Kakemono

It was the fête of Kannon of Asak’sa, whose votaries are many. They thronged the narrow paved pathway set between the two long rows of red brick stalls, and overflowed into the temple grounds behind, where the juggler and the wax-works, the two-headed porpoise, and the headless man, and all the long scale of attractions in between shouted and drummed. All the fun of the fair was here, with the advantage of a petit bout de messe, to save the soul, over the way.

Kannon of Asak’sa is a popular lady, and her doors stand wide open. You may go in with your boots on. It is true that the goddess herself, on her gilded altar, is railed off from public touch by a wire netting—like the animals in the menagerie outside. But that is all the privacy she enjoys, and the rest of her temple is as public as a railway station, and just about as sacred. The people pour in up the steps on all sides, the scraping of their gheta on the dirty wooden floor adding its quota of noise to the chink of money and the buzz of voices, the ringing of bells, and the hurry and bustle of a surging railway crowd. There is the same wide-open, doorless feel, the same discomforting, amphibious sensation of neither open air nor closed house. A large bookstall in the corner, selling the latest illustrated numbers of the goddess, and the whole stock of Kannon literature adds to the illusion. Between two pillars a temple clerk issues tickets at a substantial booking-office. A shaven official appears and rings a bell at intervals, reciting a prayer in the voice of a railway porter proclaiming stations. There is the same reasonless flux and reflux of the crowd, the same rush and bustle, with its inseparable accompaniment of underlying roar that rises and falls, sometimes absorbing all the other sounds into itself, sometimes leaving them distinct and clear, but never for a moment ceasing.

A huge lacquered case like a square coffin, its lid replaced by thick metal bars, stands between the bookstall and the booking-office, right against the wire netting. Into this each comer throws his coin before reciting his prayer, and the chinking of the money as it falls is as unceasing as the roar of the crowd.

Away in a corner behind the booking-office a worn-out black statue sits huddled in rags. Around it, bands of invalids await their turn to rub the featureless figure with their hands, and transfer the charm by rubbing themselves in the corresponding spot. As a method of propagating disease, this treatment for curing it can have few equals. But the coffers of the temple profit greatly.

Business, indeed, is brisk to-day. The shaven-headed booking-clerk is issuing tickets at a bank-holiday rate, and the bookstall is besieged. Up from all sides comes the tumult of the fair. Kannon must be a paying investment.

As I stand on the steps with the din of the temple behind me, a man in the crowd below buys a cage of little birds at a stall, and, opening the door, throws them up into the air. The startled flutter of their wings as they soar up over the heads of the crowd into the blue carries me back to Ober-Ammergau, to the memory of the overturned tables of the money-changers, and the overthrown cages of those who sold doves.

“My house shall be called the house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves.”

Is human nature the same all the world over? Are priests? Or is the fate of all religions alike?

O Kannon of Asak’sa! Kannon, Lady of Mercy! how long must thou wait for thy deliverer? O Lord Buddha, how long?