If I were a good Buddhist I should say a prayer or two to the Chioin’s great bell, an inverted cup of bronze eighteen feet in height, breathing music so sweet that it thrills the listener, and ringing so seldom that no one willingly misses its voice. This bell hangs by itself in a shady place at the top of a long stone staircase, and is struck from the outside by a swinging wooden beam that brings out soft reverberations without jar or clang. This huge hammer is unchained on rare days of the month at the sunrise hour, and in the stillness of dawn one cannot tell whence the sound comes. It is in the whole air; under one’s feet, or tingling and beating within one’s body, while yet the ear seems to drink in the very ecstasy of sound.
About Nanjenji’s lofty gate-way are clustering tea-bushes, and between its ancient shrine, its tombs, and picturesque bell-tower modern engineering has brought the aqueduct from Lake Biwa, the long tunnel emerging from the hill-side back of the buildings. Further on are Iyekando, with its lotus lake and verdant cemetery; Niyakuoji’s pretty garden and cascade; and Shishigatami, Shinniodo, and Yoshida, each with its distinctive charm and interest.
The way from these sacred places, passing through the potters’ district of Awata, and coming suddenly out on a level of rice fields, with Kurodani’s pagoda and grove rising like an island from their midst, has been likened to the abrupt transportation from Rome to the Campagna. Kurodani is a beautiful old sanctuary, and the steep hill on which stands its great pagoda is an ideal Buddhist burial-ground. Tombs, stone tablets, and lanterns, and hundreds of images of Buddha, in stone and bronze, crowd against each other, and some priest or pilgrim, ever picturesque, is always moving up or down the broad gray staircase.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE MONTO TEMPLES AND THE DAIMONJI
As an evidence of the vitality of their faith the Monto Buddhists point to their great new temple in the southern part of the city. This Higashi Hongwanji (Eastern Temple) was eight years in building, at an enormous cost, and is the largest temple in Japan. The squared trunks of keyaki-trees that support floor and roof are of a fine, close grain, that lasts for centuries without paint or preserving process. A collection of thick black ropes hangs from the beams, all of them made from the hair of pious women too poor to offer other contributions. The largest rope is five inches in diameter and two hundred and fifty feet long, the hair, wound in a dozen separate strands around a slender core of hemp, having been given by three thousand five hundred of the pious maids and matrons of the province of Echizen. Here and there in this giant cable are pathetic threads of white hair, the rest being deep black. Each summer pious men came to give their days’ labor to the temple when they had no money. The best workers in wood from several provinces, craftsmen descended from generations of wood-carvers, were brought together to labor for several years on the decorative panels, carving from solid blocks of hard keyaki wonderful birds and flowers, curling waves and dashing spray—designs full of movement and life.
This Shin, or Monto sect of Buddhists, is one of the richest and largest. Its temples are always built in the heart of cities, and always in pairs, a Nishi Hongwanji (Western Temple) and a Higashi Hongwanji (Eastern Temple) being found in Tokio, Kioto, and Osaka. At the Nishi Hongwanji of Kioto the vast interior discloses masses of carving, gilding, lacquer, damascening, and paintings on golden groundwork, and Monto altars are more splendid than those of any other sect. This Hongwanji is very rich, having been endowed with lands and mines in the days of Hideyoshi, its special protector, and the temple enclosure holds many relics of the Taiko. Connected with the temple is a great yashiki, or abbot’s residence, and the wall-screens and superb ceilings, brought from Hideyoshi’s castle at Fushimi, south of Kioto, to adorn the suites of reception-rooms, are finer than any in the imperial palace. The carved, gilded, and lacquered ceilings, the wonderful paintings on gold-leaf surfaces, the damascened mountings of the screens, the vast audience hall, the private rooms, the No pavilion, and the court where the enemies’ heads were displayed, are all magnificent. In a corner of the grounds is the pleasure-garden of Hideyoshi, a leafy, lake-centred paradise, and a marvel of artistic arrangement, with its winding water overhung with wistaria arbors, crossed by picturesque bridges, reflecting its stone lanterns, thickets of oleander, bamboo, pine, palm, and banana trees, and the two beautiful miniature palaces within the maze. On a pine-covered knoll is the thatched summer-house, where the fierce yet poetic warrior sat in his armor to watch the moon rise over the trees and turn the lake to a silver shield at his feet.
The Hongwanji services are splendid and impressive ceremonies; the companies of gorgeously-clad priests, the chanting, the incense, the lighted tapers, the bells, the opening of the doors of the golden shrine to display the image of Buddha, all bearing a strange resemblance to the worship of Romish churches. The faithful kneel, touch themselves, and use the rosary in prayer; and high mass at the Hongwanji might almost be high mass at St. Mark’s. Mass is celebrated at five o’clock on every morning of the year, and all day worshippers may come to kneel and pray before the altars. On the first and fifteenth days of each month special services are held at two o’clock in the afternoon, and every January recurs a week of prayer in honor of the founder of the Shin sect, when priests come from all parts of the empire to the mother-temple. The fortnightly afternoon services consist of readings from the sacred scriptures, and the chanting of Japanese and Chinese sacred poems by some twenty priests in black gauze stoles; a larger chorus, hidden behind the central shrine and altar, joining in and responding. The high-priest, in a cardinal and gold brocade kesa, sits directly facing the shrine, and at intervals touches the swinging plate of bronze used as a gong in the order of worship. The golden shrine, in a great gilded alcove, or chancel, bears countless gilded lotus flowers and candelabra, and slender columns of incense rise from the priests’ low reading-desk. At the conclusion of the chanted service the doors of the shrine are opened, and the sacred image displayed in a silence broken only by low strokes on the gong. Then the priests file away, and the faithful, flocking into the vacant place behind the rail, and kneeling where the priests have knelt, prostrate themselves, rub their rosaries in their palms, and repeat with ecstatic fervor the invocation: “Namu Amida Butsu” (Hail, Great Lord Buddha).
Every year, on the temple steps, the contributions of rice from distant provinces are stacked high in their cylindrical straw bales, themselves emblems of abundance. This rice is sent as an annual tribute from different parts of the empire to the head-temple of the sect at Kioto, to be used for offerings in the sanctuaries, for the priests’ food, and for alms to the poor.