Shinshū priest to be,
—What a nice thing!
Wife has, child has,
Good fish eats.
It reminded me of those popular criticisms of Buddhist conduct uttered in the time of the Buddha himself, and so often recorded in the Vinaya texts,—almost like a refrain:—
"Then the people were annoyed; and they murmured and complained, saying: 'These act like men who are still enjoying the pleasures of this world!' And they told the thing to the Blessed One."
Besides Tennōji, Osaka has many famous temples, both Buddhist and Shinto, with very ancient histories. Of such is Kōzu-no-yashiro, where the people pray to the spirit of Nintoku,—most beloved in memory of all Japanese emperors. He had a palace on the same hill where his shrine now stands; and this site—whence a fine view of the city can be obtained—is the scene of a pleasing legend preserved in the Kojiki:—
"Thereupon the Heavenly Sovereign, ascending a lofty mountain and looking on the land all round, spoke, saying:—'In the whole land there rises no smoke; the land is all poverty-stricken. So I remit all the people's taxes and forced labor from now till three years hence.' Thereupon the great palace became dilapidated, and the rain leaked in everywhere; but no repairs were made. The rain that leaked in was caught in troughs, and the inmates removed to places where there was no leakage. When later the Heavenly Sovereign looked upon the land, the smoke was abundant in the land. So, finding the people rich, he now exacted taxes and forced labor. Therefore the peasantry prospered, and did not suffer from the forced labor. So, in praise of that august reign, it was called the Reign of the Emperor-Sage."[4]
That was fifteen hundred years ago. Now, could the good Emperor see, from his shrine of Kōzu,—as thousands must believe he does,—the smoke of modern Osaka, he might well think, "My people are becoming too rich."
Outside of the city there is a still more famous Shintō temple, Sumiyoshi, dedicated to certain sea-gods who aided the Empress Jingō to conquer Korea. At Sumiyoshi there are pretty child-priestesses, and beautiful grounds, and an enormous pond spanned by a bridge so humped that, to cross it without taking off your shoes, you must cling to the parapet. At Sakai there is the Buddhist temple of Myōkokuji, in the garden of which are some very old palm-trees;—one of them, removed by Nobunaga in the sixteenth century, is said to have cried out and lamented until it was taken back to the temple. You see the ground under these palms covered with what looks like a thick, shiny, disordered mass of fur,—half reddish and half silvery grey. It is not fur. It is a heaping of millions of needles thrown there by pilgrims "to feed the palms," because these trees are said to love iron and to be strengthened by absorbing its rust.
Speaking of trees, I may mention the Naniwaya "Kasa-matsu," or Hat-Pine,—not so much because it is an extraordinary tree as because it supports a large family who keep a little tea-house on the road to Sakai. The branches of the tree have been trained out-wards and downwards over a framework of poles, so that the whole presents the appearance of an enormous green hat of the shape worn by peasants and called Kasa. The pine is scarcely six feet high, but covers perhaps twenty square yards;—its trunk, of course, not being visible at all from outside the framework supporting the branches. Many people visit the house to look at the pine and drink a cup of tea; and nearly every visitor buys some memento of it,—perhaps a woodcut of the tree, or a printed copy of verses written by some poet in praise of it, or a girl's hairpin, the top of which is a perfect little green model ox the tree,—framework of poles and all,—with one tiny stork perched on it, The owners of the Naniwaya, as their tea-house is called, are not only able to make a good living, but to educate their children, by the exhibition of this tree, and the sale of such mementos.
*
I do not intend to tax my reader's patience by descriptions of the other famous temples of Ōsaka,—several of which are enormously old, and have most curious legends attached to them. But I may venture a few words about the cemetery of the Temple of One Soul,—or better, perhaps, the Temple of a Single Mind: Isshinji. The monuments there are the most extraordinary I ever saw. Near the main gate is the tomb of a wrestler,—Asahigorō Hachirō. His name is chiseled upon a big disk of stone, probably weighing a ton; and this disk is supported on the back of a stone image of a wrestler,—a grotesque figure, with gilded eyes starting from their sockets, and features apparently distorted by effort. It is a very queer thing,—half-comical, half-furious of aspect. Close by is the tomb of one Hirayama Hanibei,—a monument shaped like a hyōtan,—that is to say, like a wine-gourd such as travelers use for carrying saké. The most usual form of hyōtan resembles that of an hour-glass, except that the lower part is somewhat larger than the upper; and the vessel can only stand upright when full or partly full,—so that in a Japanese song the wine-lover is made to say to his gourd, "With you I fall." Apparently the mighty to drink wine have a district all to themselves in this cemetery; for there are several other monuments of like form in the same row,—also one shaped like a very large saké-bottle (isshōdokkuri),[5] on which is inscribed a verse not taken from the sutras. But the oddest monument of all is a great stone badger, sitting upright, and seeming to strike its belly with its fore-paws. On the belly is cut a name, Inouyé Dennosuké, together with the verse:—