Out of the East (19 page)

(There suddenly recurred to me, with new meaning, some words of a student's composition regarding the future of a just man:
His soul shall hover eternally in the universe.)

"And therefore," continued Asakichi, "one who has a son can die with a cheerful mind."

"Because the son will make those offerings of food and drink without which the spirit would suffer?" I queried.

"It is not only that. There are duties much more important than the making of offerings. It is because every man needs some one to love him after he is dead. Now you will understand."

"Only your words," I replied, "only the facts of the belief. The feeling I do not understand. I cannot think that the love of the living could make me happy after death. I cannot even imagine myself conscious of any love after death. And you, you are going far away to battle,—do you think it unfortunate that you have no son? "

"I? Oh no! I myself
am
a son,—a younger son. My parents are still alive and strong, and my brother is caring for them. If I am killed, there will be many at home to love me,—brothers, sisters, and little ones. It is different with us soldiers: we are nearly all very young."

"For how many years," I asked, "are the offerings made to the dead?"

"For one hundred years."

"Only for a hundred years?"

"Yes. Even in the Buddhist temples the prayers and the offerings are made only for a hundred years."

"Then do the dead cease to care for remembrance in a hundred years? Or do they fade out at last? Is there a dying of souls?"

"No, but after one hundred years they are no longer with us. Some say they are born again; others say they become kami, and do reverence to them as kami, and on certain days make offerings to them in the toko."

(Such were, I knew, the commonly accepted explanations, but I had heard of beliefs strangely at variance with these. There are traditions that, in families of exceeding virtue, the souls of ancestors took material form, and remained sometimes visible through hundreds of years. A sengaji pilgrim
¹
of old days has left an account of two whom he said he had seen in some remote part of the interior. They were small, dim shapes, "dark like old bronze." They could not speak, but made little moaning sounds, and they did not eat, but only inhaled the warm vapor of the food daily set before them. Every year, their descendants said, they became smaller and vaguer.)

"Do you think it is very strange that we should love the dead?" Asakichi asked.

"No," I replied, "I think it is beautiful. But to me, as a Western stranger, the custom seems not of to-day, but of a more ancient world. The thoughts of the old Greeks about the dead must have been much like those of the modern Japanese. The feelings of an Athenian soldier in the age of Pericles were perhaps the same as yours in this era of Meiji. And you have read at school how the Greeks sacrificed to the dead, and how they paid honor to the spirits of brave men and patriots?"

"Yes. Some of their customs were very like our own. Those of us who fall in battle against China will also be honored. They will be revered as kami. Even our Emperor will honor them."

"But," I said, "to die so far away from the graves of one's fathers, in a foreign land, would seem, even to Western people, a very sad thing."

"Oh no. There will be monuments set up to honor our dead in their own native villages and towns, and the bodies of our soldiers will be burned, and the ashes sent home to Japan. At least that will be done whenever possible. It might be difficult after a great battle."

(A sudden memory of Homer surged back to me, with a vision of that antique plain where "the pyres of the dead burnt continually in multitude.")

"And the spirits of the soldiers slain in this war," I asked,—"will they not always be prayed to help the country in time of national danger?"

"Oh yes, always. We shall be loved and worshiped by all the people."

He said "we" quite naturally, like one already destined. After a little pause he resinned:—

The last year that I was at school we had a military excursion. We marched to a shrine in the district of Iu, where the spirits of heroes are worshiped. It is a beautiful and lonesome place, among hills; and the temple is shadowed by very high trees. It is always dim and cool and silent there. We drew up before the shrine in military order; nobody spoke. Then the bugle sounded through the holy grove, like a call to battle; and we all presented arms; and the tears came to my eyes,—I do not know why. I looked at my comrades, and I saw they felt as I did. Perhaps, because you are a foreigner, you will not understand. But there is a little poem, that every Japanese knows, which expresses the feeling very well. It was written long ago by the great priest Saigyo Hoshi, who had been a warrior before becoming a priest, and whose real name was Sato Norikyo:—

It was not the first time that I had heard such a confession. Many of my students had not hesitated to speak of sentiments evoked by the sacred traditions and the dim solemnity of the ancient shrines. Really the experience of Asakichi was no more individual than might be a single ripple in a fathomless sea. He had only uttered the ancestral feeling of a race,—the vague but immeasurable emotion of Shint
ō
.

We talked on till the soft summer darkness fell. Stars and the electric lights of the citadel twinkled out together; bugles sang; and from Kiyomasa's fortress rolled into the night a sound deep as a thunder-peal, the chant of ten thousand men:—

"You have learned that song, have you not?" I asked.

"Oh yes," said Asakichi. "Every soldier knows it."

It was the Kumamoto R
ō
j
ō
, the Song of the Siege. We listened, and could even catch some words in that mighty volume of sound:—

For a little while Asakichi sat listening, swaying his shoulders in time to the strong rhythm of the chant; then, as one suddenly waking, he laughed, and said:—

"Teacher, I must go! I do not know how to thank you enough, nor to tell you how happy this day has been for me. But first,"—taking from his breast a little envelope,—" please accept this. You asked me for a photograph long ago: I brought it for a souvenir."