Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan, vol 2 | Page 9

The turtle is said to have the power to create, with its breath, a cloud, a fog, or a magnificent palace. It figures in the beautiful old folk-tale of Urashima. [25] All tortoises are supposed to live for a thousand years, wherefore one of the most frequent symbols of longevity in Japanese art is a tortoise. But the tortoise most commonly represented by native painters and metal-workers has a peculiar tail, or rather a multitude of small tails, extending behind it like the fringes of a straw rain-coat, mino, whence it is called minogame Now, some of the tortoises kept in the sacred tanks of Buddhist temples attain a prodigious age, and certain water--plants attach themselves to the creatures' shells and stream behind them when they walk. The myth of the minogame is supposed to have had its origin in old artistic efforts to represent the appearance of such tortoises with confervae fastened upon their shells.
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Early in summer the frogs are surprisingly numerous, and, after dark, are noisy beyond description; but week by week their nightly clamour grows feebler, as their numbers diminish under the attacks of many enemies. A large family of snakes, some fully three feet long, make occasional inroads into the colony. The victims often utter piteous cries, which are promptly responded to, whenever possible, by some inmate of the house, and many a frog has been saved by my servant-girl, who, by a gentle tap with a bamboo rod, compels the snake to let its prey go. These snakes are beautiful swimmers. They make themselves quite free about the garden; but they come out only on hot days. None of my people would think of injuring or killing one of them. Indeed, in Izumo it is said that to kill a snake is unlucky. 'If you kill a snake without provocation,' a peasant assured me, 'you will afterwards find its head in the komebitsu [the box in which cooked rice is kept] 'when you take off the lid.'
But the snakes devour comparatively few frogs. Impudent kites and crows are their most implacable destroyers; and there is a very pretty weasel which lives under the kura (godown) and which does not hesitate to take either fish or frogs out of the pond, even when the lord of the manor is watching. There is also a cat which poaches in my preserves, a gaunt outlaw, a master thief, which I have made sundry vain attempts to reclaim from vagabondage. Partly because of the immorality of this cat, and partly because it happens to have a long tail, it has the evil reputation of being a nekomata, or goblin cat.
It is true that in Izumo some kittens are born with long tails; but it is very seldom that they are suffered to grow up with long tails. For the natural tendency of cats is to become goblins; and this tendency to metamorphosis can be checked only by cutting off their tails in kittenhood. Cats are magicians, tails or no tails, and have the power of making corpses dance. Cats are ungrateful 'Feed a dog for three days,' says a Japanese proverb, 'and he will remember your kindness for three years; feed a cat for three years and she will forget your kindness in three days.' Cats are mischievous: they tear the mattings, and make holes in the shoji, and sharpen their claws upon the pillars of tokonoma. Cats are under a curse: only the cat and the venomous serpent wept not at the death of Buddha and these shall never enter into the bliss of the Gokuraku For all these reasons, and others too numerous to relate, cats are not much loved in Izumo, and are compelled to pass the greater part of their lives out of doors.
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Not less than eleven varieties of butterflies have visited the neighbourhood of the lotus pond within the past few days. The most common variety is snowy white. It is supposed to be especially attracted by the na, or rape-seed plant; and when little girls see it, they sing:
Cho-cho cho-cho, na no ha ni tomare; Na no ha ga iyenara, te ni tomare. [26]
But the most interesting insects are certainly the semi (cicadae). These Japanese tree crickets are much more extraordinary singers than even the wonderful cicadae of the tropics; and they are much less tiresome, for there is a different species of semi, with a totally different song, for almost every month during the whole warm season. There are, I believe, seven kinds; but I have become familiar with only four. The first to be heard in my trees is the natsuzemi, or summer semi: it makes a sound like the Japanese monosyllable ji, beginning wheezily, slowly swelling into a crescendo shrill as the blowing of steam, and dying away in another