In such a night you will probably let yourself drift awhile with the stream of sight-seers through dazzling lanes of booths full of toys indescribable—dainty puerilities, fragile astonishments, laughter-making oddities;—you will observe representations of demons, gods, and goblins;—you will be startled by mandō—immense lantern-transparencies, with monstrous faces painted upon them;—you will have glimpses of jugglers, acrobats, sword-dancers, fortune-tellers;—you will hear everywhere, above the tumult of voices, a ceaseless blowing of flutes and booming of drums. All this may not be worth stopping for. But presently, I am almost sure, you will pause in your promenade to look at a booth illuminated like a magic-lantern, and stocked with tiny wooden cages out of which an incomparable shrilling proceeds. The booth is the booth of a vendor of singing-insects; and the storm of noise is made by the insects. The sight is curious; and a foreigner is nearly always attracted by it.
But having satisfied his momentary curiosity, the foreigner usually goes on his way with the idea that he has been inspecting nothing more remarkable than a particular variety of toys for children. He might easily be made to understand that the insect-trade of Tōkyō alone represents a yearly value of thousands of dollars; but he would certainly wonder if assured that the insects themselves are esteemed for the peculiar character of the sounds which they make. It would not be easy to convince him that in the æsthetic life of a most refined and artistic people, these insects hold a place not less important or well-deserved than that occupied in Western civilization by our thrushes, linnets, nightingales and canaries. What stranger could suppose that a literature one thousand years old,—a literature full of curious and delicate beauty,—exists upon the subject of these short-lived insect-pets?
The object of the present paper is, by elucidating these facts, to show how superficially our travellers might unconsciously judge the most interesting details of Japanese life. But such misjudgments are as natural as they are inevitable. Even with the kindest of intentions it is impossible to estimate correctly at sight anything of the extraordinary in Japanese custom,—because the extraordinary nearly always relates to feelings, beliefs, or thoughts about which a stranger cannot know anything.
Before proceeding further, let me observe that the domestic insects of which I am going to speak, are mostly night-singers, and must not be confounded with the semi (cicadæ), mentioned in former essays of mine. I think that the cicadæ,—even in a country so exceptionally rich as is Japan in musical insects,—are wonderful melodists in their own way. But the Japanese find as much difference between the notes of night-insects and of cicadæ as we find between those of larks and sparrows; and they relegate their cicadæ to the vulgar place of chatterers. Semi are therefore never caged. The national liking for caged insects does not mean a liking for mere noise; and the note of every insect in public favor must possess either some rhythmic charm, or some mimetic quality celebrated in poetry or legend. The same fact is true of the Japanese liking for the chant of frogs. It would be a mistake to suppose that all kinds of frogs are considered musical; but there are particular species of very small frogs having sweet notes; and these are caged and petted.
Of course, in the proper meaning of the word, insects do not sing; but in the following pages I may occasionally employ the terms “singer” and “singing-insect,”—partly because of their convenience, and partly because of their correspondence with the language used by Japanese insect-dealers and poets, describing the “voices” of such creatures.
II
There are many curious references in the old Japanese classic literature to the custom of keeping musical insects. For example in the chapter entitled Nowaki[1] of the famous novel “Genji Monogatari,” written in the latter part of the tenth century by the Lady Murasaki-Shikibu, it is stated: “The maids were ordered to descend to the garden, and give some water to the insects.” But the first definite mention of cages for singing-insects would appear to be the following passage from a work entitled Chomon-Shū:—“On the twelfth day of the eighth month of the second year of Kaho [1095 A. D.], the Emperor ordered his pages and chamberlains to go to Sagano and find some insects. The Emperor gave them a cage of network of bright purple thread. All, even the head-chaplain and his attendants, taking horses from the Right and the Left Imperial Mews, then went on horseback to hunt for insects. Tokinori Ben, at that time holding the office of Kurando,[2] proposed to the party as they rode toward Sagano, a subject for poetical composition. The subject was, Looking for insects in the fields. On reaching Sagano, the party dismounted, and walked in various directions for a distance of something more than ten chō,[3] and sent their attendants to catch the insects. In the evening they returned to the palace. They put into the cage some hagi[4] and ominameshi [for the insects]. The cage was respectfully presented to the Empress. There was saké-drinking in the palace that evening; and many poems were composed. The Empress and her court-ladies joined in the making of the poems.”
This would appear to be the oldest Japanese record of an insect-hunt,—though the amusement may have been invented earlier than the period of Kaho. By the seventeenth century it seems to have become a popular diversion; and night-hunts were in vogue as much as day-hunts. In the Teikoku Bunshū, or collected works of the poet Teikoku, who died during the second year of Shōwō (1653), there has been preserved one of the poet’s letters which contains a very interesting passage on the subject. “Let us go insect-hunting this evening,”—writes the poet to his friend. “It is true that the night will be very dark, since there is no moon; and it may seem dangerous to go out. But there are many people now going to the graveyards every night, because the Bon festival is approaching[5];—therefore the way to the fields will not be lonesome for us. I have prepared many lanterns;—so the hata-ori, matsumushi, and other insects will probably come to the lanterns in great number.”
It would also seem that the trade of insect-seller (mushiya) existed in the seventeenth century; for in a diary of that time, known as the Diary of Kikaku, the writer speaks of his disappointment at not finding any insect-dealers in Yedo,—tolerably good evidence that he had met such persons elsewhere. “On the thirteenth day of the sixth month of the fourth year of Teikyo [1687], I went out,” he writes, “to look for kirigirisu-sellers. I searched for them in Yotsuya, in Kōjimachi, in Hongō, in Yushimasa, and in both divisions of Kanda-Sudamachō[6]; but I found none.”
As we shall presently see, the kirigirisu was not sold in Tōkyō until about one hundred and twenty years later.