Jinrikisha days in Japan

by Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore

The founder of Nara rode up to the mountain on a deer to choose a residence for himself, and ever since the deer have been petted and protected. Groups of them, lying under the trees, permit themselves to be admired, and feeding parties turn their pretty pointed heads to look after the visitor. The does and fawns, however, hide in the dark fern-covered ravines. All through the forest and temple grounds are little thatched houses, where tea for man and corn-meal for deer are sold, together with the little carved images and deer-horn toys for which Nara is famous. It is a pity that the Japanese name for deer is such a harsh, unmusical word as shika, which even the little children, who toddle after the pretty creatures with out-stretched hands, cannot make musical. Plump little country maids, with their tied-up sleeves, are heard from sunrise until dusk calling up the deer to be fed—“Ko! ko! ko! ko!” (Come! come! come! come!) and at the word “Ko” even the fattest and heaviest stag lumbers forward and nibbles from their hands. Moving at leisure, these deer have a stiff, wooden gait, and seem badly-proportioned animals. It is when one leaps and bounds down some avenue, or across a clearing, that it shows its grace. The gentleness of these Nara pets is due, of course, to the long immunity from violence enjoyed by their race, beloved and protected by gods and men. Only once have they ever been harmed, and that blow was dealt by a young Japanese convert to Christianity, who struck at them as emblems of heathenism!

The atmosphere of Nara is serene and gentle—the true atmosphere of Japan. The priests are quiet, courteous old men, and the little priestesses, soft-footed and tranquil, dance in a slow succession of dignified poses. The Kasuga temple is a very cathedral of Shintoism, a place of many court-yards, surrounded by gates, and buildings painted bright Shinto red, with sacred straw ropes and symbolical bits of rice-paper hanging before the open doors. Venerable cryptomeria-trees, worthy of a California grove, stretch the great buttresses of their roots over the ground of the court-yard, and one thatched roof lovingly embraces the trunk of a crooked old tree that almost rests on it. Wistaria vines, thick, gnarled, and lichen-covered with the growth of years, hang in giant festoons from the trees, roll in curves and loops over the ground, and, climbing to the top of the tallest pines, hang their clusters of pale-green leaves like blossoms against the dark evergreens. A giant trunk, from which grow branches of the camellia, cherry, plum, wild ivy, wistaria and nandina, is a perpetual marvel. All through the woods the wistaria runs wild, leaps from tree to tree, and ties and knots itself in titanic coils.

In such lovely scenes the Kasuga priests lead an ideal existence. They marry, they raise families; their little daughters perform the sacred dance in the temple for a certain number of years, and they may leave the priesthood if they wish. All the brotherhood wear the loose, flowing purple trousers, white gauze coats, and black, helmet-shaped caps prescribed by the Shinto rules; and besides making the morning and evening offerings to the gods, and conducting special ceremonies on the two purification days of the year, they play the ancient flute and drum, and chant a hymn while the sacred dance is given. For a poetic, philosophical, meditative, or lazy man nothing could be more congenial than this life. Hurry, novelty, and the rush of events come not near Nara, which is in the land “wherein it seemed always afternoon.”

The pilgrims, who trudge from the most distant provinces with bell and beads and staff, make up the greater number of visitors, and their white garments, straw sandals, cloaks, and hats, are of a fashion centuries old. Bands of these votaries go through the temple courts, in charge of voluble guides, who intone a description of the places in the way of their craft the world over. One or two old men seem always to be sauntering up the long avenue, stopping frequently to rest, praying at every shrine, and muttering to themselves praises of the sacred place. Their wrinkled faces glow with pleasure, and they delight in watching the deer, to whom the tinkle of a pilgrim’s bell or iron-ringed staff is always a promise of cakes.

To the antiquarian, Nara is full of interest. The temples, founded in the seventh and eighth centuries, were the first Buddhist sanctuaries in Japan; Buddhism, coming from India by way of China and Korea, having found its first home here when Nara was the imperial capital. Four empresses and three emperors held the sceptre between 708 and 782, and all the region is historic ground. The great city, that covered the plain for centuries after that imperial day, has shrunken to a small provincial town, still eloquent of the past. The Shinto temples, as their rules provide, have been rebuilt every twenty years, the original buildings being exactly duplicated each time, so that, in their freshness and perfect repair, they look now as they did a thousand years ago. The Buddhist shrines have been burned, rebuilt, half abandoned at times; and in recent years, since their lands were taken from them and their revenues withheld, have suffered seriously. The largest image of Buddha is the Nara Dai Butsu. The seated deity, 63 feet in height, was set upon his lotus pedestal in 749, and once the head of the statue fell off and was broken, and twice the temple burned and melted it. The temple enshrining the bronze deity is now dilapidated, and the huge corner beams and brackets of the roof are braced with timbers, so that an earthquake would be likely to over-set the holy place.

The great two-storied gate-way of the Dai Butsu temple has stood for eleven centuries and more, and is a picturesque, weather-beaten old structure, apparently strong enough to resist the assaults of another thousand years. Colossal Nio, with hideous countenances, stand on guard in niches, and within is a large green court-yard, and a closed gallery on the two sides that connect the gate-way with the temple—the cloister of a European cathedral. A huge bronze lantern, one of the earliest examples of such work, is said to have long contained the sacred fire brought from Ceylon. The great Buddha itself is disappointing, because seen too near. The face is sixteen feet long and over nine feet wide, and the expression is not calm, soulful, and meditative, as Buddha in Nirvana should be, but heavy and stolid, with a hard, unmeditative stare. The gilding with which the statue was once covered has worn away with time, leaving it as dark and blackened as befits its Hottentot countenance. On the great halo are images six and eight feet high that look like pygmies.

Behind the Buddha is a museum of antiquities connected in some way with the temple and its founders and patrons. Here are kept the carpenters’ tools with which the first temple was built, and prehistoric-looking fragments of bronze and iron to which the stranger finds no clew. A door of the palace whereon Kusunoki, the Chevalier Bayard of Japan, wrote a farewell message with his arrow when he went away to his last battle, images, carvings, old armor, weapons, and trappings, afford the Japanese visitor much delight. But the real treasures of Dai Butsu are the relics left to it by one of the Nara Emperors, who built a substantial log storehouse in the enclosure, and bequeathed to the temple everything his palace contained. Palaces were small in those days, and their furnishings scanty; but the clothing, household effects, and ornaments of the dead benefactor were brought to this storehouse and carefully sealed up. Every summer, after the rainy season ends, the treasures are aired, the inventory verified, and the place sealed up again. Three of the greatest nobles of the empire are associated with the high-priest in the care of these Nara relics, and the storehouse can only be opened by an imperial order transmitted in the handwriting of the emperor. Only royal or greatly distinguished visitors may ask this privilege, as it is a great trouble and expense to get the guardians together. Its value as a collection and as a picture of the life of the eighth century is hardly appreciated by the Japanese, who chiefly reverence its sacredness as connected with the person of an early Emperor. An imperial commission, made up of officers of the imperial household and of art connoisseurs, examined, classified, and catalogued the treasures of the Nara and Kioto temples in 1888. Mr. Kuki, late Japanese minister to the United States, and president of this commission, had even this imperial treasure-house opened and the precious relics photographed. The commission and its staff numbered over twenty people, and the old guardians of the storehouse were much disturbed by this invasion of their carefully closed domain, which they would have resisted if they could.

On the hill above the Dai Butsu temple are other Buddhist sanctuaries; the Nigwatsudo and the Hachiman being devoted respectively to the goddess Kwannon and to Hachiman, god of war. Both are resorts for the summer pilgrims, and the droning of prayers, the clapping of hands and rattle of coins, are heard all day long. Stone terraces and staircases, mossy stone lanterns and green drinking-fountains make the old places picturesque, and the platforms afford magnificent views across to the bold mountain-wall in the west that divides Nara from Osaka’s fertile rice plain. In the court-yards are sold maps, wood-cuts, and bunches of little cinnamon twigs that the pilgrims find refreshing, and there do captive monkeys perform grotesque antics. One may often see here the Hiyakudo (the hundred times going) performed by faithful pilgrims, who walk a hundred times around in the fulfilment of a vow.

Between these Buddhist temples and the Shinto shrines, hidden in their forest park, there intervenes a smooth, grassy mountain, called the Mikasayama, or “Three-hat hill,” because of its three ridges. Every devout pilgrim climbs the delusive, velvety-looking slope to the stone at the third summit to look out upon the rich province of Yamato, “the heart of Japan,” and the scene of so many battles, wars and sieges as to be also called “the cockpit of Japan.”