In Ghostly Japan

by Lafcadio Hearn

In every coast-province of Japan,—and even at different fishing-settlements of the same province,—the forms of boats and fishing-implements are peculiar to the district or settlement. Indeed it will sometimes be found that settlements, within a few miles of each other, respectively manufacture nets or boats as dissimilar in type as might be the inventions of races living thousands of miles apart. This amazing variety may be in some degree due to respect for local tradition,—to the pious conservatism that preserves ancestral teaching and custom unchanged through hundreds of years: but it is better explained by the fact that different communities practise different kinds of fishing; and the shapes of the nets or the boats made, at any one place, are likely to prove, on investigation, the inventions of a special experience. The big Yaidzu boats illustrate this fact. They were devised according to the particular requirements of the Yaidzu-fishing-industry, which supplies dried katsuo (bonito) to all parts of the Empire; and it was necessary that they should be able to ride a very rough sea. To get them in or out of the water is a heavy job; but the whole village helps. A kind of slipway is improvised in a moment by laying flat wooden frames on the slope in a line; and over these frames the flat-bottomed vessels are hauled up or down by means of long ropes. You will see a hundred or more persons thus engaged in moving a single boat,—men, women, and children pulling together, in time to a curious melancholy chant. At the coming of a typhoon, the boats are moved far back into the streets. There is plenty of fun in helping at such work; and if you are a stranger, the fisher-folk will perhaps reward your pains by showing you the wonders of their sea: crabs with legs of astonishing length, balloon-fish that blow themselves up in the most absurd manner, and various other creatures of shapes so extraordinary that you can scarcely believe them natural without touching them.

The big boats with holy texts at their prows are not the strangest objects on the beach. Even more remarkable are the bait-baskets of split bamboo,—baskets six feet high and eighteen feet round, with one small hole in the dome-shaped top. Ranged along the sea-wall to dry, they might at some distance be mistaken for habitations or huts of some sort. Then you see great wooden anchors, shaped like ploughshares, and shod with metal; iron anchors, with four flukes; prodigious wooden mallets, used for driving stakes; and various other implements, still more unfamiliar, of which you cannot even imagine the purpose. The indescribable antique queerness of everything gives you that weird sensation of remoteness,—of the far away in time and place,—which makes one doubt the reality of the visible. And the life of Yaidzu is certainly the life of many centuries ago. The people, too, are the people of Old Japan: frank and kindly as children—good children,—honest to a fault, innocent of the further world, loyal to the ancient traditions and the ancient gods.

II

I happened to be at Yaidzu during the three days of the Bon or Festival of the Dead; and I hoped to see the beautiful farewell ceremony of the third and last day. In many parts of Japan, the ghosts are furnished with miniature ships for their voyage,—little models of junks or fishing-craft, each containing offerings of food and water and kindled incense; also a tiny lantern or lamp, if the ghost-ship be despatched at night. But at Yaidzu lanterns only are set afloat; and I was told that they would be launched after dark. Midnight being the customary hour elsewhere, I supposed that it was the hour of farewell at Yaidzu also, and I rashly indulged in a nap after supper, expecting to wake up in time for the spectacle. But by ten o’clock, when I went to the beach again, all was over, and everybody had gone home. Over the water I saw something like a long swarm of fire-flies,—the lanterns drifting out to sea in procession; but they were already too far to be distinguished except as points of colored light. I was much disappointed: I felt that I had lazily missed an opportunity which might never again return,—for these old Bon-customs are dying rapidly. But in another moment it occurred to me that I could very well venture to swim out to the lights. They were moving slowly. I dropped my robe on the beach, and plunged in. The sea was calm, and beautifully phosphorescent. Every stroke kindled a stream of yellow fire. I swam fast, and overtook the last of the lantern-fleet much sooner than I had hoped. I felt that it would be unkind to interfere with the little embarcations, or to divert them from their silent course: so I contented myself with keeping close to one of them, and studying its details.

The Lights of the Dead

The structure was very simple. The bottom was a piece of thick plank, perfectly square, and measuring about ten inches across. Each one of its corners supported a slender slick about sixteen inches high; and these four uprights, united above by cross-pieces, sustained the paper sides. Upon the point of a long nail, driven up through the centre of the bottom, was fixed a lighted candle. The top was left open. The four sides presented five different colors,—blue, yellow, red, white, and black; these five colors respectively symbolizing Ether, Wind, Fire, Water, and Earth,—the five Buddhist elements which are metaphysically identified with the Five Buddhas. One of the paper-panes was red, one blue, one yellow; and the right half of the fourth pane was black, while the left half, uncolored, represented white. No kaimyō was written upon any of the transparencies. Inside the lantern there was only the flickering candle.

I watched those frail glowing shapes drifting through the night, and ever as they drifted scattering, under impulse of wind and wave, more and more widely apart. Each, with its quiver of color, seemed a life afraid,—trembling on the blind current that was bearing it into the outer blackness…. Are not we ourselves as lanterns launched upon a deeper and a dimmer sea, and ever separating further and further one from another as we drift to the inevitable dissolution? Soon the thought-light in each burns itself out: then the poor frames, and all that is left of their once fair colors, must melt forever into the colorless Void.

Even in the moment of this musing I began to doubt whether I was really alone,—to ask myself whether there might not be something more than a mere shuddering of light in the thing that rocked beside me: some presence that haunted the dying flame, and was watching the watcher. A faint cold thrill passed over me,—perhaps some chill uprising from the depths,—perhaps the creeping only of a ghostly fancy. Old superstitions of the coast recurred to me,—old vague warnings of peril in the time of the passage of Souls. I reflected that were any evil to befall me out there in the night,—meddling, or seeming to meddle, with the lights of the Dead,—I should myself furnish the subject of some future weird legend…. I whispered the Buddhist formula of farewell—to the lights,—and made speed for shore.