Both temples were once splendid with all the emblems and trappings of Buddhism, redolent with incense, musical with bells and gongs, and resounding all day with chanted services. But after the Restoration, when the Shinto became the state religion and the Emperor made a pilgrimage to Nikko, Iyeyasu’s temple was stripped of its splendid altar ornaments, banners, and symbols, and the simple mirror and bits of paper of the empty Shinto creed were substituted. In the dark chapel behind the first room there remains a large gong, whose dark bowl rests on a silken pad, and when softly struck fills the place with rising and falling, recurring and wavering, tones of sweetness for five whole minutes, while Ito stands with open watch and warning finger, and the priest bends low and drinks in the music with ecstatic countenance. Iyemitsu’s temple was spared, and there stand the rows of superb lacquered boxes containing the sacred writings. There, too, are the gilded images, golden lotus-leaves, massive candlesticks, drums, gongs, banners and pendent ornaments, besides the giant koros, breathing forth pale clouds of incense, that accompanied the rites of the grand old Buddhist faith.
INTERIOR OF THE IYEMITSU TEMPLE
Each temple has a fine water-tank in its outer court; an open pavilion, with solid corner posts supporting the heavy and ornate roof above the granite trough. Each basin is a single, huge block of stone, hollowed out and cut with such exactness that the water, welling up from the bottom, pours over the smooth edges so evenly as to give it the look of a cube of polished glass. The fountain at the Iyemitsu temple was the gift of the princes of Nabeshima, and its eaves flutter with the myriad flags left there by pilgrims who come to pray at the great shrine. All about the temple grounds is heard the noise of rushing water, and the music and gurgle of these tiny streams, the rustle of the high branches, and the cawing of huge solitary rooks are the only sounds that break the stillness of the enchanted groves between the soft boomings of the morning and evening bells. The noise of voices is lost in the great leafy spaces, and the sacredness of the place subdues even the unbelieving foreigner, while native tourists and pilgrims move silently, or speak only in undertones, and make no sound, save as their clogs clatter on stones and gravel.
It is impossible to carry away more than a general and bewildered impression of the splendid walled and lanterned courts, the superb gate-ways, and the temples themselves, but certain details, upon which the guides insist, remain strangely clear in memory. Over the doors of the stable where the sacred white pony is kept are colored carvings representing groups of monkeys with eyes, or ears, or mouth covered with their paws—the signification being that one should neither see, hear, nor speak any evil. In one superbly-carved gate-way is a little medallion of two tigers, so cunningly studied and worked out that the curving grain and knots of the wood give all the softly-shaded stripes of their velvet coats and an effect of thick fur. One section of a carved column in this gate is purposely placed upsidedown, the builder fearing to complete so perfect and marvellous a piece of workmanship. Above another gate-way curls a comfortable sleeping cat, which is declared to wink when rain is coming, and this white cat has as great a fame as anything along the Daiyagawa.
The strangest hierophant in Nikko is the priestess who dances at the temple of Iyeyasu. She looks her three-score years of age, and is allowed a small temple to herself, where she sits, posed like an altar image, with a big money-box on the sacred red steps before her, into which the pious and the curious toss their offerings. Then the priestess rises and solemnly walks a few steps this way, a few steps that way, poses before each change, shakes an elaborate sort of baby’s rattle with the right-hand, and gesticulates with an open fan in the left-hand. The sedate walk to and fro, the movements of the rattle and fan constitute the dance, after which this aged Miriam sits down, bows her head to the mats, and resumes her statuesque pose. She wears a nun-like head-dress of white muslin, and a loose white garment without obi, over a red petticoat, the regular costume of the Shinto priestesses. She seems always amiable and ready to respond to a conciliatory coin, but the visitor wonders that the cool and shaded sanctuary in which she sits, with nearly the whole front wall making an open door, does not stiffen her aged joints with rheumatism and end her dancing days.
