In Spite Of Ito's Remonstrances And His Protestations That An
Exceptionally Good Supper Would Be Spoiled, I Left My Rat-
Haunted
room, with its tarnished gilding and precarious fusuma, to get the
last of the pink and lemon-coloured glory,
Going up the staircase
in the stone-faced embankment, and up a broad, well-paved avenue,
to a large temple, within whose open door I sat for some time
absolutely alone, and in a wonderful stillness; for the sweet-toned
bell which vainly chimes for vespers amidst this bear-worshipping
population had ceased. This temple was the first symptom of
Japanese religion that I remember to have seen since leaving
Hakodate, and worshippers have long since ebbed away from its shady
and moss-grown courts. Yet it stands there to protest for the
teaching of the great Hindu; and generations of Aino heathen pass
away one after another; and still its bronze bell tolls, and its
altar lamps are lit, and incense burns for ever before Buddha. The
characters on the great bell of this temple are said to be the same
lines which are often graven on temple bells, and to possess the
dignity of twenty-four centuries:
"All things are transient;
They being born must die,
And being born are dead;
And being dead are glad
To be at rest."
The temple is very handsome, the baldachino is superb, and the
bronzes and brasses on the altar are specially fine. A broad ray
of sunlight streamed in, crossed the matted floor, and fell full
upon the figure of Sakya-muni in his golden shrine; and just at
that moment a shaven priest, in silk-brocaded vestments of faded
green, silently passed down the stream of light, and lit the
candles on the altar, and fresh incense filled the temple with a
drowsy fragrance. It was a most impressive picture. His curiosity
evidently shortened his devotions, and he came and asked me where I
had been and where I was going, to which, of course, I replied in
excellent Japanese, and then stuck fast.
Along the paved avenue, besides the usual stone trough for holy
water, there are on one side the thousand-armed Kwan-non, a very
fine relief, and on the other a Buddha, throned on the eternal
lotus blossom, with an iron staff, much resembling a crozier, in
his hand, and that eternal apathy on his face which is the highest
hope of those who hope at all. I went through a wood, where there
are some mournful groups of graves on the hillside, and from the
temple came the sweet sound of the great bronze bell and the beat
of the big drum, and then, more faintly, the sound of the little
bell and drum, with which the priest accompanies his ceaseless
repetition of a phrase in the dead tongue of a distant land. There
is an infinite pathos about the lonely temple in its splendour, the
absence of even possible worshippers, and the large population of
Ainos, sunk in yet deeper superstitions than those which go to make
up popular Buddhism.
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