Thence the shrine was borne to a spot by the side of the Mataubara road, where anciently stood an August Tea-House, O-Chaya, at which the daimyo, returning from the Shogun's capital, were accustomed to rest and to receive their faithful retainers, who always came in procession to meet them. No tea-house stands there now; but, in accord with old custom, the shrine and its escort waited at the place among the wild flowers and the pines. And then was seen a strange sight.
For there came to meet the ghost of the great lord a long procession of shapes that seemed ghosts also—shapes risen out of the dust of cemeteries: warriors in created helmets and masks of iron and breastplates of steel, girded with two swords; and spearmen wearing queues; and retainers in kamishimo; and bearers of hasami-bako. Yet ghosts these were not, but aged samurai of Matsue, who had borne arms in the service of the last of the daimyo. And among them appeared his surviving ministers, the venerable karo; and these, as the procession turned city-ward, took their old places of honour, and marched before the shrine valiantly, though bent with years.
How that pageant might have impressed other strangers I do not know. For me, knowing something of the history of each of those aged men, the scene had a significance apart from its story of forgotten customs, apart from its interest as a feudal procession. To-day each and all of those old samurai are unspeakably poor. Their beautiful homes vanished long ago; their gardens have been turned into rice-fields; their household treasures were cruelly bargained for, and bought for almost nothing by curio-dealers to be resold at high prices to foreigners at the open ports. And yet what they could have obtained considerable money for, and what had ceased to be of any service to them, they clung to fondly through all their poverty and humiliation. Never could they be induced to part with their armour and their swords, even when pressed by direst want, under the new and harder conditions of existence.
The river banks, the streets, the balconies, and blue-tiled roofs were thronged. There was a great quiet as the procession passed. Young people gazed in hushed wonder, feeling the rare worth of that chance to look upon what will belong in the future to picture-books only and to the quaint Japanese stage. And old men wept silently, remembering their youth.
Well spake the ancient thinker: 'Everything is only for a day, both that which remembers, and that which is remembered.'
Sec. 35
Once more, homeward bound, I sat upon the cabin-roof of the Oki-Saigo— this time happily unencumbered by watermelons—and tried to explain to myself the feeling of melancholy with which I watched those wild island- coasts vanishing over the pale sea into the white horizon. No doubt it was inspired partly by the recollection of kindnesses received from many whom I shall never meet again; partly, also, by my familiarity with the ancient soil itself, and remembrance of shapes and places: the long blue visions down channels between islands—the faint grey fishing hamlets hiding in stony bays—the elfish oddity of narrow streets in little primitive towns—the forms and tints of peak and vale made lovable by daily intimacy—the crooked broken paths to shadowed shrines of gods with long mysterious names—the butterfly-drifting of yellow sails out of the glow of an unknown horizon. Yet I think it was due much more to a particular sensation in which every memory was steeped and toned, as a landscape is steeped in the light and toned in the colours of the morning: the sensation of conditions closer to Nature's heart, and farther from the monstrous machine-world of Western life than any into which I had ever entered north of the torrid zone. And then it seemed to me that I loved Oki—in spite of the cuttlefish—chiefly because of having felt there, as nowhere else in Japan, the full joy of escape from the far-reaching influences of high-pressure civilisation—the delight of knowing one's self, in Dozen at least, well beyond the range of everything artificial in human existence.
Chapter Nine Of Souls
Kinjuro, the ancient gardener, whose head shines like an ivory ball, sat him down a moment on the edge of the ita-no-ma outside my study to smoke his pipe at the hibachi always left there for him. And as he smoked he found occasion to reprove the boy who assists him. What the boy had been doing I did not exactly know; but I heard Kinjuro bid him try to comport himself like a creature having more than one Soul. And because those words interested me I went out and sat down by Kinjuro.
'O Kinjuro,' I said, 'whether I myself have one or more Souls I am not sure. But it would much please me to learn how many Souls have you.'