In Coming Down From Tenoko I Passed One Of These Close To
The Road, And A Buddhist Priest Was At The Time Pouring A Dipper
Full Of Water Into It, Which Strained Slowly Through.
As he was
going our way we joined him, and he explained its meaning.
According to him the tablet bears on it the kaimiyo, or posthumous
name of a woman. The flowers have the same significance as those
which loving hands place on the graves of kindred. If there are
characters on the cloth, they represent the well-known invocation
of the Nichiren sect, Namu mio ho ren ge kio. The pouring of the
water into the cloth, often accompanied by telling the beads on a
rosary, is a prayer. The whole is called "The Flowing Invocation."
I have seldom seen anything more plaintively affecting, for it
denotes that a mother in the first joy of maternity has passed away
to suffer (according to popular belief) in the Lake of Blood, one
of the Buddhist hells, for a sin committed in a former state of
being, and it appeals to every passer-by to shorten the penalties
of a woman in anguish, for in that lake she must remain until the
cloth is so utterly worn out that the water falls through it at
once.
Where the mountains come down upon the plain of Yonezawa there are
several raised banks, and you can take one step from the hillside
to a dead level. The soil is dry and gravelly at the junction,
ridges of pines appeared, and the look of the houses suggested
increased cleanliness and comfort.
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