When the body has been put into that strange square coffin which looks something like a wooden palanquin, each relative puts also into the coffin some of his or her hair or nail parings, symbolizing their blood. And six rin are also placed in the coffin, for the six Jizo who stand at the heads of the ways of the Six Shadowy Worlds.
The funeral procession forms at the family residence. A priest leads it, ringing a little bell; a boy bears the ihai of the newly dead. The van of the procession is wholly composed of men—relatives and friends. Some carry hata, white symbolic bannerets; some bear flowers; all carry paper lanterns—for in Izumo the adult dead are buried after dark: only children are buried by day. Next comes the kwan or coffin, borne palanquin-wise upon the shoulders of men of that pariah caste whose office it is to dig graves and assist at funerals. Lastly come the women mourners.
They are all white-hooded and white-robed from head to feet, like phantoms. [14] Nothing more ghostly than this sheeted train of an Izumo funeral procession, illuminated only by the glow of paper lanterns, can be imagined. It is a weirdness that, once seen, will often return in dreams.
At the temple the kwan is laid upon the pavement before the entrance; and another service is performed, with plaintive music and recitation of sutras. Then the procession forms again, winds once round the temple court, and takes its way to the cemetery. But the body is not buried until twenty-four hours later, lest the supposed dead should awake in the grave.
Corpses are seldom burned in Izumo. In this, as in other matters, the predominance of Shinto sentiment is manifest.
Sec. 23
For the last time I see his face again, as he lies upon his bed of death—white-robed from neck to feet—white-girdled for his shadowy journey—but smiling with closed eyes in almost the same queer gentle way he was wont to smile at class on learning the explanation of some seeming riddle in our difficult English tongue. Only, methinks, the smile is sweeter now, as with sudden larger knowledge of more mysterious things. So smiles, through dusk of incense in the great temple of Tokoji, the golden face of Buddha.
Sec. 24
December 23, 1891. The great bell of Tokoji is booming for the memorial service—for the tsuito-kwai of Yokogi—slowly and regularly as a minute-gun. Peal on peal of its rich bronze thunder shakes over the lake, surges over the roofs of the town, and breaks in deep sobs of sound against the green circle of the hills.
It is a touching service, this tsuito-kwai, with quaint ceremonies which, although long since adopted into Japanese Buddhism, are of Chinese origin and are beautiful. It is also a costly ceremony; and the parents of Yokogi are very poor. But all the expenses have been paid by voluntary subscription of students and teachers. Priests from every great temple of the Zen sect in Izumo have assembled at Tokoji. All the teachers of the city and all the students have entered the hondo of the huge temple, and taken their places to the right and to the left of the high altar—kneeling on the matted floor, and leaving, on the long broad steps without, a thousand shoes and sandals.