According to the shape of this little bone when found after the burning, the future condition of the dead may be predicted. Should the next state to which the soul is destined be one of happiness, the bone will have the form of a small image of Buddha. But if the next birth is to be unhappy, then the bone will have either an ugly shape, or no shape at all.
A little boy, the son of a neighboring tobacconist, died the night before last, and to-day the corpse was burned. The little hone left over from the burning was discovered to have the form of three Buddhas,—San-Tai,—which may have afforded some spiritual consolation to the bereaved parents.[1]
[1] At the great temple of Tennōji, at Ōsaka, all such bones are dropped into a vault; and according to the sound each makes in falling, further evidence about the Gōsho is said to be obtained. After a hundred years from the time of beginning this curious collection, all these bones are to be ground into a kind of paste, out of which a colossal statue of Buddha is to be made.
IV
September 13. A letter from Matsue, Izumo, tells me that the old man who used to supply me with pipestems is dead. (A Japanese pipe, you must know, consists of three pieces, usually,—a metal bowl large enough to hold a pea, a metal mouthpiece, and a bamboo stem which is renewed at regular intervals.) He used to stain his pipestems very prettily: some looked like porcupine quills, and some like cylinders of snakeskin. He lived in a queer narrow little street at the verge of the city. I know the street because in it there is a famous statue of Jizō called Shiroko-ō,—"White-Child-Jizō,"—which I once went to see. They whiten its face, like the face of a dancing-girl, for some reason which I have never been able to find out.
The old man had a daughter, O-Masu, about whom a story is told. O-Masu is still alive. She has been a happy wife for many years; but she is dumb. Long ago, an angry mob sacked and destroyed the dwelling and the storehouses of a rice speculator in the city. His money, including a quantity of gold coin (koban), was scattered through the street. The rioters—rude, honest peasants—did not want it: they wished to destroy, not to steal. But O-Masu's father, the same evening, picked up a koban from the mud, and took it home. Later on a neighbor denounced him, and secured his arrest. The judge before whom he was summoned tried to obtain certain evidence by cross-questioning O-Masu, then a shy girl of fifteen. She felt that if she continued to answer she would be made, in spite of herself, to give testimony unfavorable to her father; that she was in the presence of a trained inquisitor, capable, without effort, of forcing her to acknowledge everything she knew. She ceased to speak, and a stream of blood gushed from her mouth. She had silenced herself forever by simply biting off her tongue. Her father was acquitted. A merchant who admired the act demanded her in marriage, and supported her father in his old age.
V
October 10. There is said to be one day—only one—in the life of a child during which it can remember and speak of its former birth.