Kakemono

“So they made fast the temple pillars on the nethermost rock-bottom, and they made high the cross-beams to the plain of high heaven;” and the god Onamuji, the “Master of the Great Land,” King of Izumo, in accordance with his compact with high heaven, entered into that temple and dwelt there.

So the province of Izumo and the kingdom of Western Japan passed under the rule of the great Sun-Goddess whose descendants endure to this day. But the Master of the Great Land, the god Onamuji, is worshipped from end to end of the Emperor’s dominions, and his temple and his priests are sacred as the mirror of the Sun-Goddess in their eyes.

All through the year, the pilgrims in thousands journey into Izumo to remote Kizuki, whose name to their ears is still resonant with the beating (tsuku) of the pestles (ki) which made the foundations of that first great temple firm and everlasting, while in the month of October the immortal gods themselves, from every shrine throughout the land, come to visit Onamuji, and that desolate month known in Japan as kami-na-zuki (month without gods) is called in Izumo alone kami-ari-zuki (the month with gods).

At the foot of the everlasting hills the temple stands, and the far-off ripple of the Western Sea, half a memory, half a dream, wanders through its sunlit courts, a sound to listening ears.

The long dark avenue of twisted trees, so old that many are almost limbless, the three giant torī, hewn in solid granite, lie behind us; we have reached the white sunlight of the outer temple space, and the scattered buildings of the shrine are in front. Our landlord, in his Sunday-best kimono of silver-grey, leads the way. He has walked, since we left the inn, exactly three paces behind us, while three paces behind him came our kurumaya. In Kizuki it has not been considered consonant with our dignity to allow us to move anywhere without them.

Our landlord, with the profoundest bow, moves on in front. He has a letter to deliver on our behalf, so that when we reach the long, low building at the end of the first enclosure, an authoritative young priest in long white robes is there to greet us. He wears a wonderful head-dress of black lacquer, the model of a meat-cover, tied on under the chin, with two red cords in the manner of a doll’s bonnet; but his chin is human, not inflexible, so I watch to see the meat-cover tumble. It never does, not even when with a low bow he invites us up the steep polished steps into the room above. We take off our shoes and climb.

The room is long and low, with a “foreign” table covered with a green baize cloth. There are bright blue velvet chairs, an inkstand, pens; just a second-hand committee-room greatly the worse for wear, which impresses our landlord, so that his strangled h’s of admiration sound like paroxysms of coughing. We sit on the velvet chairs and wait. Our landlord, the letter and the priest have disappeared into an inner apartment. And the sound of much discussion comes to our ears. “How far are we to be allowed to go?” And then the terms “learned Ijin San,” and “august sage” reach us. At last they are all agreed. The “learned Ijin San,” the “honourable teacher,” the “august sage” shall be permitted to enter the very Holy of Holies; but the “honourable interior,” being a woman, must not cross the sacred threshold. Then there is a long pause before the authoritative young priest comes out and explains the position to us. We bow the profoundest thanks and follow him down the steps, and the reason for the pause is evident. He has changed his clothes, and is now in the fullest and most resplendent of sacerdotal robes.

Under the shadow of the gate of the ita-gaki, the second enclosing fence, stands the High Priest himself, whose fathers for two thousand years have led the temple rites. He is the eighty-second descendant of the mythic Susa-no-wo, and is still termed by many Iki-gami, which is the “Living God.” An old, old man, whose face is almost white, a mystic sacred face, quiet as the eternal smile of the Eternal Buddha. He wears a lacquered head-dress, the most imposing of meat-covers, and his robes are of white and purple adorned with gold.

We pass within the ita-gaki, and the landlord, the kurumaya, the crowd of other worshippers are left behind. Before us rises the low fence of the “jewelled hedge,” which encloses the sacred shrine itself. Again before the gateway there is a pause. The minor priests, even our authoritative young friend, do not enter here. It is explained to us that the “honourable interior” must not pass within the temple. She is a woman, but it is permitted to her, as the wife of the most “honourable one,” to look into the shrine from a room above the gateway. The High Priest removes his sandals, we our shoes, and over the rounded, water-washed, grey pebbles, hot as burning plough-shares, we enter the holy court.

A long, low wooden building is the temple, primæval in its form, the broad ends of its roof-tree sticking up like pointed anchors through the roof. Six feet around it on every side the pebbles stop, and the space is filled with the whitest, smoothest sand. All those who go up to the god leave the mark of their feet behind.

Within the temple there is nothing; bare space, dim, obscure; but the High Priest, reverently kneeling on the matting, creates the god. And into that narrow empty space the shadow of the Eternal Presence comes.

Slowly the splash of the breaking waves drifts into the stillness, faint as the whisper of God in the heart of man, a still, small voice. Over the temple there is peace, the peace of two thousand years, unbroken, sacred. And the dreamy ripple grows a sound in the silence. Faint, faint, faint, is it the song of the limitless sea, the voice of the peace and the stillness, or a broken murmur of the beyond that the listening pilgrim hears? Half a memory, half a dream, it dies at the gate of the shrine, where the stir of the world grows loud; yet the soul has heard, has believed.

Out in the sunlit court beyond the “jewelled hedge” the little group of priests still wait. And as we come slowly over the hot round stones, our shoes once more upon our feet, they greet us with an added respect. Even the “honourable interior,” whose sacredness is but indirect, transmitted through a space of court and two open shōji, has become a personage.

The old, old priest, with the face of a Chinese sage, goes on in front. We cross the second court obliquely over the stone-grey pebbles, each rounded with the rubbing of running water, and enter another building, the treasure-house of the temple. Here in a shaded upper chamber, where the white sunlight filters through the yellow matting, a long low shelf runs round, and on it lie the temple’s treasures—relics of dead heroes and of living legend. One by one the High Priest points them out, and in the thin frail voice of age tells their story: A biwa, a sword, some pieces of tattered brocade, the old, old relics of Old Japan. The tales are long, as the old man tells them with the slow-moving utterance of one who has had eighty years in which to speak. But there is a personal vibration in his voice that brings back the long two thousand years of service that he and his have given to the temple, recalls the eighty-two High Priests, his fathers, who join the living man before us to the god Susa-no-wo, from whom the Great Master, Onamuji himself, descended.

All this time, the authoritative young priest has been respectfully but quite obviously waiting to show us something. At last he draws us across the room to where a life-sized plaster statue stands, the Sun-Goddess herself in the flowing robes of Old Japan, a figure full of majesty and power, with round her neck a string of those prehistoric jewels of which the Kojiki is full, comma-shaped polished jewels of jade and crystal, threaded on a scarlet string. And in the loose sleeves of the plaster figure and about the folds at the neck are touches of brightest red. A modern plaster statue of a figure old to unbelief.

And the young man tells the story. He is so eager, so proud to relate what has indeed become the great central fact of the story, that who or what the statue is, or how or why it came there we never hear; but—it had gained a prize at the Chicago Exhibition!

And all the rest of the clergy intone a little chorus of triumph and delight. Even the High Priest himself seems pleased, and a faint smile passes over his face as he bids us examine the ticket.

It is quite true. From the out-stretched wrist of the Sun-Goddess hangs a much-worn ticket, stating in printed Roman capitals that “This Exhibit has won a Prize at the World’s Fair of Chicago.” And the figure stands there, in the long low treasure-house of Izumo’s Great Temple, while the white sunlight, filtering through the yellow matting, falls on the white-robed priests who serve a temple worshipped through two thousand years, falls on the old High Priest with the mystic sacred face, whose fathers stretch back into the mists of Time, and falling, trembles on the faded ticket on the arm of the Sun-Goddess:

“If the august sage will honourably please to descend.”

And we descended.

In the hot still court the High Priest takes his leave, with long polite phrases of strictest ceremony. The authoritative young priest who escorts us back through the ita-gaki into the outer court is equally ceremonious, and our polite Japanese is heavily taxed to keep up with him. At the outer court he bids us sayonara, and our landlord and our kurumaya, who have been respectfully waiting, form into procession again. We have become great personages in their eyes, very great personages indeed; and the pilgrims, kneeling before the shrine in the outer court, look at us with reverence. We have entered the Holy of Holies, we have visited the god Onamuji in his shrine.

It is with the lowest of bows that our landlord leads us out of the side of the temple court, westward, to where the tall dark trees of the mountain have grown down into the plain. Here, set in the silence of the cryptomerias at the foot of the everlasting hills, is the home of the High Priest. So still, so ordered, so spotless, the house and garden lie like a snowdrop in a forest. And the sound of the sea drifts in as we stand.

Then for the last time we cross the courtyard where the pilgrims are praying in the sunshine, and the temple dancing girls, dim figures in the distance, glide round and round in the long slow circles of the sacred kagura. Court and temple are burning in the sunlight. Beyond the “hedge” and the “jewelled hedge” the great beam-ends of the roof-tree rise out through the temple’s thatch. Within the shrine hangs the mirror of the great Sun-Goddess. For the heart of man, says the Shintō faith, is good and pure. And even as this mirror, when undimmed, reflects the sun, so in the tranquil soul God’s self is imaged.

Over temple and courtyard there is peace; the peace of long centuries dead; the peace of enduring belief. Down from the mists of the past the teaching comes: “Know thyself; in the stillness of peace, know but thyself, and thou shalt see God.”