In This Interior The Light Was Dim, The Lamps Burned Low,
The Atmosphere Was Heavy With Incense, And Amidst Its Fumes Shaven
Priests In Chasubles And Stoles Moved Noiselessly Over The Soft
Matting Round The High Altar On Which Kwan-Non Is Enshrined,
Lighting Candles, Striking Bells, And Murmuring Prayers.
In front
of the screen is the treasury, a wooden chest 14 feet by 10, with a
deep slit, into which all the worshippers cast copper coins with a
ceaseless clinking sound.
There, too, they pray, if that can be called prayer which
frequently consists only in the repetition of an uncomprehended
phrase in a foreign tongue, bowing the head, raising the hands and
rubbing them, murmuring a few words, telling beads, clapping the
hands, bowing again, and then passing out or on to another shrine
to repeat the same form. Merchants in silk clothing, soldiers in
shabby French uniforms, farmers, coolies in "vile raiment,"
mothers, maidens, swells in European clothes, even the samurai
policemen, bow before the goddess of mercy. Most of the prayers
were offered rapidly, a mere momentary interlude in the gurgle of
careless talk, and without a pretence of reverence; but some of the
petitioners obviously brought real woes in simple "faith."
In one shrine there is a large idol, spotted all over with pellets
of paper, and hundreds of these are sticking to the wire netting
which protects him. A worshipper writes his petition on paper, or,
better still, has it written for him by the priest, chews it to a
pulp, and spits it at the divinity. If, having been well aimed, it
passes through the wire and sticks, it is a good omen, if it lodges
in the netting the prayer has probably been unheard. The Ni-o and
some of the gods outside the temple are similarly disfigured. On
the left there is a shrine with a screen, to the bars of which
innumerable prayers have been tied. On the right, accessible to
all, sits Binzuru, one of Buddha's original sixteen disciples. His
face and appearance have been calm and amiable, with something of
the quiet dignity of an elderly country gentleman of the reign of
George III.; but he is now worn and defaced, and has not much more
of eyes, nose, and mouth than the Sphinx; and the polished, red
lacquer has disappeared from his hands and feet, for Binzuru is a
great medicine god, and centuries of sick people have rubbed his
face and limbs, and then have rubbed their own. A young woman went
up to him, rubbed the back of his neck, and then rubbed her own.
Then a modest-looking girl, leading an ancient woman with badly
inflamed eyelids and paralysed arms, rubbed his eyelids, and then
gently stroked the closed eyelids of the crone. Then a coolie,
with a swelled knee, applied himself vigorously to Binzuru's knee,
and more gently to his own. Remember, this is the great temple of
the populace, and "not many rich, not many noble, not many mighty,"
enter its dim, dirty, crowded halls. {5}
But the great temple to Kwan-non is not the only sight of Asakusa.
Outside it are countless shrines and temples, huge stone Amainu, or
heavenly dogs, on rude blocks of stone, large cisterns of stone and
bronze with and without canopies, containing water for the
ablutions of the worshippers, cast iron Amainu on hewn stone
pedestals - a recent gift - bronze and stone lanterns, a stone
prayer-wheel in a stone post, figures of Buddha with the serene
countenance of one who rests from his labours, stone idols, on
which devotees have pasted slips of paper inscribed with prayers,
with sticks of incense rising out of the ashes of hundreds of
former sticks smouldering before them, blocks of hewn stone with
Chinese and Sanskrit inscriptions, an eight-sided temple in which
are figures of the "Five Hundred Disciples" of Buddha, a temple
with the roof and upper part of the walls richly coloured, the
circular Shinto mirror in an inner shrine, a bronze treasury
outside with a bell, which is rung to attract the god's attention,
a striking, five-storied pagoda, with much red lacquer, and the
ends of the roof-beams very boldly carved, its heavy eaves fringed
with wind bells, and its uppermost roof terminating in a graceful
copper spiral of great height, with the "sacred pearl" surrounded
by flames for its finial. Near it, as near most temples, is an
upright frame of plain wood with tablets, on which are inscribed
the names of donors to the temple, and the amount of their gifts.
There is a handsome stone-floored temple to the south-east of the
main building, to which we were the sole visitors. It is lofty and
very richly decorated. In the centre is an octagonal revolving
room, or rather shrine, of rich red lacquer most gorgeously
ornamented. It rests on a frame of carved black lacquer, and has a
lacquer gallery running round it, on which several richly decorated
doors open. On the application of several shoulders to this
gallery the shrine rotates. It is, in fact, a revolving library of
the Buddhist Scriptures, and a single turn is equivalent to a
single pious perusal of them. It is an exceedingly beautiful
specimen of ancient decorative lacquer work. At the back part of
the temple is a draped brass figure of Buddha, with one hand
raised - a dignified piece of casting. All the Buddhas have Hindoo
features, and the graceful drapery and oriental repose which have
been imported from India contrast singularly with the grotesque
extravagances of the indigenous Japanese conceptions. In the same
temple are four monstrously extravagant figures carved in wood,
life-size, with clawed toes on their feet, and two great fangs in
addition to the teeth in each mouth. The heads of all are
surrounded with flames, and are backed by golden circlets. They
are extravagantly clothed in garments which look as if they were
agitated by a violent wind; they wear helmets and partial suits of
armour, and hold in their right hands something between a monarch's
sceptre and a priest's staff.
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