Kakemono

Above the white cloud of the plum-blossoms, through the dark wood of the cryptomerias, on the top of the hill lies the temple of Ikkégami. The broad spaces of its courtyards and its gardens are sunny and still, and the blue sky above is a bed of celestial forget-me-nots. Down each side the big, dark trunks of the giant fir-trees stand straight and tall—two rows of sombre pillars, shutting in a sunny aisle.

In front, at the end of the wandering white path of rounded stones sunk into the bare earth, is the Hondō or main building with the tent curves of its roof, and the polished floor of its veranda shining like a sword in the sun. Behind is the big wooden gateway, and the hundred stone steps which lead from the hilltop to the village beneath. And scattered down the wide earth courtyard, and half hidden under the dark arches of the trees, are the innumerable little buildings which form the complete whole of a Buddhist temple; the belfry, with its bronze bell hung from the big wooden beam of the ceiling to within three feet of the ground, and the polished wooden spar with which it is beaten; the quaint revolving library—like a dwarf windmill without sails—where the hundred volumes of the Buddhist Scripture can be dimly seen through the thick wooden lattice; the wide granite tank under its tiled roof, all hung with lengths of brown temple towels, where the faithful pour water over their hands from bamboo dippers as a symbol of purification; the side chapels with their drums and offerings. All are quiet to-day and deserted, only by the side of the tank, in front of a worn-out stone statue, a peasant mother is standing, her baby tucked in the back of her kimono—fast asleep. She claps her hands three times to call the attention of the gods, and then she prays, and the baby’s shaven head nods heavily over her shoulder. Then she takes the bamboo dipper and pours water over the head of the stone statue, carefully, that not a dry spot may remain, and prays again.

Between the dark pillars of the tree-trunks and the stamped earth of the courtyard, a line of narrow, pointed laths runs like a wooden fencing round the temple precincts. I wonder what they are and leave the stepping-stones of the pathway to see.

Tombstones? Yes. Set close together, and sometimes three or four deep, the long line of thin pointed laths closes in the temple and its courtyard with a fence of graves. Not a rich man’s graveyard this, but the last home of the peasants from the rice-fields and the fishermen from the sea. I look at the rows of Chinese characters running lengthwise down the narrow tombstones, and stop in wonder, for on one the Roman letters with their familiar outlines stand out plainly.

“To the Men of the Warship Onega.”

That is all.

To the men of the Warship Onega! It was true then the story. The story of the loss of the Onega in the bay below, and the sale of the sunken wreck with all its contents to fishermen along the coast. The story of the finding of the corpses of the drowned sailors, all entangled among the wreckage, and of how the Japanese fishermen collected them reverently, saying, with the faith of the ancient Greeks, that their souls would wander restless and distressed unless they were laid in their graves and the funeral prayers sung over them. So they sent a petition to the great Ijin San in Tokyo praying him to come to the temple of Ikkégami, that his dead brothers might have some one of their own race, if not of their own family, to perform the last solemn rites. And the Ambassador came to Ikkégami, and the long line of weather-beaten Japanese fishermen bore the western sailors up the hill to the temple, and buried them in the courtyard, under the silent trees, with all the rites of the Buddhist church. And they set up the wooden lath as over the grave of a brother, among the long lines of the tombstones of their fathers; but they wrote on it in the tongue of the stranger so that God and their countrymen might know their own again.

And all this they did out of their own hearts, and with the money of their own earning.

So the men of Onega lie buried with Buddhist rites in a Buddhist churchyard, and the wooden lath above their graves is but another rail in the holy fence of the Japanese dead which encloses the temple.

The long arches of the sombre trees are dark and still. The blue sky above is without fleck or stain, and the peace of God which passeth all understanding is spread as a hand above the tree-tops.

The men of the Onega sleep well.