Even as Izumo is especially the province of the gods, and the place of
the childhood of the race by whom Izanagi and Izanami are yet worshiped,
so is Kitzuki of Izumo especially the city of the gods, and its
immemorial temple the earliest home of the ancient faith, the great
religion of Shinto.
Now to visit Kitzuki has been my most earnest ambition since I learned
the legends of the Kojiki concerning it; and this ambition has been
stimulated by the discovery that very few Europeans have visited
Kitzuki, and that none have been admitted into the great temple itself.
Some, indeed, were not allowed even to approach the temple court. But I
trust that I shall be somewhat more fortunate; for I have a letter of
introduction from my dear friend Nishida Sentaro, who is also a personal
friend of the high pontiff of Kitzuki. I am thus assured that even
should I not be permitted to enter the temple—a privilege accorded to
but few among the Japanese themselves—I shall at least have the honour
of an interview with the Guji, or Spiritual Governor of Kitzuki, Senke
Takanori, whose princely family trace back their descent to the Goddess
of the Sun.
[41]
I leave Matsue for Kitzuki early in the afternoon of a beautiful
September day; taking passage upon a tiny steamer in which everything,
from engines to awnings, is Lilliputian. In the cabin one must kneel.
Under the awnings one cannot possibly stand upright. But the miniature
craft is neat and pretty as a toy model, and moves with surprising
swiftness and steadiness. A handsome naked boy is busy serving the
passengers with cups of tea and with cakes, and setting little charcoal
furnaces before those who desire to smoke: for all of which a payment of
about three-quarters of a cent is expected.
I escape from the awnings to climb upon the cabin roof for a view; and
the view is indescribably lovely. Over the lucent level of the lake we
are steaming toward a far-away heaping of beautiful shapes, coloured
with that strangely delicate blue which tints all distances in the
Japanese atmosphere—shapes of peaks and headlands looming up from the
lake verge against a porcelain-white horizon. They show no details,
whatever. Silhouettes only they are—masses of absolutely pure colour.
To left and right, framing in the Shinjiko, are superb green surgings of
wooded hills. Great Yakuno-San is the loftiest mountain before us,
north-west. South-east, behind us, the city has vanished; but proudly
towering beyond looms Daisen—enormous, ghostly blue and ghostly white,
lifting the cusps of its dead crater into the region of eternal snow.
Over all arches a sky of colour faint as a dream.
There seems to be a sense of divine magic in the very atmosphere,
through all the luminous day, brooding over the vapoury land, over the
ghostly blue of the flood—a sense of Shinto. With my fancy full of the
legends of the Kojiki, the rhythmic chant of the engines comes to my
ears as the rhythm of a Shinto ritual mingled with the names of gods:
Koto-shiro-nushi-no-Kami, Oho-kuni-nushi-no-Kami.
The great range on the right grows loftier as we steam on; and its
hills, always slowly advancing toward us, begin to reveal all the rich
details of their foliage. And lo! on the tip of one grand wood-clad peak
is visible against the pure sky the many-angled roof of a great Buddhist
temple. That is the temple of Ichibata, upon the mountain Ichibata-yama,
the temple of Yakushi-Nyorai, the Physician of Souls. But at Ichibata he
reveals himself more specially as the healer of bodies, the Buddha who
giveth sight unto the blind. It is believed that whosoever has an
affection of the eyes will be made well by praying earnestly at that
great shrine; and thither from many distant provinces do afflicted
thousands make pilgrimage, ascending the long weary mountain path and
the six hundred and forty steps of stone leading to the windy temple
court upon the summit, whence may be seen one of the loveliest
landscapes in Japan. There the pilgrims wash their eyes with the water
of the sacred spring, and kneel before the shrine and murmur the holy
formula of Ichibata: 'On-koro-koro-sendai-matoki-sowaka'—words of
which the meaning has long been forgotten, like that of many a Buddhist
invocation; Sanscrit words transliterated into Chinese, and thence into
Japanese, which are understood by learned priests alone, yet are known
by heart throughout the land, and uttered with the utmost fervour of
devotion.
I descend from the cabin roof, and squat upon the deck, under the
awnings, to have a smoke with Akira. And I ask:
'How many Buddhas are there, O Akira? Is the number of the Enlightened
known?'
'Countless the Buddhas are,' makes answer Akira; 'yet there is truly but
one Buddha; the many are forms only. Each of us contains a future
Buddha. Alike we all are except in that we are more or less unconscious
of the truth. But the vulgar may not understand these things, and so
seek refuge in symbols and in forms.'
'And the Kami,—the deities of Shinto?'
'Of Shinto I know little. But there are eight hundred myriads of Kami in
the Plain of High Heaven—so says the Ancient Book. Of these, three
thousand one hundred and thirty and two dwell in the various provinces
of the land; being enshrined in two thousand eight hundred and sixty-one
temples. And the tenth month of our year is called the "No-God-month,"
because in that month all the deities leave their temples to assemble in
the province of Izumo, at the great temple of Kitzuki; and for the same
reason that month is called in Izumo, and only in Izumo, the "God-is-
month." But educated persons sometimes call it the "God-present-
festival," using Chinese words. Then it is believed the serpents come
from the sea to the land, and coil upon the sambo, which is the table of
the gods, for the serpents announce the coming; and the Dragon-King
sends messengers to the temples of Izanagi and Izanami, the parents of
gods and men.'
'O Akira, many millions of Kami there must be of whom I shall always
remain ignorant, for there is a limit to the power of memory; but tell
me something of the gods whose names are most seldom uttered, the
deities of strange places and of strange things, the most extraordinary
gods.'
'You cannot learn much about them from me,' replies Akira. 'You will
have to ask others more learned than I. But there are gods with whom it
is not desirable to become acquainted. Such are the God of Poverty, and
the God of Hunger, and the God of Penuriousness, and the God of
Hindrances and Obstacles. These are of dark colour, like the clouds of
gloomy days, and their faces are like the faces of gaki.'
[42]
'With the God of Hindrances and Obstacles, O Akira I have had more than
a passing acquaintance. Tell me of the others.'
'I know little about any of them,' answers Akira, 'excepting Bimbogami.
It is said there are two gods who always go together,—Fuku-no-Kami,
who is the God of Luck, and Bimbogami, who is the God of Poverty. The
first is white, and the second is black.'
'Because the last,' I venture to interrupt, 'is only the shadow of the
first. Fuku-no-Kami is the Shadow-caster, and Bimbogami the Shadow; and
I have observed, in wandering about this world, that wherever the one
goeth, eternally followeth after him the other.'
Akira refuses his assent to this interpretation, and resumes:
'When Bimbogami once begins to follow anyone it is extremely difficult
to be free from him again. In the village of Umitsu, which is in the
province of Omi, and not far from Kyoto, there once lived a Buddhist
priest who during many years was grievously tormented by Bimbogami. He
tried oftentimes without avail to drive him away; then he strove to
deceive him by proclaiming aloud to all the people that he was going to
Kyoto. But instead of going to Kyoto he went to Tsuruga, in the province
of Echizen; and when he reached the inn at Tsuruga there came forth to
meet him a boy lean and wan like a gaki. The boy said to him, "I have
been waiting for you"—and the boy was Bimbogami.
'There was another priest who for sixty years had tried in vain to get
rid of Bimbogami, and who resolved at last to go to a distant province.
On the night after he had formed this resolve he had a strange dream, in
which he saw a very much emaciated boy, naked and dirty, weaving sandals
of straw (waraji), such as pilgrims and runners wear; and he made so
many that the priest wondered, and asked him, "For what purpose are you
making so many sandals?" And the boy answered, "I am going to travel
with you. I am Bimbogami."'
'Then is there no way, Akira, by which Bimbogami may be driven away?'
'It is written,' replies Akira, 'in the book called Jizo-Kyo-Kosui that
the aged Enjobo, a priest dwelling in the province of Owari, was able to
get rid of Bimbogami by means of a charm. On the last day of the last
month of the year he and his disciples and other priests of the Shingon
sect took branches of peach-trees and recited a formula, and then, with
the branches, imitated the action of driving a person out of the temple,
after which they shut all the gates and recited other formulas. The same
night Enjobo dreamed of a skeleton priest in a broken temple weeping
alone, and the skeleton priest said to him, "After I had been with you
for so many years, how could you drive me away?" But always thereafter
until the day of his death, Enjobo lived in prosperity.'
For an hour and a half the ranges to left and right alternately recede
and approach. Beautiful blue shapes glide toward us, change to green,
and then, slowly drifting behind us, are all blue again. But the far
mountains immediately before us—immovable, unchanging—always remain
ghosts. Suddenly the little steamer turns straight into the land—a
land so low that it came into sight quite unexpectedly—and we puff up
a narrow stream between rice-fields to a queer, quaint, pretty village
on the canal bank—Shobara. Here I must hire jinricksha to take us to
Kitzuki.
There is not time to see much of Shobara if I hope to reach Kitzuki
before bedtime, and I have only a flying vision of one long wide street
(so picturesque that I wish I could pass a day in it), as our kuruma
rush through the little town into the open country, into a vast plain
covered with rice-fields. The road itself is only a broad dike, barely
wide enough for two jinricksha to pass each other upon it. On each side
the superb plain is bounded by a mountain range shutting off the white
horizon. There is a vast silence, an immense sense of dreamy peace, and
a glorious soft vapoury light over everything, as we roll into the
country of Hyasugi to Kaminawoe. The jagged range on the left is Shusai-
yama, all sharply green, with the giant Daikoku-yama overtopping all;
and its peaks bear the names of gods. Much more remote, upon our right,
enormous, pansy-purple, tower the shapes of the Kita-yama, or northern
range; filing away in tremendous procession toward the sunset, fading
more and more as they stretch west, to vanish suddenly at last, after
the ghostliest conceivable manner, into the uttermost day.
All this is beautiful; yet there is no change while hours pass. Always
the way winds on through miles of rice-fields, white-speckled with
paper-winged shafts which are arrows of prayer. Always the voice of
frogs—a sound as of infinite bubbling. Always the green range on the
left, the purple on the right, fading westward into a tall file of
tinted spectres which always melt into nothing at last, as if they were
made of air. The monotony of the scene is broken only by our occasional
passing through some pretty Japanese village, or by the appearance of a
curious statue or monument at an angle of the path, a roadside Jizo, or
the grave of a wrestler, such as may be seen on the bank of the Hiagawa,
a huge slab of granite sculptured with the words, 'Ikumo Matsu
kikusuki.'
But after reaching Kandogori, and passing over a broad but shallow
river, a fresh detail appears in the landscape. Above the mountain chain
on our left looms a colossal blue silhouette, almost saddle-shaped,
recognisable by its outline as a once mighty volcano. It is now known by
various names, but it was called in ancient times Sa-hime-yama; and it
has its Shinto legend.
It is said that in the beginning the God of Izumo, gazing over the land,
said, 'This new land of Izumo is a land of but small extent, so I will
make it a larger land by adding unto it.' Having so said, he looked
about him over to Korea, and there he saw land which was good for the
purpose. With a great rope he dragged therefrom four islands, and added
the land of them to Izumo. The first island was called Ya-o-yo-ne, and
it formed the land where Kitzuki now is. The second island was called
Sada-no-kuni, and is at this day the site of the holy temple where all
the gods do yearly hold their second assembly, after having first
gathered together at Kitzuki. The third island was called in its new
place Kurami-no-kuni, which now forms Shimane-gori. The fourth island
became that place where stands the temple of the great god at whose
shrine are delivered unto the faithful the charms which protect the
rice-fields.
[43]
Now in drawing these islands across the sea into their several places
the god looped his rope over the mighty mountain of Daisen and over the
mountain Sa-hime-yama; and they both bear the marks of that wondrous
rope even unto this day. As for the rope itself, part of it was changed
into the long island of ancient times
[44]
called Yomi-ga-hama, and a
part into the Long Beach of Sono.
After we pass the Hori-kawa the road narrows and becomes rougher and
rougher, but always draws nearer to the Kitayama range. Toward sundown
we have come close enough to the great hills to discern the details of
their foliage. The path begins to rise; we ascend slowly through the
gathering dusk. At last there appears before us a great multitude of
twinkling lights. We have reached Kitzuki, the holy city.