The opening chapter is his first day in the Orient, "the first charm of Japan is intangible and volatile as a perfume." Everything seems to him elfish and diminutive. "Cha," his Kurumaya, takes him past the shops where it appears to him "that everything Japanese is delicate, exquisite, admirable—even a pair of common wooden chop-sticks in a paper bag with a little drawing upon it." The money itself is a thing of beauty. But one must not dare to look, for there is enchantment in these wares, and having looked, one must buy. In truth one wishes to buy everything, even to the whole land, "with its magical trees and luminous atmosphere, with all its cities and towns and temples, and forty millions of the most lovable people."
Before the steps leading to a temple he stops.
I turn a moment to look back through the glorious light. Sea and sky mingle in the same beautiful pale clear blue. Below me the billowing of bluish roofs reaches to the verge of the unruffled bay on the right, and to the feet of the green wooded hills flanking the city on two sides. Beyond that semi-circle of green hills rises a lofty range of serrated mountains, indigo silhouettes. And enormously high above the line of them towers an apparition indescribably lovely,—one solitary snowy cone, so filmly exquisite, so spiritually white, that but for its immemorially familiar outline, one would surely deem it a shape of cloud. Invisible its base remains, being the same delicious tint as the sky: only above the eternal snow-line its dreamy cone appears, seeming to hang, the ghost of a peak, between the luminous land and the luminous heaven,—the sacred and matchless mountain, Fujiyama.
Passing to the temple garden he wonders why the trees are so lovely in Japan.
Is it that the trees have been so long domesticated and caressed by man in this land of the gods, that they have acquired souls, and strive to show their gratitude, like women loved, by making themselves more beautiful for man's sake? Assuredly they have mastered men's hearts by their loveliness, like beautiful slaves. That is to say, Japanese hearts. Apparently there have been some foreign tourists of the brutal class in this place, since it has been deemed necessary to set up inscriptions in English announcing that "it is forbidden to injure the trees."
Of Hearn's first visit to a Buddhist temple, I quote what one of his critics has to say:—
"The silence of centuries seems to descend upon your soul, you feel the thrill of something above and beyond the commonplace of this every-day world, even here, amidst the turmoil, the rush, the struggle of this monster city of the West, if you take up his 'Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan,' and turn to his description of his first visit to a Buddhist temple. Marvellous is his power of imparting the mystery of that strange land, of hidden meanings and allegories, of mists and legends. The bygone spirit of the race, the very essence of the heart of the people, that has lain sleeping in the temple gloom, in the shadows of the temple shrines, awakes and whispers in your ears. You feel the soft, cushioned matting beneath your feet, you smell the faint odour of the incense, you hear the shuffling of pilgrim feet, the priest sliding back screen after screen, pouring in light upon the gilded bronzes and inscriptions; and you look for the image of the Deity, of the presiding Spirit, between the altar groups of convoluted candelabra. And you see:
Only a mirror, a round, pale disc of polished metal, and my own face therein, and behind this mockery of me a phantom of the far sea.
Only a mirror! Symbolizing what? Illusion? Or that the Universe exists for us solely as the reflection of our own souls? Or the old Chinese teaching that we must seek the Buddha only in our own hearts? Perhaps some day I shall be able to find out. (350.)
Many more temples are visited in the following chapter. What impresses him the most is the joyousness of the people's faith: everything is bright and cheerful, and the air is filled with the sound of children's voices as they play in the courts. He sees the many representations of Jizō, the loving divinity who cares for the souls of little children, who comforts them, and saves them from the demons. The face of Jizō is like that of a beautiful boy, and the countenance is made "heavenly by such a smile as only Buddhist art could have imagined, the smile of infinite lovingness and supremest gentleness." There is also Kwannon, "the goddess of mercy, the gentle divinity who refused the rest of Nirvâna to save the souls of men." Her face is golden, smiling with eternal youth and infinite tenderness. And he sees Emma Dai-ō, the unpitying, tremendous one. He learns many things of many gods and goddesses. There is the temple of Kishibojin—the mother of Demons. For some former sin she was born a demon and devoured her own children. But through the teaching of Buddha she became a divine being, loving and protecting the little ones, and Japanese mothers pray to her, and wives pray for beautiful boys. At her shrine what impresses the visitor are hundreds of tiny dresses, mostly of poor material, stretched between tall poles of bamboos. These are the thank-offerings of poor simple country mothers whose prayers to her have been answered.
In another chapter Hearn writes of the Festival of the Dead, for between the 13th and the 15th day of July the dead may come back again. Every small and great shrine is made beautiful with new mats of purest rice straw, and is decorated with lotus flowers, shikimi (anise) and misohagi (lespedeza). Food offerings, served on a tiny lacquered table—a zen—are placed before the altars. Every hour, tea daintily served in little cups is offered to the viewless visitors. At night beautiful special lanterns are hung at the entrances of homes. Those who have dead friends visit the cemeteries and make offerings there with prayers, and the sprinkling of water, and the burning of incense. On the evening of the 15th the ghosts of those, who in expiation of faults committed in a previous life are doomed to hunger, are fed. And also are fed the ghosts of those who have no friends.