Kakemono

A matchless blue sky overarches the world, pale, clear, intense, and the twisted green boughs of the Japanese pine throw their gaunt, black arms up into the blue, in the vain endeavour of a hundred years to reach it. The hush of cloistered calm in which the trees grew up is still here, although the Tokyo citizen walks and rides where once none but Buddhist priests might linger. The Red Gateway, with the tent curves of its roof petrified into grey tiles, still claims for all within Buddha as its master.

And the hush of cloistered calm grows stiller.

Through a wide space open to the sky, a space paved with rounded pebbles, water-washed for many years ere they floored the courtyard of the House of God, believing and unbelieving feet have beaten smooth a wide, brown pathway. All around, and arranged in serried rows, stand a myriad grey-stone lanterns, the pious gifts of dead daimyō. Between these tall stone emblems of the five elements the pathway runs; cupola, crescent, pyramid, sphere, cube—ether, air, fire, water, earth—and the crude shapes of the primitive elements, touched and altered by generations of artists, are turned to curves of quaintest beauty. Diagonally across the space goes the black pathway, the standing rows of tall lanterns thickly set on either side, until beneath another gate it makes a pause. A gate of red lacquer this, with carvings of gilded wood on ceiling and wall. Carvings full of that oriental luxuriance of colour and line which half shocks our sober northern senses; so shocks them sometimes that we call it scornfully “barbaric,” until we grow wiser with much looking and learn to see the truth and beauty of this exuberant splendour.

Beyond the gateway, the black path leads out under the blue sky, a pebbled square on either hand, set round with stately rows of bronze lanterns, the pious gifts of yet greater daimyō. Another gate stands waiting at the end of the pebbled square, a gateway with rounded wooden columns of red lacquer, like its fellow, and carvings of gold. But the beams of its ceiling have been smoothed away, and in the centre a much twisted and curled dragon, which, like Joseph’s coat, is of many colours, writhes across the ceiling. A carved and gilded gallery stretches away on either side past the gateway. Another yet more beautiful, with its slender square pillars of red lacquer bound at base and crown with beaten brass, leads a rainbow shadow through the sunny court to the cool dark door of the temple itself. In the shade of the gilded galleries, suspended from the red-lacquered cross-beams, hangs a row of still bronze lanterns. Dimly in their exquisite shapes can one trace the symbolised elements.

Behind a wooden barrier five steps lead straight to the temple’s front, closed now with dark blinds of split bamboo bound together with a silken thread. The tiled eaves of the curving roof overhang the steps, and between door and lacquered pillar writhes in many wriggles of green and golden carving two royal dragons, the Ascending and the Descending—the going-up and the coming-down.

Leaning on the barrier, the glory of those golden dragons, of those red columns, of the carved beams and inlaid porch rushed riotously into the soul. And now one understood the preparation of those successive gateways, set each between a sunny space of pebbled court; for the first had shown but red and gold, up in the ceiling of the second lingered lines of azure blue, the third added green to the other three, the gallery gave glances of mauve and violet, while here, under the eaves of the temple roof, the rainbow itself is glorious in carved wood.

A culminating point of colour and splendour, what can the temple hold within?

Cool spaces of matted floor set round with black boxes on black stools, each box holding its portion of Buddhist Scripture; sombre pennants of dark blue and green brocade upon the walls; a sober light clear but colourless; and which is more beautiful, the rainbow porch of many colours riotous in carving and scrolls, or the sober quiet of the temple, a beauty of spaces and restraint?

The colourless matted room is wide and low. In front between the sombre pennants is the inner sanctuary. Gods on either side on lacquered tables set against the walls; at the end, beyond more lacquered tables, two brocaded masses rise like square coffins on a raised daïs; between stand figures of the gods, white-faced Benten and Kannon, Lady of Mercy. The red tables bear many-coloured sweets and biscuits heaped high on metal plates, in metal cups; offerings to the spirits of the dead Shōgun whose tablets lie enshrined behind those masses of brocade. A bronze bowl on the floor filled with grey ash sends forth filmy clouds of incense. There is no sound.

Behind the temple, through two open spaces of pebbled squares, each reached by a score of granite steps, is the tomb; a smooth, round mass of stone encircled with a breast-high parapet of bronze; all around a sweep of grey pebbles.

That is all.

And yet standing here I wonder whether the dead Shōgun have not rightly chosen? Whether their resting-place is not more truly beautiful than the beauty of sombre ornament in the temple, than the riotous carving of the gateways.

The porch was Beauty’s body, arrayed, adorned; here lies Beauty’s soul, naked and eternal.