Rare days in Japan

by George Trumbull Ladd

Having arrived at the top of the stone stairway, and at least partially extricated ourselves from the crowd, our attention was directed to the students of the neighbouring Nichiren College, who were posted here and there, throughout the dimly lantern-lighted grove, exhorting the people to the religious life and expounding the tenets of the sect. But the crowd on the outside, for the most part, was not on religion bent. The Hondo, or main temple, however, was solidly packed with a body of truly devout believers, all sitting on the floor and expecting to spend the entire night in silent meditation and devout prayer.

“[THE CHIEF ABBOT CAME IN TO GREET US]”

With great difficulty we forced our way to the beautiful and new priests-house which had been built in the place of a similar one among the several monastery buildings destroyed by a recent fire. There I was received with no small ceremony, ushered into a waiting-room that had been reserved for us, and offered cakes and tea. Soon [the chief abbot and the vice-abbots came in to greet us] and to express their regret that, since all the rooms of the monastery were occupied by the faithful who had come to pass the night there, they could not entertain their guest more as they would have desired. Before excusing himself, however, the chief abbot invited me to bring Mrs. Ladd and, at some time in November, when the maple trees for which Ikegami is justly celebrated should be at their best, give them the pleasure of making us both their guests. At that future time it was promised that we should see the best of the temple’s treasures, and have the principles of the sect duly expounded. For the present, one of the vice-abbots, who seemed overflowing with religious enthusiasm, explained in a somewhat deprecatory way that, although the authorities of the monastery did not by any means approve of all which was done by the crowds who attended the festival, and would not wish to have the spiritual principles of the sect judged by this standard, they did not think it best to check the manifestation of interest. In reply I was glad to say that I had seen nothing suggestive of immoral conduct. I was indeed—although I kept the thought to myself—reminded of the answer of my Bengali friend, Mr. Kali Bannerji, who, when I asked him if the Bengalese have any proverb corresponding to ours about “killing two birds with one stone,” responded: “Yes, we say, going to see the religious procession and selling our cabbages.” But it is not in India or Japan alone that religion and cabbages are mixed up in some such way.

The promise of another visit to Ikegami, when daylight and leisure should make it possible to see the place and hear the doctrine much better, accentuated our willingness at the present time to spend one-half rather than the whole of the night in seeing the festival, however interesting and instructive it was likely to prove to be. Not long after midnight, therefore, we began the severer task of forcing our way against the crowd and back to the railway station where we could take the train for our return to Tokyo.

But, first, let us spend a few minutes in taking in more thoroughly the remarkable scene afforded by the annual all-night festival in honour of its founder whose birth occurred nearly seven hundred years ago. The stately and somewhat gloomily beautiful cryptomerias, which are the favourites for temple-groves in Japan, when seen at night through the upward rays of myriads of coloured lanterns, form a rarely impressive and appropriate vault for a congregation of out-door worshippers. No cathedral pillars made by human hands can easily rival them. The wholly frank exposure of the mixture of motives which has brought the crowds together does not necessarily lessen the complex impressiveness of the scene. The aged peasant man or woman, bronzed and bowed nearly double with years of hard labor under a semi-tropical sun, and the child-nurse with the wide-eyed baby on her back; the timid and lady-like maiden with her grand-dame or servant for escort, and the stalwart youth of the other sex who has the frame of an athlete and something of the manners of a “soshi”; tonsured priests, and temple boys, venders of eatables and drinkables, of toys and charms, of religious notions and bric-a-brac;—all these, and others, for various purposes have come to the festival at Ikegami. Preaching, beating of drums, praying and clapping of hands, the clinking of small coins as they fall into the collection-boxes, blend in a strange low monotone of sound; while the sight of some faces upturned in religious ecstasy and the sight of others gaping with curiosity or giving signs of mirth, invite our sympathy in somewhat conflicting ways. Doubtless, as we have just been told, all that the crowds do at the annual all-night festival at Ikegami is not to be approved in the name of religion, and perhaps not in the name of morality; but there in the temple built by men beneath nature’s greater temple were the “good few” of the truly devout and faithful, according to their light and to the inner voice which they sincerely believe has spoken to them, as it had spoken to their patron saint, the holy Nichiren, so many centuries before.

All the way from the foot of the hundred stone steps to the station of Omori the road was still packed with those coming to join for the night in the festival at Ikegami. And now we were frequently compelled to stop entirely and stand beside the way, in order to let pass by more than two-score of those sodalities of which the sect boasts, in all one hundred or more. There had obviously been no small amount of friendly rivalry to influence the splendid manner in which they had “got themselves up” for this occasion. With lanterns, banners, and illuminations, devised to give the impression of a superiority of initiative, so to say, and with beating of drums and much shouting and repeating of sacred formulas, they came tramping on in a succession quite too frequent and resistless to favour the speed of parties going in the opposite direction. And, although there was little of obvious rudeness, it was plainly good policy to step well out of the way, stand still, and let them pass by.

But all things have an end; and so did, although it seemed almost endless, the muddy and thronged road from Ikegami to Omori in the “small hours” of the dark morning of October 13, 1906.

It was the second visit to the monastery, which occurred more than a month later, and was made on invitation to a luncheon with him by the chief abbot, that was most distinctive and informing. The invitation itself—so our host assured those who conveyed it—was entirely unique. For, although during the last fifty years foreigners who, as tourists, had visited the monastery at their own instance, had been offered refreshments, no other foreigners had ever been especially invited as the abbot’s guests. Three of the same four Japanese young men who had formerly accompanied me on my visit to Ikegami now served as escort and companions. Although it was past the middle of November in what had been an unusually cold Autumn, the day was warm and moist, but without falling rain, as a day in June. The fields were brilliant in colouring, with the ripened rice and the great store of young and green vegetables; while the sides of the hills were aglow with the red and yellow flame of the maples, made the more splendid by the dark foliage of the cryptomerias and the pines. Large crops of daikon, lettuce, onions, Brussels-sprouts, and other eatables, gave promise of plenty for the dwellers in the humble homes beside the way. It was a good day to be alive, to have no work to do, and to escape from town.

When we reached Omori, since the jinrikishas which were to be sent from the monastery had not yet arrived, we waited in the tea-house opposite the station, where we were treated to tea and a drink composed of hot water with an infusion of salted cherry blossoms. The road to Ikegami was muddy, as it was on the night when we had tramped it to attend the great annual festival in honour of Nichiren; but how different its appearance in the sober daylight from the impression made by its lining of illuminated bazaars and its throngs of thousands carrying lanterns and banners! At its end, however, we climbed the same flight of one hundred stone steps and entered the sacred grove, now scarcely less solemn than it had been at midnight, but lighted enough by such of the sun’s rays as could find a way through the over-arching cryptomerias and maples, to note its multitude of ancient and more recent tombs and memorial offerings of stone or bronze lanterns and monuments. No person, I am sure, who possesses even the beginnings of an emotional religious nature, can easily avoid having feelings of mystery, awe, and longings for inward peace, come over him on entering any one of the most typical temple-groves of Japan.