In The Long Street Of The Farming Village Of Matsuhara A Man Amazed
Me By Running In Front Of Me And Speaking To Me, And On Ito Coming
Up, He Assailed Him Vociferously, And It Turned Out That He Took Me
For An Aino, One Of The Subjugated Aborigines Of Yezo.
I have
before now been taken for a Chinese!
Throughout the province of Echigo I have occasionally seen a piece
of cotton cloth suspended by its four corners from four bamboo
poles just above a quiet stream. Behind it there is usually a long
narrow tablet, notched at the top, similar to those seen in
cemeteries, with characters upon it. Sometimes bouquets of flowers
are placed in the hollow top of each bamboo, and usually there are
characters on the cloth itself. Within it always lies a wooden
dipper. In coming down from Tenoko I passed one of these close to
the road, and a Buddhist priest was at the time pouring a dipper
full of water into it, which strained slowly through. As he was
going our way we joined him, and he explained its meaning.
According to him the tablet bears on it the kaimiyo, or posthumous
name of a woman. The flowers have the same significance as those
which loving hands place on the graves of kindred. If there are
characters on the cloth, they represent the well-known invocation
of the Nichiren sect, Namu mio ho ren ge kio. The pouring of the
water into the cloth, often accompanied by telling the beads on a
rosary, is a prayer. The whole is called "The Flowing Invocation."
I have seldom seen anything more plaintively affecting, for it
denotes that a mother in the first joy of maternity has passed away
to suffer (according to popular belief) in the Lake of Blood, one
of the Buddhist hells, for a sin committed in a former state of
being, and it appeals to every passer-by to shorten the penalties
of a woman in anguish, for in that lake she must remain until the
cloth is so utterly worn out that the water falls through it at
once.
Where the mountains come down upon the plain of Yonezawa there are
several raised banks, and you can take one step from the hillside
to a dead level. The soil is dry and gravelly at the junction,
ridges of pines appeared, and the look of the houses suggested
increased cleanliness and comfort. A walk of six miles took us
from Tenoko to Komatsu, a beautifully situated town of 3000 people,
with a large trade in cotton goods, silk, and sake.
As I entered Komatsu the first man whom I met turned back hastily,
called into the first house the words which mean "Quick, here's a
foreigner;" the three carpenters who were at work there flung down
their tools and, without waiting to put on their kimonos, sped down
the street calling out the news, so that by the time I reached the
yadoya a large crowd was pressing upon me.
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