[He is coming, my long-desired lord, whom I have been waiting to meet here, on the banks of the River of Heaven.... The moment of loosening my girdle is nigh!⁷]

[Over the Rapids of the Everlasting Heaven, floating in his boat, my lord will doubtless deign to come to me this very night.]

[Though winds and clouds to either bank may freely come or go, between myself and my faraway spouse no message whatever may pass.]

[To the opposite bank one might easily fling a pebble; yet, being separated from him by the River of Heaven, alas! to hope for a meeting (except in autumn) is utterly useless.]

[From the day that the autumn wind began to blow (I kept saying to myself), "Ah! when shall we meet?"—but now my beloved, for whom I waited and longed, has come indeed!]

[Though the waters of the River of Heaven have not greatly risen, (yet to cross) this near stream and to wait upon (my lord and lover) remains impossible.]

[Though she is so near that the waving of her (long) sleeves can be distinctly seen, yet there is no way to cross the stream before the season of autumn.]

[When we were separated, I had seen her for a moment only,—and dimly as one sees a flying midge;¹⁰ now I must vainly long for her as before, until time of our next meeting!]

[Methinks that Hikoboshi must be rowing his boat to meet his wife,—for a mist (as of oar-spray) is rising over the course of the Heavenly Stream.]

[While awaiting my lord on the misty shore of the River of Heaven, the skirts of my robe have somehow become wet.]

[On the River of Heaven, at the place of the august ferry, the sound of the water has become loud: perhaps my long-awaited lord will soon be coming in his boat.]

[As Tanabata (slumbers) with her long sleeves rolled up, until the reddening of the dawn, do not, O storks of the river-shallows, awaken her by your cries.¹¹]

[(She sees that) a mist is spreading across the River of Heaven.... "To-day, to-day," she thinks, "my long-awaited lord will probably come over in his boat."]

[By the ferry of Yasu, on the River of Heaven, the boat is floating: I pray you tell my younger sister¹² that I stand here and wait.]

[Though I (being a Star-god) can pass freely to and fro, through the great sky,—yet to cross over the River of Heaven, for your sake, was weary work indeed!]

[From the august Age of the God-of-Eight-Thousand-Spears,¹³ she had been my spouse in secret¹⁴ only; yet now, because of my constant longing for her, our relation has become known to men.]

[From the time when heaven and earth were parted, she has been my own wife;—yet, to be with her, I must always wait till autumn.¹⁵]

[With my beloved, of the ruddy-tinted cheeks,¹⁶ this night indeed will I descend into the bed of the River of Heaven, to sleep on a pillow of stone.]

[When I see the water-grasses of the River of Heaven bend in the autumn wind (I think to myself): "The time (for our meeting) seems to have come."]

[When I feel in my heart a sudden longing for my husband,¹⁷ then on the River of Heaven the sound of the rowing of the night-boat is heard, and the plash of the oar resounds.]

[In the night when I am reposing with my (now) far-away spouse, having exchanged jewel-pillows¹⁸ with her, let not the cock crow, even though the day should dawn.]

[Though for a myriad ages we should remain hand-in-hand and face to face, our exceeding love could never come to an end. (Why then should Heaven deem it necessary to part us?)]

[The white cloth which Tanabata has woven for my sake, in that dwelling of hers, is now, I think, being made into a robe for me.]

[Though she be far-away, and hidden from me by five hundred layers of white cloud, still shall I turn my gaze each night toward the dwelling-place of my younger sister (wife).]

[When autumn comes, and the river-mists spread over the Heavenly Stream, I turn toward the river, (and long); and the nights of my longing are many!]

[But once in the whole year, and only upon the seventh night (of the seventh month), to meet the beloved person—and lo! The day has dawned before our mutual love could express itself!²⁰]

[The love-longing of one whole year having ended to-night, every day from to-morrow I must again pine for him as before!]

[Hikoboshi and Tanabata-tsumé are to meet each other to-night;—ye waves of the River of Heaven, take heed that ye do not rise!]

[Oh! that white cloud driven by the autumn-wind—can it be the heavenly hiré²¹ of Tana-bata-tsumé?]

[Because he is my not-often-to-be-met beloved, hasten to row the boat across the River of Heaven ere the night be advanced.]

[Late in the night, a mist spreads over] the River of Heaven; and the sound of the oar²² of Hikoboshi is heard.]

[On the River of Heaven a sound of plashing can be distinctly heard: is it the sound of the rippling made by Hikoboshi quickly rowing his boat?]

[Perhaps this evening shower is but the spray (flung down) from the oar of Hikoboshi, rowing his boat in haste.]

[From to-morrow, alas! after having put my jewel-bed in order, no longer reposing with my lord, I must sleep alone!]

[The wind having risen, the waves of the river have become high;—this night cross over in a towboat,²³ I pray thee, before the hour be late!]

[Even though the waves of the River of Heaven run high, I must row over quickly, before it becomes late in the night.]

[Long ago I finished weaving the material; and, this evening, having finished sewing the garment for him—(why must) I still wait for my lord?]

[Is it that the current of the River of Heaven (has become too) rapid? The jet-black night²⁴ advances—and Hikoboshi has not come!]

[Oh, ferryman, make speed across the stream!—my lord is not one who can come and go twice in a year!]

[On the very day that the autumn-wind began to blow, I set out for the shallows of the River of Heaven;—I pray you, tell my lord that I am waiting here still!]

[Methinks Tanabata must be coming in her boat; for a cloud is even now passing across the clear face of the moon.²⁵]

—And yet it has been gravely asserted that the old Japanese poets could find no beauty in starry skies!...

Perhaps the legend of Tanabata, as it was understood by those old poets, can make but a faint appeal to Western minds. Nevertheless, in the silence of transparent nights, before the rising of the moon, the charm of the ancient tale sometimes descends upon me, out of the scintillant sky,—to make me forget the monstrous facts of science, and the stupendous horror of Space. Then I no longer behold the Milky Way as that awful Ring of the Cosmos, whose hundred million suns are powerless to lighten the Abyss, but as the very Amanogawa itself,—the River Celestial. I see the thrill of its shining stream, and the mists that hover along its verge, and the water-grasses that bend in the winds of autumn. White Orihimé I see at her starry loom, and the Ox that grazes on the farther shore;—and I know that the falling dew is the spray from the Herdsman's oar. And the heaven seems very near and warm and human; and the silence about me is filled with the dream of a love unchanging, immortal,—forever yearning and forever young, and forever left unsatisfied by the paternal wisdom of the gods.

GOBLIN POETRY

Recently, while groping about an old book shop, I found a collection of Goblin Poetry in three volumes, containing many pictures of goblins. The title of the collection is Kyōka Hyaku-Monogatari, or "The Mad Poetry of the Hyaku-Monogatari." The Hyaku-Monogatari, or "Hundred Tales," is a famous book of ghost stories. On the subject of each of the stories, poems were composed at different times by various persons,—poems of the sort called Kyōka, or Mad Poetry,—and these were collected and edited to form the three volumes of which I became the fortunate possessor. The collecting was done by a certain Takumi Jingorō, who wrote under the literary pseudonym "Temmér Réōjin" (Ancient of the Temmér Era). Takumi died in the first year of Bunkyū (1861), at the good age of eighty; and his collection seems to have been published in the sixth year of Kaéï (1853). The pictures were made by an artist called Masazumi, who worked under the pseudonym "Ryōsai Kanjin."

From a prefatory note it appears that Takumi Jingorō published his collection with the hope of reviving interest in a once popular kind of poetry which had fallen into neglect before the middle of the century. The word kyōka is written with a Chinese character signifying "insane" or "crazy;" and it means a particular and extraordinary variety of comic poetry. The form is that of the classic tanka of thirty-one syllables (arranged 57577);—but the subjects are always the extreme reverse of classical; and the artistic effects depend upon methods of verbal jugglery which cannot be explained without the help of numerous examples. The collection published by Takumi includes a good deal of matter in which a Western reader can discover no merit; but the best of it has a distinctly grotesque quality that reminds one of Hood's weird cleverness in playing with grim subjects. This quality, and the peculiar Japanese method of mingling the playful with the terrific, can be suggested and explained only by reproducing in Romaji the texts of various kyōka, with translations and notes.

The selection which I have made should prove interesting, not merely because it will introduce the reader to a class of Japanese poetry about which little or nothing has yet been written in English, but much more because it will afford some glimpses of a supernatural world which still remains for the most part unexplored. Without knowledge of Far Eastern superstitions and folk-tales, no real understanding of Japanese fiction or drama or poetry will ever become possible.

There are many hundreds of poems in the three volumes of the Kyōka Hyaku-Monogatari; but the number of the ghosts and goblins falls short of the one hundred suggested by the title. There are just ninety-five. I could not expect to interest my readers in the whole of this goblinry, and my selection includes less than one seventh of the subjects. The Faceless Babe, The Long-Tongued Maiden, The Three-Eyed Monk, The Pillow-Mover, The Thousand Heads, The Acolyte-with-the-Lantern, The Stone-that-Cries-in-the-Night, The Goblin-Heron, The Goblin-Wind, The Dragon-Lights, and The Mountain-Nurse, did not much impress me. I omitted kyōka dealing with fancies too gruesome for Western nerves,—such as that of the Obumédori,—also those treating of merely local tradition. The subjects chosen represent national rather than provincial folklore,—old beliefs (mostly of Chinese origin) once prevalent throughout the country, and often referred to in its popular literature.

I. KITSUNÉ-BI

The Will-o'-the-wisp is called kitsuné-bi ("fox-fire"), because the goblin-fox was formerly supposed to create it. In old Japanese pictures it is represented as a tongue of pale red flame, hovering in darkness, and shedding no radiance upon the surfaces over which it glides.

To understand some of the following kyōka on the subject, the reader should know that certain superstitions about the magical power of the fox have given rise to several queer folk-sayings,—one of which relates to marrying a stranger. Formerly a good citizen was expected to marry within his own community, not outside of it; and the man who dared to ignore traditional custom in this regard would have found it difficult to appease the communal indignation. Even to-day the villager who, after a long absence from his birthplace, returns with a strange bride, is likely to hear unpleasant things said,—such as: "Wakaranai-mono we hippaté-kita!... Doko no uma no honé da ka?" ("Goodness knows what kind of a thing he has dragged here after him! Where did he pick up that old horse-bone?") The expression uma no honé, "old horse-bone," requires explanation.

A goblin-fox has the power to assume many shapes; but, for the purpose of deceiving men, he usually takes the form of a pretty woman. When he wants to create a charming phantom of this kind, he picks up an old horse-bone or cow-bone, and holds it in his mouth. Presently the bone becomes luminous; and the figure of a woman defines about it,—the figure of a courtesan or singing-girl.... So the village query about the man who marries a strange wife, "What old horse-bone has he picked up?" signifies really, "What wanton has bewitched him?" It further implies the suspicion that the stranger may be of outcast blood: a certain class of women of pleasure having been chiefly recruited, from ancient time, among the daughters of Éta and other pariah-people.

[—Ah the wanton (lighting her lantern)!—so a fox-fire is kindled in the time of fox-transformation!... Perhaps she is really nothing more than an old horse-bone from somewhere or other....]

[Because of that Fox-fire burning there, the very soul of me is like to be extinguished in this narrow path (or, in this heart-depressing solitude).²⁷]

II. RIKOMBYŌ

The term Rikombyō is composed with the word rikon, signifying a "shade," "ghost," or "spectre," and the word byō, signifying "sickness," "disease." An almost literal rendering would be "ghost-sickness." In Japanese-English dictionaries you will find the meaning of Rikombyō given as "hypochondria;" and doctors really use the term in this modern sense. But the ancient meaning was a disorder of the mind which produced a Double; and there is a whole strange literature about this weird disease. It used to be supposed, both in China and Japan, that under the influence of intense grief or longing, caused by love, the spirit of the suffering person would create a Double. Thus the victim of Rikombyō would appear to have two bodies, exactly alike; and one of these bodies would go to join the absent beloved, while the other remained at home. (In my "Exotics and Retrospectives," under the title "A Question in the Zen Texts," the reader will find a typical Chinese story on the subject,—the story of the girl Ts'ing.) Some form of the primitive belief in doubles and wraiths probably exists in every part of the world; but this Far Eastern variety is of peculiar interest because the double is supposed to be caused by love, and the subjects of the affliction to belong to the gentler sex.... The term Rikombyō seems to be applied to the apparition as well as to the mental disorder supposed to produce the apparition: it signifies "doppelgänger" as well as "ghost-disease."

—With these necessary explanations, the quality of the following kyōka can be understood. A picture which appears in the Kyōka Hyaku-Monogatari shows a maid-servant anxious to offer a cup of tea to her mistress,—a victim of the "ghost-sickness." The servant cannot distinguish between the original and the apparitional shapes before her; and the difficulties of the situation are suggested in the first of the kyōka which I have translated:—

[Which one is this?—which one is that? Between the two shapes of the Rikombyō it is not possible to distinguish. To find out which is the real wife—that will be an affliction of spirit indeed!]

[Two lives there certainly are not;—nevertheless an extra body is visible, by reason of the Shadow-Sickness.]

[Yearning after her far-journeying husband, the woman has thus become two bodies, by reason of her ghostly sickness.]

[Though (it was said that), because of her ghostly sickness, there was not even a shadow of her left to be seen,—yet, contrary to expectation, there are two shadows of her to be seen!²⁸]

[Afflicted with the Rikombyō, she hides away from people in the back room, and never approaches the front of the house,—because of her Shadow-disease.²⁹]

[Here her body lies; but her soul is far away, asleep in the arms of a man;—and the white-haired mother, little knowing her daughter's heart, is nursing (only the body).³⁰]

[If, when seated before her toilet-stand, she sees two faces reflected in her mirror,—that might be caused by the mirror doubling itself under the influence of the Shadow-Sickness.³¹]

III. Ō-GAMA

In the old Chinese and Japanese literature the toad is credited with supernatural capacities,—such as the power to call down clouds, the power to make rain, the power to exhale from its mouth a magical mist which creates the most beautiful illusions. Some toads are good spirits,—friends of holy men; and in Japanese art a famous Rishi called "Gama-Sennin" (Toad Rishi) is usually represented with a white toad resting upon his shoulder, or squatting beside him. Some toads are evil goblins, and create phantasms for the purpose of luring men to destruction. A typical story about a creature of this class will be found in my "Kottō," entitled "The Story of Chugōrō."

[The eye of it, widely open, like a (round) mirror; the mouth of it opening like a wash-basin—by these things you may know that the Toad is a goblin-thing (or, that the Toad is a toilet article).³²]

IV. SHINKIRŌ

The term Shinkirō is used in the meaning of "mirage," and also as another name for Hōrai, the Elf-land of Far Eastern fable. Various beings in Japanese myth are credited with power to delude mortals by creating a mirage of Hōrai. In old pictures one may see a toad represented in the act of exhaling from its mouth a vapor that shapes the apparition of Hōrai.

But the creature especially wont to produce this illusion is the Hamaguri,—a Japanese mollusk much resembling a clam. Opening its shell, it sends into the air a purplish misty breath; and that mist takes form and defines, in tints of mother-of-pearl, the luminous vision of Hōrai and the palace of the Dragon-King.

[When the hamaguri opens its mouth—lo! Shinkirō appears!... Then all can clearly see the Maiden-Princess of the Dragon-Palace.]

[Lo! in the offing at ebb-tide, the hamaguri makes visible the miniature image of Shinkirō—the Dragon-Capital!]

V. ROKURO-KUBI

The etymological meaning of Rokuro-Kubi can scarcely be indicated by any English rendering. The term rokuro is indifferently used to designate many revolving objects—objects as dissimilar as a pulley, a capstan, a windlass, a turning lathe, and a potter's wheel. Such renderings of Rokuro-Kubi as "Whirling-Neck" and "Rotating-Neck" are unsatisfactory;—for the idea which the term suggests to Japanese fancy is that of a neck which revolves, and lengthens or retracts according to the direction of the revolution.... As for the ghostly meaning of the expression, a Rokuro-Kubi is either (1) a person whose neck lengthens prodigiously during sleep, so that the head can wander about in all directions, seeking what it may devour, or (2) a person able to detach his or her head completely from the body, and to rejoin it to the neck afterwards. (About this last mentioned variety of Rokuro-Kubi there is a curious story in my "Kwaidan," translated from the Japanese.) In Chinese mythology the being whose neck is so constructed as to allow of the head being completely detached belongs to a special class; but in Japanese folk-tale this distinction is not always maintained. One of the bad habits attributed to the Rokuro-Kubi is that of drinking the oil in night-lamps. In Japanese pictures the Rokuro-Kubi is usually depicted as a woman; and old books tell us that a woman might become a Rokuro-Kubi without knowing it,—much as a somnambulist walks about while asleep, without being aware of the fact.... The following verses about the Rokuro-Kubi have been selected from a group of twenty in the Kyōka Hyaku-Monogatari:—

[Oh!... Shaking loose her long hair disheveled by sleep, the Rokuro-Kubi stretches her neck to the length of a thousand fathoms!]

[Will not the Rokuro-Kubi, viewing with astonishment her own body (left behind) cry out, "Oh, what a headless goblin have you become!"]

[Swiftly gliding along the roof-beam (and among the props of the roof), the Rokuro-Kubi laughs with the sound of "kéta-kéta"—oh! the fearfulness of her face!³⁴]

[Beholding the Rokuro-Kubi rise up above the six-foot screen, any five-foot person would have become shortened by fear (or, "the stature of any person five feet high would have been diminished").³⁵]

VI. YUKI-ONNA

The Snow-Woman, or Snow-Spectre, assumes various forms; but in most of the old folk-tales she appears as a beautiful phantom, whose embrace is death. (A very curious story about her can be found in my "Kwaidan.")