Kakemono

Out of the town and above it, the daimyō of Matsué once built him a castle, and he filled it with the stern warriors whose soul was their sword. Daimyō after daimyō lived and died, and still a daimyō ruled over Izumo; and warrior after warrior fought and was slain, and still the samurai learned the laws of the bushi, the way of the warrior, and the strong fortress of Matsué, with its moat and its walls, was guarded and kept by men whose lives were one long servitude to honour and duty. The grim ideals of a code which feared no death and no torture, which exacted the sternest courage and self-control, were taught and practised in the castle of Matsué, until the Son of Heaven ruled in Tokyo and daimyō and samurai were feudal lord and loyal vassal no longer.

The grim walls are standing now, the castle with its moat still rises above Matsué to possess it, but the spirit of its fierce dominance is gone; instead, that twin-soul of the Japanese race has entered into the stronghold, the Love of Beauty has cast out the Love of Battle, the sword is changed to flowers, for in the moat of the castle the lotus is blooming.

Stern and very strong the grey walls rise high into the air, they have not lost their grimness though their feet are bathed in flowers. It is true the gateway is broken, and where the drawbridge once fell there is now a broad path of stamped earth, but the long lines of solid wall are firm still and uninjured. They still rise frowning from out the deep waters of the moat; but to-day the moat itself has disappeared, in its place the broad thick leaves of the lotus stretch like a silvery green river around the walls. So broad, so strong, so helpless, the great leaves hang like unsteady giants on their stalks, and the pin-points of water gather and gather on the hairy surface, till the leaf curls to a cup and a big waterdrop, molten as quicksilver, runs gleaming over the green.

The lotus leaves lie all lazy at angles of rest, but the flowers seem to rise on their stalks as birds taking wing. All pure white or palest pink, each single flower is a giant’s handful of blossom, and yet the petals are delicate, almost transparent; thin, too, in their texture, but of a satiny softness, they curl with the grace of a rose above the pure gold of their hearts.

The lotus leaves dream inert, each on its stalk hangs drooping, often awry: they encircle the walls like a green river of water that stagnantly sleeps; but the flowers are awake and they rise from their leaves as the Spirit of Beauty once rose from the waters. All pure white on this side of the gateway, all pale pink on that, the great cups of blossom stand stately. Very fragile in their texture, and yet so ample in their form the lotus flower seems the meeting-point of luxuriance and grace; the point where more of either were really less of both.

With its roots deep down in the mud, with its leaves often frankly ridiculous in the large uncouthness of their attitudes, with its beauty in no way ethereal, the lotus is yet the symbol of Death, not of Nirvana, but of Death, of the completing of one brief period in this long cycle which we call Life. So in Matsué they planted the moat of the castle with the flower of the lotus for the life of Old Japan, of castle and daimyō and samurai, is ended. It is Death but a new Beginning.

Beyond the gateway, a grass-grown flight of granite steps leads to the castle, and we climb.

All the castles in all Japan are the same, bigger or smaller, with details of decoration or style that differentiate them, they are yet in the broad outlines of their architecture one and the same. A Japanese house is Japanese, but the castle comes from China, at least originally, and its pagoda character is very evident. The castle at Matsué had its ground floor of stone, rough-hewn blocks of granite which fitted closely to each other without mortar. The stone storey, as all the succeeding ones of wood above it, tapered gradually inwards so that the topmost wooden storey would have fitted into the one below it, and that into the next, and all into the square stone box of the ground floor, as neatly as the nest of baskets sold in the streets of the town below.

Inside, the rough-hewn stone walls were left as bare as the outside, and a long steep ladder of a staircase, which began abruptly in the middle of one floor to end with equal abruptness in the middle of the floor above, led from storey to storey. The stone storey was divided into two, the rest were of wood, and all now were absolutely bare and unadorned; the mere outer shell of a building which had once lived and sheltered lives. Only in the top floor, where on all four sides sliding panels of glass had replaced the rice-paper shōji, was there any sign of life. This room had been turned into a sort of Military Museum with relics of the China war, swords and guns, and a whole long series of wonderful coloured prints, with the Chinese always fleeing, their long, long pigtails floating in the breeze, the Japanese always pursuing with impossible profiles and highly polished boots; and gravely studying the pictures was a group of schoolboys. Their comments were mostly bloodthirsty; the best way of sticking the pink Chinaman on the left, or of beheading the yellow one on the right; but they did not seem moved with any animosity or any sense of triumph, they merely discussed the sword-cuts scientifically, seriously, as though it were a grave business of life and they wished to arrive at a right conclusion.

Matsué’s castle is beyond and above the town, and the daimyō who built it and the warriors who guarded it looked down on this side over the grey roofs of the houses to the wide blue waters of the still lagoon, on that side over the grey roofs of the houses and the sweep of the quiet rice-fields where the river, like a broad path of steel wanders through the bright green fields; and further round they looked to where the tall trees climb the steep hillsides, and further still to the great blue lines of the hills themselves shutting in the sky. And the old warriors in their watch-tower looked out over this wide fair world which lay so still around them. They guarded the castle and they kept it, and the light that was set in that tower was the light of courage and of duty. Over the world beneath their feet it shone out clear and bright, but the world was wider than their horizon. After many years they learned that lesson, and then they came down from their watch-tower, and the light which once burned there in the castle is gone to-day through all the land.

Then the Spirit of Beauty, the soul of that world which lay so still beneath the tower, went up to the castle, where with courage and duty the love of battle and of death had ruled so long, to possess it. And in the waters of the moat the lotus is blooming.

With its roots in the mud, say the Japanese Buddhists, the lotus flower is an emblem of man, of a good man in this wicked world. From among the sins and the passions of life Buddha himself rose perfect, pure as the lotus, and perfect. So for a sign and a comfort to all men, Lord Buddha himself sits throned on the lotus, showing how Goodness Eternal came, not from good, but from the midst of things evil.

In the moat of the castle the people of Matsué have planted whole fields of the lotus, that the flower which is perfect might grow from the sins of the past, grow with each cycle of Life ever more perfect.