In Ghostly Japan | Page 9

face and form would appear.
In many old Japanese and Chinese books mention is made of a famous
story about this incense,--a story of the Chinese Emperor Wu, of the
Han dynasty. When the Emperor had lost his beautiful favorite, the
Lady Li, he sorrowed so much that fears were entertained for his reason.
But all efforts made to divert his mind from the thought of her proved
unavailing. One day he ordered some Spirit-Recalling-Incense to be
procured, that he might summon her from the dead. His counsellors

prayed him to forego his purpose, declaring that the vision could only
intensify his grief. But he gave no heed to their advice, and himself
performed the rite,--kindling the incense, and keeping his mind fixed
upon the memory of the Lady Li. Presently, within the thick blue
smoke arising from the incense, the outline, of a feminine form became
visible. It defined, took tints of life, slowly became luminous, and the
Emperor recognized the form of his beloved At first the apparition was
faint; but it soon became distinct as a living person, and seemed with
each moment to grow more beautiful. The Emperor whispered to the
vision, but received no answer. He called aloud, and the presence made
no sign. Then unable to control himself, he approached the censer. But
the instant that he touched the smoke, the phantom trembled and
vanished.
Japanese artists are still occasionally inspired by the legends of the
Hangon-ho. Only last year, in Tokyo, at an exhibition of new
kakemono, I saw a picture of a young wife kneeling before an alcove
wherein the smoke of the magical incense was shaping the shadow of
the absent husband.(1)
Although the power of making visible the forms of the dead has been
claimed for one sort of incense only, the burning of any kind of incense
is supposed to summon viewless spirits in multitude. These come to
devour the smoke. They are called Jiki- ko-ki, or "incense-eating
goblins;" and they belong to the fourteenth of the thirty-six classes of
Gaki (pretas) recognized by Japanese Buddhism. They are the ghosts of
men who anciently, for the sake of gain, made or sold bad incense; and
by the evil karma of that action they now find themselves in the state of
hunger-suffering spirits, and compelled to seek their only food in the
smoke of incense.
1 Among the curious Tokyo inventions of 1898 was a new variety of
cigarettes called Hangon-so, or "Herb of Hangon,"--a name suggesting
that their smoke operated like the spirit-summoning incense. As a
matter of fact, the chemical action of the tobacco- smoke would define,
upon a paper fitted into the mouth-piece of each cigarette, the
photographic image of a dancing-girl.

A Story of Divination
I once knew a fortune-teller who really believed in the science that he

professed. He had learned, as a student of the old Chinese philosophy,
to believe in divination long before he thought of practising it. During
his youth he had been in the service of a wealthy daimyo, but
subsequently, like thousands of other samurai, found himself reduced
to desperate straits by the social and political changes of Meiji. It was
then that he became a fortune-teller,--an itinerant uranaiya,--travelling
on foot from town to town, and returning to his home rarely more than
once a year with the proceeds of his journey. As a fortune-teller he was
tolerably successful,--chiefly, I think, because of his perfect sincerity,
and because of a peculiar gentle manner that invited confidence. His
system was the old scholarly one: he used the book known to English
readers as the Yi-King,--also a set of ebony blocks which could be so
arranged as to form any of the Chinese hexagrams;--and he always
began his divination with an earnest prayer to the gods.
The system itself he held to be infallible in the hands of a master. He
confessed that he had made some erroneous predictions; but he said
that these mistakes had been entirely due to his own miscomprehension
of certain texts or diagrams. To do him justice I must mention that in
my own case--(he told my fortune four times),--his predictions were
fulfilled in such wise that I became afraid of them. You may disbelieve
in fortune-telling,-- intellectually scorn it; but something of inherited
superstitious tendency lurks within most of us; and a few strange
experiences can so appeal to that inheritance as to induce the most
unreasoning hope or fear of the good or bad luck promised you by
some diviner. Really to see our future would be a misery. Imagine the
result of knowing that there must happen to you, within the next two
months, some terrible misfortune which you cannot possibly provide
against!
He was already an old man when I first saw him in