GLIMPSES OF UNFAMILIAR JAPAN
First Series

Chapter Thirteen Shinju

1
SOMETIMES they simply put their arms round each other, and lie down
together on the iron rails, just in front of an express train. (They
cannot do it in Izumo, however, because there are no railroads there
yet.) Sometimes they make a little banquet for themselves, write very
strange letters to parents and friends, mix something bitter with their
rice-wine, and go to sleep for ever. Sometimes they select a more
ancient and more honoured method: the lover first slays his beloved with
a single sword stroke, and then pierces his own throat. Sometimes with
the girl's long crape-silk under-girdle (koshi-obi) they bind themselves
fast together, face to face, and so embracing leap into some deep lake
or stream. Many are the modes by which they make their way to the Meido,
when tortured by that world-old sorrow about which Schopenhauer wrote so
marvellous a theory.

Their own theory is much simpler.

None love life more than the Japanese; none fear death less. Of a future
world they have no dread; they regret to leave this one only because it
seems to them a world of beauty and of happiness; but the mystery of the
future, so long oppressive to Western minds, causes them little concern.
As for the young lovers of whom I speak, they have a strange faith which
effaces mysteries for them. They turn to the darkness with infinite
trust. If they are too unhappy to endure existence, the fault is not
another's, nor yet the world's; it is their own; it is innen, the result
of errors in a previous life. If they can never hope to be united in
this world, it is only because in some former birth they broke their
promise to wed, or were otherwise cruel to each other. All this is not
heterodox. But they believe likewise that by dying together they will
find themselves at once united in another world, though Buddhism
proclaims that self-destruction is a deadly sin. Now this idea of
winning union through death is incalculably older than the faith of
Shaka; but it has somehow borrowed in modern time from Buddhism a
particular ecstatic colouring, a mystical glow. Hasu no hana no ue ni
oite matan. On the lotus-blossoms of paradise they shall rest together.
Buddhism teaches of transmigrations countless, prolonged through
millions of millions of years, before the soul can acquire the Infinite
Vision, the Infinite Memory, and melt into the bliss of Nehan, as a
white cloud melts into the summer 's blue. But these suffering ones
think never of Nehan; love's union, their supremest wish, may be
reached, they fancy, through the pang of a single death. The fancies of
all, indeed--as their poor letters show--are not the same. Some think
themselves about to enter Amida's paradise of light; some see in their
visional hope the saki-no-yo only, the future rebirth, when beloved
shall meet beloved again, in the all-joyous freshness of another youth;
while the idea of many, indeed of the majority, is vaguer far--only a
shadowy drifting together through vapoury silences, as in the faint
bliss of dreams.

They always pray to be buried together. Often this prayer is refused by
the parents or the guardians, and the people deem this refusal a cruel
thing, for 'tis believed that those who die for love of each other will
find no rest, if denied the same tomb. But when the prayer is granted
the ceremony of burial is beautiful and touching. From the two homes the
two funeral processions issue to meet in the temple court, by light of
lanterns. There, after the recitation of the kyo and the accustomed
impressive ceremonies, the chief priest utters an address to the souls
of the dead. Compassionately he speaks of the error and the sin; of the
youth of the victims, brief and comely as the flowers that blossom and
fall in the first burst of spring. He speaks of the Illusion--Mayoi--
which so wrought upon them; he recites the warning of the Teacher.. But
sometimes he will even predict the future reunion of the lovers in some
happier and higher life, re-echoing the popular heart-thought with a
simple eloquence that makes his hearers weep. Then the two processions
form into one, which takes its way to the cemetery where the grave has
already been prepared. The two coffins are lowered together, so that
their sides touch as they rest at the bottom of the excavation. Then the
yama-no-mono [1] folk remove the planks which separate the pair--making
the two coffins into one; above the reunited dead the earth is heaped;
and a haka, bearing in chiselled letters the story of their fate, and
perhaps a little poem, is placed above the mingling of their dust.

2

These suicides of lovers are termed 'joshi' or 'shinju'--(both words
being written with the same Chinese characters)-signifying 'heart-
death,' 'passion-death,' or 'love-death.' They most commonly occur, in
the case of women, among the joro [2] class; but occasionally also among
young girls of a more respectable class. There is a fatalistic belief
that if one shinju occurs among the inmates of a joroya, two more are
sure to follow. Doubtless the belief itself is the cause that cases of
shinju do commonly occur in series of three.

The poor girls who voluntarily sell themselves to a life of shame for
the sake of their families in time of uttermost distress do not, in
Japan (except, perhaps, in those open ports where European vice and
brutality have become demoralising influences), ever reach that depth of
degradation to which their Western sisters descend. Many indeed retain,
through all the period of their terrible servitude, a refinement of
manner, a delicacy of sentiment, and a natural modesty that seem, under
such conditions, as extraordinary as they are touching.

Only yesterday a case of shinju startled this quiet city. The servant of
a physician in the street called Nadamachi, entering the chamber of his
master's son a little after sunrise, found the young man lying dead with
a dead girl in his arms. The son had been disinherited. The girl was a
joro. Last night they were buried, but not together; for the father was
not less angered than grieved that such a thing should have been.

Her name was Kane. She was remarkably pretty and very gentle; and from
all accounts it would seem that her master had treated her with a
kindness unusual in men of his infamous class. She had sold herself for
the sake of her mother and a child-sister. The father was dead, and they
had lost everything. She was then seventeen. She had been in the house
scarcely a year when she met the youth. They fell seriously in love with
each other at once. Nothing more terrible could have befallen them; for
they could never hope to become man and wife. The young man, though
still allowed the privileges of a son, had been disinherited in favour
of an adopted brother of steadier habits. The unhappy pair spent all
they had for the privilege of seeing each other: she sold even her
dresses to pay for it. Then for the last time they met by stealth, late
at night, in the physician's house, drank death, and laid down to sleep
for ever.

I saw the funeral procession of the girl winding its way by the light of
paper lanterns--the wan dead glow that is like a shimmer of
phosphorescence--to the Street of the Temples, followed by a long train
of women, white-hooded, white-robed, white-girdled, passing all
soundlessly--a troop of ghosts.

So through blackness to the Meido the white Shapes flit-the eternal
procession of Souls--in painted Buddhist dreams of the Underworld.

3

My friend who writes for the San-in Shimbun, which to-morrow will print
the whole sad story, tells me that compassionate folk have already
decked the new-made graves with flowers and with sprays of shikimi. [3]
Then drawing from a long native envelope a long, light, thin roll of
paper covered with beautiful Japanese writing, and unfolding it before
me, he adds:--'She left this letter to the keeper of the house in which
she lived: it has been given to us for publication. It is very prettily
written. But I cannot translate it well; for it is written in woman's
language. The language of letters written by women is not the same as
that of letters written by men. Women use particular words and
expressions. For instance, in men's language "I" is watakushi, or ware,
or yo, or boku, according to rank or circumstance, but in the language
of woman, it is warawa. And women's language is very soft and gentle;
and I do not think it is possible to translate such softness and
amiability of words into any other language. So I can only give you an
imperfect idea of the letter.'

And he interprets, slowly, thus:

'I leave this letter:

'As you know, from last spring I began to love Tashiro-San; and he also
fell in love with me. And now, alas!--the influence of our relation in
some previous birth having come upon us-and the promise we made each
other in that former life to become wife and husband having been broken
-even to-day I must travel to the Meido.

'You not only treated me very kindly, though you found me so stupid and
without influence, [4] but you likewise aided in many ways for my
worthless sake my mother and sister. And now, since I have not been able
to repay you even the one myriadth part of that kindness and pity in
which you enveloped me--pity great as the mountains and the sea [5]--
it would not be without just reason that you should hate me as a great
criminal.

'But though I doubt not this which I am about to do will seem a wicked
folly, I am forced to it by conditions and by my own heart. Wherefore I
still may pray you to pardon my past faults. And though I go to the
Meido, never shall I forget your mercy to me--great as the mountains
and the sea. From under the shadow of the grasses [6] I shall still try
to recompense you--to send back my gratitude to you and to your house.
Again, with all my heart I pray you: do not be angry with me.

'Many more things I would like to write. But now my heart is not a
heart; and I must quickly go. And so I shall lay down my writing-brush.

'It is written so clumsily, this.

'Kane thrice prostrates herself before you.

'From KANE.

'To---SAMA.'

'Well, it is a characteristic shinju letter,' my friend comments, after
a moment's silence, replacing the frail white paper in its envelope. 'So
I thought it would interest you. And now, although it is growing dark, I
am going to the cemetery to see what has been done at the grave. Would
you like to come with me?'

We take our way over the long white bridge, up the shadowy Street of the
Temples, toward the ancient hakaba of Miokoji--and the darkness grows
as we walk. A thin moon hangs just above the roofs of the great temples.

Suddenly a far voice, sonorous and sweet--a man's voice-breaks into
song under the starred night: a song full of strange charm and tones
like warblings--those Japanese tones of popular emotion which seem to
have been learned from the songs of birds. Some happy workman returning
home. So clear the thin frosty air that each syllable quivers to us; but
I cannot understand the words:-

Saite yuke toya, ano ya wo saite; Yuke ba chikayoru nushi no soba.

'What is that?' I ask my friend.

He answers: 'A love-song. "Go forward, straight forward that way, to the
house that thou seest before thee;--the nearer thou goest thereto, the
nearer to her [7] shalt thou be."'

Notes for Chapter Thirteen

1 Yama-no-mono ('mountain-folk,'--so called from their settlement on
the hills above Tokoji),--a pariah-class whose special calling is the
washing of the dead and the making of graves.
2 Joro: a courtesan.
3 Illicium religiosum
4 Literally: 'without shadow' or 'shadowless.'
5 Umi-yama-no-on.
6 Kusaba-no-kage
7 Or 'him.' This is a free rendering. The word 'nushi' simply refers
to the owner of the house.