In Ghostly Japan | Page 3

dropped upon neighbouring
roofs; and the whole street was soon ablaze. Then a sea-wind, rising,
blew destruction into further streets; and the conflagration spread from
street to street, and from district into district, till nearly the whole of the
city was consumed. And this calamity, which occurred upon the
eighteenth day of the first month of the first year of Meireki (1655), is
still remembered in Tokyo as the Furisode-Kwaji,--the Great Fire of the
Long-sleeved Robe.
According to a story-book called Kibun-Daijin, the name of the girl

who caused the robe to be made was O-Same; and she was the daughter
of Hikoyemon, a wine-merchant of Hyakusho-machi, in the district of
Azabu. Because of her beauty she was also called Azabu-Komachi, or
the Komachi of Azabu.(1) The same book says that the temple of the
tradition was a Nichiren temple called Hon-myoji, in the district of
Hongo; and that the crest upon the robe was a kikyo-flower. But there
are many different versions of the story; and I distrust the Kibun-Daijin
because it asserts that the beautiful samurai was not really a man, but a
transformed dragon, or water-serpent, that used to inhabit the lake at
Uyeno,--Shinobazu-no-Ike.
1 After more than a thousand years, the name of Komachi, or Ono-no-
Komachi, is still celebrated in Japan. She was the most beautiful
woman of her time, and so great a poet that she could move heaven by
her verses, and cause rain to fall in time of drought. Many men loved
her in vain; and many are said to have died for love of her. But
misfortunes visited her when her youth had passed; and, after having
been reduced to the uttermost want, she became a beggar, and died at
last upon the public highway, near Kyoto. As it was thought shameful
to bury her in the foul rags found upon her, some poor person gave a
wornout summer-robe (katabira) to wrap her body in; and she was
interred near Arashiyama at a spot still pointed out to travellers as the
"Place of the Katabira" (Katabira-no-Tsuchi).
Incense
I see, rising out of darkness, a lotos in a vase. Most of the vase is
invisible, but I know that it is of bronze, and that its glimpsing handles
are bodies of dragons. Only the lotos is fully illuminated: three pure
white flowers, and five great leaves of gold and green,--gold above,
green on the upcurling under-surface,--an artificial lotos. It is bathed by
a slanting stream of sunshine,-- the darkness beneath and beyond is the
dusk of a temple-chamber. I do not see the opening through which the
radiance pours, but I am aware that it is a small window shaped in the
outline-form of a temple-bell.
The reason that I see the lotos--one memory of my first visit to a
Buddhist sanctuary--is that there has come to me an odor of incense.
Often when I smell incense, this vision defines; and usually thereafter
other sensations of my first day in Japan revive in swift succession with
almost painful acuteness.

It is almost ubiquitous,--this perfume of incense. It makes one element
of the faint but complex and never-to-be-forgotten odor of the Far East.
It haunts the dwelling-house not less than the temple,--the home of the
peasant not less than the yashiki of the prince. Shinto shrines, indeed,
are free from it;--incense being an abomination to the elder gods. But
wherever Buddhism lives there is incense. In every house containing a
Buddhist shrine or Buddhist tablets, incense is burned at certain times;
and in even the rudest country solitudes you will find incense
smouldering before wayside images,--little stone figures of Fudo, Jizo,
or Kwannon. Many experiences of travel,--strange impressions of
sound as well as of sight,--remain associated in my own memory with
that fragrance:--vast silent shadowed avenues leading to weird old
shrines;--mossed flights of worn steps ascending to temples that
moulder above the clouds;--joyous tumult of festival nights;--sheeted
funeral-trains gliding by in glimmer of lanterns; murmur of household
prayer in fishermen's huts on far wild coasts;--and visions of desolate
little graves marked only by threads of blue smoke ascending,--graves
of pet animals or birds remembered by simple hearts in the hour of
prayer to Amida, the Lord of Immeasurable Light.
But the odor of which I speak is that of cheap incense only,--the
incense in general use. There are many other kinds of incense; and the
range of quality is amazing. A bundle of common incense- rods--(they
are about as thick as an ordinary pencil-lead, and somewhat
longer)--can be bought for a few sen; while a bundle of better quality,
presenting to inexperienced eyes only some difference in color, may
cost several yen, and be cheap at the price. Still costlier sorts of
incense,--veritable luxuries,-- take the form of lozenges, wafers,
pastilles; and a small envelope