An Artist's Letters from Japan

by John La Farge

At the inside corner of the gate stands a gigantic cedar, said to have grown to this height since the time when Iyéyasŭ carried it about with him in his palanquin. Opposite to three red buildings, which are storehouses for the memorial treasures of the temple, stands, closer to the wall, a charming building, mostly gray,—partly owing to the wearing of the black lacquer with time,—and decorated with carved panels, which make a frieze or string-course all around its sides. Above this line of green, red, blue, white, and gold, a large space of gray wood, spotted with gilt metal where the framework of the outer beams is joined, spreads up to the pediment under the eaves, which is all carved and painted on a ground of green. The heavy roof above is of black bronze and gilded metal and is spotted with the golden Tokugawa crest. Below the colored band, midway, the black wall has gratings with golden hinges, for this delicate splendor is given to a stable—the stable of the sacred horse of the god Iyéyasŭ. The patient little cream-colored pony has no look of carrying such honors; and I can scarcely imagine his little form galloping out in the silence of the night under the terrible rider.

SACRED FONT.

A gentle splashing of water, which mingles with the rustling of the trees and the quiet echoes of the pavement, comes from the end of the court where its edge is a descent filled with high forest trees. This lapping sound comes from the temple font, a great wet mass of stone, looking like solid water. It has been so exactly balanced on its base that the clear mountain stream overflows its sides and top in a perfectly fitting liquid sheet. This sacred well-basin has a canopy with great black bronze-and-gold roof, supported by white stone pillars, three on each corner, that are set in bronze sockets and strapped with gilded metal. The pediment and the brackets which cap the pillars are brilliantly painted, and the recessed space below the curved roof-beam is filled with palm-like curves of carved waves and winged dragons. Next to this, and at right angles to it, is a heavy bronze Torii, through which we go up to another court, turning away from the buildings we have seen. On the dark surface of the Torii glisten the golden Tokugawa crests; on the great tie-beam, the upper pillars, and the central upright. Near us, the eaves of its lower roof continuing the lines of the water-tank pavilion, is the closed library, red, delicately adorned with color under the eaves, and with the same heavy black roofing of bronze dotted with gold which all the buildings have in a heavy monotony. The steps lead us to another court, spotted with different buildings, among tremendous trees—a bronze pavilion with a hanging bell, a bell tower, and a drum tower, closed in with sloping walls of red lacquer, and a large lantern of bronze under a bronze pavilion, whose curious, European, semi-Gothic details contrast suddenly with all this alien art, and prove its origin a tribute from trading Christian Holland to the mortal deity worshiped here. On one side, where the forest slopes down in sun and shadow, stands a Buddhist temple, sole survivor of the faith in this place, now turned over to the official and native worship. The latticed gold-and-black screens were all closed, except in the center, through which we could see the haze and occasional glitter of the gold of gods and altar ornaments, and the paleness of the mats. On its red veranda stood a young Buddhist priest, whom our companions knew; a slight, elegant figure, a type of modesty and refinement. Farther back, on the other side of the veranda, an older companion looked down the valley at some girls whose voices we could hear among the trees.

YOUNG PRIEST.

The main entrance rises above the high steps to a little esplanade with heavy railing, on the level of a higher embankment. The court that we were in was full of broken shadows from its own tall trees, and from all this accumulation of buildings, red-lacquered and gilded, black-and-bronze roofed, spotted and stained with moss and lichens, or glittering here and there in their many metals. Long lines of light trickled down the gray trunks and made a light gray haze over all these miscellaneous treasures. Great lanterns (toro) of stone, capped with green and yellow moss, metal ones of bronze and iron, stand in files together here and in the lower court, or are disposed in rows along the great stone wall, which is streaked by the weather and spotted with white and purple lichens. Along its upper edge runs the red-lacquered wall, heavily roofed, of the cloister which surrounds the farther court above. Its face is paneled between the metal-fastened beams and posts with two rows of deep carvings of innumerable birds and trees and waves and clouds and flowers. All these are painted and gilded, as are the frieze above and the intervals between the gilded rafters.

On all this space, and on the great white gate, the "Gate Magnificent," the full sun embroidered the red and white and colored surfaces with millions of stitches of light and shadow.

The gate, or triumphal arch, is a two-storied building with heavy bronze-tiled roof, capped and edged, like all the rest, with gilded metal, and spotted with the gilded crest of the Tokugawa. Its front toward us rises in the well-known curve, shadowing a pediment, full of painted sculpture. Eight white pillars embroidered with delicate reliefs support the white lintel, which is embossed with great divine monsters and strapped with gilded metal. In the niches on each side are seated two repellant painted images, inside of white walls, which are trellises of deeply-carved floral ornament. These figures are warriors on guard, in ancient and Japanese costume, armed with bows and quivers of arrows, whose white, wrinkled, and crafty faces look no welcome to the intruder, and recall the cruel, doubtful look of the guardian statues of foxes that protect the entrances of the primitive shrines of the land-god Inari. The far-projecting white capitals are the half-bodies of lion-like monsters with open mouths and stretched-out paws. Above these, below the carved balcony which marks the second story, the cornice is made of a wilderness of tenfold brackets, black lacquered and patterned with gold, and from each of the ten highest ones a gilded lion's head frowns with narrowed eyes.

The balcony is one long set of panels—of little panels carved and painted on its white line with children playing among flowers. Above, again, as many white pillars as below; along their sides a wild fringe of ramping dragons and the pointed leaves of the bamboo. This time the pillars are crowned with the fabulous dragon-horse, with gilded hoofs dropping into air, and lengthy processes of horns receding far back into the upper bracketings of the roof. Upon the center of the white-and-gold lintel, so delicately carved with waves as to seem smooth in this delirium of sculpture, is stretched between two of the monster capitals a great white dragon with gilded claws and gigantic protruding head. But all these beasts are tame if compared with the wild army of dragons that cover and people the innumerable brackets which make the cornice and support the complicated rafters under the roof. Tier upon tier hang farther and farther out, like some great mass of vampires about to fall. They are gilded; their jaws are lacquered red far down into their throats, against which their white teeth glitter. Far into the shade spreads a nightmare of frowning eyebrows, and pointed fangs and outstretched claws extended toward the intruder. It would be terrible did not one feel the coldness of the unbelieving imagination which perhaps merely copied these duplicates of earlier terrors.