Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan Read Online Free PDF Page B

Sakya-
Muni); I have not looked upon the face of the Buddha. Perhaps I may be
able to find his image to-morrow, somewhere in this wilderness of wooden
streets, or upon the summit of some yet unvisited hill.
    The sun is gone; the topaz-light is gone; and Cha stops to light his
lantern of paper; and we hurry on again, between two long lines of
painted paper lanterns suspended before the shops: so closely set, so
level those lines are, that they seem two interminable strings of pearls
of fire. And suddenly a sound—solemn, profound, mighty—peals to my
ears over the roofs of the town, the voice of the tsurigane, the great
temple-bell of Nogiyama.
    All too short the day seemed. Yet my eyes have been so long dazzled by
the great white light, and so confused by the sorcery of that
interminable maze of mysterious signs which made each street vista seem
a glimpse into some enormous grimoire, that they are now weary even of
the soft glowing of all these paper lanterns, likewise covered with
characters that look like texts from a Book of Magic. And I feel at last
the coming of that drowsiness which always follows enchantment.
Sec. 11
    'Amma-kamishimo-go-hyakmon!'
    A woman's voice ringing through the night, chanting in a tone of
singular sweetness words of which each syllable comes through my open
window like a wavelet of flute-sound. My Japanese servant, who speaks a
little English, has told me what they mean, those words:
    'Amma-kamishimo-go-hyakmon!'
    And always between these long, sweet calls I hear a plaintive whistle,
one long note first, then two short ones in another key. It is the
whistle of the amma, the poor blind woman who earns her living by
shampooing the sick or the weary, and whose whistle warns pedestrians
and drivers of vehicles to take heed for her sake, as she cannot see.
And she sings also that the weary and the sick may call her in.
    'Amma-kamishimo-go-hyakmon!'
    The saddest melody, but the sweetest voice. Her cry signifies that for
the sum of 'five hundred mon' she will come and rub your weary body
'above and below,' and make the weariness or the pain go away. Five
hundred mon are the equivalent of five sen (Japanese cents); there are
ten rin to a sen, and ten mon to one rin. The strange sweetness of the
voice is haunting,—makes me even wish to have some pains, that I might
pay five hundred mon to have them driven away.
    I lie down to sleep, and I dream. I see Chinese texts—multitudinous,
weird, mysterious—fleeing by me, all in one direction; ideographs
white and dark, upon signboards, upon paper screens, upon backs of
sandalled men. They seem to live, these ideographs, with conscious life;
they are moving their parts, moving with a movement as of insects,
monstrously, like phasmidae. I am rolling always through low, narrow,
luminous streets in a phantom jinricksha, whose wheels make no sound.
And always, always, I see the huge white mushroom-shaped hat of Cha
dancing up and down before me as he runs.

Chapter Two - The Writing of Kobodaishi
*
Sec. 1
    KOBODAISHI, most holy of Buddhist priests, and founder of the Shingon-
sho—which is the sect of Akira—first taught the men of Japan to
write the writing called Hiragana and the syllabary I-ro-ha; and
Kobodaishi was himself the most wonderful of all writers, and the most
skilful wizard among scribes.
    And in the book, Kobodaishi-ichi-dai-ki, it is related that when he was
in China, the name of a certain room in the palace of the Emperor having
become effaced by time, the Emperor sent for him and bade him write the
name anew. Thereupon Kobodaishi took a brush in his right hand, and a
brush in his left, and one brush between the toes of his left foot, and
another between the toes of his right, and one in his mouth also; and
with those five brushes, so holding them, he limned the characters upon
the wall. And the characters were beautiful beyond any that had ever
been seen in China—smooth-flowing as the ripples in the current of a
river. And Kobodaishi then