Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan: Second Series

by Lafcadio Hearn

Sec. 30

I went by boat from Hishi-ura to Amamura, in Nakanoshima, to visit the tomb of the exiled Emperor Go-Toba. The scenery along the way was beautiful, and of softer outline than I had seen on my first passage through the archipelago. Small rocks rising from the water were covered with sea-gulls and cormorants, which scarcely took any notice of the boat, even when we came almost within an oar's length. This fearlessness of wild creatures is one of the most charming impressions of travel in these remoter parts of Japan, yet unvisited by tourists with shotguns. The early European and American hunters in Japan seem to have found no difficulty and felt no compunction in exterminating what they considered 'game' over whole districts, destroying life merely for the wanton pleasure of destruction. Their example is being imitated now by 'Young Japan,' and the destruction of bird life is only imperfectly checked by game laws. Happily, the Government does interfere sometimes to check particular forms of the hunting vice. Some brutes who had observed the habits of swallows to make their nests in Japanese houses, last year offered to purchase some thousands of swallow-skins at a tempting price. The effect of the advertisement was cruel enough; but the police were promptly notified to stop the murdering, which they did. About the same time, in one of the Yokohama papers, there appeared a letter from some holy person announcing, as a triumph of Christian sentiment, that a 'converted' fisherman had been persuaded by foreign proselytisers to kill a turtle, which his Buddhist comrades had vainly begged him to spare.

Amarnura, a very small village, lies in a narrow plain of rice-fields extending from the sea to a range of low hills. From the landing-place to the village is about a quarter of a mile. The narrow path leading to it passes round the base of a small hill, covered with pines, on the outskirts of the village. There is quite a handsome Shinto temple on the hill, small, but admirably constructed, approached by stone steps and a paved walk.

There are the usual lions and lamps of stone, and the ordinary simple offerings of paper and women's hair before the shrine. But I saw among the ex-voto a number of curious things which I had never seen in Izumo— tiny miniature buckets, well-buckets, with rope and pole complete, neatly fashioned out of bamboo. The boatman said that farmers bring these to the shrine when praying for rain. The deity was called Suwa- Dai-Myojin.

It was at the neighbouring village, of which Suwa-Dai-Myojin seems to be the ujigami, that the Emperor Go-Toba is said to have dwelt, in the house of the Choja Shikekuro. The Shikekuro homestead remains, and still belongs to the Choja'sa descendants, but they have become very poor. I asked permission to see the cups from which the exiled emperor drank, and other relics of his stay said to be preserved by the family; but in consequence of illness in the house I could not be received. So I had only a glimpse of the garden, where there is a celebrated pond—a kembutsu.

The pond is called Shikekuro's Pond,—Shikekuro-no-ike. And for seven hundred years, 'tis said, the frogs of that pond have never been heard to croak.

For the Emperor Go-Toba, having one night been kept awake by the croaking of the frogs in that pond, arose and went out and commanded them, saying: 'Be silent!' Wherefore they have remained silent through all the centuries even unto this day.

Near the pond there was in that time a great pine-tree, of which the rustling upon windy nights disturbed the emperor's rest. And he spoke to the pine-tree, and said to it: 'Be still!' And never thereafter was that tree heard to rustle, even in time of storms.

But that tree has ceased to be. Nothing remains of it but a few fragments of its wood and hark, which are carefully preserved as relics by the ancients of Oki. Such a fragment was shown to me in the toko of the guest chamber of the dwelling of a physician of Saigo—the same gentleman whose kindness I have related elsewhere.

The tomb of the emperor lies on the slope of a low hill, at a distance of about ten minutes' walk from the village. It is far less imposing than the least of the tombs of the Matsudaira at Matsue, in the grand old courts of Gesshoji; but it was perhaps the best which the poor little country of Oki could furnish. This is not, however, the original place of the tomb, which was moved by imperial order in the sixth year of Meiji to its present site. A lofty fence, or rather stockade of heavy wooden posts, painted black, incloses a piece of ground perhaps one hundred and fifty feet long, by about fifty broad, and graded into three levels, or low terraces. All the space within is shaded by pines. In the centre of the last and highest of the little terraces the tomb is placed: a single large slab of grey rock laid horizontally. A narrow paved walk leads from the gate to the tomb; ascending each terrace by three or four stone steps. A little within this gateway, which is opened to visitors only once a year, there is a torii facing the sepulchre; and before the highest terrace there are a pair of stone lamps. All this is severely simple, but effective in a certain touching way. The country stillness is broken only by the shrilling of the semi and the tintinnabulation of that strange little insect, the suzumushi, whose calling sounds just like the tinkling of the tiny bells which are shaken by the miko in her sacred dance.