling on the cross,’ observed during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries in Japan in order to eradicate all traces of Christianity. The pagan authorities made a copper engraving of the crucifix, and putting it on the ground, between a structure that was evidently meant for the doorway with a threshold under it, they compelled every one–man, woman, and child–to step upon the figure of Christ and the cross in token of their rejection of everything belonging to Christianity.
“In ancient Japan, and all through her history, great care was taken with boundaries and boundary marks, the latter being sometimes masses of charcoal buried in the earth, or inscribed pillars, the bases of which were charred. Mr. Ernest Satow, the first authority on things Japanese, believes that these boundary pillars, which, in some cases (as in Corea today), were carved to represent certain gods, afterwards became phallic emblems. Before most of the Buddhist temples of importance are to be found the two guardian deities Ni-ō (two kings), and before many thousands of shrines of both Shintō and Buddhism is the ama-inu (heavenly dogs), which are the guardians of the entrance to the temple.
“Time would fail me to tell of the various fetiches placed over and beside the doorways and gates. Beside the very elaborate New Year’s symbolism signifying prosperity, longevity, congratulations, etc., there is always, on the last night of the year, a sort of ‘purging out of the old leaven,’ cleaning up of the house, and exorcism, by means of beans as projectiles, of all evil and evil spirits. Then bunches of thorny leaves, like holly, are affixed outside on the door lintel. Over the doorway of almost every house of country folk and many of the townspeople, one can see the wooden charms nailed up. These are bought in the temples of the priests as well as the packages of sacred paper with Sanskrit letters or monograms for the better class of houses.
“Besides the red cord with which almost every present in Japan is tied, the stamp of the red hand on or at the side of the door, either on the wood itself or on a sheet of paper, nailed up beside the door, is very common at particular times.
“The Mecca of Japanese Shintō is at Isé, where the temples have had from time immemorial ‘only one foundation.’ The buildings are renewed every twenty years on the same spot. For many centuries it has been the custom to rebuild Buddhist temples on the same foundation when destroyed by fire, or when ‘captured’ from Shintoist to Buddhist ownership....
“Let me call your attention to the idea underlying the political and religious covenant of the great Iroquois Confederacy–the most remarkable political structure of North American Indian life. The five tribes (later a sixth was added) called their dwelling-place in New York, between Niagara and the Hudson ‘the Long House’ after the typical Iroquois dwelling in which lived many families. Few Iroquois lived east of Schenectady, though they went to fish in the Hudson River, which they then named (a) ‘Schenectady.’ Schenectady (which in the Indian conception was the region in their extreme east) means, when analyzed, ‘just outside the threshold,’ or ‘without the door.’ While Onondaga was the central fore-place of the Confederacy, the site of Schenectady had special sacredness in the minds of the Iroquois, and the Mohawks, who occupied this portion of the country, were called ‘the guardians of the threshold.’
“Van Curler (Arendt Van Curler), one of the real ‘makers of America,’ who knew the Indians so well, and who made that great covenant with them which kept the Iroquois, despite all French intrigue, bribery, and opposition, faithful (for two centuries, till the Revolution divided even the white men), first to the Dutch, then to the English, knew this Indian reverence for the threshold, and took a just advantage of it. The fact that ‘The Covenant of Corlear’ was made on the threshold of their Long House gave it such sacredness in the eyes of the Indians that it was never broken. In all their later oratory, for two centuries they referred to this covenant. Besides calling the governors of New York ‘Corlear’ (the only instance, as Francis Parkman once wrote me, in which the Indians applied a personal name instead of making use of a material object, figuratively, to a governor,–‘fish,’ ‘pen,’ ‘big mountain,’ etc.), the Mohawks of Canada to this day, as I heard them speak it after personal inquiry, call Queen Victoria ‘Kora Kowa,’ that is, ‘the great Corlear’ (Van Curler).”